I have been following Tim Rustwick for some time now on Youtube and I've found his words very inspiring as a solo game developer. Despite that I would like to make an unbiased review for this game. 

Philophobia is a fun challenge plat-former something along the realm of Super Meat Boy, Celeste, or the N series, except that it has a wonderful aesthetic art style that I feel is very original.

The enemies look like hearts. Everything is shaped like a heart! The monster design on a few of these enemies actually look appropriate. I understand that this game is the fear of love, but I still think this game is overdoing it with the hearts. There are other symbols that can represent love and I think that is a shame that this game did not explore other options. "The Break" is probably my favorite level in terms of looks, even though it may not be the most challenging.

Each level is really varied and has a nice blend of enemy types that help keep each level fresh and entertaining.  Also some levels will tend to be puzzles or more about precision platforming. I think that this is nice so the game does not become too much of a strain so you can take breaks between the challenging parts. While this is nice and all, it seems to have a strange up and down difficulty curve. I would find myself dying 50 times on one level, but then the next level will be easy, and then it will be hard again.

The difficulty curve is not a major problem though, make no mistake that Philophobia excels in adequate level design that kept me playing wondering what the next level will be like. Unfortunately the boss levels in this game are on the weak side. I never found fighting any of the bosses in game particular the exciting (except the last one). The animation is not very impressive and kept me wishing it had more polish. Defeating them is not very creative or satisfying. I was actually confused how the spider boss died. I guess it over ate or something?

Philophobia also changes up the game by introducing new abilities like shields, boomerangs and dashes in mid air. Unfortunately I did not find any of these upgrades very useful because there uses are extremely limited. The dash I used all the time with no problem, but I hardly ever used the boomerang . The boomerang is mainly used to hit hard to reach switches and not many levels emphasized its importance. Interestingly you can throw it upwards and diagonally but you cannot do it without dashing first because the up button is both the jump and dash button. If this was ever planned to by utilized, it does not show in this game.

Philophobia's worst part is the glitches. There were times during the game where the player would get stuck in a wall for a split second for no reason, but the real game breaker was the fact that there were some platforms in the game that I simply could not jump off of them. One particular level called "Bashful" had this problem, where an easy jump to grab a key turned out to be a chore where I died close to 100 times. Instead of leaping off the platform I just fell into spikes because the jump would not register. There was also a spot in the final boss battle where this kind of happened and I thought that would drive me up the wall, but thank goodness there was a mid level checkpoint and a work around! The fact that this game is a challenge plat-former can really frustrate someone if they encounter one of these glitches and may discourage a complete playthrough. Fortunately, this glitch is very rare and not in every level.

I also understand that this game was on a strict development schedule. There are some parts of the game that feel unfinished. The game never explains what the collectible broken hearts do, and there seems to be know way to start a new game from the menu screen. Despite all that I liked the game. I played it all the way through.  I know I'm sounding really negative, but I liked the game and I think it is worth your money. 98% of all the levels were fun and it kept me playing all the way through. The ending was very inspiring and moving too, so a playthrough is worth it.