Jill of the Jungle: The Complete Trilogy

Jill of the Jungle is one of many entrants into the ersatz (derogatory) PC Platformer Wars. Between Keen, Cosmo, Skunny, and more, there were people trying to outdo Mario at every level, and not succeeding. And Jill, based on boasts within the game itself, DOES NOT. However, it is mechanically sound and competent, which is a rather tall bar to clear for the PC. So many mechanically failed platformers on that front I could name, such as being asked to platform in a (graphical) text parser game. Jill's story is originally as scant as her clothes, then it takes a turn for the silly in the third, where there's suddenly a prince to save. Graphically, the jungle is gradient heavy and full of heavy primary colors. One of the famous claims of the time is that since it had more colors, it was more impressive than any ole' console, right? But there is value in limiting oneself. And this is 1992. The home consoles smoked Jill graphically. Sprites were bigger, more expressive, felt more cohesive within their worlds, and the comparison gets more unfair the longer I think about it. By 1991 there were already four Valis games. This also extends into play control. Jill has a stiff jump arc. Hard to explain, but easy to see in motion; where you can only adjust in tile increments instead of having smooth control. And by the means of not having a lives system, the jungle is more open to traps, trickery, and just mean "Gotcha" traps. Blind jumps, offscreen secrets, switch mazes, and more. By the way, how do you feel about a game with questionable checkpointing? Merciful enough that it has it, sure. The game does tend to have some strange ideas about what a checkpoint state is, though, and you cannot activate checkpoints manually to soft save progress in a level. As for sound and music? There's only one track I ever think about regarding Jill, and it is Zeppelin. Most of the other tracks are aural annoyance. (The title theme is okay.) Now sounds, that is an audioscopic nightmare to digest. Everything makes a loud sound. Jumping has both a takeoff and land. Throwing a weapon, impact, pickups...it all makes some kind of noise, as a feature. And it is all heavily compressed samples, that change between each game, so you can't get used to a single nightmare. Now it may seem that I have spent my time shaming the game, but I wanted to bear out what I felt it did wrong by saying that the game part of it is fine, just that it falls into the classic shareware trap. The one where the first part has a fine enough curve, and then the rest falls into impossible challenges, and not enough meaningfully changes between episodes to be worth the cost. Except for some reason Jill III has a level map, which would be great if it actually meant anything.

loved this game for decades still do. Easy to play fun challenges.

Great story, full of cameos of Mario, Duke Nukem, Pac man. A true classic.

even though its a simple game the puzzles are still fun

very charming and easy game. super recommend it!