Jill of the Jungle (1992)

There's no real title screen, just screens like this for each episode.

Name:Jill of the Jungle
Number:246
Year:1992
Publisher:Epic MegaGames
Developer:Epic MegaGames
Genre:Side-Scroller Shooter
Difficulty:3/5
Time:3 hours 30 minutes
Won:Yes (109W/78L)

In retrospect, it's kind of strange that Epic as a company would go from a simple flip-screen game that runs in text mode to a smooth-scrolling VGA side-scroller. It feels like there's a step missing, lessons not learned from the world of CGA or EGA games. Something which does show straight off, as the title screen isn't better looking than Apogee's EGA titles.

Jill insists upon herself, apparently.

The story is, Jill is a mysterious figure in the jungle. She is beautiful and brave and all adjectives you would apply to a heroine of a game. We get no backstory, like how she appeared in this world, how she can turn into animals, or what she's doing in general. Just a rhetorical question, 'who says a lady can't slay a few monsters'? Which in 1992 feels a bit pretentious to put in as your sole rationale for making a female protagonist.

Jill has an overmap, much like Commander Keen and certain other Apogee games. It's pure side view, so you're basically just walking between stages. It's a bit non-linear, but I feel like it should have been just a series of levels. You automatically enter anything you walk into, and there are the usual keys and doors. Later episodes shift this. Episode two has a more traditional series of levels, and the third has a standard top-down overmap.

The controls are you basic fare for the era. Shift jumps, alt shoots and the arrows move. There's seemingly no rebinding them. In comparison to a lot of the competition, Jill moves closer to the hero of a cinematic platformer. There's no climbing or anything, but there's a noticeable delay to most actions. Jumping is where this is most pronounced, with a very realistic build-up to jumping and landing. I dig it.

That said there is some issue with this, and it's that the game often forces you to time jumps fairly well. Jill has health, and health pickups are plentiful, but it would be nice to play a game where I don't have to worry about nigh certain injury. You also get no control over your height, but at least you can turn mid-air. At least there are infinite lives.

There are vines and chains that Jill can climb up, or if you press left or right, jump off a certain distance of. It's generally smooth, but like a lot of other things, the game plays around with this. Elevators and destructible blocks, which function like most others of the era. Step off the elevator, it drops down to the floor it originated on.

Behold, a destructible block maze.

Where this kind of falls apart is in the shooting. Rather than a gun, Jill gets various boomerang-like weapons. Unfortunately, she can only shoot standing up, and there's no easy way to handle enemies who aren't at head height. You just have to hope the game gives you a weapon that doesn't go in a straight line. Because even if you crouch after throwing one of those, it's still heading back straight towards you. Sometimes they even get stuck inside walls, and because you can't fire the weapon again until it comes back, you're screwed.

There are two weapons Jill uses. A dagger, which goes in a straight line until it goes a bit off-screen. This is useless against a lot of enemies, and you have to manufacture situations for it to hit them. Then there's the shuriken, which has a downward arc, bounces, and sometimes doesn't return to Jill, but it returns to her inventory anyway. Despite weapons with downward arcs being the stereotype of a terrible side-scroller weapon, this bucks the trend.

Jill, this isn't what they mean by Phoenix Force!

Jill can transform into various forms based on symbols you can find around. These are usually fairly obvious. The first is the flaming bird that's a constant enemy in the game. This can fly and shoot. Though if you shoot you also fly. Everytime you fire or press the fly button, you get a small burst of upward momentum. It's a bit tricky to get used to, and it's easy to get caught by climbing too fast, but it is possible.

Then there's the fish form. This only works in water, and thankfully you can't jump out of the water. (In her base form, if Jill lands in a body of water, she dies) Jump still moves you up, but not at a quick enough rate to be of any use. Instead you just hold up. Considering that from a player perspective, flying and swimming should be only slightly different, why the massive change?

The third form is a frog form, which doesn't have an attack and just constantly hops. Like Keen's pogostick form, just without the option to turn it on or off. I'm really not sure what the purpose of this is, since outside of one section where it can enter water, it just sort of shows up.

A game set in a jungle without a crocodile is a rare game indeed.

As to Jill's enemies, well, queen of the jungle she isn't. Every animal in the forest seems to want to kill her, and also demons from heck and lizardmen. Most of this can be boiled down to a few real types, the ones on the ground, the ones that shoot back. But there are certainly some unique enemies, not always for good reasons.

Each level is more or less self-contained. Even the hub world, outside of a few keys. This means that weapons, jump power-ups and transformations are all unique to that level. As a result, some levels are centered around regular side-scrolling action, while others are all about finding a clever way around enemies.

Surprised nobody in these games ever tries to harness the energy of a perpetually bouncing ball.

Most levels aren't very noteworthy. They're fun, but simple and easy to get through. Perhaps too easy at times. Level design is often very simple, A to B, with the occasional sidetrip which has point items. Maybe sometimes it's diagonally instead of sideways or vertical, but you go in one, straight-forward line of some sort.

