Since the early days of 3D platforming back on the old PlayStation 1 alongside the Nintendo 64 and the Dreamcast, I've grown up with some of the best that the expanding gaming industry had to offer at the time, whether this be the lightning-fast Sonic on his brand new adventure in Station Square or Lara Croft jumping and dodging the many deadly traps in the City of Khamoon alongside the likes of Rayman, Croc, Tomba and many other great platformers of the time.
Yet two were closest to the crown of being the game series that defined the PlayStation 1, chief amongst those was the Spyro games whose fantasy setting and more relaxed gameplay lend itself quite nicely for a truly cozy type of feeling that many casual gamers enjoyed thoroughly in a time when gaming still felt tied towards the arcade style of gameplay, making up for content with excessive difficulty to eat up those quarters.
The indie we are about to explore here, however, took its inspiration from the purple dragon's most fiercest competitor, and the one that ultimately won in the end, as Crash Bandicoot is legendary in his own right in so many ways that I wish I were reviewing the original trilogy published by Universal Interactive Studios simply so I could explore in so many aspects what made that series as fantastic as it was back in the 90s!
However, noting the absence of any actual classic platformers that specifically aimed to replicate that PS1 era of platforming, bad_vertex has taken it upon himself to make what I can only describe as a lovely homage to the Crash Bandicoot games of old, particularly the first one albeit I'll touch on why this is both a good thing for some as well as a bad one for others.
To begin, the player takes control of this game's fungal heroine that is Sybil as she explores the island that is made up of twenty-five levels, twenty of these being your typical platforming stages and the other four being boss battles that comprise of the antagonistic Lord Nutmeg and his top swine serving as his henchmen, plus a brutal post-game level at the very end! Naturally the most direct goal is going through each of these levels, completing these stages by making it through to the end or defeating the boss in an intense combat sequence in typical platforming style, whilst the longer overreaching objective is to collect all of the 'tokens' (these are mushrooms which represents the level's shroom denizen in need of rescuing) and achieve a 'gold skull' in the time trial after beating the level.
One thing I should touch upon in what made the Crash Bandicoot games so revered as a platforming legend is how it appears intimidating at first for those not used to platformers of a tight nature, having to quickly think and dodge on the fly as enemies can easily kill you on contact and falling off is just as effortless for anyone sloppy on their feetwork! Yet the games themselves are actually quite generous for the most part, giving you more than enough time to slowly get acclimated with the platforming and even providing the ever-helpful 'Aku Aku' masks that served to give players a second chance if they took a hit, with further upgrades giving even more protection to the player.
The developer behind this game, however, sought to take PsiloSybil in an even more arduous direction than the very first Crash Bandicoot game as the airtime you get from a jump is not as much as you would find in most other platformers of that era, also not helping is the lack of a 'safety net' with the absence of power-ups alongside the game expecting you to pick up the pace quite quickly compared to its inspiration.
This has me feeling mixed to some degree, as I've always enjoyed a good challenge and certainly I took it head on as the first segment of this game leading up to Chef Porcini (the first of four bosses) is actually fairly decent for somebody used to platforming but not at a professional level. However, this challenge raises considerably in the second and third parts that will see the average player's deaths easily going into the double-digits on their first attempts and by the time you enter the final section of PsiloSybil, expect the prospect of seeing over a hundred deaths per level to be a brutal reality!
Though it's why I am glad they replaced the limited lives to counteract this as my attempts of playing this on the arcade mode (replacing the token goals with the rare Sybil collectable that acts as an extra life) saw me getting as far as the 9th level before running out of lives despite getting to know the early levels rather well, no doubt a skill issue on my end but I suspect many others will not even reach or get past the first boss before calling it quits on this particular mode.
This is to say that, for anyone interested in the unquestionably amazing atmosphere that bad_vertex has created faithfully which this game could have easily passed for a legitimate PS1 game back in 1999 or 2000, whether PsiloSybil will be enjoyable or not will largely depend on your tolerance for tight platforming and genuinely hard challenges.
On the one hand, if you enjoyed Crash Bandicoot 2 and 3 but found the first game's challenge to be a little too much (whether due to 'first game syndrome' or Naughty Dog making it less casual than they were aiming it to be), then unfortunately this game is easily multiple steps above the difficulty of the first Crash Bandicoot and will likely prove too frustrating to be enjoyable. However, if you've fully completed the trilogy and found only the first game's platforming levels to offer any challenge outside of time trials, then I can say with confidence that you'll have a fairly good time learning a new standard of precise platforming here!
It wouldn't go without saying here, however, that I did encounter some issues with PsiloSybil throughout my time spent with it, mainly the occasional stutter in performance. Whilst these are rare, it did end up causing several out of the approximately 1200 or so deaths on my first playthrough that I did find rather frustrating when it occurred, but thankfully it was manageable with the unlimited lives.
Another unfortunate issue I had is with the last segment and its extreme reliance on precise platforming plus how four of the five stage in the final stretch are not so much unique levels as they are 'recycled' since Gruesome Grotto, Dark Chocolate and Hell's Bells are all essentially harder variants of Crystal Hollow, Dessert Outpost and Stone Cold respectively. Haunted Lodge does start off similar to Boarsailles but thankfully has its own creative spin in the latter-half that I quite enjoyed.
Honestly though, I had a pretty great time with PsiloSybil all things considered, even with the fairly high difficulty throughout the game and [b]especially[/b] towards the end of it. However whether you will end up enjoying this game or not largely will come down to how high your tolerance is for platforming that, at times, borders on Kaizo-tier difficulty. Were it not for the inclusion of unlimited lives in the regular game mode, personally I would not have recommended this game due to being too unforgiving with limited lives and not being able to go back to older levels on arcade mode like you could in the Crash Bandicoot games.
All in all, bad_vertex has done a fantastic job with not just replicating the classic retro platforming experience on a gameplay basis but also putting serious efforts towards recreating just how it felt to play a good and (mostly) well-designed platformer game in the late 90s, as the immersion I felt playing PsiloSybil is almost second to none and I frankly wouldn't have it any other way! Hold off buying it as a casual and get the N. Sane Trilogy when it goes on a discount to see how you feel about tough platforming first, however anyone who is looking to take things to the next level will feel right at home with this indie and all of its infuriatingly hard stages!
