Preliminary: Ooooo I love this. I was hesitant about it, since it's sequel to my favorite of the earliest platformers and so far the basis to my judgment of later platformers (Manic Miner). I don't know why, I must've mistaken it with another game I playtested, because I'm loving this right from the beginning! It's got that "open world adventure" feel where you can wander to your master bedroom (tho don't ha) or return to the bathroom through a different entrance. I assume I am supposed to collect all the items in the rooms? I hope I don't mess that up. But so far, the controls are very tight; I love how high/far you jump and how consistent it is; I love how the controls flow; I love how it has the look and gameplay feel of its predecessor Manic Miner; and I love that you can fall from decent heights (I will soon test if you can fall from any like in Loderunner, ha). If only you had a way to fight back, if it were clearer to know whether I have all items as I move on (not gonna want to do much backtracking ha, but also don't wanna refer to a guide), and if only you could move mid-jump, And this is all just my first 15 mins preliminary thoughts!! Time to read up a little bit more before I drop down that hole to the rest of the game! (Oh, ha, it does tell you how many Items you've collected in the UI :-p duh)

Look: 7/10 Classic Manic Miner/Speccy look. Much imitated, but never properly realized. Manic Miner had that epic feel to it, of a variety of rooms with tacky but cute sprites that early game mindset where you had to use what you could make, but with such fun and oddly adventurous room names too. Similarly, this game, taking place in your 60-room mansion (seems like a reasonable amount of screens for my taste), has a cute concept well-realized--the master bedroom great, the expanse from a simple mansion concept to an absurd adventure both classic and cute, and the variety of sprites well-done. I liked the color of the texts and the look of the remaining lives ha.

Sound: 7/10 I could not seem to get my sound to work, which was probly for the better. Based on the videos I peeked at, I like the classic Speccy sound effects tho they were quite sparse compared to most classic Speccy games; it could have benefited from a jingle; and the jingles I heard were meh. Even once I got the sound working, it was classic Speccy and nice with the jingle... Moonlight Sonata is one of my favorite classical pieces... the gameplay jingle itself is quite meh, but not too annoying..

Play: 6/10 Welp, for my sanity, I will at least have a video walkthrough to refer to (I wish there were more written walkthroughs for the Speccy era, I only seem to find video ones, since a written one would be easier to just reference whenever I'm lost or frustrated or wondering which item/s I missed). Imma try not to use it at all, but I found a seemingly reliable one to get me through it. Oh and I also had the map to refer to as needed, too. I'm nervous I might have the original Speccy version, with bugs that make it unwinnable, but here goes nothing heh. LOL! No wonder I had no sound at first--I accidentally had it at 350x speed and only noticed it once in Nightmare Room smh woopsie. Now the game feels a lot more reasonable when it comes to the enemies coming at me but now it feels clunkier. Odd. Like the turning and jumping feels just like Manic Miner now, tho when I had it at 350x lol, it felt smoother. Odd. Maybe I should do 150 or 200x just to appease that initial preliminary playing ha. The game definitely is very difficult, as I get deeper into it. I would've been so lost without a walkthrough and map to reference. And in the end, even with those, the difficulty of the gameplay was just so high I couldn't push through.

Feel: 7/10 I love how they explain the mansion that it was bought for by the wealth accumulated in Manic Miner ha. What a cute concept--I think one of the reasons I thought I wasn't gonna like it was cuz it had such a set concept/"story" for an early Manic Miner-type platformer. But I think they had the right amount of story: connect it to the prior game and allow for a fun concept for room names and sprites like the munching toilet ha. I love the way the time is displayed (plus the colors of the texts/fonts in general), plus just that idea of not being a time limit per se but instead the actual time ticking away.

Attachment: 7/10 Whoa, fascinating copyright protection gimmick. You find the corresponding square on the graphic they included with the game (available here) and had to type in the code for that color. In reality tho, if it weren't for savestates, I'd probly hate this game (and Manic Miner, too ha). But as it is, being able to save at the start of levels once I'm down to one life, it's approachable--albeit insanely difficult. After playing a brilliant, enjoyable platformer like Below the Root, this early era of being absurdly difficult--almost immediately requiring pixel-perfect jumps and memorization of screens--just isn't as approachable. As I mentioned in my preliminary thoughts, I really was hoping it was a game where falling from heights wasn't such an issue--because I like to enjoy my games. Unfortunately, as it was, it came way too heavy with the pixel-perfect jumps, and didn't relinquish at any point. It might be worth another try at some point, when I have all the time and patience in the world, but for now, a bit too difficult and relentless for my taste! As I enter the more approachable, enjoyable era of games, after all!

Completion: 16 Items Collected Playtime: ~1 hour