Phantasmaburbia is a commercial console-style RPG developed by Greg Lobanov as the Spiritual Successor to Dubloon.
The game takes place in a small suburban community known as Owl Creek, where four teenagers find themselves in the middle of a mass haunting; ghosts are showing up all over the neighborhood as a result of some dark force's efforts to enter the human world. With the help of their own personal Spirit Advisors, they set out to save their home.
The game boasts vastly improved visuals compared to its predecessor, including fully-animated battles, new lighting and particle effects and a sleek, streamlined interface. The mouse-based controls and Action Command-based battles return from Dubloon, but the battle item system has been scrapped in favor of new finisher moves, which can be stacked to perform Combination Attacks.
The game was funded on Kickstarter on August 24th, 2012. It was released on October 31st, 2012.
This game provides examples of:
- Big Boo's Haunt: Owl Creek becomes this at the start of the game.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are four pairs of elements, with each member of a pair being strong against the other: Light and Dark, Rain and Bolt, Earth and Air, Fire and Ice.
- Haunted House: All of the party members' houses, especially Sophie's and Pat's.
- Indian Burial Ground: Pat's house happens to be built over one. Hilarity Ensues.
- Musical Spoiler: When first talking about the demon, the music that plays may sound a bit familiar to people who played Escape from the Underworld.
- Mythology Gag: Tons. A lot of the characters in Phantasmaburbia are re-imagined versions of characters from the creator's now-defunct webcomic-turned-game, Someplace Else; this includes the four main party members, Moshi, and the Shadultima.
- The wild animal sprites are from his first game, Wolf, and Clair's dogs were intentionally designed to resemble the titular creature.
- Speaking of Wolf, the title screen's layout and coloring are reminiscent of Wolf's title screen.
- Among the game's soundtrack are many rearrangements of songs in Banov's other games. The composer has almost always been the same person for all of Banov's work.
- There is a Ricky ride in the playground area.
- Pat's wall contains posters of fictional movies based on Dubloon, Assassin Blue and Wolf. The different party members react to the posters in different ways, with Pat gushing about them and Sophie criticizing them, echoing comments that some players made about the games in real life.
- Many of the enemies were featured in previous games in some form.
- The wild animal sprites are from his first game, Wolf, and Clair's dogs were intentionally designed to resemble the titular creature.
- Nature Spirit: In addition to the garden-variety nature spirits, there are the eight High Spirits in Act 2.
- Phantom Zone: The Spirit Tunnels, which link the land of the dead with the land of the living.
- Pistol-Whipping: Pat's normal attack in battle.
- Punny Name: The spells available to you include such gems as Polterslice, Frentazmy, Phantomb, etc.
- A good number the enemies, too, especially later in the game. For example, there's Roadent (roadkill ghost), Ghoulutton (a fat ghost that eats his allies), and Bangshee (an Action Bomb).
- Shout-Out: Oh, man, where to begin?
- The potential names for the party members contain references to Shaman King, Ghostbusters, Homestuck and Dubloon. The preview videos indicate that the names for the Mother 3 party members were also included at one point.
- One of the bonus bosses is an Expy of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from the Ghostbusters franchise.
- Inspecting Yoshi's poster causes him to remember the lyrics of various Arcade Fire songs. He also has an LCD Soundsystem poster.
- Pat has a bunch of Nintendo consoles lined up against his south wall.
- Spirit Advisor: One for each party member, either being a relative of the teen or a former occupant of their home.
