Android Games – Let’s start playing on my phone again.

It has been quite some time since I wrote an article with short reviews of Android games, has it not? Lately, I have been focussing on the bigger games and I haven’t given the smaller games some time to shine on my blog. Also, when I was talking about a smaller game, I wrote a longer article on it instead of a short review. But, since I’m currently working on bigger articles and I didn’t want to skip this week, I decided I wanted to bring this series back and start talking about a few smaller games I have been playing on my phone lately. So, let’s start talking about smaller Android games and let’s take a quick look if they are worth your time/money. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and opinions on the games and/or the content of this article.

ProgressBar95

Steam version – Android version

For those who don’t know, I’m 28 years old, and I also have a day job. This day job is being an IT admin in a big art secondary school (high school for some) here in Belgium. My work days are filled with solving problems that teachers and students have, improving our IT infrastructure, developing our website… Apart from that, I’m also a big fan of old tech and I love messing around with old computers and technology.

So, when I came across ProgressBar95 on the app store, I downloaded the game right away. And I fell in love with it right away. The game keeps true to its tagline that this game is a “hypercasual UI game”. The main idea of this game is that you are a progress bar that needs to catch dropping squares to make the progress bar progress. Blue and light blue are good ones, orange are errors but still help you in progress. Pink detracts from your progress bar, so you can get rid of orange squares if you want.

Depending on how well you do, the amount of points you get to unlock various upgrades to your computer. The higher your level, the more difficult this game becomes and the more points you can earn. This game also works with lives, but if you run out of lives, you don’t have to wait a certain amount of time for them to recharge and try the game again.

So, the interface of this game is top-notch. It nails the ascetic of being a computer amazingly. For example, to toggle sound on or off, you can press the sound icon in the bottom right of the computer. If you click the “EN” of the language toolbar, you can switch languages. It also has a colorblind mode, cloud saving, multiple game modes and one of the best ways to handle microtransactions I have seen.

The different gameplay modes I have played so far is a sort infinite runner Wolfenstein game and a “dodge the red numbers and get to the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet”-game. They add so much variety to the game and I love going between them if I’m bored with one game mode.

The biggest recommendation I would give to you is that you buy the extremely cheap “no-ads” package. Overall, the ads aren’t annoying but the game improves so much without forced ads. Now, if you look at the whole shop, you might think that this game is a “pay-to-win” or a money sink. But, no. You can pay to unlock all other levels but 99% of the stuff in the store can be earned easily in-game by winning levels or doing side quests.

It’s clear that this game has a lot of love put into it and I have a hard time finding anything negative about this game. Apart from this game being extremely niche and the game being a little boring for extend playthroughs… But yeah, I honestly would recommend this game to all my other retro gamers or people who are into computer science. It’s an amazing and refreshing experience.

Score: 5/5.

Word Lanes

Android store

So, when I’m in a waiting room or have some time to kill, I love playing small games. Especially when they are puzzle games like word searches or connect the dots to give two examples.

In Word Lanes, you are presented with a grid of letters, and you have to find all the words that fit the clues at the top. Each letter can only be used once and the letters have to connect horizontally or vertically to be used in a word.

This game is rather relaxing, and it’s a great way for me to unwind. I also love how the game is fully translated into my native language. The only complaint I have about that is the fact that as a Belgian person, I always have to struggle when the hint is talking about something from the Netherlands. But, I always report them with a handy report feature after you solved a clue. With this report feature you can report typo’s, wrong clues and things like that.

I’m also on the fence about the microtransactions. You earn coins to use the hint features after beating a level, but I feel I always don’t have enough. Thankfully, you have these daily rewards and saving them up is easy then. Honestly, I just think that the prices of the power-ups are a tad bit too high.

But hey, that’s a minor complaint. Since this game has so much enjoyment to offer and the ads aren’t THAT intrusive and only play between levels. Also, quite frequently, I have an option where the ads are disabled for one day. This is amazing and actually makes me consider buying the “no ads” package since I got a free trial.

Score: 4/5

Reigns

Android store

Way back in 2017, I wrote an article about Questr. A game that has some “Tinder” style gameplay while being a questing game. Now, that game was more about adventuring while you created your party with a sort of Tinder app. In this game, the main feature of Tinder of swiping left to reject or right to approve, is set into a “choose your own adventure” game.

