Retro or Rose-tinted: Jill of the Jungle

One of the very first games I have any memory of playing, Jill of the Jungle was a shareware title made by Tim Sweeney of Epic MegaGames. It was, indeed, Epic's first really big hit title, building from the success of ZZT and paving the way for classics such as One Must Fall, Jazz Jackrabbit, Traffic Department 2192 and, eventually, Unreal and Gears of War.

As a kid, I'd have called this game a classic. But does it hold up today? I thought I'd play it and check it out.

The first game in the trilogy is Jill of the Jungle and it's the one I most associate with childhood. I had the shareware version from the time I was six to about the time I was sixteen, at which point I stumbled across a copy of the full version at a Cash Converters somewhere. There is no real story to Jill of the Jungle, other than it's a day for Jill and she's adventuring in the jungle. The game opens with Jill on a map screen which plays, functionally, the same as the levels - it's a platformer, with the levels represented by numbered bricks which you can jump down into. The map level is great - well designed, offering you a choice of what level to tackle next and hiding several secrets and bonuses. You don't need to finish all the levels, but it's much better if you do.

The levels are amazingly well designed - highly creative and varied. Some, like The Castle, test your platforming prowess and host no enemies, while others, like The Boulders or The Hut, require you to also take an active role in combat, armed with knives (which are more functionally boomerangs) or spinning blades (a much better, if somewhat less precise, weapon).

The first game starts off as a fairly regulation, if somewhat pretty, post-Keen platformer. The point that turns it around, however, is level 7, The Forest. This level is one of my favourites to this day. It seems relatively straightforward at first - but then you get the extra jumping power. This level introduces you to the game's love of opening up new areas as you access new abilities/weapons/items in the level - and, most importantly, to Jill's ability to transform. Toward the end of the level, Jill transforms into one of the phoenix enemies, granting her the power of flight as well as a flamethrower projectile (that the real phoenixes mercifully have to do without). Suddenly, the game changes, and you can explore the level freely, opening up new areas - including a treasure trove that you could see, but not access, in level 1. Many of the levels are linked in this way - hinting at things that you might find later.

The second episode, Jill Goes Underground, largely offers more of the same, albeit with something of a change of format: the map level is gone, and instead the game plays out in a linear fashion, albeit one that still encourages exploration to a degree. The level design here is excellent once again, opening with a challenging trek up the mushrooms seen in the first game's epilogue, before plunging you into the underground and working your way through devilish mazes, gauntlets of enemies and some outright strange areas, peaking with the eye-hurting Land of Eternal Weirdness. The game reaches an incredibly satisfying conclusion as, after your exhausting trek through the underground, you finally break through to the surface again.

The third episode - Jill Saves the Prince - suffers from a stunning sense of disconnection against the fist two. For a start, the map is back, but this time it's overhead. Where the first two games were connected - the second started at the end of the first - there seems to be no link between two and three. Also, the plot of a kidnapped prince comes out of absolutely nowhere - this isn't what we've been working toward for the last two games or anything, just suddenly - Jill is going to save a prince, the same way she might go down the shops, or do her taxes. The levels are well enough designed - and very challenging - but not quite as memorable as the first two. Nothing on the level of The Forest or Montezuma's Castle here, or even the Depths of Heck (I will never get over the fact that Americans seem to find the world hell so illicit). The level design will push you to your limits, however - culminating in levels 12 and 13, the former being on the border of impossible due to an overabundance of instant-kill spikes while the latter contains countless traps, including a false exit that leaves the game unbeatable. Odds are, however, that you'll never see it, as level 12 will sap your will to live. If you see the screenshot above, then it's already too late for you.

 
As the three episodes are all technically parts of the same game, they share a lot of assets, although each episode introduces some new stuff. Most of the graphics are exceptional for their time, and still look nice today, however, in episode 3 you will find the Ship of the Giant Lizard Men (which comes out of absolutely freaking nowhere), with the titular lizard men serving as enemies. Their sprites are the absolutely pits, the worst looking thing in all three games. I initially thought this level must be a joke, but as it turns out they're the ones who kidnapped the prince to start with. The sound is good, and the music was always bearable but not really memorable - there is nothing here that you'll be humming afterwards.

The gameplay is solid - run and jump, basically, with the knife being the only game mechanic that requires any mastery (the in-game help refers to using the knife as an art). The platforming is a bit dated - Jill is as stiff as a board and locks to grid quite nastily - you can actually have her frozen mid-running animation, if you time it right. This can make some tricky jumps even more ridiculous (seriously, level 12 of episode three can go suck it) but it's nothing that you can't get past with some practice.

I would have said I'd gotten worse at video games as I've gotten older, but I knocked over all three episodes in a little over 3 hours. Given that they're meant to be taken as one game, I think that's not an unreasonable length for the type of game in question. After Episode 1, you've pretty much seen everything - gameplay wise - that the games have to offer, but the subsequent episodes find new ways of using those mechanics and to get through episode 3 you will need to draw on everything you've learned thus far.

All in all, I think Jill holds up. Commander Keen it ain't, and many console fans of the time may turn their noses up at it, but it's a fun adventure that constantly challenges you to try new things and rarely throws up the same challenge twice. Not perfect, but still fun, and a
title I would happily recommend to anyone after a 2d platformer with which to kill an afternoon.