Antro Review

Antro is a side-scrolling rhythm-based puzzle action platformer developed by Gatera Studio and published by Selecta Play and Astrolabe Games. There are several genres that I consider myself not great at: rhythm games, puzzlers, and platformers… so of course I decided to give this game a shot.

 The setting here is your typical totalitarian dystopia: In a world where the surface has become uninhabitable and everyone lives underground, in ANTRO. Here, only the rich get a decent living while everyone else subsists on bugs and rats, gets bombarded with propaganda, forced to work to the bone, and all while getting the occasional robotic beatdown for breathing funny. You play as Nittch, a silent, lowly (as in, lives at the very bottom of this hellhole) delivery guy who is given the relatively simple task of delivering a package. No name, just a location. But, as he travels into the upper levels to make the delivery, he ends up getting the attention of the totalitarian government and joins the rebellion to reshape ANTRO into a place worth living in.

The story is… serviceable. It's the standard anti-authoritarian narrative that pokes and prods at things like censorship, social media, capitalism, and wants you to rise up with music and rebellion in your heart. There's nothing wrong with it, and it's a message that is becoming increasingly important, but I dunno. The ending was sort of visually cool, but meh overall. I get what it's trying to tell me, but it's a song I’ve heard before that doesn't do anything interesting with it. The voice acting isn't too great either, sounding pretty stilted throughout the entire game.

However, I have to give props to the soundtrack featuring hip hop, drill, R&B and electronic songs to jump and slide to. They are all original tracks from Spanish artists, and all the levels are specifically crafted to the current beat it plays, and they can be visually stunning if they get the chance. There are some real bangers that you should listen to after you beat the game.

Anyways, let's get into the action. Nittch is a fairly athletic person who doesn’t take much crap from anyone, so he’s capable in parkour and using a bat. You can jump, slide, and hit stuff. There is a slight delay to your actions (and movement can feel stiff), so timing is everything here. While there will be moments of calm, thoughtful platforming and even a standard rhythm mini-game to unlock doors, the main meat is the auto-run sections where you’ll move to the beat in order to make it to the other side in one piece accompanied by a killer track. However, if you slightly mistime an action, the music becomes a little out of synch, which can mess you up, and it isn’t helped by the occasional iffy hitbox. Also, every time you die, your friend will admonish you for getting yourself killed. Every time. It’s quiet, but it will annoy you more than the deaths and repetition.

And… that’s everything about the game. Yeah, there’s not a lot here, and I beat Antro in 109 minutes, including needing to repeat a few sections. It's a short experience if you aren't going for 100%, and if you are, then it’ll probably take you another 30-40 minutes at best. After beating the game, it just sends you back to the first level to do it all again. There is a level select, but it’s in the Load option in the pause menu.

Onto performance, and with some potato-friendly specs, it shouldn’t fry anything. It ran perfectly fine without any hiccups on my mid-tier PC and the load times were short. I didn’t really have any issues other than what has already been mentioned.

Antro is a soundtrack with a free game. It's convincing me to go try out some of the artists featured, but there isn't much more substance to it than that. The message is relevant but overplayed, and the gameplay was fun, but experiencing it once is enough. It's a nice time, but if this is anything more than £10 digitally (and even that's pushing it), I might get a little mad.