Video Game / Ghost 1.0

Ghost 1.0 is a Metroidvania video game created by Francisco Meneses, who had earlier developed Unepic. He initially released it on PC through Steam on June 7th, 2016, and later ported it to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on July 11th and 12th of 2018, and to PlayStation 4 on April 8th 2019.

You play as Ghost, an infiltrator with a Remote Body who can jump in and out of said body to possess other nearby robots for the sake of infiltration.

The game also received a April 28th, 2017 demake, named Mini Ghost. The series is now on GOG.com and Steam.

Ghost 1.0 provides examples of:

• Acid Attack: Ghost can obtain several primary and secondary weapons that shoot acid at her enemies, inflicting Damage Over Time. Numerous enemy units that can do the same start appearing from the greenhouse onward.
• Affably Evil: Doctor Musashi. He is strictly against the Biped being deployed in the Labs, only grudgingly agreeing to it being posted at the entrance, and, during the Final Battle, activating the shield protecting Ghost's brain, denying the order to deactivate it as the General is not his superior, and destroying the first wave of robots with a load of bombs.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Ghost never loses her upgrades, primary weapons or items when she dies, and dying actually replenishes all uses of her items. There’s also an upgrade that allows Ghost to respawn with a set amount of Energy Cubes already in her possession, which can be increased by collecting more versions of that upgrade.
    • Additionally, in Survival Mode you can quit to the Main Menu during the death animation to avoid losing everything you found so far.
  • Boss rooms have “save points” that allow Ghost to restart the fight immediately without losing any of her weapons, power-ups and energy cubes if she dies, rather than forcing her to respawn at a 3D-printer and waste time gearing up for another go at the boss.
  • The Jacker rescue is skippable without penalty and offers frequent checkpoints. Additionally, Ghost can't be destroyed as her chassis is back on the Nakamura station, so there's no risk of losing energy cubes.
• Attack Drone:
  • The Drone power-up deploys a drone that follows Ghost around and shoots at her enemies. The Killer Drone item deploys a much more powerful drone that explodes after a while.
  • The Linux Gun shoots capsules that hatch into tiny robot penguins, which run around and shoot at Ghost’s enemies with Eye Beams. They eventually explode, damaging nearby opponents.
• Attack Its Weak Point:
  • The bosses can ony be damaged by hitting specific spots on them. It's averted by the Laboratory boss, who has Regenerating Health instead.
  • This also applies to Ghost herself. Her body can be printed again and again, while her Virtual Ghost form is indestructible. The only way to take her out permanently is to destroy her brain.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Jacker and Boogan are the first clients to treat Ghost like a person rather than an asset. They communicate with her throughout the mission, show concern for her wellbeing, and generally make her feel like part of the team. As such, when Ghost’s boss Viktor kidnaps Jacker toward the end of the game, Ghost immediately enacts a plan to rescue him.
• Body Surf: Ghost can exit her body and take control of other robots at any time. She mainly uses this ability to solve puzzles by having robots hold down pressure plates or throw switches that she can’t reach.
• Boring, but Practical: The Plant Skin that can be acquired by collecting all Hidden Souls in the Greenhouses "only" gives Ghost a passive 2HP/second regen effect, but this can be more useful than the skins acquired later.
• Bottomless Magazines: Ghost’s weapons have finite ammo that regenerates constantly, with some guns regenerating at a slower or faster rate than others. If she runs out of bullets for one gun, she can just switch to another gun while the empty gun replenishes itself.
• Catch and Return: The Laboratory Boss can send Ghost's shots back at her.
• Charm Person: The Daisy Gun secondary weapon charms any robot shot with it into fighting on Ghost’s side for 20 seconds. The player can also spend skill points in Jacker’s skill tree to make him hack enemy turrets and robots during alarm phases.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Most enemies have a red light somewhere on their bodies, and if Ghost posesses them (or Jacker hacks them), the light turns the same blue as Ghost's hair... cord... thing.
  • The various collectables that Ghost can find are color-coded. Primary and secondary weapons are blue, single-use items are green, power-ups are teal, upgrades are brown, and Geek items are yellow.
• Continuing is Painful: When Ghost dies, she loses all of her energy cubes, and in Survival Mode she’ll also lose all her power-ups and secondary weapons. She can retrieve a limited number of power-ups and one secondary weapon if she returns to the spot where she died.
• Conveyor Belt of Doom: Very prevalent in the Chunker Sector.
• The Cracker: Jacker's primary motivation is to profit off of Nakamura's servers. That said, he does become friends with Ghost and exposes Nakamura's sinister secrets to the public at the end.
• Dash Attack: The Charge secondary weapon lets Ghost dash forward, heavily damaging enemies in her path.
• Developer's Foresight: At the screen where you "choose a name for your game," you are told to "choose wisely, as it can't be changed later." If you put in "Wisely", the game sarcastically laughs. If you type in "Changed Later", the game emphasizes that it can't be changed later and prompts you to type another name. And if you follow that up with "Another Name", the game just says "I'm getting sick of you," and shuts down. You get an achievement for this.
