Jelly's Journey

It doesn’t take much to come up with a decent platformer when it comes to gameplay mechanics, mainly because you can easily borrow your inspiration from all the other games in the genre. What’s truly difficult, on the other hand, is to implement new ideas and change the way people enjoy platformers, because you are bound to make a lot of people unhappy, even if the ideas are good.

Jelly's Journey is a 2D platformer in which your only goal is to reach the end of the level and make sure you get there in one piece. There are no original concepts to worry about, nor any kind of difficult gameplay mechanics to get used to, so every fan of the genre should feel right at home. Unfortunately, the lack of original content can also cause boredom, especially in slightly more experienced players.

To begin with, there’s not much of a story, so you start directly by having to stomp enemies and collect various items that hold no particular significance. On the other hand, this can also help you have fun and keep you mind free of stress, which is also important sometimes. Moreover, the mechanics seem to be well optimized and designed to be as intuitive as possible.

The enemies usually patrol the levels and are quite easy to predict, given the fact that all you have to do is time your movement in such a way as to avoid them. It’s also possible to stomp them if you feel particularly violent, and it’s also worth noting that they drop valuable points, which might be worth something if you are after the high score. You can also collect various items by exploring each part of the stage.

Lastly, the retro graphics are not bad, but they could certainly be better in many regards. The low resolution might turn people away, especially since retro is not a synonym with old. It’s perfectly alright to feature pixelated artwork, but it’s much better to have it in full-HD resolutions than to see a handful of pixels stretched over our modern screens.

In the end, Jelly's Journey is a regular platformer with nothing new to add to the genre, but that’s not a very big problem. The issue is the repetitive gameplay and the lack of a clear purpose, not to mention the outdated technology used to render the whole thing.