Reigns is published by DeveloperDigital and is so close to be amazing, it’s painful. The gameplay is quite addictive, and I love taking decisions as an immortal king on how my kingdom should progress. The atmosphere, sound effects, music and visual design is amazing. It really pulls you into the game and I love playing the game but…

It’s way too easy to take a decision. It’s too sensitive. I had several moments where I was choosing between two options and just because I hit the edge of one side a bit too much, the game decided for me. And not only that, my phone doesn’t have physical buttons anymore and quite often, I had the game deciding for me just because I swiped down to see the time or see my latest notification.

There is also no “message log”. So, when you put the game down for a moment, you can’t see the history of what happened. And if I want to change the options during gameplay, though luck. The menu only appears when see the progress between kings.

This game has a lot of amazing elements like having to balance your four powers and the various twists and turns certain decisions and pathways can take, but it has various rough edges, I fell so mixed about this game. Maybe the PC version of the game is better, but I feel like this game works best as a mobile game. But, I feel like the mobile version just got a few rough edges. For example, I had to look up a way to reset your progress in the game. It turns out you have to hold two fingers on to have the reset screen to show up.

Yet, I advise people who enjoy adventure games to give this game a go. But be warned, the mobile version has some rough edges. But, for the low asking price of this game and the amount of content in this game, I can say for a fact there is a LOT worse out there. And I’m also so glad that this amazing concept got a few sequels as well… So, I know what to play next on my phone.

Score: 3.5/5

Wrapping up

I’m so glad that I gave this format another go and revived it. It allowed me to talk about three Android games I wanted to showcase on my blog, but I didn’t have the time for or wasn’t able to write a good enough “long” article about. I think I’ll revisit this format more often in the future and maybe also use it when I play small games on Steam, Switch or other platforms.

Then again, with my busy lifestyle and the backlog of games I still want to cover, I can’t promise how frequent I’ll write articles like these. I also challenged myself to be brief and short in this article and I had the urge to keep writing about these three games. So, if you want a more in-depth article about one of these games, let me know in the comments.

So, with that said, I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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NekoJonez’s 11 YEARS of blogging

Has it already been 11 years? On in late 2010, I opened my Dutch personal blog. And now, that blog died due to personal reasons and I restarted my English blog on the 20th March 2013. So, I have been blogging for 8 years in English and quite close to 11 years if you count the years that I wrote articles in my native Dutch language. So, let’s have a retrospective look at my experiences as a writer, blogger and things like that. Let’s do a sort of celebration for this milestone that I reached with a simple hobby. But, first, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and opinions on this article. Yeah, the usual ending of my opening paragraph.

The usual word of thanks

So, the fact that I’m able to reach around 10.000 people each and every year is amazing. Sadly enough, my numbers have been taking a big dive lately. While I can explain that away with the fact that I’m writing less, but way better, articles… It still surprises me that I get around 10-20/visitors each day. I know, I shouldn’t focus on these numbers too much or else I’ll burn out but still, when I compare these numbers with numbers from other people in the community, I honestly feel humbled.

If only I had more time to write more articles, I think I would be able to have even better numbers. I would love to reach as much people as I can since the people I have met over the years, is just mind-blowing. I have created friendships that will last a lifetime. Furthermore, I’m not going to list any names here since I want to avoid that people are going to feel left out, but you know who you are. I love talking to you guys and girls.

Apart from meeting so much other content creators, I also love to interact with the people that read my blog. From indie developers to people who are looking for their next game to play. It warms my heart that people like what I write, and I have to say. From childhood, I always wanted a way to share my experiences and my life stories with others and writing this blog allowed to make that dream become a reality. Because I don’t always play the latest of the latest games and I don’t always play the “most popular” retro titles, I had a hard time connecting to other gamers.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading my articles. I’m still blown away by the support I get from others all the while I keep writing. As said earlier, I might be writing less than in the past, I still see a lot of people interacting with my blog and I always see huge spikes in my visitor graph whenever I publish an article. So, yeah. If only I was better at expressing gratitude and things like that without resorting to the classic speech is usually given by other content creators….

