Onesimus: A Quest for Freedom (1992)

Name:Onesimus - A Quest for Freedom
Number:249
Year:1992
Expansion for:Jill of the Jungle
Publisher:Ark Media Publishing
Developer:Epic Megagames
Genre:Side-Scrolling Shooter
Difficulty:3/5
Time:2 hours 30 minutes

Onesimus is a minor New Testament figure, the (probable) slave of a Roman in Antolia named Philemon. Both figures are minor saints in various forms of Orthodox Christianity, but generally just overlooked outside of the east. The letter in which these two are named is one of the shortest works in the Bible, and focuses on forgiveness. What Philemon needs to forgive Onesimus for is not mentioned, but it is 1st century Rome, so it's possible that it isn't something that has translated well across the centuries. It strikes me as more unique because it isn't Paul politely saying that the person it was directed to is a terrible Christian.

Why this of all things, is being turned into a Jill of the Jungle mod is beyond me.
 

This is not an exaggeration. This is basically just Jill of the Jungle Episode 4, except now Jill is a male Roman slave in a tunic. Because a woman with a shapely ass is not something a Christian game can have. Unless ass is code for donkey, although I suspect many would question why you're describing a donkey as being shapely. Nearly everyone who worked on Jill also worked on this, hence why I've placed Epic as the developer even if that isn't official.

When I say that this is Episode 4, everything is from Jill except the main character's sprites, which are clearly modified from Jill's, and give the main character, who I presume is supposed to be male, a feminine appearance. Sounds, music, graphics and gameplay. If you edited this to have Jill's sprites, there would be barely any difference.

Even if you discount my theory that this is Epic doing contract work, there are levels here which are from Jill of the Jungle. It might honestly be all of them and I just didn't notice. It certainly is a lot of them, some of which I wasn't so happy to play through the first time around. Oh, sweet, the level where I'm practically guaranteed to take damage, I sure wanted to play through this one again! This isn't even done in a sensical way, near the end of the game there's a level from Episode 1.

The game works somewhere between Episodes 2 and 3 of Jill. There's an overworld, but some levels are multi-part. (Technically, Episode 3 did have this, but it was doing trickery on the final level) The map is different, but clearly based on the already existing map. There's still a maze though, proving once again that if you need to pad out your game's runtime, add a maze.

Don't be fooled by how quickly I managed to complete the game, this is quite long. There's nearly every level that doesn't involve turning into an animal at some point. It's shorter than the whole of Jill, but longer than any individual episode. If this were just a collection of Jill levels without the changes, well, it wouldn't be amazing, since the animal stuff changed things up, but it would be better.

The whole Christian element feels weird. If you've read up about Wisdom Tree, they were a developer who started making Christian games on the NES after Nintendo started cracking down on unlicensed games. The thing is, they were atheists and doing it because selling their stuff via the Christian market bypassed Nintendo's censorship. I have no proof that this is a similar case, but Tim Sweeney is absolutely the sort of person who would cater to a market in the most cynical manner possible.

Now, the reason why this comes off as atheists trying to exploit a market is because the Christian element is mostly performance. The Christian element is as hacked together as the game itself. Slightly modify a few graphics in such a way that superficially seems Christian, then put out of context Bible verses in an apple every stage. By this logic, you could modify any game to be Christian. Even something like Postal, just switch the weapons to something that sounds religiously safe, make the enemies fall in prayer instead of dying. Congrats, you can print that. It would be obvious pandering, of course, but that's never stopped anyone before.

What I find questionable most of all is the safe changes to the game seems to make things worse. Instead of demons, there are invincible, flying, moonwalking thieves who throw spinning fireballs. That is really messed up. I think a coin pick-up is supposed to make it so you can get past them without getting, hurt, but I never got it to work. Either way, I don't think a character that's a demon in a human's skin is any better than a regular demon. Just don't have demons if you feel like demons are too risky.

Then there's the change to the weapon. The shuriken, or whatever it was called, is now a rock. It works the same. I'm really not sure why this is supposed to be a safe choice. Weird ninja weapons, for all the criticism they get, are rare and expensive, even if you went back to the era of Japan where there actually would be ninjas walking around. Rocks are not rare and expensive, and rocks can be deadly weapons.

There was some unimportant work of literature, in which one of the characters said "let he who is without sin cast the first stone". Because getting hit with a rock can kill you. That's why stonings were popular forms of vigilante killings for thousands of years. They were cheap, easy to use, and there was very little you could do to defend yourself against man throwing rock. As your little burgeoning Cain shall soon discover. Say what you will about media that tries to be non-violent, it's better than half-heartedly sanitizing violence only to create something worse.

I'm going to give this a 5, it's not bad, but feels unwieldy and some of the changes have made the experience less fun. If this was your only option, it wouldn't be bad, there's just no reason to play this otherwise.

The idea of cloning/licensing some uber popular game and making a Christian version isn't a bad one. You're starting from a good template, the audience you're selling to might actually enjoy what you're selling, and if you're good enough people outside of the niche might look upon it fondly. There are people who like some of the later Wisdom Tree games, which followed this template. The key thing is, these games were clones, not just the same game with a new coat of paint.

Next time, we'll go out of order to see Lucasarts attempt at making a naval sim action game, PHM Pegasus.