That said, there were some outliers. Some good, and some bad. Like most games, there's this mistake of thinking a maze is automatically a good choice of difficulty. Because of the way Jill lands, this makes those mazes very tedious. Worse still, the most annoying one involves getting your weapon to destroy the right destructible blocks or having to make several precise jumps. Good thing Jill doesn't take fall damage.

One of the two levels the lizardmen, the evil enemies of the game, appear in.

Then there are the less straight-forward levels. These revolve around more puzzling layouts or just going through a level without a weapon. Despite the unusual movement and my distaste for the latter, I found these interesting. Jill has such an easy time with violence, since everything dies the second you hit it, that non-violence forces some cleverness on the player's part.

Like I mentioned at the start, the game's weird in the audio-visual department. It seems like they have little experience working against the limitations of earlier eras and instead made it straight to an effectively limitless palette and audio design. It's not bad-looking, it's just that the use of colors show that there's little thought about it. Look at all the pretty colors rather than thinking about what colors should be used.

Then there's the audio design. It's very impactful, distinct and matches actions well, but it's also distracting. Sounds are a bit loud and there's no volume adjustment in-game. They also sometimes don't quite fit, made worse by how every episode changes a lot of them around. Sometimes a sound will be reasonable, then in the next episode it'll change to something that is not.

This makes the game feel less like a DOS game and more like an Amiga game. Which in retrospect makes the game feel a bit out of date for 1992. Clearly, it didn't hurt Epic, but the second more obviously VGA games appeared on the scene, Jill feels more out of place. I still like the way the game is set-up, but I must admit that it has some problems.

"...the game series I would outlast. By three decades if you count that mobile game!"

One thing that rubbed me the wrong way was that instead of having a story, the game introduces various text boxes making fun of other video game heroes, which strikes me as overly presumptuous at the time. Now, considering that all of the characters being mocked had sequels at the time and Jill only ever had one unofficial sequel, well, I'm not terribly amused. Reminds me that impotent indie developer sniping isn't just limited to the 21st century.

At least, this is the story until the third episode. In the third episode, Jill now has to save a prince to prevent lizard men from destroying the forest to build condos. None of the shareware games so far have had an amazing story or anything, but it's odd just slapping in some half-hearted real story at the final part of the game.

It would have been nice if there was more variation than just huts.

In general the third episode changes a lot of things about the game. Suddenly, there's an overworld. Level design shifts from the mostly straight-forward levels of the first two episodes to something non-linear. It's an odd choice, considering that usually the shareware episode is the best. If it weren't for how the staff remains the same between the three episodes, I'd say someone new in this episode was better. Guess they just wrote all their levels in same order you play them.

There is some unpleasantness to this cleverness. Sometimes the game will allow Jill to jump down a bit of water which before, would kill her. And oh, the game loves dumping hundreds of spikes on the player. They kill Jill outright rather than hurting her, which is just great. It's about the only part I actually disliked in the final episode.

In most games centered around rescuing a princess, we don't find that part out 2/3rds of the way through!

Eventually, you get an epic two-part level where you free the prince. The game throws a text box at you if you try to exit without doing so, which is amusing, but otherwise the level is a bit disappointing. The final part is a straight-forward key hunt, and the ending is a joke that feels like it was added at the last minute to make some sort of point that failed to land. Onto the rating.

Weapons:
Despite some annoyances, the weapons have some clever unique behaviors going on which makes each feel different from the others and useful in their own way. Even if some can't hit some enemies. 4

Enemies:
For the most part, just enemies which go back and forth. The few which are actively hostile tend to be among the more annoying ones. At least they don't present an unbeatable challenge. 3

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Rarely bad, usually forgettable, never outright unpleasant. The third episode is by far the best, and shows that the people behind this were clearly improving. 5

Player Agency:
Jill is a bit of an odd duck. She leans towards the realistic side, but doesn't quite force herself towards a full cinematic platformer style. At times it feels like she's an imitation of a cinematic platformer hero. That said, I liked it, and generally the game didn't make you work around the flaws it had. 6

Interactivity:
The usual switches and destructible blocks. 1

Atmosphere:
The whole package is weird. It feels like it came out of the void with barely any influences on it or influences that at times seem impossible. All in a package that seems to exist with the barest interest towards what it's trying to do. It's a strange fever dream, an aspect that gets overlooked because for many, Jill was a seminal game. 5

Graphics:
Nice-looking, but generally overly soft. While I like the animation, it sometimes seems both choppy and smooth, and I can't place my finger on why. 6

Story:
Basically nothing. 0

Sound/Music:
Nice, well designed sounds except for one flaw. Too bombastic. The music is nice, but loops are just a bit too short and are likewise, sometimes too bombastic. 6

That's 36, about comparable for most titles we've seen in the shareware era. Basically middle of the pack.

The thing that strikes me the most about this game is how odd it is. We've gone directly from a top-down shooter which was a very simple template using text mode to a complex VGA game which has a lot going on. Maybe it doesn't always succeed at what it tries to do, but Epic is starting to feel like a company that goes for something absolutely crazy, even if it can't always hit that target.

Halloween is about to pop up, so it's time for something spooky and slightly out of the usual. Well, one of those things, anyway, in Welcome House 2.