By Bryan Eley (breley) , Reviewer

Summary: "A superb new platform game - help Boneyboy beat his evil twin Mr.Nobone who has bewitched all the animals in the jungle. Run, jump and avoid the traps before you. Help protect the backpackers from the evil of Mr.Nobone and win back your jinxed pet Mr. Turtle! This classical Jump''n'' Run offers multi-layer scrolling, rendered animations and backgrounds and stunning sound. You have to guide the little pygmy Boneyboy through the jungle to clear each stage. Jump from platform to platform and collect various items but watch out: many opponents and traps will give you a hard time. Boneyboy Features: - outstanding graphics - more than 30 different level and bonuslevel - automatic save function after each level - excellent music and sound effects and speech - programmable keys - ultimate heli-jump (bone on top of the head works as a rotor) - dozens of different animated enemies and traps in a huge world - very slick multi-layer scrolling - sensational particle effects - motion-blur-effect, if boneyboy is touching an enemy - weather effects."

Remember those nasty little fire-breathing pygmy shamans from the Kurast jungle regions of Diablo II®? Well, I’m not sure, but I think one of them escaped and set up shop in the Boneyboy world. Dubbed Mr. Nobone, this evil twin of our hero, Boneyboy, has twisted the otherwise peaceful denizens of the lush jungle and set deadly traps to prevent Boneyboy from stopping his nefarious plans. What nefarious plans, you ask? Why, apparently harming innocent backpackers hiking through the jungle. Not wishing our own Ikehiker or his fellow hikers to come to harm, I decided to aid hapless Boneyboy and guide him through his jungle and temple mazes to fulfil his quest.

Testing Environment

Dell Axim X51v, Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 OS, ROM version A012

Installation

Installation was simple and straightforward from the supplied executable, and the user is prompted to either try the demo version or register on the spot with a handy built-in keyboard. Install size was about 12.5MB.

GAMEPLAY

The game starts off with a pygmy, er, mini-cutscene showing Boneyboy and Mr. Nobone, and the game is set to run in portrait mode only. A voice exclaims "Get Ready!"

“He has a tiny brain, but a huge heart - help him run and jump through this great new adventure!” And shoot. Don’t forget the shooting. Some enemies or obstacles must be eliminating by hurling stones or energy powerups you come across along the way. But be careful! Blowing up a series of stacked boxes before seeing what’s above them may deprive you of some extra goodies since you can climb and jump off the boxes.

Shooting this box revealed it had coins in it. Exploding boxes disappear in a puff of "green" smoke. Get it? Green? Eco-friendly? No...? Well, never mind.

The primary items to collect along the way are coins and gems, and there are special powerups you may encounter as well. There are also fruits and such like apples, pineapples and bananas that can raise Boneyboy’s life level when he gets attacked by some of the monstrous animals, like a jumping piranha or shooting wasps or hunting spiders. Some of the monsters are relatively stationary obstacles, like the nameless red clam-like monster with the oh-so-sharp teeth or the dangling spiders. Others march back and forth, or some, like a large orange wasp will chase after you once they spot you. There are traps here and there, such as rolling stones, crushing blocks, spikes that pop up from the ground, or skull statues that fire dangerous energy orbs to name a few.

 "...along came a spider, and sat down beside her, then Boneyboy zapped it away."

There are 30 levels that Boneyboy must progress through before he gets to the final boss level to confront his evil twin. There are essentially two types of environments, the outdoor jungle area, or the interior of temple-like buildings. Some levels are timed such that you have a set period of time to collect as many items as you can and provide a nice change of pace from the hazard-beset jump and shoot action of the other levels. Other slick features are areas of some levels that can have multiple platforms crossing each other, but don't occupy the same space exactly. Instead they are partially superimposed over each other.

 Boneyboy is running across one level, but is behind another. Now he's on the sloping level partially seen in the previous image. Pretty cool!

