A game by Bread Team for PC, Switch, Xbox One, and PS4, originally released in 2017.
Phantom Trigger begins with a fellow named Stan speaking to his wife about breakfast before heading off to work, but during the conversation, he drops to his knees and slumps over on the kitchen floor. Then, the game cuts to a neon world where a man is sitting on a handmade sailboat that is floating across the sea. The boat comes to a stop at a dock, and the man disembarks, wandering into a small village filled with unusual creatures, including an anthropomorphic toad named Toad, a speaking tree, and a redheaded woman with antennae, named Ant.
Throughout the game, the narrative switches back and forth between Stan’s normal life – where he is in a hospital being treated for some serious but unknown issue – and the neon world, where it seems he is an adventurer who calls himself The Outsider. Much of the dialogue in both worlds is purposely vague and mysterious, refusing to delve too deeply into what is real or what is really happening with Stan… although he is clearly having some issues separating these possible realities. For instance, Stan seems to be confusing his wife with Ant from the neon world, but it turns out that his wife is an entomologist, so perhaps Ant is his mind’s construct in a fabricated reality.
