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Jack B. Nimble is a single button endless runner that features fantastic retro style graphics and music, along with a decent amount of variability in the six available levels in terms of artstyle, gameplay rhythm, and difficulty. Estimated time to completion: 20 hours.
The basic gameplay unfolds as you start each run at a fairly slow pace. The game progressively speeds up as you play, and each level has its own set of speed-up/slow-down environmental blocks that you can use to play to your style. You can jump with varying heights based on how long you press and hold the jump button. While in mid-air, you can press the same button to perform a whipping action. The goal is whip all of the candles/lanterns that are along your path while staying alive. Each candle whipped gives you a +1 multiplier to the total score. But the game also keeps track of your misses, by giving an overall multiplier when you are done by the percentage of accurate whips performed. This would prevent the player from performing any unnecessary whipping while playing. The positive and negative bonuses are really well balanced. The base score these multipliers are applied to your total run distance. All three statistics are continually tabulating on the top of the screen.
There are levels to unlock with the tallying up of all of your high scores for the available levels, and with the level unlocks, there are also playable character sprites to unlock, along with artistic color schemes that you may want to use to play this game. So you have to be semi-decent at the first level in terms of getting used to the basic skills/controls in order to unlock anything at all. So far I have unlocked all six of the levels and still have two more character unlocks to find. Who knows when I will get them since the other ones unlocked with new levels.
The levels are progressively difficult especially as you speed up and your reaction time is reduced. The six levels also increasingly difficult, with the last level really challenging in my opinion. Each level is accompanied by its own art style and really well-written theme music. While the tracks repeat in the levels, I estimate them to be around two minutes each, so you have to survive some time before the music starts repeating. Perhaps I am heavily overestimating the music track lengths, but all I wanted to say is that the track lengths are adequate in length.
Every once in a while you will run into a Curse level. This is the developer's allusion to the awful displays of Virtual Boy. The game runs the same, though it's rather unpleasant to look at.
I play using an XB360 controller, but for some reason only the Right Stick moves the on-screen cursor when it is available. The Right Trigger is the only button I can get to register as the affirmative mouseclick. This doesn't bother me too much, just the cursor movement is really quick across the screen, but once I have the game running, it's easy to just leave the cursor in one place (by memory it loads back in the same location), and press Right Trigger after each death twice to restart, without jostling the Right Stick and the need to move the cursor. I tested with a Steam controller as well, only the right touchpad moves the cursor, though this is expected since that is more or less mimicking the mouse. The game is playable with the mouse as the single-button command as well. So there are control options available.
(EDIT: I just purchased an XBox One controller to check this, and the cursor moves with both joysticks as well as the D-Pad. Seems that the above-mentioned issue was specific to the XB360 controller.)
The game features a really quick several page tutorial that is easy to flip through and start playing.
One small detail I really appreciate is the Quit menu display. Jack is so sad if you have the cursor over "Yes" while he is happy if you hover over "No." I always look at both animations before leaving the game. Small details like this provide the players with a hint of the passion that the developers put toward the game while creating it. It is quite lovely to see.
There are achievements in this game, and I must warn the achievement-hunters out there, if you want to obtain all of the achievements, it will take quite some time. From my own playing, I have played over 3 hours, and I average about 500 candles per hour of play time. There is an achievement for 10,000 candles whipped, for me that's about 20 hours. I can't really see myself doing it much faster either.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
Jack B. Nimble is a really good runner with excellent art style, music, and replay value. The game challenges you to get better before opening up more play options for you, and each level is accompanied by its own flavor. The animations are excellent and you see plenty of references to older 8-bit games. The game is easy to learn, difficult to master, with responsive controls. It gives you a real sense of accomplishment to successfully unlock some of the later gameplay features. With the addition of achievements, it also provides an incentive for the player to keep polishing his/her skills, as well as putting prayers upon lady luck for good RNG on some runs. At the base asking price, I would strongly recommend this game.
[quote]I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.[/quote]
