Juiced does right by its promise to offer a nostalgia steeped DOS-style platformer. Cosmo and Commander Keen are the most obvious, but there's an impressive breadth of influences. Movement is responsive but a gratuitous item system makes the controls a tripping hazard. However the biggest issue by far is presentation.
While I applaud how much one person has accomplished, there's an obvious lack of experience with palettes and shading. You could generously call the art direction zany, but a lot of it just doesn't look nice. There's serious issues with inconsistent pixel sizes. Particle effects should be put through a pixelization filter, it's a jarring break of the retro fourth wall for them to be perfectly smooth. I also noticed one cutscene where your ship is obviously higher resolution than everything around it.
I don't think having sketchy art direction is a cardinal offense, and if that's all that was wrong I'd probably say this is good enough for a $2 game. What I really can't get past is asking me to make a separate save file - of which you are limited to only three - to run a time trial of a level. You should be able to freely replay levels and have the high score / best time data tied to your save file.
Monster Bash HD is a great example of the right way to handle saving and level selection. You can freely select any level you've completed to replay or proceed to the next one, and it keeps all of your vital information in one place - best score, best time, the difficulties you've completed that level on, even extra challenges to go back for. That quality of life polish makes it a much more enjoyable experience than the 90s original, and I feel like that's sorely missing here. It's also incredibly tacky to beg for reviews in a Steam game. I don't think 'mobile port' is a pejorative, but when it's the first thing I notice upon booting your game up - you've definitely done something wrong as far as adapting to PC UI conventions.
Juiced doesn't fit gracefully into Steam's binary review system. It's not a bad game, and costs as much as a bag of chips, but the rough edges are [i]jagged[/i] - and some of the sprites cross the line between nostalgia and tracing over old artwork. I think there's potential here, and the sheer volume of references got a smile, but it's not enough recommend in Steam's incredibly crowded platformer market.
