Preliminary: See my status update here, I def was excited for it!

Look: 7/10 While I was initially excited by the Mario-esque/ahead-of-its-time look, the fact is, it relies on far too few colors and settings, resulting in--like their other game Psytraxx--a repetitive feel that defeats the point of having over 1000 screens. Why does it matter if you have that many screens when they all blend together. All that being said, the colors it uses fit the theme well and it all came together technically well--just doesn't warrant this many screens. And lol that it feels like there are just randomly placed torches to "fill" the game heh.

Sound: 6/10 Gave me NES/Zelda-era feel, good adventure melody.

Play: 6/10 Thank goodness it's one of those Lode Runner type platformers where you can fall far, instead of always dying if you fall even just to one platform before. Always makes for more fun, fast-paced gameplay. And like I always say, platformers with a way to fight back--critical. Some of the stuff is tacky--like you can, in fact/counterintuitively, go down in parts that clearly have a platform; also, you have to make your way back to the beginning after it was already long enough... It really ends up using the same basic formula and stretching it over a super large game... the same issue I had with their other game Psytraxx. The controls, collision masks, and mechanics were way clunkier and worse than I had expected, unfortunately (like, maybe I'm missing something, but do you just shoot with the joystick directions? and jump is just integrated in, so there's no real way to control well? maybe it's just an issue with my settings so I will try not to judge that aspect too much..). And gosh, some of those pillar lava jump parts were just so awful, not in some challenging fun way but just plain annoying--thank goodness for savestates. But I still tried to push through because I had looked through the map and planned a route!

Feel: 7/10 Love that it's multidrectional shooter with platforming, love the pre-Mario-Bros gameplay style, love the Zelda-esque action-adventure look. As much as I wanted to love this, and had fun playing through it with the help of the map and--after trying a few times--cheats, it technically is just a bad game. Can't believe it had such good contemporary reviews. Probly because the concept and gameplay-on-paper sounds great. But in reality, you have no visible energy bar you just slowly die; the controls are extremely clunky; and you are collecting chests that show no inventory or health bar or, well, why you're collecting them lol. It's just wave after wave of enemy, jump a gap with the clunky jump mechanics, then repeat repeat repeat. When you are climbing down or up a rope, simply going a little to the left or right means you just fall off it lol, you can't move while mid-fall or adjust your jumps etc. which I know were possible at this time (tho maybe not when you tried to cram in as many rooms as could fit...). Oh, and you can wind up permanently stuck to boot.. But hey! There's 1024 rooms, doesn't that mean it's good? Ha. At least I didn't cave to the walk on lava/walk through walls cheat! Heh.

Attachment: 7/10 Again, thank goodness I could drop as far as I wished, as silly as that is, cuz I wound up just streamlining it to the Sceptre then back lol, based on my preliminary mapping through the map that's available online (from what I read, Zzap! 64 magazine printed that very in-depth map). As technically bad as this game was, I had an oddly fun time playing it: it has a lot of the elements I like, the right amount to get me to push through awful gameplay mechanics. I don't feel bad at all for using a map, invincibility cheat, and savestates: it really was that poorly-designed heh, and that's the norm/consensus among the c64 community as well. Finalfrickingly I got to the sceptre after over an hour and that's even with savestates/cheat/map. What a chore that was. Now, is it worth it trying to get back? I decided I would just give a little attempt but if I tire, I just move on. Especially since, tho I wanted to like this more, it really is a bad game heh. (And yes, that screenshot shows all the colors you experience in the game, hence why my guy blends in to the cauldron, and yes those are sperm-esque "fireballs" behind me that I'm scurrying from lol).

Wow, I can't believe I just did that to myself. Never again heh... why did I just do that for a game I don't plan to replay or show others smh

Completion: 100% for some ungodly reason Playtime: Just over 2 hours