Boneyboy has some tricks up his sleeve to overcome the physical obstacles. He can jump, double jump, and heli-glide. The latter involves a key sequence where Boneyboy's namesake, a bone in his topknot whirls like a propeller and allows him to glide (heli-glide) short distances. Never mind the physics, this is serious gameplay and darned helpful, too. There are also "Info" signs about that provide info and clues to help you.

 Yay! An Info sign! Er...what's with the skull and bones for letters??? Well, at least it had some useful info. Oops, Boneyboy and pals use creative spelling for "initiate!" ;-)

 A rolling stone gathers no moss, but fortunately Boneyboy can heli-glide over it. However, in the middle screen, thanks to this pesky silver-blue piranha, heli-gliding isn't without its hazards, and another rolling boulder and low ceiling precludes spinning the roto-bone...

The primary items to collect along the way are coins and gems. There are also fruits and such like apples, pineapples and bananas that can raise Boneyboy’s life level when he gets attacked by some of the monstrous animals, like a jumping piranha or shooting wasps. Some of the monsters are relatively stationary obstacles, like the red clam-like monster with the oh-so-sharp teeth or the dangling spiders. Others march back and forth, or some, like a large orange wasp will chase after you once they spot you. There are traps here and there, such as rolling stones, crushing blocks, spikes that pop up from the ground, or skull -like pylons that fire dangerous orbs. On some levels a set sequence of actions is necessary to remove obstacles or reveal otherwise inaccessible pathways. Other levels are more freeform, allowing for more choice as to level completion. The game has a funky music soundtrack, albeit the same one throughout.

There are 30 levels that Boneyboy must progress through before he gets to the final boss level to confront his evil twin. There are essentially two types, the outdoor jungle area, or the interior of temple-like buildings. Some levels are timed such that you have a set period of time to collect as many items as you can and provide a nice change of pace from the hazard-beset twitch and shoot action of the other levels. Along the way, Boneyboy makes some rather choice remarks when he dies or kills an enemy, and some of these comments might not suit younger players. "Eat my dust and lick my bag!" comes to mind. When idle too long, Boneyboy sounds like he's doing an impersonation of Dieter from the Saturday Night Live "Sprockets" show when he says "It's BORING!"

 A shooting bee (no help spelling there), and is that red thing happy as a clam...oops, mind the teeth there, that's an unhappy clam babysitting the coins, and a looooong jump to get the gems and clear the spikes.

 Monsters can be dealt with by carefully jumping over, or shooting at them. Some monsters are obviously easy to kill, others are much more difficult. Physical obstacles like rocks, spikes, blocks and so forth must be dealt with by careful jumping and heli-gliding. Vines can be used to climb acrossor up from one platform to the next. Beware those thorny vines, though!

 Vines can help you climb up to higher platforms or across chasms. Get those powerups and multishots!

Checkpoints help for those longer levels, so that you respawn if you inadvertently eliminate yourself. Special powerups, like Multishot, give you additional abilities to fight the baddies.

The game autosaves between levels, which is a nice feature, but I really wish it had the option of saving at the checkpoints at different levels, so that if only level 4 I missed an area or if I just wanted to go through a level again to see if I could do better and not lose so many lives, I could go back and continue from that point even if I had progressed to level 5 or above.

 Closing Words

All in all, I really liked Boneyboy. Boneyboy continues the enjoyable tradition of platform-style gaming on the Pocket PC. It's got tons of levels, numerous enemies, excellent graphics and a few gameplay twists along the way. It's very reasonably priced for as much entertainment that it provides.  Believe me, I spent many hours going through these levels!  I helped beta test Jazz Jackrabbit for Epic Megagames waaay back in 1994, so I was back in familiar platform gaming territory.

Pros:

• Fast-paced game with high-res graphics
• Weather effects
• Challenging, big levels
• Many different enemies to overcome and assorted powerups and such to help Boneyboy
• Obstacle puzzles to solve

Cons:

• Repetitive soundtrack
• Keys cannot be mapped to the Contacts button (at least on my X51v) by default, only Calendar, Mail, and Home buttons
• Sound effects not as loud as I expected