Doodle Jump

A kid goes to middle school. He is a sociable student of a middle-class background who loves video games (what kid his age doesn't?), particularly arcade and mobile games, and has a natural aptitude for drawing. However, his passions tend to get in the way of his schoolwork, and outside of art class, he performs just fine (you have to imagine me lifting my arm to wave off his average scores in a cynically dismissive manner). A serial doodler, every so often, his art appears on the edges and back side of his school- and homework, to the annoyance of his teachers. Sometimes, he writes his name on his work with a distinctive doodle, a fact his teachers have grown used to. Even in art class, his drawing habits often lead him to creating doodles irrelevant to the current subject matter. Mr. Renaissance Oil Nerd is the teacher who has witnessed Dowdy Doodleman's mad creations the most. A green, four-legged creature? A series of planks on which the creature bounces? Monsters at which the green creature spits pellets with its protruding mouth while it endlessly climbs up? Forget why it is doing the latter. What does any of this have to do with school? Why is he drawing those doodles in class and not during recess? Whatever answers the school could extract from Dowdy Doodleman, none of which satisfied their demands for more focus, at least one teacher, Ms. Imaginary Number, has admitted to fellows in private that she enjoys the boy's drawings. So does Sir British Literature Freak over there. Having viewed it myself in Doodle Jump, I like it, too.

All right, it is a farfetched explanation of the game's art's origin for this review's hook, but it does look as if a former employee for Namco instructed his 5th-grade child to sketch out the green anomaly, some monsters and alien flying saucers (?) as the bad guys, and planks to hop on, and it is not to say that it is bad. Rather, it is reminiscent of life before work, and playing Doodle Jump is like going back to school. No, the UFOs make sense now, as they speak to the fact of life that kids' imaginations run wild in true Calvin and Hobbs fashion, even if they seem absurd to adults like me.

*lip-popping sounds begin to taunt you* On the gameplay front, Doodle Jump admittedly breaks no ground, at least not the sort that is sturdy (joke incoming), but it does have a few trump cards to play, one being the cheeky art. In addition, the game has the player climbing from platform to platform with only one goal in mind: to go up. There is no end, only going up, the only way to gain points, but be careful. As you progress, the screen scrolls up, with the ground approaching the bottom and being destroyed when out of view. Do not plunge into the abyss, or your green curiosity will fall into the limbo for all dead video game heroes, and appear the scrawled words "game over" *knells the church bell*, following the silly sound of a slide whistle with a descending pitch. To make matters worse, the brainchild of any bored middle school kid in art class bounces forever and cannot stand still *lip-popping intensifies*. However, it leaves the controls for movement straightforward: tilt the device sideways to move left or right. It is straightforward to use, although I question its one-size-fits-all approach toward sensitivity, as I have occasionally found myself wishing there were an option to increase it a little. Doodle Jump Guy also has the ability to spit pellets upward infinitely, each with a tap of the screen. This ability does come with the option to fire in multiple directions or just straight up. In the case of the former, the player aims by tapping the screen horizontally, where center fires straight upward. It is this mix of smartphone controls, a concoction novel for a game at the time, that lends this platformer challenge.

*more lip-popping* It helps further that it is hard to find a comparison to this game, released all the way back in 2009, before it. Platforms start off as many and the green stationary sort, but the number diminishes and the blue, moving ones take over. A handful are brown, decaying planks that will break (the joke) on landing, and it should be obvious to any dimwit that they ought to be avoided, unless it is for a mission - more on that - or an achievement. Bad news, the player is susceptible to dimwittedness when the player is reacting fast. Sorry, pal, you are after all a human, not that I am any better at that. On many planks are springs and trampolines, the springs being much more common, both giving your character a rapturous whoosh. If you want more whoosh, look for propeller beanies and jet packs. They are less common than the other items, but they help you skip portions of the level for a thousand or so points. There are of course other goodies, but those are the most abundant. By the 40,000-point mark, the game is bent on killing your character, with blue platforms moving fast, disappearing platforms, platforms that jerk to the side on contact. Throughout, there are black holes to circumvent and doodles of monsters that are deadly to touch and can be shot down arcade-style or stomped on like the dreadful-as-ever-a-school-eraser Goombas. Same for the UFOs, only they would be happy to haul in your character and rescue him from the abyss, yet the game ends the same *chimes the bell*. It is you versus the controls versus whatever the game decides to throw in your face.

The level structure is randomized each game, but I notice that certain segments will look familiar and are in fact identical, particularly with the monsters or UFOs. Not that it matters, as the experienced player still never really knows what they are going to get next beyond the grunting of a monster and the unnecessarily piercing sound of a UFO until they have seen at least the first part of the segment. Aside from the default plain theme reminiscent of the days spent at school with chaps like Dowdy Doodleman, there are eleven, such as Easter, Pirate, Soccer, Space, and Underwater, with some serving to be decorative and others having a distinctive level structure with its own bad guys or hazards and power-ups. Another theme is a clever one: Arcade. Remember what I said about Doodle Jump looking like a product by a former Namco employee, assuming amnesia is not standing in your way? Yes, it *feels* like a Namco game with the shooting mechanics, and the game is self-aware enough to include a theme that deliberately looks like the golden age of arcade video games, with obvious references to famous titles. There are achievements to unlock, as might be expected, such as breaking platforms and blasting monsters without missing, but also missions with ever-increasingly difficult objectives, which include anything from using springs and sharing one's score to stomping enemies and picking up a certain power-up a number of times. Completing a set of three missions awards the player one spin of a wheel upon a game over. Tap "stop", and watch the wheel land on a head start that skips a nice chunk of the beginning, an item that resurrects Jumpman once after dying, or prize money that can be spent in the game's shop. The shop sells items such as those on the wheel, skins, abilities activated with the tap of the screen, and upgrades. Several themes are affected by the purchases, one of them being my favorite, the Ninja theme. Of course, it is possible to collect money by playing in those themes.

*slide whistle* After weeks of playing, however, Doodle Jump starts to struggle in longevity and purpose - rather ironic for a game with such an art style. Yes, there are a total of twelve themes, but after weeks, the only novelty is to collect enough money to purchase more upgrades, skins, and abilities. I would have liked to see an editor for creating themes with their own level structure, art, enemies, and power-ups and sharing them with others. Such a feature might prove difficult for younger players, but it would have been very interesting to see what creations players come up with. To its credit, the game does try to maintain its freshness. It has leaderboards for the top 100 players of the current day, the current week, and all-time, offering further incentive for continuing to play. If you can break the 100,000-point barrier, congratulations, and if you can hold a firm position in the weekly leaderboards or beat my personal best, I truly salute you. Lima Sky charitably added a multiplayer mode where the goal is to get to the finish line without dying and whoever crosses it first or is the one still alive tallies a point, with its own Racetrack theme exclusively for iPad owners. Unfortunately, the Android version (which I tested for this review) is underdeveloped and, as of this writing, lacks the mode *a chorus of slide whistles*.

VERDICT: Doodle Jump was one of the fastest-downloaded apps in its heyday, and it deserved it. As simple as it is, it is original enough, is a taxing game of hand-eye coordination, has attitude, and is oddly a nostalgic throwback to the good old days of being confined to a school and worrying only about homework, while having many privileges reserved for adults only. Do not let its imperfections discourage you from giving it a day's worth, but be warned. If you proceed to play, play it responsibly. As a precaution, be sure to have a friend or relative available to confiscate your device should you get all too hooked.