Nixy the Glade Sprite (BubbleSoft) $1.99USD (Digital) / £8.99 to £39.99 (Physical)
Game title: Nixy the Glade Sprite
Game description: Nixy the Glade Sprite is a scrolling platform adventure game that sees Nixy being placed in charge of looking after the Gaia stone which gives life to the plants and flowers. Unfortunately, the stone has become corrupted and needs to be cleansed. So your job is to travel through the forest and its caverns avoiding deadly plants and creatures to find the sacred pool and locate 10 flower blooms to cleanse the stone, before returning it to the Guardian Tree in the Glade. In order to succeed in her task, Nixy will need to rely on her timing and jumping abilities. Collecting small hearts acts as a re-spawn point for when Nixy loses a life, while extra lives can be gained by collecting the larger hearts dangling from vines.
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Production - 80%
80%
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Fun - 75%
75%
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Depth - 70%
70%
Summary
Nixy is quite a nice looking game with its hi-res graphical style providing so much detail and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this graphical style being adapted to future c64 games. It is great to see that the C64 version adopts scrolling game play (as opposed to the ZX Spectrum’s flick screen), however, while the scrolling motion itself is smooth it is a little slow and at times it feels like you need to stop to allow the game to catch up with your character. I found Nixy to be charming with its innocent story narrative, soothing music soundtrack and gentle pacing. Timing movements and jumps is a critical element to Nixy’s game play. Fortunately, the game’s jump controls are good and allow us to pull off some pixel perfect jumping that the game requires. I enjoyed the objective based game play though I do wish there was a greater variety of enemies and hazards as it does feel like you have seen it all after about 5 minutes. The game is also generous with the number of lives offered though re-spawning is a bit of a bug bear as you are placed back where you last collected your last heart rather at the point where you have just died. Despite some of its pain points, there is something quite relaxing about playing Nixy the Glade Sprite and I did enjoy my time with the game.
Overall
75%User Review
( vote)Pros
- Attractive hi-res graphics
- Soothing soundtrack
- Responsive controls
- Lots of lives
Cons
- Could benefit from greater variety in game play and enemies
- Re-spawn points are not based on near location
- Scrolling can lag behind Nixy character
Game Video Link:
