It was a dark, dark night, in the dark, dark room, and during the dark, dark night, a magical explosion occured. Later, a skeleton head wobbles before setting off to find its body. Just Bones is a fantastic platformer inspired by the 32-Bit world of solving puzzles with speed!
Elephant Games created Just Bones, a 2D Side scrolling platformer with the overall story focusing on a skeleton who once used to walk the world as a magical Mage. That was until he created an experiment that was far too dangerous to comprehend and ended up blowing his body to pieces. His skull remained animated, and lay without it’s body, with the desire to become whole again; bones, muscles, skin, the whole works. It won’t be easy though, because the world has a bunch of obstacles that will make your body harder to retrieve.
The way the game is played has been designed to be fast paced. Your goal is to rush through the level and collect whatever pieces of your body there are and reach the portal to finish the level in the shortest time possible. Failure to complete a level above a one star rating will stop progression until a satisfactory star level is completed. An example, to unlock the next world, you will need to ensure you have a certain amount of stars, and a certain amount of keys.
It won’t be easy collecting your body however, as your skeleton requires specific parts to be collected first before the rest can be attached. The Skull is the piece you start with at the start of each level, and then it’s a mission to find your torso first, once you’ve retrieved that, your arms and legs can be collected in whichever order. After the first few introductory levels it progressively gets more complicated. The hands you need to be able to pick up a spade are too high for you to jump to, so you’ll need to get your legs first, but once you’ve got your legs you’re too tall to fit in the area after you’ve got your hands, meaning you’ll need to fall and break your body apart and rebuild it. Not only that, but some levels have two sets of bones scattered around due to some levels requiring you to leave your legs behind at certain bits. It’s fast-paced, and you’ll be squinting with determination to get the quickest time.
You start of in the “Caves” which contains fifteen levels. Moving on to Mountains and then, a jungle themed world, and even ice! All levels have a few elements that will be suited to the environment as well as making it harder for you to progress. As already stated above, when it comes to progression you’re awarded with stars, there are also keys hidden throughout the level that can be used to either unlock the next world, or be used to revive yourself if you had gotten so far but didn’t want to restart the whole level. Trouble with that is if you use the keys to revive, then you need to go back through older levels and find them again. The good news is, you don’t need to suffer making it all the way to the end of the level, just grab the key, then quit the level. If you need to collect more stars, you’ll find yourself going back through older levels and replaying them. When you do this you’ll notice a little bar split into three parts at the top of the screen. This will start empty and show three stars. As the timers grows the bar will get bigger but the stars will decrease. Basically, you need to finish that level before the bar reaches the end; do really well and reach the end before the bar has filled the first bar and you’ll get three stars.
The main thing that irks me about the game is how unforgiving it is. It’s not even a game that makes you feel like it’s your fault, it doesn’t laugh at you and say, “Hah, you hit jump too early there” Instead it gives you what are essentially forks in the road, if you choose the wrong one, then you’re stuck, time to restart. It then starts giving you several of these forks, and watches you, urging you to remember which route to miss. Not only that, remember those keys I mentioned? If you use those keys to revive yourself halfway through a level, and later you need more keys to progress to the next world…well you’re in for a lot of replaying the levels until you collect the required amount. It’s a cruel, nasty game that tests your patience. I love it.
The graphics in Just Bones resembles those of the 32-bit era of games, the world and characters aren’t smooth in terms of modelling, and the colours are few, but it certainly looks inspired. It isn’t true 32-bit though as everything is slightly more textured, coloured, and more defined in general. The atmosphere of the worlds are fairly creepy and you definitely get a feeling that you’re playing the game in the shadow of the night, despite how bright the world is. It’s also very monotonous.
The sounds in Just Bones are rather chirpy, rather upbeat, and very nostalgic. Not in the sense that we’ve heard these exact sounds before, but because they sound just like the old games back on the SNES, Arcade games. The high pinging noise from picking up an item, the level completion distorted, beepy crescendo. As for the music, the game also follows on from traditional vintage music. Beeps, distortion, and melodies that make your eyes bleed pixels.
The controls are a rather simple, and quite an arcade themed layout. Left and Right arrow keys move you around, W is jump, and Q is the action key allowing you to pick up your body. Hit ESC to open the menu and find the general menu options as well as the restart function. Perfect if you mess up and need to start again. Trust me, you will need it. When it comes to the restart function it’s a bit of a mess, rather than having a hot-key to restart the level if you get stuck, you do need to use the menu. However when you die or reach the end portal a quick restart symbol is shown. This would be useful throughout the whole game, bar the main menus of course. Despite that, the game plays well, there’s no failed physics, no awkward button mashing, it’s simple and executed wonderfully.
Are you after a fun, fast paced puzzler that really tests both your mind and your patience? This might be for you, with it’s simple, easy to pick up and play controls, and it’s lack of story, meaning you, yourself can just collect bones without having to worry about why you’re collecting bones in the first place. Check it out, see what you think. I think it’s a game that can bring hours of enjoyment, but will eventually lose it’s charm when levels start getting too pressing. Unless of course you’re really competitive.