Highlights from the past 11 years

A typical question to ask when somebody celebrates a milestone like writing for over 11 years is what your favorite or most memorable moment was. To be quite honest, I don’t have just one moment. At first, I was planning to through each and every year and give you my best moment for each and every year, but even that wouldn’t do justice to the opportunities and highlights I had in the past 11 years.

This stats above, show how much I have written over the past 8 years while I’m writing this English blog. Let’s just say that I have written over 700.000 words in the past 560+ articles. That’s roughly 1250 words per article as an average. I write and publish around 40 – 75 articles each and every year. So, finding my favorite(s) moment(s) would be finding a needle in a haystack.

So, let me just name a few of them. A few memorable moments that stick out for me and that I currently remember from the top of my head. By all means, these just a few examples of moments I just adored and are the things that just make this blogging experience so memorable for me.

Reviewing Stella Glow

http://thebuttonsmashers.com/2016/08/game-review-stella-glow/

Back in 2016, I sometimes got requests from small developers to take a look at their game. But, when a good blogging friend of mine gave me the opportunity to write about a game I just played the demo off, and I was planning to go and pick up, I was over the moon.

When I started to play the game, I was amazed at the quality and polish that the game had. And not only that, the music and the atmosphere was so amazing. While it’s a shame to admit that I haven’t fully completed the game just yet since I didn’t grind certain characters enough to beat a certain fight, I’m actually planning to finish this game in the near future.

Now, you might notice that the link to the article isn’t on my blog. That’s because as a part of the agreement, I had to publish the article on his site. Which is only fair since he has provided me with the press key to this game. But, it felt so strange being able to write for a bigger company than all the indie developers.

Don’t get me wrong here. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing for indie developers. But, the fact that even bigger companies trust their brand in my hands and I only do this as a hobby is such a special feeling for me. So yeah, thank you, Stella Glow for providing me with such an amazing opportunity and the memories that I created while playing this game and talking about it with family and friends while I was preparing the review was such an amazing feeling.

Retrospective collabs

One of my favorite memories in the blogging world is the fact that I was able to do 3 retrospective collabs so far. The idea started when I wanted to write a retrospective series on a game series, but I didn’t want to do it alone. So, the idea of the hub article was born.

The moment of the birth of this idea was actually in a Discord call with another blogger who wanted to start out and was looking for idea’s and cross promotion. Sadly enough, I didn’t hear from that blogger when I was working on the first hub article… But, I felt that the idea had so much potential, I kept the collab running. The end result was:

The Legend Of Zelda Retrospective – A Bloggers Journey

Not too long after that, The Well Red Mage, who was one of the writers for this collab started his own collab in the same style for the Final Fantasy series. He also did one for the Mario series. In the meantime, I did two other ones.

Tomb Raider – Writer’s Raid

A Pokémon Retrospective – Creator’s Catch Hub

All three collabs have their own unique stories and memories attached to it. From being able to work with an actual journalist, YouTubers, being promoted by YouTubers, celebrating the anniversary of the series together and writing about the latest recently released game in the series, it’s just magical. I love doing these collab, but they are so extremely draining and demanding to do. But, the rewarding feeling you get when everything comes together, and you see everything get published and launch at the same time… And then seeing the community read and interact with the whole collab, it’s so lovely. And yes, here is a little hint… I may be thinking about the next game series to give it the hub retrospective look… Keep an eye on my blog and such if you want to be part of it.

And while I have only chosen two moments, I can keep listing a lot more amazing moments. From writing an article for HP, The Creative Christmas collab in 2017, those two weeks in 2017 where I wrote 2 articles every day for two weeks(!), the time I interviewed an internet friend who turned game dev, the time that a quote of mine made it on the Steam store page, being called the best tech blog in 2017 and being a part of the list of best gaming blogs on the Internet… those are just a few examples of my amazing ride. And yeah, I just noticed that 2017 was an amazing year for my blog, but strangely enough, it’s the year after that I got the biggest spike in visitors and such. Strange how things go.

Award questions

You know what would be fun as well? Let’s take a look back some previous award question posts I have written and let’s see if some of my answers would change today. How much have I changed in the past years? Let’s find out together. Meanwhile, it’s a fun trip through memory lane taking a look back at the various bloggers who think it’s worth it to follow and read my work.

