Antro Review – Gamereactor
Antro is the first game from the small Spanish developer Gatera Studio, which consists primarily of a group of young game developers. The project began during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, shortly after the young developers had left university. They had no experience in game development, but they had a dream of “bringing underground culture to gaming,” and the result is the small game Antro.
After The Collapse, only 1% of humanity has survived, and they have been forced to seek refuge underground. Beneath the old town of Barcelona lies Antro, a dirty and dark hole divided into several geographical layers. The inhabitants of the lowest levels struggle to survive by performing forced labour in the factories, while those on the higher levels rule over the new underground world.
Antro is ruled by a totalitarian system, headed by a company based on technological overproduction known as La Cúpula. Freedom of expression has been censored, art and music are banned, but rebellion lurks just below the surface.
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You take on the role of Nittch, a kind of courier in the dark underworld, who must deliver a package to a mysterious and unknown recipient. But as Nittch moves through Antro, he discovers that the package may help stop the powerful company that controls his entire world.
Antro has, without further comparison, much the same energy as Inside. You typically move from left to right, jumping and avoiding obstacles, defeating drones and robots as you move forward towards the package’s destination. Where Antro differs significantly from Inside, and other games in this genre for that matter, is in the game’s so-called “music levels”.
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In these levels, the game becomes a combination of a rhythm game and an auto-runner. To the sounds of really cool and heavy Spanish hip-hop and electronic music, you now have to run and jump and slide over and under obstacles in time with the music. This is where the game is clearly at its best, with the tracks and music flowing together into a whole.
Now that we’re on the subject of music, let’s take a look at the soundtrack, which is one of the most important aspects of a game of this type. As mentioned, it’s a really cool and heavy soundtrack, with cool Spanish hip-hop (i.e. with Spanish vocals) and electronic music. The soundtrack is undoubtedly what carries the game, because it is really well done and the original Spanish vocals in the hip-hop tracks do something good for the mood of the game.
If Antro didn’t have this cool soundtrack, it would be a completely different experience. In isolation, it’s not a very good game, and it’s clear that it was produced by a new team. The animations are stiff, the graphics are simple, and the controls are heavy and imprecise, but when the game becomes a combination of an auto-runner and a rhythm game and opens up to the cool soundtrack, it works.
I completed Antro twice during the review period. The first time, I would guess it took about 80 minutes to complete, and the second time I timed my game and it took 67 minutes. In this playthrough, I found 11 of the 15 hidden items scattered around, and if you want to find them all, you might want to add 10 minutes to that. Antro is a very short game.
Antro is Gatera Studio’s baby. It’s their first game, and they’ve been working on it for several years. That kind of dedication can only be admired. Antro costs just over £12 (depending on which platform you play on), so if you’re up for a quirky little indie game with a top-notch soundtrack, you should check out Antro. It’s worth the short playtime – and you’ll be helping a small new developer at the same time. You can also check out the free demo, which is available for download on Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
