Black Jewel Reviews

This looks extremely authentic to a C64 action platformer from back in the day, the graphics, sound and music are spot on. The loadscreen and hacking intro are nice touches as well. It really reminds me of games like Psygnosis Barbarian or Palaces Barbarian 2, Stormlord etc. The Barbarian hero was really popular at the time as was the Ninja thanks to the classis Arnie movie. However it emulates these games a bit too well. Controls are pretty good, but by the time you do your two hit combo with your sword the enemy will hit you. In the very beginning its fine, but the stone tossing green guys are a pain. A way to block would of been nice or have your attacks be quicker and enemies die quicker as well like Rastan or have enemies stagger back from a attack. I would of like to have some modern quality of life improvements, like the ability to save and checkpoints. Also you have only one life and when you die you may get the highscore but cant put in your name (I know earlier arcade style games did that but here you could have done that). Also when you die it sends you back to the C64 intro, which would of not happen even back then (loading sure, but we dont need to be THAT accurate). Yes you can skip it, but I prefer to be just put back to the level. Still the dev wanted to make a trully hardcore and accurate C64 style game that is clunky, unforgiving but oozes atmoshpere. Its still playable and honestly I admit I am not very good at platformers myself, so my opinion is pretty subjective. I recommend this if you loved beating hardcore unforgiving C64 platform games. But honestly it is not for me, Age of Barbarians, Slain and Volgaar are also very hard plattformers of the same style and feature checkpoints, save feature and other features. With some polish this could of been golden, and the dev could still add the "hardcore" 1 live mode to the game. Achivements and tradingcards would of been cool but are not essential, but to me other stuff is. So again I recommend it to people who played through all the tough C64 plaformers without cheats and want something new, but yeah its not for me personally.