Black Jewel

Yet another game from the developer that gets the aesthetic side of retro games right, but doesn't understand how to make gameplay interesting and fun. Music is nice, graphics are on-point in emulating C64 look, partly because they are almost a carbon copy of an actual C64 game, Storm Warrior. But somehow the game feels less responsive and dynamic than its 8bit counterpart. See, there are two general types of building challenge in those old games: either you make it reflex or memory based. In the first case, you present the player with unpredictable and quick obstacles but provide him with mobility, swiftness and ample resources to overcome them. In the second case you make it slow and methodical - your character is less responsive, health is hard to come by, but the enemies have constant attack patterns you can memorize. In this game, we got the worst mix of those two: your character is slow, extremely cumbersome to control, can't even duck, but the enemy attack patterns are random and health items are very limited. A perfect recipe for frustrating gameplay. The only way to play it is with regenerating health cheat enabled, and then the whole thing is over in 15 minutes. If you're in the market for some retro fun, try Odallus instead, it's orders of magnitude better.

Хардкор в коммодоровском стиле. А значит, лучшее в игре - это музыка. Графику и физику, впрочем, тоже не такую всратую сделали, сойдёт - стилистически слизано с Storm Warrior, даже босс один оттуда, но контента побольше завезли. И хардкор в том, что здесь только одна жизнь на всю игру. С одной стороны хорошо, что вообще сделали такое, а то сейчас вечно сейвы и чекпоинты, с другой, "коммодорная" сложность всё таки тупой атавизм по сравнению с несколькими жизнями в более честных играх. Но это не самое главное. Играешь ты такой, сначала вроде всё понятно, тактики против врагов и боссов ясны, но к середине игры наступает момент, когда надо пройти сильно рандомного босса, а перед ним куча стреляющих во все стороны рандомных грибов, а потом враги уже начинают быть жирнющими, не так поддаются избиению и бои с ними гарантированно приводят к потере здоровья. Пытаешься превозмогать и приходишь к мысли, что врагов надо тупо перепрыгивать. Может чуток урона получишь, но пройдёшь дальше. И вот вторая половина игры просто пробегается мимо врагов, а последний босс тупо легко глушится твоими ударами и мало что может сделать в ответ. Такая вот халтурка со сложностью. В итоге игра особо не нужна, ну музыка крутая, да, но одна на все уровни, да и игра сама по себе вторичная, тупо улучшение коммодоровской игры. Опыт кривого старого хардкора, когда сначала непонятно, как в это вообще играть, а потом находишь эксплоиты в кривизне и пробегаешь игру.

Black Jewel is an unabashed ripoff of Storm Warrior (copyright Elite Systems, 1989). To date, the intellectual property owner has not taken legal action against the "developer" of this clear case of copyright infringement. Storm Warrior is an ancient 2D side scrolling brawler with mild platforming/timed dodging elements that was of middling popularity on the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC platforms it was designed for. This is the exact same game, only with more copyright infringement. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Clickteam Fusion construction kit - the "No-Code" construction kit that "Anyone can make games with!!". Including, you know, people who aren't game developers. Which is a problem. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Black Jewel is relatively cheap at $2 USD (that's a fairly high price for someone else's game), but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price and the looming possibility this will be removed from Steam if the copyright owners step in, this is impossible to recommend.

I got this and the developer's other game Mastema in some throw-away bundle on Fanatical ages ago and even though I got it for pennies on the dollar, I just can't recommend it. A great soundtrack and authentic retro pixel graphics are undermined by awkward controls and poor gameplay that is neither fun nor rewarding. I've played tons of difficult retro games, I grew up with challenging arcade games like Sword of Sodan, Rastan, Azteca (on Apple II), and a slew of other games, none of them were as ridiculous as this game that gives you 1 life and no continues. You die you start from the beginning. There is a fine line between challenging the player and wasting their time and I think the developer leaned on the latter and washed their hands of this nuance and decided to just appeal to the Cult of Difficulty™ that has emerged with Dark Souls-style games. If that's your bag then go for it, but for me I just see an unrealized sword & sorcery action-adventure.

Минимальные системные требования: Оперативная память: 2 GB ОЗУ Место на диске: 15 MB

This looks extremely authentic to a C64 action platformer from back in the day, the graphics, sound and music are spot on. The loadscreen and hacking intro are nice touches as well. It really reminds me of games like Psygnosis Barbarian or Palaces Barbarian 2, Stormlord etc. The Barbarian hero was really popular at the time as was the Ninja thanks to the classis Arnie movie. However it emulates these games a bit too well. Controls are pretty good, but by the time you do your two hit combo with your sword the enemy will hit you. In the very beginning its fine, but the stone tossing green guys are a pain. A way to block would of been nice or have your attacks be quicker and enemies die quicker as well like Rastan or have enemies stagger back from a attack. I would of like to have some modern quality of life improvements, like the ability to save and checkpoints. Also you have only one life and when you die you may get the highscore but cant put in your name (I know earlier arcade style games did that but here you could have done that). Also when you die it sends you back to the C64 intro, which would of not happen even back then (loading sure, but we dont need to be THAT accurate). Yes you can skip it, but I prefer to be just put back to the level. Still the dev wanted to make a trully hardcore and accurate C64 style game that is clunky, unforgiving but oozes atmoshpere. Its still playable and honestly I admit I am not very good at platformers myself, so my opinion is pretty subjective. I recommend this if you loved beating hardcore unforgiving C64 platform games. But honestly it is not for me, Age of Barbarians, Slain and Volgaar are also very hard plattformers of the same style and feature checkpoints, save feature and other features. With some polish this could of been golden, and the dev could still add the "hardcore" 1 live mode to the game. Achivements and tradingcards would of been cool but are not essential, but to me other stuff is. So again I recommend it to people who played through all the tough C64 plaformers without cheats and want something new, but yeah its not for me personally.

It's awesome! The style is spot on, especially the music! The only down side is: Short and really hard without cheat... And sometimes even with that too! But now I'm not sure what's going on. I was pretty sure that this was a REAL C64 game. It's that faithful. Only one sound effect "told" me that this couldn't be at that time. Had to do some research, and I found that this is basicly an upgraded version of Storm Warrior. Graphics and music wise. And a bit longer. And... Found an actual Sega Megadrive / Genesis game demo called Black Jewel Reborn, and even for NES! But this is the "real deal". Those are good too, but I was always been a Commodore 64 one guy. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3675760040 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3675761551

un juego pero de los gods

Que venha a versão Reborn do Michael Mrozek! \o/

Não é para mim. Mas não quer dizer que seja ruim. Só é muito DIFÍCIL! Se os inimigos não tivessem um padrão tão errático e o boneco se movesse mais rápido, seria bem melhor!