The Real Neat Blog Award – 5 YEARS of NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog Special

What’s your earliest gaming memory?

So, my answer isn’t going to change from what I have said in that article. Rather, I’m going to add to the story. It’s true that the earliest gaming memories are playing Pac-Man on the Gameboy. But, one of my earliest gaming memories is also playing Tarzan on my parent’s computer. I still remember that when they bought their first computer, they called me into the office but instead of explaining me on how to properly use the computer, my mom took out a copied version of the PC game Tarzan. I remember playing it all afternoon and bragging to my mom how far I had gotten.

The copied version of the game came from one of her co-workers. I was so sad when the copy stopped working, I had one goal, buy my own copy. And, I’m proud to admit that I took my bike and rode to the toystore and bought a copy for myself. And yes, as a proud game collector, I still have that copy in my collection. It’s one of the games that will never ever leave my collection when I have anything to say about it.

Do you have a games room / corner?

Now, it might only be 4 years since that article, but I have to say, a lot changed. Not only do I live on my own but my games room/corner changed quite a lot. Currently, my retro systems and my computer is in my office and my more modern systems are in my living room. Compared to the pictures, I gained a NES and a Switch in terms of consoles and a few more retro game computers.

Of course, I also gained quite a lot of games to add to my collection. I don’t dare to count the size of my collection at the moment but I estimate that my game collection is nearing the 5K games mark. I really should start counting them one day. I feel like a project is coming up for this summer.

Oh, and if you want to see pictures of my current game room… Well, here are two.

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Community Award: Real Neat Blog Award from Frostilye

Light theme, or dark theme?

To be honest, for writing I prefer my light theme. It reminds me more of writing on a piece of paper and I feel like I have a bit more control. For reading, I tend to switch between the two.

Now, most of the apps I use on my phone and the default setting on my computer is in dark mode. I just prefer those apps that way. But, I don’t mind interacting with a light theme. A big example is that I have my Microsoft Teams set in dark mode but when I help teachers or students to solve problems with Teams, I notice that the majority has still light mode on.

Now, my answer if I should choose a light or dark theme hasn’t changed… I rather prefer a gray/silver-ish theme since that’s my favorite color. The “bland” yet special color that can support so much while not standing out at all and being easy on the eyes… Yes please. (At least, that’s my opinion on the color.)

Award Time – Thanks LaterLevels

If a game based on your life was made, what would be the genre and title?

This is one answer that’s going to change completely. When I was writing that article, I was playing a ton of RPG’s, so it doesn’t surprise me. Also, action…? Well, let me put this into context. There are a lot of things that happen in my life, but it isn’t THAT eventful that you would say it’s an action game.

Lately, I feel that my life is more in the style of a visual novel/adventure game. One where an interesting story is told through the eyes of an IT-admin in an art school who has a lot of experiences in terms of having a ton of different experiences due to being involved in a theater group, speedrunning…

Then again, maybe a simulation like the Sims would fit my life as well. But then again, I think that would fit almost everybody’s life wouldn’t it? But, I think that if you would base a character on me, I think I would be either that helpful companion who helps to solve the problems or something along those lines.

The Sunshine Blogger Award #2 of 2018 for NekoJonez

What things do you do to relax?

So, I still love to explore cities but lately, I’m more into speedrunning one of my favorite childhood games. Also, I’m watching less anime lately. I don’t know why exactly, but lately I do enjoy reading more on the SPC-wiki. I just love the idea of a whole universe being created from everybody who wants to contribute to the universe. Also, the stories that are created can be so interesting and unique they can be their own film/movie or have such a deep meaning.

On top of that, I also quite enjoy contributing to open source projects. Especially WordPress lately. I’m not that good of a coder, so I currently help in translating plugins and themes into Dutch and Flemish.

Apart from that, I still enjoy playing games, watching anime/YouTube and writing. Something I also enjoy is going to theater. Which wouldn’t be a surprise if you knew that I also love acting on stage and/or being a part of the technical crew while preforming a play.

So, one of the biggest projects I did this school year was completely revamping my school’s website. I’m quite proud of it, but I’m not done revamping it. But, I have to admit that doing this project also made me discover that I also enjoy creating websites quite a lot. So, yeah…

Wrapping up time

I was planning to do something special last year with my 10 years of blogging milestone but my workload with my job and other personal things stopped me from writing something special. Now, a lot of my workload has to do with me being unable to be unproductive. I always want to do something to work on something. I think that’s just a curse of being a creator. My mind never shuts down. I always think about the next story/article to write or what I can do to help out others.

