Welcome to a seasonally festive Hallowmay with Pumpkin Jack, a linear 3D platformer with a sort of MediEvil meets Ghost Rider theme as the titular Stingy Jack, a notorious crook and trickster, is resurrected by the Devil into a scarecrow body in order to defeat humanity's last best hope, the Wizard, in their war against Hell. For as metal as this all sounds, the game is very much geared towards a preteen audience with its wiseacre (though uncommonly violent) protagonist and his cowardly and sarcastic crow companion (and as a Longest Journey fan, I'll always approve of sardonic corvid sidekicks) as they defeat silly monsters and sillier bosses. Sort of like a Spawn for the recently spawned.

Pumpkin Jack's developers (which is maybe just the one guy, Nicolas Meyssonnier) keenly understands that in a genre like this, with an audience like this, the key is to keep throwing new ideas the player's way. While Pumpkin Jack does recycle its mini-games and other unique obstacles within a level, they're unique to that level alone: the game has six stages, approximately 30-45 minutes long apiece, and of the ones I've seen each had their own enemies, challenges, mini-games, and environments. Gameplay is usually a mix of platforming and combat, the latter being relatively weaker, though there's a fair number of on-rails sequences that reminded me of the dynamic that the first Jak and Daxter had, breaking up long stretches of collecting junk and beating up enemies with vehicle sections (which, towards the second game onwards, started taking over more from the on-foot parts). Its inventiveness and variety is definitely the game's strength, followed by the presentation.

I found the combat to be relatively mashy but for the fact that the developer implemented a lack of causing enemies to flinch which means that, unless you destroy them first, their melee attacks will hit unless you remember to dodge them. Most encounters therefore involve small combos followed by an evasive roll to keep out of harm's way, though you can also mix in attacks from your crow companion which can hit from a distance but require a bit of cooldown to activate again. There's also a stronger mid-air attack that also has a cooldown, but the game's kind of withholding about how long that cooldown might be. An odd decision by the game is giving the player a new weapon after every level: each new weapon is incrementally better for the most part, but you can always go back to an earlier type if the current isn't working out for you. In addition to standard melee types like a shovel and a scythe, there's also a magic sword that produces waves of energy and a shotgun which... well, might seem a little out of place against the game's fantasy backdrop but perhaps is fitting if you're fighting the minions of Hell (which are mindless monsters that will target you as often as any nearby human). You have a sturdy enough health bar and almost anything you can destroy in the environment will produce a healing effect, so the combat's never really a sticking point even for as chaotic as it can get with multiple enemies around.

The platforming's a little more palatable due to starting with a double-jump which, on top of everything else, does a wonderful job of correcting for any previously misplaced hop. As another Jak and Daxter comparison, the jumping feels very familiar with the same sort of fluid weightiness to it that can help plant you easier if not necessarily allow for any ridiculous long-jumps or maneuvers by way of a 3D Mario. It's entirely satisfactory, which is a hard thing for any platformer developer to get right while also being the most important thing to nail. The mini-games tend to be reminiscent of those that Rare N64 platformers drop you into, depriving you of your body to give you limited jumping options. These might involve playing back a sequence of musical notes Simon Says-style, directing a bomb around a maze, or a whack-a-mole challenge; each level, as stated, does something different with it and then offers two or three variations within that same level of increasing challenge.

I'm mostly positive on Pumpkin Jack (uh-oh, sounds like another 4 out of 5 is imminent) but for a few minor bugbears here and there. The combat, as stated, feels a little too unmanageable at times and the player's hitbox remarkably vulnerable. There's one annoying glitch in particular that causes the fullscreen option to break into a semi-windowed mode after every transition (say, entering a level or dying) and won't fix itself unless you go into the video options menu, tweak something, and apply the new settings. Falling into inch-high water or catching yourself on the edge of a barrier while in certain on-rails sections causes you to instantly die (with a sarcastic death message) rather than just do a small amount of damage and reset where you are, which seems overly punitive given how generous your health bar is in most other cases, and the sheer linearity and repeating mini-games can make revisiting levels for missing collectibles kind of a slog (there's two types, for the record: 20 crow skulls per level which can be spent on cosmetic skins and a single gramophone per level which I imagine will contribute towards some manner of post-game sound test). (Of course, you could just decide they're not important enough to go through the whole level again, but my brain worms deprive me of that option.) On the whole, though, the game is inventive with its challenge variants and charming with its Burton-esque spooktown aesthetic, and importantly plays well enough (platforming-wise, at least). Also, I'm a fan of how much the protagonist sound like Beavis whenever he jumps. I'm actually impressed that only one person made a whole 3D platformer of this quality level.

Rating: 4 out of 5.