Losing is never easy, but one of the biggest illusions in all of gaming is that there’s a consequence to it. There are some games where that’s not entirely untrue, such asEve Onlinewhere a destroyed ship can hold the value of dozens of people gaming for uncountable hours to afford its construction, but for the most part the cost of failure is a few minutes of gaming to get back to where you’d been. The frustration of a particularly troublesome boss or difficult section with no checkpoints can lead to controller-destroying rage, but when you step back and disengage it can seem like maybe just a bit of an overreaction (especially when you pick the controller back up and breeze through like it was nothing, but that’s a different article entirely).
Phantom Sparkis a racing game constantly reinforcing in-game failure has no consequence at all, and that losing is learning, putting you in the necessary mindset to retry as many times as it takes to post a track time you can be proud of.
Okay Three, Two, One, Let’s Jam!
The world ofPhantom Sparkis divided up among three domains, each ruled over by a champion who sets the goals for their collection of time-trial races. Fwinti governs the first domain, teaching new sparks the ins and outs of the basics, while the cocky Zyn and serene Aaroon up the challenge with wilder courses and their own track quirks. Each of the three sets of courses is ten tracks long plus a couple of bonus trials added in to practice specific techniques, and while it may be a twisty ride from start to finish, the key is simplicity.
Three Tracks of Time Trial Bliss in Phantom Spark Demo
Phantom Spark is a time-trial racer featuring hover-vehicles like in Wipeout but a racing challenge more similar to Trackmania.
Every race is fairly short, with very few taking over a minute to complete, and the wide tracks only have the occasional bottleneck on the straightaways. Controls could also be described as basic but are best thought of as uncluttered, consisting only of steering, acceleration, and brake. There’s no secret technique to get a boost of speed off the three-two-one countdown at the starting line, no handbrake to powerslide around the curves or turbo to hammer on to make up lost time.Phantom Sparkdrops everything that’s not pure racing, focusing on speed, momentum, and cornering, showing that each aspect is its own specific art to master and providing the tools to learn.
While the handling of the racing ship feels perfect, responding exactly as you think it will once you’ve cleared the first couple races, and each new course is its own challenge in figuring out how to wrangle it through the corners without killing momentum by brushing the edges, the replayability comes fromPhantom Spark’s ghost runs teaching you how to play better. The first time on a new course you’re by yourself, but clearing it properly means re-running to not only beat the time and ghost of the previous run, but also the ghost of the champion.
Each track has multiple champion runs for differing abilities, so if you bomb out that first time with no medal you won’t be put up against a ghost with silver-ranked times. The flip side, of course, is if you have the luck and skill to blow through the track with a silver medal on the first attempt, the next run is going to take a few attempts to clear. The ghosts, however, will show the way, and restarting is instantaneous with the touch of a single button.
Simple and Easy Are Very Different Things
What all this simplicity means is that each race is a fight for hundredths of a second. There’s not an ounce of fat to be found inPhantom Spark’s design, so everything, absolutely every advantage for the entire length of each race, has to be used to post a respectable time. Slowing down in a corner may be helpful in avoiding the brief speed and acceleration penalty from hitting a wall, but letting up on the gas beforehand so you can zip out of the corner with greater momentum will pay off with much better track times. Knowing when to let off the accelerator or use the brakes becomes vital for earning a gold ranking, which only sounds obvious until you’re looking at an S-curve at the base of a descent and need to calculate how much speed you’ll be carrying into it, keeping in mind that the descent adds a little velocity.
Boost pads also increase speed, and the spark racer doesn’t lose any of it unless you let up on the accelerator or bounce off a wall. There are far more variables to finding the perfect line than are readily apparent, and racing it with the simple controls means holding the top speed is all down to technique. Think of it like playing a guitar, in that anyone can twang a string, but there’s a long way to go to sound like Eddie Van Halen.
I’ve been playing a preview build ofPhantom Sparkfor the last week and while it’s too early to review, I can say it’s already one of my gaming highlights of the year, to the point that I’ve gotten silver ranking on all but Aaroon’s final set of courses and am about to start cleaning those up before seeing how many gold I can earn. Each track has its own leaderboard and while I’m in the thirties to fifties on most, that’s not going to last when the game comes out, especially when racing enthusiasts and speedrunners work their dark magic on it.
The secret is practice, and the racing feels so good that redoing a track over and over again, practicing the turns and figuring out the best cornering in the tricky areas never feels like a chore. The short tracks mean you can replay as many times as needed to learn each one’s subtleties, with a failed run just being on average between thirty and fifty seconds to try again. Failure becomes irrelevant, because each missed corner or heavy-handed braking is another lesson in how to whip through the track at lightning speed next time.