Like I said in the article I wrote in 2014, I sometimes have trouble enjoying certain things like games. Since I always think about: “How can I turn this into an enjoyable article?”. It’s not that I’m not having fun tho. I’m having quite a lot of fun. Yet, I’m so glad that I decided to listen a bit more to my mental health instead of pushing myself into writing each and every week. Sometimes it’s okay to skip a week (or two), as long as I keep the quality of my articles up.

Looking back to my first article and the articles I write today, I am quite amazed at the progression I made. When I read my older articles, I feel they are incomplete, and I want to edit them to make them more complete. But, I’m not going to. This blog is also sort of my portfolio, and it’s my life’s journey. And I’m so happy that I can share it with you all. It’s a journey that I love going on.

It might be extremely cliché, but I can’t thank everybody enough who helped me, supported me and been there for me in the past 11 years. But, I’m so grateful for all my readers and people who went into interaction with my articles. If you decided to buy a certain game because of me, I hope you enjoyed your time with it. Feel free to let me know if you did.

I don’t know what the future will bring for me and my blog. But you can be sure that I’m going to keep writing. At the moment, I don’t have any reason to stop doing this enjoyable hobby. And if you want to see your game or a certain game reviewed on this blog, feel free to reach out to me via my contact page. The best way to follow me is following my Twitter, since I’m that sort of person who can only maintain a few social media channels and Twitter is the easiest for me to share short updates.

And with that, I’m going to close off this ramble article. It might have been all over the place, but I hope you enjoyed reading it and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article and until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Review: Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (GBC) ~ Speedrun Time!

Wikipedia entry

Times can change quite a lot. Way back in 2014, I wrote an article about one of my most favorite childhood games ever made. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. You might think, why am I reviewing this again? Well, in today’s article I’m going to review the port to the Gameboy Color. I still remember getting my copy for one of my birthdays. Since I wasn’t allowed much time on the computer and I saw I was able to take the game on the go with me, the solution was easy. My godmother aunt bought the game for me and gave it to me when I was sleeping over at her place. A few days later, I want to my cousin who introduced me to this game and he got so jealous of my copy that he started to beg his mother for a copy as well. Amazing memories. Anyways, now that I’m also speedrunning the game (both this version and the PC version) and that I have fully finished this game, I think it would be a neat idea to review the GBC version of this game. Is it a good game or should we ignore it? Let’s talk about that while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: want to see runs of this game? 

So, what happened?

If the developers of this game were able to cram the whole PC game into a Gameboy Color game, I would be amazed. But we all know how powerful the Gameboy Color was a playing a 3D game on that wasn’t fully realized yet. There are a few 3D titles on the Gameboy Color but not too many. So, some things had to give. But, how much had to go and did we still have a good game left? 

Let’s first talk about the extremely strange cuts into the story of this game. When you are used to playing the PC or N64 version of this game, the story in the Gameboy Color game is quite strange to say the least. There is so much less story in this game that if you would only play the Gameboy Color game, you might be unable to follow along.  

The best example is almost the whole ending cutscene after the first level is cut out of the game. You don’t get an explanation on why Sophia was looking for you and the whole setup of the story falls in like a cake you take too soon out of the oven. Yet, when you have played the PC/N64 version, you’ll recognize the story beats right away and know where in the story you are. 

So, since the gameboy wasn’t powerful enough, some sections and even entire levels have been cut. For example, there aren’t any final bosses in this version and Palawan Temple, Jeep Trek and King Sol’s Mines are missing in this version. Instead, we got a new level, the Russian Border. This level is a sort of extended version of the Tian Shan River opening section. 

The story in this game is a mess. I don’t really advise that you try to follow it if you haven’t played the PC/N64 version. It’s a shame since the story of the original versions is great. It really makes you feel that you are playing through an Indy movie. Fun fact, did you know that this game was first going to be about aliens before it got veto’ed because the script for the 4th movie was in development? That movie some Indy fans don’t talk about.

So, is this 2D or 3D?

