Phantom Spark is a hover racer of impeccable chill and wistful fantasy worldbuilding

I was a diehard WipeOut player as a kid. Seriously, me and the boys used to roam the streets of Bradford looking for F-Zero players to bully, at least till the RollCagers rocked up and stole our lunch money. Mind you, I think I was probably less interested in WipeoUt's racing than its trackside landscapes, which remain exquisite decades on - all those sweeping album-cover facades with their animate fixtures that thickened and solidified into full-blown peripheral cities as the series progressed.

I am similarly hooked by the worlds of Ghosts Ehf's Phantom Spark, which are a million lightyears from WiPeout in terms of their influences and atmosphere, much as the underlying hover-jockeying is a million lightyears away from WipeouT in terms of its gentleness and lack of combative elements. But these spaces are just as mesmerising to fly through and think about when not focussed on finding the perfect line through the next corner, or avoiding a patch of grass. Small wonder, given that the game's art director is Joost Eggermont, whose streaking astral contraptions and "small interactive moments" I've long admired, but never managed to write about until now.

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