Philophobia: The Fear of Love Reviews

I only played 40 minutes but I wanted to review early on because of how awesome the game is. I'm not one to play platformers on pc. I usually play the old snes platformers the old console but this really is a beautiful game. It really gives me the feel of old snes games with modern responsive controls and beautiful graphics. But this is a really fun game to play if you need a break from today's modern violent video games and just want to enjoy an awesome story told from Tim's heart. Imo this a really cool unique game. i feel like I am playing a modern day mario with themes coming from the darkness games. The game has no bugs as of yet. If there are any I have yet to experience any. I rate this 9.5/10 as in my eyes nothing is perfect but this game comes pretty close to it.

This game is really fun. The controls feel great, the story is very engaging and the level design is challenging but it feels great when you complete levels. Also, finding the hidden items in each level is a lot of fun. Definitely worth playing! :)

The controls are tight and I love the shadow mechanic. The shadows make it fun to discover what's around each corner and getting through a level on the first try is a thrill. And if you don't make it on the first try, the shadows force you to commit the level to memory. Most of the levels fit on a single screen which makes them short and sweet, although there are a handful of levels that will make you want to rip your hair out but in a good way! This is where the theme of heartbreak, anger and frustration fits really well. The levels are very fair in that it doesn't take long to figure out how to beat them, so it's entirely on the player to execute! Dying and respawning is also very snappy which motivated me to give even the most difficult levels "just one more try" without realizing I died 40 times. I enjoyed the minimalist art style and the color palette works really well. Well done Tim! Definitely a labor of love.

TLDR: good platformer with a decent difficulty curve, but nothing else is much above average. Has important message given to you by a developer that learned form his emotional trauma, but you'll only get that at the very end, so ignore all the cutscenes and subpar poetry that come before it. Might fail to keep you interested near the end. WOULD ONLY RECOMMEND TO skilled platformer players that need more platforming in their lives, specially if they have love issues. If you're not that skilled it might be hard and frustrating (some other people had a much harder time beating it than i did). The emotional themes might not resonate with you at all. FULL REVIEW: Game is an entertaining platformer with a relevant message at the end. It's made by one guy and that definitely shows up, so don't expect anything to be of excellent quality. But there's nothing very bad either. Difficulty curve felt pretty good to me, except for the occasional times it kills you on purpose or the minor glitches that might annoy you a couple of times ( [spoiler] Tip: you cannot dash while using boomerang [/spoiler], the most amount of deaths i got in a level was 30 and it was because i could not figure that out ). Nothing too frequent tho. Near the end of the game it becomes more of a puzzle platformer than a precision platformer and that made the levels somewhat uninteresting. At that point i took a break, went to do something else, and i didn't think i was gonna go back to finish the game. It's not very appealing for any specific reason, it's just sorta good enough, so at that point i wasn't expecting to see anything very new and exciting that i hadn't seen in the first 80% of the game. I will usually be excited to see the ending of a game, but i wasn't for this one. The ending cutscene is good and has a relevant message to it, but that's the only moment you'll get the point of the game. The game is made up of 5 realms, and in between each realm you'll get a cutscene. The artstyle is simple, good enough for the platforming sections, but on the cutscenes you would expect something better. The poetry on the cutscenes is not that great. It's filled with stuff that's very emotionally relevant to the developer but it seems a little too specific, so i don't think it will resonate with most people that play it, it certainly didn't to me. You can see the emotional themes that are supposed to be embedded in the game but it doesn't do a very good job of transmitting that to the player, so it just plays like an arcade platformer up until the end. But i did come back to play the rest of the game. I might not have played it to the end if i hadn't followed the development of the game and felt like i had to beat it so i could give the developer an honest review. So i beat the 4th realm, and the 5th realm had some real neat platforming to it. It was the best platforming section on the game, and it's followed by an ending cutscene that's much better than the other cutscenes in the game. This one includes a message that you will understand (different from the other cutscenes), and it's a relevant message to anyone who's been through emotional problems.

Got stuck on the 2nd to last level of Denial. Looking forward to trying again at some point. Glad to help support Tim :) Art style & feeling are great, it's a little bit dark for my taste and found it to be really hard, but not impossible. I appreciate the pacing & how the game teaches you the mechanics, no hand holding, but easy enough to figure out.

It's ok. It has some good levels and some bad levels. It has a good message. I would still try to get it on sale though.

I've been watching Tim Ruswick's YouTube channel for the last few years and decided to take the plunge and buy Philophobia. My time with the game was quite enjoyable (albeit also frustrating) and it was definitely a fairly challenging platformer. The shadow mechanic was quite interesting and added to the challenge and I liked using the dash ability a lot, though I feel the other two abilities were underused a bit in comparison. There's some elements introduced in the later realms of the game that I feel could have been introduced earlier in the game to be utilised more, like these heart stalactites that try to fall on you. The 3rd and 4th bosses were also sort of annoying due to requiring a lot of rapid key presses and quick responses to avoid dying (which I did a lot). Some of the levels in the game did also suffer similar problems with relying more on rapid responses which can lead to a lot of deaths and are a source of frustration. The story presented in the game is simple and serviceable, so anybody looking for a deep story and well written characters will want to look elsewhere. All in all, I enjoyed the game and would recommend it to people who want a challenging precision platformer and can look past some rough edges. 7/10 I also want to thank Tim for being a huge source of inspiration and advice to myself as a budding game developer and I wish him well with his future endeavours.

Very unique in visuals! Nice bite-sized precision platformer that's tricky at times but, for the most part, not too difficult. Collected all the heartifacts and lost souls and finished the game in about 5hrs (though it would have been nice to indicate which levels the lost souls were in somehow -_-). Not sure if it's a typo in the store-page but I only saw 5 realms to escape, not 6? Overall fun platformer to grab while on sale!

Philophobia The Fear of Love by Tim Ruswick. This game is a delight to play. The controls are very responsive. The levels are extensive hide and seek puzzles. The sounds effects and background audio is immersive. The art style fits perfectly with the game and the sounds, it's a great mix of colors and darkness. I am really enjoying the game. I've watched this Solo Indie Developer work on this game on youtube and twitch for the last two years. He's a delight to hang out and chat with. He's dedicated to providing the best possible experience with low bug incidence. (I'm a developer too so it's important to me.)

This game is criminally underrated.The control is smooth and the visual design is stunning especially the bosses, also I love the art style(2D). It's a "must play" If you love platformer genre.