Jack Lumber

Developer: Owlchemy Labs
Steam Release: Apr 2013
Hours Played: 2.5
Similar To: AVSEQ / Flight Control / Trino 
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips



GAMEPLAY
This unique little offering from Owlchemy Labs is about creating a trail with your mouse while under time pressure. The trail must slice through a number of logs that are flung across the screen and then held there in slow-motion. A game lasts for around 3 minutes and contains about ten or so waves of flying logs. You'll first face a screen with a landscape filled with trees and mountains etc - but this isn't important. Suddenly, a series of logs will start to be flung onto the screen. Your job is to split these logs in half (usually long-ways) with a trail while they hover in mid-air - preferably before the quick timer, that runs down along the top of the screen, gets to the end. To do this you need to activate slow-motion mode which you do so by clicking and holding the left mouse button. With everything going super-slow and with the left-mouse held down, you draw your path. 


BALANCE & PACE
This is essentially the line that Jack's axe makes to cut these logs in half. Let go of the mouse before cutting the logs and you lose big points. When you've finished, you release the mouse and then watch as a satisfying animation unfolds. This shows the logs getting split as your line is followed and as Jack grunts and groans in the background. As you can imagine the game is all about mouse control and the efficiency with which you draw your path. With odd-shaped logs, one-way only logs, logs with a clock on them that freezes time for a short while and logs that have to be split multiple times, there will come a time when the expected gold award ends up being a silver and when the expected silver award gets to be just a paltry bronze. Additionally, among other items, syrup bottles and barrels of explosives to cut through get brought into the mix as well.

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
For such a straightforward game, you're given plenty of menus to navigate your way through. Each level ends with an animal flung up into the air and it's this animal that's put into your cabin when you finish that level. First off then, when you hit Play from the title screen, you are taken to this cabin which contains all of the woodland animals you've collected. These wear a sash: bronze, silver or gold depending on how well you completed that level. From the cabin screen, you click on a map which takes you to the level-select screen which consists of a path with each level represented by a large red dot with its bronze, silver or gold award.




PROGRESS SYSTEM
You click on one of these to start your game and when you've finished you get plenty of info about your performance. First off, you get a picture of the animal wearing the sash you've achieved. You get shown your score as well as your high score along with your place on the online leaderboard. Finally, there is your cupboard which you can access from the stat page just mentioned or from your cabin. This sells a range of items that you buy with points that you earn as you play. There are power-ups that come in the form of syrups or beards (that you can switch on or off) that make the game harder but increase multipliers for a better score. 




CONCLUSION
Simply moving a mouse to cut logs might sound quite boring but Jack Lumber injects plenty of quirks and twists to keep things fresh. The menus, for one, have plenty going on. You've got your collection of woodland animals in your cabin that make their own unique comical noise; you have your stats-page and the decision to try to beat that high score and then you have your cupboard of items with the choice of when to buy and use them. It's not a game you'll want to play for long periods and I'm still none too sure about that pink and purple colour scheme - but with the opportunity to toughen the game up (with those points you earn as you go) it's a game with decent replay value; either to beat that crumby old score, rise up through the online ranks or to get that damn silver award up to a gold.