Henry's House (1984)

Preliminary: Wow wow wow, the graphics and setting of this are so good I'm so excited. Platformer? Check. Cute, well-executed concept? Check. Set amount of rooms to have a goal toward? Check. (Even tho it does do the tacky recycle back to Room 1 thing). Nervous to see that falling from certain heights kills you, hopefully it's reasonable, and to see the "puzzle" aspects of being able to get the key for each room (I'm typically awful at unforgiving, puzzle-infused early platformers ha). Annnnd it looks unforgiving in general lol. But here goes nothing!

Look: 9/10 Here's where it really shines. What great level designs and concepts and enemies

As much as I loved the cute ideas for enemies and collectibles, sometimes it required trial and error to figure out which things are collectibles and which are enemies heh, though it became more obvious with time. Same with platforms, for instance you def can't land on the faucet handle which would have been a cute addition ha. For instance who would ever have thought (well, I mean, I did think it on my own, but still) that you are supposed to land in this plane as a means to mitigate the too-far-a-drop issue in Room 5? But ahhh, look how cute I look in the plane lol

I love the "liminal space" room between rooms heh

And I love love loved Room 4 with the TV with news and static etc. I especially loved the static segments tho I captured the News segment heh.. and that fireplace... mmmmm

At this point, apparently I'm just screenshotting every Room's look lol, but love the sleepiness of this one. And that sad face on the alarm clock enemy ha

Sound: 6/10 For the most part, unremarkable. Good, classic sound effects for the jump etc, but missing a jingle/tune. The sound effect for the toy airplane though, was great! Gotta give it credit that, for a C64 game, there was only one truly annoying sound and that was during Room 7. Oh shoot, and the annoying repetitive sound factor came again on the last Room. Blergh. At least I was near the end before they started that stuff heh.

Play: 8/10 Well, I was wrong it's not puzzles--just the usual collect-items-to-move-on type thing. With an aspect of score too with that (well, there's sorta-puzzles like emptying the bathtub/sink-thing in Room 2, but that really boiled down to collecting items ha). Thank goodness for no time limit! So I could sit there and figure out the best way to complete a level--phew! The controls were tight, thankfully, but I was hoping for more mid-jump control, as I know was possible at this time, but for the most part the mechanics were reasonable (for the era heh). And reasonable, mostly forgiving collision masks thank goodness. The ladder collision masks/usage was pleasantly well-done, a lot of these recent ones were so tacky about either precise ladder collision masks or clunky getting on/off.

Feel: 9/10 Well it certainly wasn't the jaw-droppingly amazing game I preliminarily expected--but definitely among the better Manic Miner-esque platformers (soooo many 82-85) with an amazing concept/Look/Feel and solid all around. A lot of these Manic Miner type collect-the-items-to-move-on (even after I got the key on Room 1, I realized I do in fact have to get all the items not just for a higher score, boo) get tedious after a while--but shoot way better than the Miner 2049er derivative step-on-every-single-tile. What a tedious, lame concept that was. If only there were some sort of jingle or tune to push this into the great category, because the Look and concept certainly warrant it! With the cute concept of exploring your own house but with it, Pajama Sam-style, all different and enemy-ridden; the well-done Look; the solid gameplay; and most importantly, the reasonable length (albeit a tacky re-cycle factor, it technically is a doable 8 rooms with an understandably super difficult final room), this really stands out as the closest to Manic Miner these early microcomputer platformers have gotten (but all pale to the arcade platformers like Flicky heh).

Attachment: 8/10 Well, as I had seen in my preliminary video watchings, indeed the last level has a huge difficulty spike. Super annoying feature with that bat thing that follows you vertically, damn near a sure death if you're on the right side of the screen (the trick apparently is to be lucky and still have items to collect, because they seem to disappear when you collect an item... or otherwise if you are lucky enough to be in a position to take advantage of the fact they have to fly at an angle to get far distances, so you could skerp back behind them horizontally... hard to explain heh). But at last--I did it! Always anti-climactic when there's no ending, instead just re-cycles to the beginning (gosh Manic Miner really was so special to have a climactic, celebratory ending). Sucks I had to reset on the last Room, so then I made a point to savestate on my 2nd playthrough at Room 8, just to make it enjoyable. It says something that I was willing to replay it on the spot, though. In the end, this is no Manic Miner, but compared to the many Manic Miner-derivative games, this one has to be the best or at least among the best. Worth a playthrough, and I could even see myself returning to it when craving Manic Miner type early platformers.

Completion: All 8 unique rooms, with a Score of 18,825 on 2nd playthrough Playtime: ~2 hours, but the 2nd playthrough itself was probably closer to 45 minutes for an estimate of actual playtime needed for one game