• Double Jump: Ghost can unlock the ability to double jump with a perk from the Chassis skill tree. The animation implies that her android chassis has jets built into its legs. This can be further upgraded with the Jetpack perk, which lets Ghost glide after a double jump by firing her jets continuously.
• Dueling Hackers: The premise of the Final Battle is Jacker working against Viktor's coder to try and stop Ghost's brain from being destroyed.
• EMP:
  • The EMP item releases an electromagnetic pulse that damages every enemy onscreen, destroying weaker robots outright and briefly stunning those that survive. The boss of the Labs sector can use the same sort of EMP against Ghost.
  • Other enemies can release EMP shockwaves which travel along the floor. Ghost can jump over these to avoid taking damage.
• Everything Is 3D-Printed in the Future:
  • The Nakamura space station is equipped with 3D printers that can be used by the Player Character to reprint herself if/when the chassis housing her Virtual Ghost form is destroyed. Each 3D printer also functions as a Save Point, with the printers also functioning as a Warp Whistle system by printing a new body at the target destination.
  • The shops around the station that sell consumable items, upgrades and weapons to Ghost also qualify, with Ghost only having to collect enough energy cubes to power the printing unit for a given consumable item, upgrade or weapon.
• Eyepatch of Power: Jacker has a cybernetic implant resembling an eyepatch which covers his left eye.
• Fat and Skinny: Jacker and Boogan, respectively.
• Fembot: The Naka androids are designed to resemble human women. Ghost’s chassis, being a heavily modified Naka, is no exception.
• Gradual Regeneration: Repair kits gradually restore Ghost’s health over time, at a rate of 10 hit points per second.
• Guide Dang It!: At times, what has to be done to release the Hidden Souls in a room can be quite puzzling. Some rooms have requirements like "Survive the alarm" or "Destroy all enemies", which the player is likely to be triggering anyway. However, other rooms have reqirements like "Crouch for 5 seconds" or putting either Ghost or her Virtual Ghost in some random location that's unlikely to be found without trying everything.
• Hacker Cave: Jacker and Boogan's base.
• He Knows Too Much: Right before the Final Battle, Viktor tells Ghost she has seen too much to be allowed to continue living.
• Human Resources: At the game’s climax, it’s revealed that the “server farm” which remotely operates the Naka androids is actually a few million human brains in jars which are being used as Wetware CPUs. The brains’ nutrient fluids are laced with a drug that keeps them docile, obedient, and unaware of their situation, while the epilogue reveals that the Nakamura corporation had erased their memories of their original lives to further control them.
• Humongous Mecha: The bosses of the central zone and the Greenhouse, as well as the Biped.
• Is This Thing Still On?: During the tutorial, Jacker uses voice distortion to try and make it seem like Ghost is working for a large, established company like usual - until he forgets to close the comm channel one time and Ghost hears everything. However, this is downplayed, as Ghost had already been told by Viktor beforehand that this time, she was working for, in her words, "Two nerds with money".
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Jacker starts referring to Ghost as “it” rather than “she” after becoming convinced that she’s a Naka.
• Man-Eating Plant: The boss of the greenhouse is a giant cybernetic plant. It will take a bite out of Ghost if she gets too close.
• MegaCorp: Nakamura Corporation is the world’s largest producer of robots, ranging from android housekeepers to military bipeds. They own a massive space station which houses their manufacturing facilities and the server farm which remotely operates their androids, with an army general in charge of overseeing its security. The finale shows them to be horrifically corrupt, having ties to organized crime and using captive human brains as Wetware CPUs for their androids.
• Mission Control: Jacker and Boogan serve as this, giving Ghost instructions and exposition from Earth while she infiltrates the station.
• Multiple Endings: Two, depending on whether Jacker of Viktor's coder wins the Final Battle.
• The Münchausen: At one point, Boogan tells a wildly exaggerated tale of how Jacker "saved his life".^note They were in a bar planning to infiltrate a heavily guarded fortress (in a tabletop RPG). When they left, they were approached by a couple of thugs demanding their money (a couple of homeless people politely asked them to spare some credits) which Boogan refused to do, forcing him to bravely fight off an infinite swarm of punks with his bare hands until he was overwhelmed and gravely wounded (he got a back sprain while reaching for his wallet), at which point Jacker drove him to the hospital. Jacker outright compares him to the Trope Namer and tells Ghost what actually happened, though she states she prefers Boogan's version.
• Pinball Projectile: The Bouncing Ball secondary weapon fires a spread of projectiles that ricochet off solid surfaces until they hit an enemy.
• Poisonous Person: One power-up makes Ghost leave a trail of radioactive particles in her wake, damaging any enemy that touches them. Some enemy units have the same ability, and others will explode into clouds of poisonous gas when destroyed.
• Puzzle Boss:
