Preliminary: Ooooo, another torturous early microcomputer platformer most people should skip but for some reason I am going to give an earnest try. At least I see a playthrough in only 6 minutes?! That means this shouldn't be too frustrating right?... Here we go again... I spent a week on the last one lol.

Look: 8/10 Mostly just functional, but gotta give credit to a microcomputer game having full sprites, some quite elaborate, certainly for 1984. This sink tho why do i love it

I mean, just look at it.

I also really like this screen

Sound: -/10 I didn't even notice it? Lol. At least it wasn't super annoying.

Play: 7/10 This absolutely is an action-adventure game. Pretty cool to see a mix of action-adventure and platformer, tho I suppose I've seen a few so far. Anyway, a way to fight back in the usual frustrating early platformer format?!?! Yay!... But.... the clunkiness of the movement mechanics kinda outweighs the benefit of the fight-back mechanic. And as per usual, the overall gameplay winds up mostly frustrating and tedious. Still, a set goal, seemingly attainable, and in the genres I most enjoy? Hard not for me to push through. As clunky as the jump mechanic was, at least it was very forgiving... oddly forgiving for an early microcomputer platformer (they almost always prided themselves on pixel-perfect jumps right from the beginning). Instead, they kept the god-awful feature of many early platformers where how-far-you-fall-arbitrarily-kills you, even when you're landing on a reasonable platform etc.

Feel: 8/10 Welp, here I am again. Spending multiple days and hours on a clunky platformer. As much as I criticize them, it has to say something that I push through their frustrations and flaws. Unfortunately, the shoot mechanic proved to be very poorly executed, tho I'm still glad to see it. I would have never thought to go into the fireplace but that further confirmed the adventure/action-adventure side of this game. I know I so often say this but this gave me an Abe's Odyssey vibes, especially in the 2nd half of the game with how the "next screen" mechanic worked: largely linear but not necessarily. It also, oddly, gave me the PS1 Casper game feels.

Attachment: 8/10 Welp, I've made it to the " Beware" screen with the secret code to be able to start from that part on. The difficulty will increase. Oh boy, like it wasn't hard enough already. But I love the adventure elements and, even, the fact they included this secret word screen, reminding me of NES/SNES level codes where you could skip ahead but hypothetically, you had to have earned knowledge of the level code (a lot of the Disney SNES games come to mind). Ayyy all done! Only took me a couple days yay. Compared to other early microcomputer platformers, this definitely is a bit shorter, more forgiving, and a bitttt less frustrating. Clunky and goofy for sure, but innocuous enough and fun for a playthrough. Will likely be worth a replay to see if the gameplay is worthy of an 8, and thereby a 4 star rating overall.

Completion: Main Story Playtime: ~2 hours over 2 play sessions