Giveaway of the Day - Bumpy Jumpy

Bumpy Jumpy

Today’s game giveaway was originally given away back in November 2008, you can read all the comments from then via the following link:

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/bumpy-jumpy/

It only received 37% positive votes out of 547 votes and there were 81 comments made, though for some reason I didn’t comment at all. I really can’t remember why I missed the giveaway?

The downloaded zip file is 6.71Mb in size which unpacks to a read me and a dual activation and set up module. The game installs to the following paths for Vista and Win 7 (first path) and Win XP (second path). A shortcut is installed to the desktop and Start menu programs list. You’ll find an uninstaller in the Start Menu.

C:\Program Files (x86)\BumpyJumpy

C:\Program Files\BumpyJumpy

Introduction:

Do you remember “Bumpy” game for old consoles, do you feel some nostalgia about it? A ” Bumpy” remake for PC has been released. Help Bumpy to overcome the obstacles and collect treasures in the lost ancient city. There are spikes, fire, barriers and the other traps on Bumpy’s way from level to level. This game will test not only your reflexes, but also strategical thinking.

Reference http://www.novagame.com/en/Bumpy/index.php accessed 23rd Oct 2010

The Game:

The game is a cute looking platformer based on an old classic called bumpy. The colours are vibrant and the levels well made. There’s no help file, but the game play is straight forwards, collect the gems and gold as well as various items that help you pass various obstacles such as brick walls which are destroyed by picking up a pick axe or dousing fire by picking up bowls of water, plus other useful power ups such as extra lives. You get about 5 lives before picking up extra ones (I think). Beware of certain platforms which only allow a specific number of bounces before collapsing. You’ll find keys that unlock some doors and there are also coloured barriers that can be destroyed by bouncing Bouncy a specific number of times for example you need to bounce four times against a red wall , three times against a yellow wall and twice against a green wall.

The options menu enables you to change the screen resolution from the default 640 x 480 to 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768. The game was released over four years ago, which probably explains the lack of any better resolutions. I found all of my desktop reverted to the lowest resolution until I changed it to the highest setting. You can also change the color depth from the default 32 bit to 16 bit if you wish. There’s also a full screen/ windowed toggle and sound and music toggles to switch them on and off as well as sliders to adjust the volume.

Controls:

Left Arrow – Move Left
Right Arrow – Move right
Space – Jump

Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP compatible computer system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for video card and sound card)

• INTEL® Pentium III® 500 Mhz or equivalent AMD® processor

• DirectX 8.0 or higher

• 128 MB RAM

Conclusion:

Despite the low screen resolution the game is bright and colourful, with reasonably sharp graphics. As platformers go it’s a reasonable game that’s worth the effort to download IMO. Personally I don’t like this type of platform game but will be keeping this one because I know my daughter is going to love it.

I’d give it 7 out of 10. The game has been well constructed, has 100 levels to explore with simple puzzles to solve. An ideal family orientated game.

I do think the framework around the main game arena is far to intrusive, when I look at the game screen the surrounding areas that are not directly involved in the game really impinge on my senses and make the whole esperience not as pleasant as it should be. I would highly recommend the developer tone down the color or reduce the frame significantly. The game would then probably appeal to a wider audience.

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Alternatives

You’ll find loads of excellent free platform games over in G@rgoyles free games project which you can find via the following link:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4534

And if you pop over to MyPlayCity or Gametop you’ll find games like Turtix, Mario and Azangara, both of which are excellent platform games. I’d also check out the platform section of Caimans which has 20 pages of platform games with 15 games to a page, that’s an astounding 300 games to choose from. Many of the platformers are commercial quality games:. I also found an earlier incarnation of Bumpy hailing from 1992 that was released by Loriciel SA which is now considered abandonware. you can find it via the following link:

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/210/Bumpys+Arcade+Fantasy.html

Look to the bottom of the abandonia page for more abandoned platform games.

MyPlayCity:

http://www.myplaycity.com/free_arcade_games/

Gametop

http://www.gametop.com/category/platformer.html

Caimans

http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/fplatform.html

When downloading games from either Gametop or MyPlayCity do watch out for hidden extras while installing your games. Many of the games will install toolbars and hijack your home page if you don’t uncheck the boxes during the installation wizzard. The games are clean apart from those ; also when you close down any of those games your browser will open to the home page of either MyPlayCity or Gametop. This is entirely innocuous and can be useful as both sites regularly get new games, for example MyPlayCity now has Alawars premier breakouts Actionball 2, hyperballoid 2 and Stikeball 3 and I think you may find Magic ball 2 or 3 as well.

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This Game is gay