JackQuest: The Tale Of The Sword published by Blowfish Studios is a great action platformer with a unique pixel art style that scratches a nostalgic itch deep within me.
I met with Samuel McCully, the producer of JackQuest: The Tale Of The Sword while I was at PAX South earlier in the year. He sat me down with an up-to-date demo of the game. From the first moments of the demo, I could see the heavy Super Mario World influences on it. Perhaps it is the scrolling cave graphics in the background or the arc of Jack’s hop, but it brought back fond memories of the Super Nintendo classic.
The story in JackQuest is that during a casual stroll in the woods, Jack’s love interest Nara is captured by a huge orc named Korg. As he enters the cavern system below, Jack stumbles upon a talking sword named Kuro who offers to help Jack with his quest. With a magic sword in hand, Jack sets out to invade Korg’s underground base and rescue his love from the villain.
There are plenty of different moves and abilities in JackQuest. Even during my short time with the game I saw wall-jumps, a whirlwind attack, double jump and a bow and arrow. There are a fair number of enemies skulking about, including bats that mindlessly flap back and forth, and blue slimes that launched projectiles — that I am guessing are part of themself — at me? Since Jack starts the game out with only a few hearts every hit matters, but the enemies are nothing that the huge sword on Jack’s back can’t handle, anyway.
My demo ended with a huge slime boss that I was unable to beat, but Samuel told me that the boss was being tweaked to have less hit points in the final version. I’m anxious to try the final version soon, as Jack and his world have me fairly intrigued.
JackQuest: The Tale Of The Sword is out now for Xbox One, Playstation 4, Switch and on Steam. Check out their website and Twitter page for more information about the release.
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