Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure (click for larger version)
Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure is a side-scrolling platform game pretty reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers, at least at first: you can run left or right, jump on enemies, and collect coins (100 for an extra life). I’ll admit I wasn’t extremely impressed at first. However, you’ll find that Pixeline has a few more tricks up her sleeves. After completing a world, she gains the ability of the corresponding jungle spirit. She can turn into a fast blue lizard who can fit into small spaces—at the cost of being able to jump high. Later, she can turn into a flamingo who can jump much higher, but walks quite slowly. The final animal is a bear who helps knock out large enemies.
On each level, there are a number of gold coins and treasure chests to collect (you have to get the keys first to unlock the chests), and there are some that you can’t reach at first—you’ll have to wait until you collect the right abilities, and then return to the level later. Fortunately the map screen shows how many coins and chests you’ve already collected. There are plenty of silver coins scattered throughout, making extra lives fairly easy to come by, but if you lose all your lives your game is still saved so at most you lose the checkpoint in the last level played. You can also have up to three profiles so that multiple people can play the game, each with their own progress.
The game includes 26 levels and some are quite challenging, particularly if you’re going for completeness and trying to collect all the coins and chests. The controls are simple enough that most videogame-savvy kids won’t have any trouble picking them up. Pixeline has three hearts, and there are extra hearts scattered throughout the levels—but (like Mario) if she falls in a pit or in the water, she dies instantly. The instructions are generally given by Pixeline in dialogue boxes which are cheery and encouraging.
Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure isn’t an entirely original gameplay experience, but it’s nice to see a little girl character for a change. The story itself is basically gender-neutral, but so are many other old-school platformers which happen to feature guys. So while I don’t expect this little app to start a revolution in gender roles in the media, I imagine games like this might be more interesting for my own daughters once they start getting more into videogames.
Pixeline is $2.99 for the iPhone version, or $3.99 for the HD iPad version. We’ve got a free download code for Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure, so if you’d like to try it out, leave a comment on this post (include the words “Giveaway” and “Pixeline” so we know you’re not just leaving some insightful commentary) by 11:59pm (PST) on Friday, December 17. We’ll pick a winner at random and send you a code to download the app for free.
Wired: Old-school platforming with a few twists, like the jungle animals that grant different powers. Also, the moving platforms carried by flying bluebirds are a nice touch.
Tired: A little derivative—some of the enemies look suspiciously like hairy Goombas.