  • The biped that Ghost encounters on the way to the labs is beatable by sheer brute force, but also a Damage-Sponge Boss. It's instead easier to take control of the biped and walk it down a corridor full of turrets and security robots, where the sheer weight of fire will eventually destroy it (and clear out some of the defenses, too).
  • The boss of the labs retreats to a sealed room in order to heal itself whenever it gets low on health. To prevent this, Ghost must possess one of the security robots in the corridor running below the boss’s room and use it to shatter a pipe which feeds healing nutrients to the boss.
• Regenerating Health:
  • The Laboratory Boss. An important part of the boss battle is figuring out how to disable the regeneration system.
  • Ghost can gain Regenerating Health as well by printing herself with the Plant Skin.
• Remote Body: Ghost’s body is just an android shell that her consciousness operates. If it gets destroyed, her support team can print up a new one from one of the station’s many 3D printers.
• Self-Deprecation: The trailer for the game makes you think it's for the game since it involves a Robot War, but it involves Jacker and Boogan watching a trailer for an in-universe roguelike. Jacker complains that it involves a muscular white guy, but upvotes it because it's from an indie studio.
• Shockwave Stomp:
  • The Jump Wave power-up makes Ghost release damaging shockwaves whenever she jumps off the ground.
  • The first boss has an attack where it jumps into the air and releases an EMP shockwave upon landing. If Ghost doesn’t jump over the shockwave, she’ll take damage and be stunned for a few seconds.
• Shout-Out: All over the place.
  • Jacker quips that Ghost has discovered Energon after she finds her first Energy Cube.
  • The Biped that Nakamura sends to deal with Ghost is transparently an ED-209. It even issues the same warning:
    Biped: Please, put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
  • At one point, Jacker asks Ghost a question from the Voight-Kampff test to figure out if she’s really a robot. Boogan catches the reference and calls him out on it before she can answer.
  • At the start of the Jacker rescue mission, Ghost says "Let's get dangerous."
  • In the Chunker sector, Jacker wants to cause "A disturbance in the Force" to answer the question whether or not Ghost is a Naka.
• Silliness Switch: Yellow “Geek” items are collectibles that alter the game in cosmetic and humorous ways. For example, one Geek item makes Ghost let out the iconic Tarzan yell whenever she slides down a rope.
• Skill Scores and Perks: The game has five skill trees where the player can spend skill points to unlock various perks. Each perk provides a unique benefit, and also increases an attribute associated with its corresponding tree: Chassis perks increase Ghost’s max HP, Boogan perks increase her maximum ammo, Jacker perks increase Jacker’s hacking speed, Ghost perks increase the damage output of possessed robots, and Nakamura perks increase the drop rate for health kits.
• Space Station: Most of the game takes place on the Nakamura Corporation’s space station.
• Stating the Simple Solution: When Jacker says that the equipment Boogan needs to cause the "disturbance in the Force" in the Chunker sector may not even exist on the station, Boogan simply replies that he has blueprints he can send to one of Nakamura's 3D printers.
• Stealth-Based Mission:
  • The Labs sector is under lockdown when Ghost arrives. Laser sensors sweep the labs for intruders, and if Ghost is detected, she’ll be obliterated as beams flood the room. She must carefully sneak past the sensors by ducking behind crates and blocking them with moving platforms in order to deactivate the alarms for each lab.
  • There's also the Jacker rescue, which has Ghost going through an underground Earth facility equipped with an "anti-ghost shield" that boots her back to the nearest Naka body she inhabited if she's not controlling anything for more than a second.
• Sticky Bomb: The Grenade secondary weapon fires bouncing grenades that stick to any enemy they touch.
• Taking You with Me: After the first boss is beaten, it makes one final leap at Ghost, dealing a staggering 150 damage if it connects. However, even if Ghost's body is destroyed by this attack, the boss stays dead.
• Tractor Beam: The boss of the Jacker rescue uses these. At first, it only throws barrels, but as its HP get depleted, it picks up a metal beam to shield itself from the front. As its HP get even lower, it rips a steam tank from the floor and starts to throw it around as well - which is a One-Hit Kill for the robot you're forced to control for the fight if it hits.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Near the end of the game, Jacker is kidnapped by Viktor, leading to Ghost and Boogan mounting a rescue mission. The facility where Jacker is kept prisoner is equipped with a "Ghost Shield", which throws Ghost back to her body if she stays in her Virtual Ghost form longer than a second.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Ghost can roll to pass under certain traps. She can also spend skill points in Boogan’s skill tree to take less damage while rolling, and to damage enemies when rolling through them.
• The War Sequence: The Final Battle is a massive gauntlet of enemies that requires Ghost to stay in range of her brain while fending off the robots.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Jacker and Boogan discuss this trope while watching a news report about android rights. Boogan believes that androids are deserving of the same rights as humans, while Jacker firmly believes that androids are just machines. As such, he becomes much colder toward Ghost when he begins to think that she’s an android.
• You Are Number 6: The serial number of Ghost's brain is 17823.

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