Explosive Jake Review

Explosive Jake doesn’t just wear its inspiration on its sleeve, it has a matching pajama set, and sleeps in the branded bedding. A real Bomberman clone game with retro graphics that make the game look like it was made on an Atari or Commodore 64.

There is no story, sorry for those coming into this expecting a story, just like other retro games of the past, it throws you in the deep end and lets you work out things for yourself. You are what seems to be a skeleton with an endless supply of bombs and a desire to blow things up whilst looking for an exit – This is the best story of the game that I can honestly come up with

There are no tutorials, you are presented with a list of stage numbers which you must complete one by one before you can access the next. The audio is very limited, from the same background high tempo music which loops and often restarts when going in and out of menus, retro feel or not, I hate this beyond words and chose to play the game in silence.

The goal of each stage is to reach the exit but first, you need to find the exit by blowing up blocks with your bombs. Once you find the exit you also need to find the key hidden within the blocks as well. Each stage is set on a black background with different shaped maps set out in almost the exact same way that Bomberman is set up.

This is to make sure you can only move in 4 directions, and on each of the stages are enemies that come in various generic designs such as Knights and so on. There are also traps like spikes or buzz saws to try add some attempt of breakup on the gameplay, it doesn’t really work as it doesn’t stop the game being really difficult to follow and really quite dull to play.

Explosive Jake is not very difficult in its gameplay, but mostly due to the weird rules and issues it develops. Bomb placement is a bastard, as sometimes it can be frustrating just trying to lay a bomb and it seems movement makes it harder. It seems like the game is designed to make players stop dead and then press the button to lay a bomb.

The bomb no longer blocks you or the enemy, so those wanting to trap an enemy with a bomb are out of luck as they walk straight through them, as do you, so.. what’s the point? The bombs also don’t trigger in a chain reaction, by that I mean one bomb will not set off another and so that strategy doesn’t work.

The enemy AI is rigid in the fact that it will stick to the same pattern regardless of what you do, so you can walk right up close and stay in the same square and the AI will not change their path to hit you, so those after a challenge by some interesting AI will be very, very disappointed – and bored.

Other than the comparisons to Bomberman, there isn’t much else to say about this game. No real challenge, no real reason to keep playing and no real reason to pick it up in the first place. Honestly, if you’re after a Bomberman experience, just pick up any version of Bomberman again.