izigame.me

Phantom Spark is pure time-trial racing zen for anti-grav folk; there’s no combat or physically jostling with other racers here. There’s no directional braking, ability boosting, pit-stops, ship variants or worrying about nose angle over bumps and jumps. It's focused entirely on your racing line and when you accelerate and decelerate. I was worried that it would be a little too bare for me, coming from BallisticNG, but, ho boy. It's really got its hooks in. I usually find time-trial racing quite stressful but here it's downright soothing, and the drum and bass soundtrack just oozes calm.
Something I really appreciate about Phantom Spark, beyond its gorgeous and unique visual design (from the ships and environments, to the UI and characters), is its structure and introduction to the mindset of time-trial racing. It doesn’t just dump you on to tracks, or ‘pathways’ as they’re called, and list some times for you to beat. It breezily eases you in.
The game is divided into three domains, each featuring ten or so pathways, and each domain has its own unique champion, starting with ‘Fwinti’. Fwinti’s domain is for new racers, or ‘sparks’, and her words do a lot to get you into the game’s core loop.
First you complete a pathway on your own, so no pressure. That unlocks the next one, but each pathway has ‘tiers’ of completion and Fwinti encourages you to stick around and improve your time. It’s at this point where she introduces her ghost or ‘phantom’. Now you’ve got a challenger which is the first big hook. She’s not that far ahead but where can I find the speed to catch her? You keep trying. You observe her phantom and learn from it, and eventually beat her. Depending on your time, she may have a faster one to continue racing against, but, if not, you can pick a nearby challenger from the online leaderboard, which includes a friends section. If you want, you can go straight to the top and pull the first place phantom on to the pathway but there’s something about having a competitor that’s just within your reach.
It helps that throughout all this, restarting when you mess up is pretty much instant and Fwinti actively encourages you use it. I also love that splits are colour coded green or red so you can see how well you’re doing without taking your eyes off the pathway.
Sooner or later you’ll move on to the next pathway (and in turn, domain and champion) and start the process again, but, eventually, Fwinti will notify you that she’s beaten one of your times on a previous pathway, inviting you back to try and go a bit faster… I just think this is such a welcoming, organic and gentle way of encouraging you to improve incrementally and it fits right in with the chill atmosphere of the game. It’s all about precision, but without being stressful (at least not yet!) which is a remarkable achievement.
But I really admire the focus and minimalism here; trying to find those tiny racing line and speed adjustments that make the ‘biggest’ differences, well, as big as can be when we’re talking tenths and hundredths of a second! And, y'know, it just feels good to go fast and beat times, whether they're your own, your friends, the champions' or folk online. There's always a phantom to race against and learn from.