Even games with a messy story can be quite fun to play. So, is this game fun to play? Well, in my honest opinion, I’m having quite a lot of fun in playing this game, but this game has a lot of special quirks you need to get used to, to be able to enjoy this game to the fullest. The first one is that this game is sort of 2,5D game where you look at Indy from above. Thanks to the good use of shadows and different textures, you can be able to quickly see when you are approaching a cliff. 

While you can explore in this game, this game is somewhat linear. There aren’t a lot of moments where you need to backtrack. There is a certain order in which you have to play and beat the level but finding that out is half the fun. Now, as soon as you get a hang of the quirks of this game, it really opens up. Together with the extremely responsive controls, this game is challenge to play. 

So, when I started to speedrun this game, I hadn’t beaten the whole game yet. I had beaten the first 3 levels in my childhood, but the 4th level gave me a lot of trouble. When I actually started to run the levels I hadn’t played yet, I challenged myself and I tried to finish them without looking at the guide. To be honest, I was extremely surprised how the knowledge of the PC version helped me in certain sections and that this game also has unique sections and puzzles. 

Is the game difficult? Well, in a certain degree, yes it is. Healing items are more scarce in this game and there are no checkpoints in this game. When you die, you have to restart the level. A difference in terms of difficulty in this game is that poison can run out. Yes; it can run out. Oh, and med kits don’t heal poison. Only venom kits (green medkits) do. 

Surprisingly, the machine parts have the same use as in the PC/N64 version. The Azerim (flying) tool works a small bit differently but has the same concept behind it. So, knowledge of the PC/N64 version can be extremely helpful in this game to not get stuck. Since, like the original game, the GBC version doesn’t have a tutorial. It doesn’t help you in explaining the controls and the fact you can interact with certain things. A big piece of advice from me, if you are stuck, use the hand on anything strange. If a certain tile on the floor looks strange, use your hand on it. Since lifts aren’t always clear that they are lifts. 

So, the controls. Earlier I said they are extremely responsive. Now that I have quite some experience with them thanks to speed running this game, I have to say that they are precise but can feel a bit floaty. It’s something that has to click with you, or you will have some trouble with it. The D-pad is used to control Indy, the A button interacts with the selected item and B jumps. Start opens the inventory and Select cycles through your tools. 

For this review, I have played quite a lot on my Gameboy Advance as well and I have to say that I can’t decide if I like the fact that I run on an emulator since it gives me more screen space and I can connect my XBOX controller for finer control, or if I enjoy the charm of the game on a smaller screen with a bit more stiff controls. The difference in controls might have to do with the fact I’m running this game. 

Another big difference you might have noticed between the PC/N64 version and the GBC version from the inventory screen you can see a bit higher in this article is that you can only carry 5 of each healing item. You can’t carry more of them. You can purchase more of them with the treasures you find at the end of each level. But, here is something interesting. You can sell your healing items. For example, when you want more medkits, you can sell your green medkits. 

So, what is the gameplay here? This game is an adventure game where you have to platform your way to the end. All the while you have to solve puzzles, fight enemies and avoid traps. This adventure takes you through 15 levels that quite closely follow the structure of the N64/PC version. The red bar is your health and the blue bar is your stamina. 

To beat this game, you have to pull blocks, jump and swing over gaps and solve some puzzles. Most of the puzzles have to do with using the right item on the right location. Sadly enough, picking up and using items can be a bit pixel perfect which is annoying during runs. 

Sadly, you don’t have a map in this game for the larger levels. But, all in all, the levels won’t take you that long to beat. The longest level is Nub’s Tomb, which took me around 11 minutes in my speedrun. Now, certain levels can be beaten in under a minute if you know what you are doing. If you hold up while Indy is moving over a ladder, he can climb it… No matter how long his fall is going. And this game uses that mechanic in certain levels as well. 

All in all, the gameplay is quite addicitive. Especially if you enjoyed the original game. But, I can understand why people would get frustrated and lost in this game if they haven’t played the PC or N64 versions of this game.  

It’s fine

Now, visually this game looks fin in my opinion. There are better looking games on the Gameboy Color yet, I find the atmosphere the developers created with the visuals is quite nice to look at. But, it looks the best in the correct ratio. It doesn’t look bad in a bigger screensize, but you will have some blur here and there. 

