Jetboard Joust is here!
What is it? Great question, glad you asked. Jetboard Joust is a arcade-retro shoot ’em up, wherein the players takes control of the Jetboard-riding badass to purge the alien scum invading our planet and stealing our people. The player will fight their way through a myriad of different aliens and bosses, with a huge variety of weapons at their disposal, including the board itself!
The game launched late last year and is brought to the world by the very dedicated developer in BitBull Ltd, and through it’s publisher Freedom Games! If you haven’t had a chance to check out the game, fear not, because we’re going to go through some of the finer points of the game, and give you MGN’s Top Five Reasons You Need to Try Jetboard Joust.
1:10 – Number 5: Active Development
The development behind Jetboard Joust is not simply, ‘release the game, and whatever happens, happens’. The tale is as old as time, developer releases game, game has issues, developer abandons game in it’s current state but still rakes in the cash. This isn’t the case with Jetboard Joust. The development on the game is in a good place, and it’s only getting better. There are frequent updates, bug fixes, platform additions. This is a good sign for things to come, and all the updates and changes are easily available to look through on the steam store page or the games twitter.
That’s another great thing about the development behind the game, there’s an online presence via social media. If you have a question, if you make a video, if you post a review, you’re getting interactions with the figurehead behind the game both giving and receiving feedback. How great is that?!
2:03 – Number 4: Nostalgia
If you’re old enough to remember having to bike down to the arcade, and put physical money into a slot in order to play a video game, well then Jetboard Joust is going to feel right at home. The game looks arcade, it boasts that it’s arcade, and it feels arcade. All of this is a good thing. If you’re going in expecting the same feel as those classic coin-operated shoot ’em ups, you will not be disappointed here.
But that doesn’t mean that the game is stuck in the past, and is going to feel frustrating if you have modern expectations from a video game. The game plays smoothly in 60 frames per second, and even has elements of modern games with rogue-lite features – adding plenty of replayability and longevity to the experience. Nailing that classic feel without getting bogged down in the frustrations of the era from an industry perspective isn’t easy, but knocked out of the park with Jetboard Joust.
2:59 – Number 3: Price
Coming in at number three is price, Jetboard Joust is inexpensive for the experience. The game is currently sitting at $14.50AUD on the Steam store, and for that price, the game is an absolutely steal. Why do I say that? Well, for that price you’re getting an incredibly fun experience, and you’re going to get plenty of playtime also. Like I mentioned, there are rogue-lite features that will having you trying, coming back, fighting bosses again and again without the game feeling tired.
The playtime for some of the more popular reviews on steam for the game are pretty varied. Some people give the game a positive review, and are happy with the price at around 10 hours. Having said that, with the level of replayability, there are reviews for the game at 70+ and close to 100 hours. That kind of playtime out of a game that is only costing $14.50AUD is insane value.
3:48 – Number 2: Time
This is a huge contributing factor behind my excite for Jetboard Joust, you can play the game, and have a blast, regardless of how much time you have. If you’re time poor like myself, that’s a huge win. If you want to sit down, and get multiple runs in, see just how far you can take it – well, you can do that too! That’s why the number two reason you should try Jetboard is time.
Being able to play the game whether you only have 20 minutes, or whether you want to sink 2 hours in, and not feel punished in any way for choosing either is a rare thing to achieve in the genre, or in games in general. If you just want to drop in, grab whatever takes your fancy, and call it quits whenever time permits, you can absolutely just do that! If you want to make progress overall, try different builds, try different strategies against the bosses, well you can absolutely do that too! You’re getting the best of both worlds.
4:39 – Number 1: Fun
Simply put, Jetboard Joust is fun as hell. That’s the whole point of sitting down to play a video game. If you strip everything away, are you having fun when you play? Hell yes you are. Jetboard Joust just wants to give you and good time. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you can see this by the description in the Steam store:
“Don’t expect a story. Do expect frantic, fluid, fast-paced 60fps action, big guns, and explosions!”
You can tell that the focus is on fun. And you know what? The game lives up to those expectations, there is absolutely plenty of big guns and explosions – more than you can poke a stick at. And that’s why I had to give ‘Fun’ the number one spot, because that’s the best reason to checkout Jetboard Joust – you’re going to have an absolute blast the entire time you’re playing.
Summary
That’s going to wrap things up for our Top Five Reasons to check out Jetboard Joust. If you agree or disagree with any of the points we’ve made on this list, we’d love to hear from you on the mgn.gg blog, the Youtube channel MGN TV, our new MGN TV Twitter, or the discord! The links for all of which can be found in the video description of this review. Thanks for checking us out!
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Credits
Program | Founding Writers |
Author | Luke Cowling |
YouTuber | Luke Cowling |
Publisher | MGN |
Game | Jetboard Joust |