Antiquity Jones by Paul Jenkinson was created using Jonathan Cauldwell's excellent Arcade Game Designer. It's a great advert for AGD and shows what can be achieved with a bit of imagination.
The action takes place in the jungle and there are vines to climb and rivers to cross not to mention jungle critters to avoid. These are not hard to avoid, your main enemy being your constantly depleting energy. This can be topped up by bottles that you find lying about. It also means you need to keep moving to stay alive. Dawdle for too long and you won't have time to reach the next energy bottle.
This brings me to my only real criticism of the game. Climbing the vines is harder than need be and you can waste valuable time trying to line yourself up correctly. But this is a minor quible in an otherwise enjoyable game.
Paul Jenkinson has proved his expertise with AGD and this is his best game to date.
Review by YOR on 17 Sep 2020 (Rating: 4)
I was hoping this would be good and yeah it thankfully is. It's a really fun platformer with neat graphics, simple and effective gameplay and a cracking intro tune. Can't really complain about it really, it's pretty and deserves some love.
2012 Paul Jenkinson (UK)
I agree, this is a great platform game. It was done using Jonathan Cauldwell's Arcade Game Designer, which goes to show what can be done if you have enough patience and ideas.
Overall it's a simple game, with simple looking graphics and an easy to get into plot. You cross a jungle avoiding dangerous animals and obstacles, then a desert with similar dangers while collecting enough energy to endure. It's done in an intelligent, modern way that rewards the player along the way instead of making him feel like an idiot, with an almost impossible first level seen in so many older games.
I would have added a bit more sound, and a better ending each time you lose your energy, which I felt a bit abrupt and uninteresting. But the biggest letdown is surely the size of the map, I played it a few of times and completed half of the total map, so I wonder how long will it take me to complete it. That's why I rated it with a 3.
EDIT: When returning back to the truck with the treasure, the game froze, well, rocks kept falling in the cave but I couldn't move Jones and neither the energy level dropped, so I guess, there is at least one bug.
