Yeti Mountain (Russell Mills / Protovision) $8.99 USD
Game title: Yeti Mountain
Game description: Yeti Mountain is a multi-genre interactive adventure game spread out across three distinct episodes as you set out to Yeti Lodge Resort to investigate the suspicious disappearance of your best friend Chris. The first episode is a quest based RPG-style exploration game where you interact with characters, participate in ski events and explore the Resort surroundings in order to uncover clues. The second episode provides multi-scrolling platform action as you gain entrance to the Yeti’s lair and explore its diverse environments filled with traps and subterranean fauna. The final episode sees you take to the slopes again as you ski your way down to the bottom of Yeti Mountain - stopping along the way to partake in some casual puzzle solving as you try to restore power back to emergency warning stations.
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Aggregated Score - 88%
88%
Summary
Well given my involvement with the game (story concept and game design) it would not be right to provide a regular review on Yeti Mountain. Instead, I will summarise the feedback received from gamers and game reviewers and lay them out as objectively as I can. The aggregated score is taken by averaging out the overall scores from Zzap!64 Micro, Retro Gamer magazine, and K&A Plus magazine.
Yeti Mountain’s stand out feature is that it is a unique game that packs a lot of different game genres (exploration, detective, ski sports, platforming, puzzle) into the overall package. The production values on offer is very high with many beautifully drawn cut scenes, a highly engaging story narrative and high quality multi tune SID soundtrack driving things along. The ski engine implemented is fast and smooth and the game is rich with multi-directional scrolling (including the skiing). There are many 80s, 90s and 2000s pop-culture references within the game that (most) people were able to pick up as being a bit ‘tongue in cheek’ rather than a ‘rip-off’, which ultimately personalises the experience to the player’s childhood memories.
Many players found the ski events to be hard, especially those playing the game on NTSC machines. A subsequent update to the game, gave the player an extra 30 seconds each time they failed the events to help get around this difficulty.
Perhaps the biggest criticism of the game is that it employs a timer system, which put some gamers off from the game all together. Despite the time actually being quite generous, in hindsight it would have been best to not implement this element and design the game in a way that allowed players to freely explore the game world at their own leisurely pace.
Those who have persisted with the game have found the experience to be highly rewarding and have gone back to try and obtain the best of the five different endings on offer and, in an environment where most C64 games are different versions of platformers, Yeti Mountain brings something unique to the current C64 gaming scene and while it does not succeed in every aspect – it does a whole lot very well.
Overall
88%User Review
( votes)Pros
- Multi-genre
- Polished production values
- Engaging story narrative
- Side quests
- Multiple endings
Cons
- Ski mini games feel hard initially
- Implementation of timer system
- Need to save regularly
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