Ghost in the Machine

A very nice platformer with accurate controls, fine music and levels which are easy and levels which are hard. A neat level editor provides everything to build your own great creations which can be friendly or insanely difficult.

It has decent enough mechanics for a platformer. It reminds me of 1001 spikes in that the game is about mastering a couple actions instead of learning new things. However the game is too simple (and at this point in gaming history, boring) for its current price. Maybe when it gets a 75% discount. I don't recommend it at this point but I recommend it if it's cheap and you want platforming.

Ghost in the Machine is a minimalist precision platformer. Your enjoyment of it will entirely depend on how interested you are in its “quirks”—almost all the negative reviews seem to blast it for things that very well could be selling points (minimalist gameplay, minimalist presentation, hyperactive chiptunes). However, the biggest point of contention is that the game seems to actively work against you: the monochromatic visuals are busy and make it hard to tell what’s going on all the time (admittedly, I think they look amazing and find the challenge of them fun), and, perhaps most significantly, the character sprite does not represent its hitbox. This second part is very strange for a platformer. I would liken Ghost in the Machine to a “bullet-hell” SHUMP: a game where you “feel” your hitbox rather than see it in a sea of messy, stylish visuals. If you enjoy this or not is entirely personal preference, but it’s clearly intentional, not “laziness” as some other reviewers have said. There are also some quality-of-life problems which keep me from enjoying the game too much. The lack of a restart button sucks in a game where you’ll want to retry as soon as you mess up something small. The jump often feels sluggish and sticky; I’m pretty sure inputs aren’t buffered at all, so you have to be totally on the group when you hit jump to jump again. The levels generally move smoothly if you do things correctly, but there’s lots of waiting around in some of them if you mess up at all, which can start to be very frustrating. Still, I love the visual design and overall groove of the game too much to let these get me down. Td;dr If you’re looking for an imperfect but fun precision platformer, it’s worth checking out.

Tags: Platformer Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: Blind jumps on moving blocks. Constant reloads. Obtuse progression path to follow. Hard to visaully decipher the level with minimal neon on back assets. First of all it needs to be stated, the music in this game is good, and is very varied, and is lenghty or at least I cannot easily spot any looping points. Thats awesome. I managed to get the Xbox 360 pad working by manually mapping out the keys and I could manually enter my screen resolution which seemed to maybe work. There are also a few options to make the game look more retro by simulating CRT monitor display. The minimalistic neon outlines on black fit the night time setting platformer on a flavor level. The game attributes the outline color seemingly at random for a level and some of them work much better than others to say the least. The background is often pitch black, or only has minor accents if it has anything, considering that walls themselves are just ultra thin outlines of walls with no textures within, you will often attempt to jump through a wall and instead just fall all the way down the level. The camera is already pretty zoomed in on the protagonist, and on top of that the game uses a limited field of vision mechanic which makes the game even more frustrating to navigate, adds artificial difficulty and really adds nothing else. You will often have to make blind jumps from moving blocks into the void and hope you do not land on spikes. Speaking of which there are a lot of spikes and a lot of falling blocks, and it is always the same thing. Avoid spikes, jump on top of falling blocks to use them as elevators and improvise a platforming to something else before you get crushed on the ceiling. You will often jump in walls in a panic and fall on spikes. The character model is very large, the feet are very wide apart which makes precision platforming between two platforms possible as you can readily see based on the feet position when you are meant to jump. However to jump between two sets of spikes closely together it is very ineffectual, and I gave up on even attempting it after a few tries. The same assets are constantly reused, always the same falling blocks, the same spikes, the same pipes, the same waterfall thing. After having seen about a dozen levels the only new thing I saw was a bear trap, another thing that wants me dead... just what I needed. Most of my fifteen minute playthrough was spent loading up a level realizing it was a near impossible nightmarish run to complete with a lot of blind navigation and cheap deaths that cannot be prevented in the vain hope I could learn to trial and error and rote memory myself out of it. Just way easier to press the start button quit and load the next available level. Eventually I ran out of levels to try. One level had me straight up spawn at the bottom of a pit. It was a deep pit and a narrow one, no way I was climbing out or doing anything. It is almost as if they did not playtest anything, or they were planning on adding more features but never got around to it. Who knows its a mystery. What is not a mystery however is that this game has next to no entertainment value and I am removing it for library declutter

Great 8 bit pixel puzzle game! Really enjoy the music!

Super tight controls and super difficult.

This game is sadistic. Like, if that old "Super Mario Frustration" ROM hack and Dark Souls had a baby on the Virtual Boy, it would be this. The game was originally made for a contest in which the theme was "unforseen consequences," hence the recurring theme in the story and the tunnel vision. Controls are crisp, music is awesome, aesthetic is amazing, but only buy this game if you have a CRT that can withstand your fist. LCDs are out of the question, you'll break one on the third level. Do not use with a CRT that cannot withstand your fist; you will be horribly mamed by flying shards of glass. Anyway, ever get stuck on a level of a game like Donkey Kong Land and just have fits of rage after dying on the same level for months? This game summons the same amount of rage, but unlike DKL, it's not because of janky controls, confusing graphics, that horrible GameBoy screen, or a sadistic saving system. It's because each level requires a whole lot of trial, error, death, and inhuman precision. It's simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

This game is immensely challenging throughout, the music is great, and the graphic style is pretty cool. Each stage is comprised of timed doors/locks, bear traps, treadmills, spikes, pistons, jumps, and climable walls. The creators play with these primitives to make some unexpected challenges. Sometimes the doors run horizontally and must be walked on to near the end before the door opens again dropping you into deadly spikes. Sometimes you must jump from climable wall to climable wall to platform to piston in a seemingly unbeatable gauntlet of spikes and bear traps. Each stage presents a unique challenge, requiring you to grow in skill before ever overcoming it. I highly recommend giving this game a shot if you like unique and exciting challenges.

i thought this was a game that the steam scream icons Ghosts in the Machine was based on, i was wrong but still a fun game 8.5/10

exactly the kind of game i like, the difficulty could be a little bit higher but the balance is well done . ty for the level design that sometimes makes me sick . ! give it a try , you'l like it for sure !