Phylox

Phylox was one of two games developed by Beavis Soft, a small indie from the shareware days, before the company became FastTrack Animations.

Developed as an action platform shooter meant to rival console titles, Phylox's creators had initially hoped to find distribution through Apogee--the appearance of Wolfenstein 3D on the cover of a gaming magazine discouraged Beavis Soft from submitting, however, and they ultimately went with a “rather dubious publisher”, Precision Software Publishing. Beavis Soft's only other game, Wacky Wheels, was picked up by Apogee.

The two levels presented in the shareware version of Phylox showed some promise, though the game is very rough around the edges. Controls are sluggish and imprecise, and the platformer level features several enemies who will ALWAYS hit you before you can shoot them. Even in the demo, there's a recurring “moonwalk” glitch, in which the sprite will face the wrong direction while walking (it shoots the right direction, though).

Phylox was nearly a “lost” game. While the shareware version is readily available from several sites, the “full” version, which promises “some of the best animated characters you have ever seen” and “end of level guardians...as big as you would see on any of the consoles”, was notoriously hard to find until recently.

So does the full version live up to its promises? The second shooter tunnel DOES feature a “boss” fight, and it is “big” (it looks like an upscaled version of one of the green aliens from the platforming section), but it's not particularly impressive. The platforming section continues from where you left off, however a possibly game-breaking bug that messes up the mid-jump grappling hook button trigger when jumping to the left makes what should be a difficult jump an impossible one. The full version saves your progress between stages, so with a lot of patience and practice one might be able to pull off that jump.

Review By P. Alexander

On this page, you can download the shareware and the rare full version.