Whose Ore You Exploring? (review 10)

While I’m more into the traditional Jazz Jackrabbit / Super Mario Bros style platform games, I don’t mind the occasional “puzzle in a platform guise” type adventures. This is just the type of game Ur Mobile Game has brought us in its first portable outing, Ore Explorer. You play the part of Jack, an explorer who is trying to gather up a very rare kind of ore for his country. Unfortunately, this ore only appears in certain places around the world (and out of this world), and those places have been overrun by monsters. With a sharp mind and keen reflexes, however, you will be able to overcome the obstacles and recover all of the ore for your country. To ultimately triumph you must overcome 60 levels of box pushing and demolishing, monster stomping or avoiding, and some often tricky platform jumping.

Your arsenal consists of jumping, kicking, pushing and bombs. The game is completely stylus driven, which is nice in theory but in practice causes its share of problems. To move left and right, simply press the stylus to somewhere in front of Jack either on his left or right side. To jump you do the same, though you must also have the stylus over Jack’s head. If you want him to jump straight up you simply hold the stylus right above his head. For the most part moving isn’t a problem, though there have been a couple of times where I had the stylus too far north and ended up jumping instead of moving. Usually such a mistake was recoverable. However, there have been far more times where I’ve actually just moved when I thought I had the stylus high enough for Jack to jump. This type of error is not always easy to recover from.

Dropping a bomb is much like digging a hole in Lode Runner, where you must stand on the space next to the one you wish to blow up and then face your target. When you press the button for bombs Jack will kneel down and place a bomb on the appropriate square. If there is a block right next to the bomb, the block will be sent flying in the direction opposite where the bomb sits. This little extra will come in hand on occasion. The biggest problem here is that if you happen to place the bomb right on the line between two blocks, it could possibly blow up the wrong block. If you can get the bomb in the middle of the block you want to remove you’ll be in the optimal situation. To kick you must click by Jack’s feet. When you’re on the ground this isn’t such a problem, but when you’re trying to execute a jump kick, which is possible and necessary at times, it can become cumbersome. For me it has caused more than my fair share of do-overs on certain levels.

Finally you have the viewer tool, which allows you move around and view the level without actually moving Jack. You will find this tool invaluable on larger levels, as Ore Explorer is one of those games where you often have to plan the entire thing in advance to avoid unattainable areas in a later part of the level. It would have been nice to be able to control this tool with the D-Pad, because if you don’t click on it quite right or accidentally slide the stylus of the viewer while using it you could accidentally trigger a jump from Jack, which could provide disastrous depending on where you left him. While I like the fact that they tried to do something different by making a platform completely stylus driven, I think they could have left some options for those like myself who aren’t very skilled with controlling a game like this via a stylus.

Besides the control, my other main gripe about Ore Explorer is in the level design itself. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. As a matter of fact, I actually appreciate that they went through the trouble of making sure the levels weren’t too overwhelming. Sometimes developers forget that they are making games for a portable platform with little screen real estate and make sprawling landscapes like the original Castlevania for the GBA. At any rate, the problem I do have with the levels is that they seem to be either too easy or too difficult, with no middle ground. And generally speaking, the difficult ones are not so because they are challenging to figure out, but because the tasks needed to complete the levels are full of overly sensitive moves where one false stylus stroke will see you starting the whole level over again. Since the game really isn’t grid based I don’t know if this would be possible, but some sort of undo would be nice, even if it didn’t roll back the timer.

The background graphics in Ore Explorer are gorgeous. It would be nice if there were more than one background per region (there are only five regions between the 60 levels), but nonetheless they look awesome. The non-interactive foreground elements look pretty nice as well. Even your player is rendered pretty nicely, though it’s a bit pixilated at such a low resolution. The monsters look okay, though in the 25 levels I’ve played so far there have only been three different types of creatures. The variety is a bit lacking. The interactive foreground elements, such as boxes and platforms, are okay, but they certainly aren’t anything special. Overall there’s a bit of a mixed feel to the images, but the quality of the player and background far outweigh anything else.

The sound effects are pretty standard fare. In fact, the jumping and kicking sounds that Jack makes actually get kind of annoying after a while. Plus, the monsters themselves never seem to make any noise. On the other hand, the music is great. There appears to be three tracks from what I can tell, and I enjoy every one of them. It’s just a shame that they have to keep starting over every time I restart a level. I guess I just have to get better at solving levels!

For their first mobile outing, Ur Mobile Game has done a great job with Ore Explorer. There’s enough challenge to keep you occupied for a few hours, and graphics and music will make sure your eyes and ears are busy while your brain tries to solve the puzzles. The ability to control some aspects of the game through hardware keys would have been nice, and a little better balance in level design would give the game a more even flow, but overall the pieces fit together to bring us a nicely polished package. Hopefully the developers will up the ante in their next release.

Overall Score: 7/10