Sadly enough, sometimes certain things like breakable walls or places where you can swing with your whip blend in a bit too much in the background. I’m certain that if when you play this game in a darker room or if you suffer from colorblindness that you’ll be unable to see them sometimes. Which is a shame. I wish they stood out a bit more since things like this give the neat visuals a bad name. 

As said earlier, there are a lot better looking games on the Gameboy Color but with the “weaker” visuals, they still pull off an amazing atmosphere. One of my favorite levels visually is Nub’s Tomb. It also has the worst puzzle in the game with the music puzzle. And let’s not forget the jump over the lake bit and if you miss one jump, you have to restart that whole section.

Are there glitches in this game? Well, not a lot. I found a few spots where the game gets confused so you are able to stand on places you aren’t supposed to stand and if you fall into the liquid in the Infernal Machine level and you are holding a direction button while facing a wall, you don’t die until you release the movement button. 

Now, going back to the visuals. There are also animations in this game. These animations are good. They really add to the game, all the while they don’t feel out of palace. They really blend into the created atmosphere really well. I always enjoyed seeing Indy swing over large pits and always hearing that amazing melody is just icing on the cake. But, let’s not mention how tricky it is to get in the right position to whip over a pit. 

Sadly, in terms of sound effects and music, this game lacks quite a lot. Apart from the main theme at the start and some short tunes, there isn’t a lot of music in this game. In the later parts of the game, there is a bit more music but it mostly aids in the puzzles or certain a bit more tension. I wish these moments were used a bit more. And there aren’t a lot of sound effects either. If I didn’t have to focus on my gameplay, I would play this game while listening to music. It’s a shame since when this game has music, it’s amazing chiptune goodness but it’s so sparingly implemented it’s annoying. Thankfully, the walking sound effects of Indy aren’t annoying. 

There are 15 levels in this game and when you play each level optimally, I think you can beat this game in 4 to 5 hours in your first run and without using a guide. Currently, I’m griding for a full run of this game and I estimate that it will take 2,5 hours if I don’t make too many mistakes. Granted, that’s when I skip all the treasures that are in most of the levels. Apart from, I think, 2 levels, there are 10 treasures hidden in each level. But, in this version of the game, they are a bit well less hidden compared to the PC/N64 version.

The final thing I want to talk about is the password system. As a speedrunner, I’m a bit on the edge on this mechanic. Before I started running this game, I hated this system. Why couldn’t I use the save system like in the Zelda games and other Gameboy Color games. But, now that I run this game, it’s quite helpful in training certain levels or trying to set a new level record. So, yeah. 

Anyways, I think it’s high time for a conclusion is it not? Let’s wrap up this article with a nice conclusion to summerize my thoughts.

Summary time

The good:

+ Enjoyable gameplay with exploration and nice puzzles.

+ Decent visuals (for the most part)

+ …

The bad:

-Butchered story.

-Too little in terms of music.

-Some sections are a bit too pixel perfect.

-Lack of tutorial.

Final thoughts:

Is this game worth your time? If you enjoy games like the old school Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, I would say yes. If you enjoy unique and special old mobile games, I would also recommend this game. But, know that this game is a niche game and it has it’s quirks.

Two things can happen. It can click like it did with me and then you have a nice experience all the while you see the flaws and issues that this game has. The other thing is you realize that this game isn’t your cup of tea and you don’t play it. 

I honestly think that it’s quite impressive how they were able to cram a somewhat solid version of the PC/N64 version into a small Gameboy Color cartridge. I mean, the rom file for this game is only 1MB! This whole game is 1MB and it can provide you with a decent Indy game..? Sign me up! 

Now, if you are on the fence about it, just give the first two levels a try. If you notice that it’s not your cup of tea, then skip this game. If you enjoyed playing the first two levels, I would highly recommend you continue to play this game. 

Granted, I think that the nostalgia for this game might have placed a lot of rose colored glasses on my eyes and I might see this game in a better light then it actually is but should that matter? I think this game is a nice gem in the Gameboy Color library and I would recommend it to people who enjoy adventure games. All the while, I would warn it’s an unique and special game with it’s own flaws but it’s still enjoyable. If only the story was a bit more intact… 

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 80/100