Exophobia PC review – Are you on the square?

A Metroidvania that uses Wolfenstein-esque graphics? You better believe that got my attention. Exophobia was mostly put together by one person, but there’s clearly a lot of talent on display here. Of course, it’s not really a full Metroidvania. There’s ability-gating here and there, but you really can only backtrack for a few health upgrades and some collectibles. Regardless, the game is a strong first-person adventure with some truly clever mechanics that come together in a unique way.

Exophobia tells the story of some humans that land on an alien planet, only to to find themselves under attack. The crew’s survivors are all able to hole up in a panic room of sorts on their ship, but with limited supplies, it’s only a matter of time until they perish. Luckily, the player character has also survived, so it’s up to them to fight through the alien assault and save their comrades from certain doom. The entire game takes place on the human spaceship. But instead of exploring one giant interconnected map, you’ll instead be switching between the four floors of the ship.

Visually, the game is clearly meant to evoke Wolfenstein. It’s first person, but you can’t look up or down. At any given time, there’s just a single level, plus the visuals use a very muted, small colour palette meant to evoke older games as well. Exophobia has a charming look to it that’s mostly unlike anything else I’ve seen. The different areas of the ship are all visually distinct too, plus they have their own gimmicks. One tasks you with charging up batteries in fairly wide spaces, while another is overgrown with some sort of parasitic lifeform.

As Exophobia is a first-person shooter, you can expect there to be a lot of alien blasting. Strangely, you really only have a single gun. It does obtain a few additional uses as the game goes on, but you’ll mostly be charging up strong shots and shooting enemies with it. Most enemies will die in a single charged shot, so this can make the combat feel like it doesn’t evolve all that much over the course of the game, but the emphasis here is more so on exploration and navigation, so that didn’t bother me too much.

While the game might be broken up into four maps instead of one big one, these are technically interconnected. There are multiple elevators on each floor that will take you to different parts of the other floors, allowing you to reach areas that you can’t reach by other means. You have an overhead map of each floor that does a solid job of showing you where you’ve been, but due to the nature of how the map system works, it can be unwieldy and kind of difficult to use. For instance, it’s possible to see where elevators are but seeing where on the other floor that elevator will take you isn’t a thing.

Xenophobia makes the strange choice of purposefully limiting how much you can use your map outside of save rooms. Whenever you look at it, it’s stationary and can’t be scrolled. It only shows your current location. What’s more, looking at it uses up a battery that, when depleted, means you can’t look at the map anymore. Truthfully, this isn’t a big deal since save points are so plentiful, but it doesn’t really add much. Why a game that’s so focused on navigation wants to de-incentivise use of one’s map is beyond me.

The map shows save rooms and elevators, but you have to move the cursor over these to see what they are, meaning you can only tell where another save room is for certain when you’re in a save room. It seems a little backward. While the game might appear fairly open, there’s always one specific way forward. Exophobia isn’t always great about communicating what this is, but seeing as it’s a game about exploration, that’s far from a deal breaker. However, I wish there was a bit more to go on at some points.

Instead of having a health pool, your health is represented by little circles akin to hearts in a Zelda game. Everything does a single circle of damage, save for explosions which bizarrely do four. I’m not so sure that was the best choice for the game, as it weakens the difficulty curve to a certain extent. But so many of my deaths were specifically due to how needlessly damaging explosions are. It’s fine that they do more damage than a normal attack, but quadruple the damage is really pushing it.

Exophobia‘s abilities are quite different than those found in similar games. You have a charge shot that breaks certain grates, but there’s also a shockwave attack that stuns enemies and has other uses, as well as the extremely awesome ability to teleport to a location of one of your bullets passed over. You don’t find all that many abilities in the game, but they’re all useful and mostly interesting. There are also some boss battles, although most of these are against the same enemy. One fight against a giant worm goes on far too long, to the point that I felt like it was never going to end while doing it, but the others fare better.

Exophobia might take players seven hours if they know exactly where to go, but will take most people around 10 or so, I’d wager. The game has a true ending that can only be unlocked by tracking down some hidden items, but less observant players will probably not even realise they’re in the game. Granted, all this really adds aside from a different, brief ending is an additional boss fight that’s bizarrely far, far easier than the gruelling fight that precedes it. As for other nit-picks, the game switches inputs to a gamepad if there’s one detected, so if you’re playing on mouse and keyboard you need to go into the menu with your gamepad and switch, which is a curious choice.

I liked Exophobia overall. It’s an interesting, creative game that offers some fun throwbacks but some intriguing ideas, too. If you’re purely looking for a first-person Metroidvania, this probably doesn’t have all the hallmarks you’re looking for, but it’s well worth a playthrough all the same. Unless you really hate Wolfenstein 3D-esque visual design. Honestly, I kind of do, but this game is charming enough that I didn’t mind it so much.

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