Pumpkin Jack

 

Release: 2020

Developer: Nicolas Meyssonnier

Publishing: Headup Publishing, Beep Japan

Gameplay Stats: 6 hours, 32/32 achievements

Yay Halloween! This was in a Humble Bundle for 3d platformers so that's why I picked it up without really reading reviews. And it's nearing Halloween so I thought I'd give it a go!

I was ready to come out as negative against this game. It's pretty formulaic, there is too much dialogue, and the combat is frequent and uninteresting. But now I know this game was mostly made by a single person, so I feel like I have to couch my criticism a bit. It seems like this was a complete vision of a single person who has different tastes in games than I do. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the game. The creepy covers of classical music were pretty fun and the game didn't overstay its welcome.

Technically the game ran very well apart from seeming to launch a new instance (and kill the old instance) each time you died or loaded into a new area. This broke my fullscreen each time it did that but with some quick Googling I was able to get that fixed. Otherwise I didn't experience a single issue with the game which is pretty crazy. Sometimes you play games with entire teams behind them and they don't run nearly this well.

I don't really know if I would recommend this game but as an effort mostly brought about by a single human, it was impressive. I hope this creator goes on to make more games, I am excited to see what they continue to make in the future!