JetPac Miner

Break Space

Al

Mpk

JETPAC MINER Briefer $2 Mpk's Review There can't be many titles more laser-focused on grabbing the attention of a vintage Spec-Chum. Jet Set Daley, maybe, or Chuckie Skool. Something like that. But if the title suggests a mash-up of games, the actual play style here is about as far away from either Manic Miner or Jetpac as you could want. Think instead of modern delving games like Splunky, or the author-cited A Game About Digging a Hole. You start at ground level, with a hole ahead of you, and a handy shop. The only way is down. Gameplay is straightforward - jump down that hole, and drill, baby, drill. You mine through the dirt and rather tougher rock, occasionally turning up precious stones. The rocks may fall on you, Boulder Dash style, ending your adventure very suddenly. Drilling them also uses up a lot more of your precious fuel, which not only powers your drill, but also your jetpac, which you may need to fly home if you've dug ( or fallen down ) a shaft that's too high to jump out of. The rocks can also be used to smash the wandering creatures that will sap your energy. Whatever those creatures are is unclear*, as they are cleverly and simply represented by pairs of flashing eyes in the dark. That's the gameplay loop then - dig, collect precious rocks, return to surface, sell rocks, buy improved fuel tanks and drills and so on. You can buy lights to enable travel to greater depths - a ladder icon in the bottom corner of each level takes you down to the next screen. Returning home with a full rucksack and low fuel can be genuinely tense, and the delicacy of your drilling around rock piles encourages thoughtful, careful progress. There are flashes of humour as well, including a gag in the redefine keys option that made me hoot aloud. It's ambitious, with modern sensibilities, and pretty much unique as a package on the Spectrum. But. There are technical issues here - the game crashes too frequently, the hand-built code corrupting itself and putting an end to your hard-won progress. The rocks don't fall as predictably as they should to allow satisfying planning. The jump/jetpac controls sometimes are finnicky to operate. Sometimes individual blocks don't render correctly. Nothing major, aside from the crashes, but collectively enough to dampen the mood. Enough small problems in the end, to make this a near miss rather than a modern classic. But the design is fun and well worth, aha, digging into. Oh, I can't believe I've said that. *Possibly it's in the manual, but manuals are for nerds, frankly.

Hey, I wonder if that pile of rocks could be encouraged to go down that shaft...

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