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Jump Jet Rex: This is Going to Take a While

Jump Jet Rex is a platformer about collecting rings to unlock the end of a level.  That's it.

 SO while members of our team like Gabe play modern masterpieces like Nier: Automata, I'm playing Jump Jet Rex (because it is great).  You're the Rex, and you can both jump and jet in a straight line as well as straight up.  The mechanics not mentioned in the title include quickly descending.  Directions, I know.  The way this game starts you off is, I believe, precious.  You start on this screen with a giant button.

WELL gee that button looks like the button of the controller I have plugged in.  So right there you learn how to jump.  That's cool.  Why aren't there more funny directions mixed with in-game objects in the industry? I don't know, but it's nice and I knocked it over immediately.  It did encourage me to explore and experiment very early on.
I found a treasure.












ANYWAY, you get in your cool space car and ride out to the galaxy map, land on the first planet and there you are.  You spawn.  You can spend however long you want on a given map.
 You're really battling yourself

THE ending is always blocked by a door that needs to be unlocked by collecting the rings spread throughout the level.  Some of these levels are race-like, run and get them fast.  Others are open for exploration, which means you'll have to find the best pattern to collect them.  Often with indie-sized games nowadays, the levels are given multiple criteria for completion.  This isn't Mega Man.  You don't get to breathe that sweet victorious sigh of relief just because you shot Cut Man before he cut you.  You have to earn stars here, three in total per level, but not all are necessary.  The easiest is for completion.  The second is for doing it under par time, and the last is for not dying.  You need stars to unlock the various region bosses.  That means you might be doing these levels a bunch of times.  That's one play-through just to figure it out, and then the second load of them to perfect it.
Looks like it's time to jump and jet
Teenage mutant ninja rex
How does that all work out?  Well, this is my kind of game, so I enjoy the hardships.  It can be frustrating, which is usually what happens in the genre.  I brought up Mega Man because Jump Jet Rex, as evident by the art style and overall simple goal, fits in well with the 8/16 bit 2D era gameplay.  This means the controls are important and intentional: highly responsive which puts all of the power in your hands to overcome the objective.  This also means that the conventions of two-dimensional gaming are implied.  All the relevant information is on the screen and obstacles can only come so many different ways.  Yes, some of the levels move fast, but you don't really jet into an obstacle that surprised you from off screen.  These levels are more the enemy here, instead of the actual enemies, but that is often manifests as slight alterations of the same traps from previous levels.  Some levels have lasers that coat the walls so surfaces aren't an option.  That's not impossible, just jet.  But other levels have a fixed moving camera, so dodging lasers is more immediate because they occupy most of the space, in which case the rage follows.  Slight changes to obstacles like the lasers over a long time can feel irritating because there's not always a new game mechanic to learn.  You're instead dodging different version of things you've already dodged.  That could be why Mega Man, and other fondly remembered games of the era, have very few levels per game.  But Jump Jet Rex is the opposite, a 2D collect-a-thon to a timer.  More like Banjo, in which choosing where to walk was half of the fun.  It may not be hard to understand Jump Jet Rex, but it just might take a while to beat.  Better get started.
- Ben R.
Player of games

P.S.

UGH
WHY
Also,


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