Flinthook PC Review

When I first laid my eyes upon the Flinthook, I honestly thought it would be a wannabe Shovel Knight with some flavor added to it. However, it turned out that I was off in my prediction and I was met with a rather pleasant surprise. Flinthook is single handedly one of the most addictive, fast paced and incredibly simple games I have ever played in a long time.

Think of Flinthook as Speedrunners meets Shovel Knight and Rogue Legacy. The game is a pixel graphics experience in a pirate setting. The objective of the game is simple: collect loot, raid and plow through multiple pirate ships with random structures where the risk goes higher the more you play. You will be jumping, zipping and blasting in a rather unforgiving environment where the biggest  inhabitants of the space sea will be your enemy.

The art style of this game is incredible. A lot of people consider Pixel art in videogames as something trivial and easy to do, but I would be lying if I said that the animations, sprite details and backgrounds weren’t fitting and great looking for a game like this. A 2D platformer will always go hand in hand with Pixel art. And the game didn’t disappoint at all, either. Couple that with the music, which pretty much describes itself, the intro song becoming one of my favorite songs of all time, and you’ll get a game that looks and sounds amazing.

I really can’t say much for the story because of two reasons. The first one being, the intro cinematic explains the plot clearly well, showing how Flinthook, one of the Lighthouse Planet keepers gets merged with a person, whom we know nothing about, after an explosion. With the help of a Blasma Pistol, a Quickhook and a Chronobuckle  the legendary space pirate sets off to stop the threat of a malevolent treasure hunter who wants to unleash an ancient evil which will put the cosmos itself in danger.

That’s about all the major equipment you’ll be seeing in the game, there’s no variety in the weapons whatsoever. The Blasma Pistol shoots plasma projectiles at the rotation of your stick, the Quickhook acts as your means to travel through stages since it’s a tether and the Chronobuckle slows down time by holding down the ZL button. All of the weapons will get their upgrades through perks, such as increased firing speed for the Blasma Pistol, increased usage time for the Chronobuckle and immunity to slow down for the Quickhook to mention a few examples.

You also have access to sub weapons like Bombs and Skull tornadoes among others, which will aid you in battle. By pressing the Y button you’ll drop them and cause heavy damage to the enemy. However, being sincere here, you’ll mostly use the Blasma Pistol because first of all you don’t get access to sub weapons a lot.  Secondly they are one use items that can’t be stacked and thirdly, they are extremely scarce and inconvenient to use due to the fact that they follow an arc pattern which requires a defined zoning and positioning from enemies.

The second reason why I won’t explain the plot of the game in detail is because the lore of the game is also one of the collectibles. These are found in the rooms that have a library in them. Whenever you collect a page of the Lore, you get to see the backstory behind a lot of the game’s gadgets and characters, like the identity of the person controlled by Flinthook, the origin of the Quickhook and Chronobuckle among lots of other things. A pretty nice read once you collect the necessary pages.

Speaking of collectibles, the objective of Flinthook is to find Ghost Gems located at a random location (usually after a Boss Room) in randomly generated ships, with randomly generated benefits and hazards in them. I know it’s redundant but the game is that random in terms of where you’ll find stuff. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, I have played this game for a while now and have seen some patterns in the layouts of the pirate spaceships. However, they don’t feel samey and are only apparent if you have a knack for detail. Since the map layout is generally short, you don’t have to worry about getting a few of the levels watered down since they still are action packed and fun to play through.

Ship modifiers go from rooms with more traps, enemies or treasure, perk drops, stores to helpful tips for your quests. The pirate ships will be as difficult as you want them to be. Before you start a raid, you are given a choice between 3 different ship cards, each with their own modifiers. Included is a number, on the side, to determine how difficult your journey will be on average. If you go for the riskier route, you will obtain more rewards.

You will also gain Fongoolian Doubloons (Green gemstones with a skull in them) which will allow you to buy more perks, equipment and other kinds of objects to support you in the Black Market. One of the most important equipment pieces you’ll want to get first would be the Perk+ and Perk ++ which will add Perk Points to your character so you can equip even more perks for your next attempt.

The game will be fast paced and unforgiving to players inexperienced with the genre. You have to get a grasp of how to use the Quickhook and learn to tether your way to victory while attacking enemies with your Blasma Pistol. While it may be something jarring for a lot of casual gamers, the more you play the more you’ll get used  to the game’s mechanics, and the easier it will be for you to gracefully zip through the stages. If you put at least some level of dedication to it, you’ll find that the learning curve for Flinthook isn’t as steep as other games.

Now, while the game has a lot of positives, there’s also some negatives that I would like to address. Firstly, there’s the hitboxes and invincibility frames. When you get hit by an enemy you do get a few invincibility frames but they wear off far too quickly for comfort. This will definitely be a horrible time because you’ll get hit very frequently if you get in the middle of a flurry of projectiles or get hit by traps and don’t react quick enough. Since you suffer from knockback whenever you get hit by an attack, it will throw you off your game. There are also times where I pointed my Quickhook to a tether to escape a spiked pit and the hook simply didn’t connect with anything  ending up in me being damaged as a result.

The screen as a whole also tends to flicker during gameplay. It’s a really odd graphics glitch I have never seen in other games. It also seems like I’m not alone since this has been a consistent problem amongst other users. There’s also the feature where (like other Rogue-like games) you will start all the way from the top each time your HP hits 0. The way this works is that when you start a raid, you’ll have to collect the 3 Ghost gems to unlock the way to the boss of the stage. If you get killed while collecting the gemstones or during the boss battle, you’ll have to do everything all over again, of course. You’ll level up and buy more perks before tackling the stage again, but I expected at least a checkpoint whenever I reached a boss fight. However, this isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Flinthook got me hooked (pun intended) with a very pleasant mixture of gameplay I have never seen before in a 2D platformer. The tether mechanics of Speed Runners, the addictiveness and replay value of Rogue Legacy and the fast paced action of Shovel Knight are to be found with this title. Coupled them with an incredible soundtrack, boss battles that test your patience , skills and beautiful graphics and they make for a game that I can safely say, is one of the best of 2017.

Javier Ulises, NoobFeed
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