Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery : Episode 2

This game was fun. it was cool. and i liked it.

I agree that this game is shorter than the previous one. Twice. And I thought it would start from the cooler with appropriate puzzles, but no. The cooler is only mentioned in the pilot and a single puzzle. I am a little bit disappointed, but okay. I got enough positive impact from the game.

It would be nice to have the full story, the all episodes, but not a chance.

Being the second episode on the series, it's more of the same, and it's fantastic puzzling as the first episode. Too bad this series never continued, it has lots of charm and fun :(

Been some time since i played this but from what i remember i really enjoyed it. It's short and sadly wasn't finished but good for what it is. Nice characters, voice acting and the puzzles are pretty good.

WARNING: The series is unfinished. Story left hanging.

I gave thumbs up since it is fun, with well written dialog and amusing puzzles; ultimately worth the few $ I paid. But if you are the type of person who needs a completed story do not buy. However, if you're the type of person who likes pushing harmless old men into the grinding gears of a watermill so you can continue your quest buy the game, who am I to judge?

I have Episode 1 on my PS Vita, so I wanted to get Episode 2 to carry on with the story.

The puzzles in this one seemed a lot easier than in the first episode.

i really enjoyed episode 2.
it's more atmospheric and a good bit darker, which i love.
controls are still a bit clunky at times so getting all achievements might be tough.... but you can play the whole game without issues.
i really want to know how the story continues but sadly lucid games seem to have abandoned it and also didnt respond to a support inquiry regarding the development of a sequel. at least a public statement would have been nice...
but playing it till then is very enjoyable so if you liked episode 1, go ahead!

FIRST PLAYTHROUGH

GAMEPLAY

FINAL THOUGHTS

Cannot recommend this game as it takes 2x less time than Episode 1 for completion and ends way too soon. It's got only 1 main hub, compared to the two in Episode 1. Puzzles are good and the story is fine (if you consider the 5min plot at the beginning to be a story), but this is way too short to be worth it. Not to mention the gap between Episode 1 ending and the intro of Episode 2.

To only make things worse, it seems the developers abandoned this series.

These games are great if you like proffesor layton and what not. Give me more!!! Thanks devs!

10/10

Would watch old man fall into watermill and die again.

An excellent follow up to Jacob Jones 1. It's a bit shorter, but I liked the story. Puzzles I thought were very good and graphics are excellent for this type of game.

Endlessly charming. Solvable Puzzles. Cute characters, Great Art. Sweet, simple, cohearant, story.

It's a Winner. Great for kids too.

Amazing game made by an amazing team. Looking forward to Episode 3.

This episode is shorter than the first one. Still fair but... it doesn't worth the price.

Pros:
-Satisfying puzzles.
-Wonderful humour and characters.
-Cute graphics and sounds.
-Bigfoot!

Cons:
-Lack of configuration options.
-Annoying swaying screen effect and blurred edges.
-Individually, each episode is a little brief.

[Review for both Episode 1 and 2]

One day when I was a kid, I was looking for a cheap holiday read in one of Gloucester’s 4396 discount books-that-no-other-shop-wanted stores and came across a book that was so invocative and fascinating that I simply had to have it. Creatures From Elsewhere set my mind alight with the apparent mystery of creatures unknown to science but somehow leaving their mark upon the Earth. The opening chapters centred upon Bigfoot, and Bigfoot foot like creatures. It was marvellous and thrilling stuff. Utter nonsense, but I loved it. I love Bigfoot and all his mates. From Tintin in Tibet to Bigfoot centric X-Files episodes, the whole mythos of this elusive man-ape creature is so engaging that I can’t help but adore the whole Bigfoot culture. So seeing a puzzle game about a Bigfoot mystery appear in the Steam store was a real no-brainer for me.

Jacob Jones is a kid on his way to summer camp at Camp Evil Eagle Feather. He wears a blue bear coat. Already this is a thoroughly charming game. Needless to say, there is a Bigfoot involved and a mystery. This plays out in a very lovely cardboard cut-out style environment with cute stylised character models. It reminded me a lot of Psychonauts, which is one of my favourite games ever so any resemblance, even if just in passing, is fine by me. The story is rather basic, but it makes up for it by having some wonderfully witty dialogue and laugh out loud worthy gags. There are an awful lot of horror referencing tucked away into the largely child-friendly dialogue, some jokes got surprisingly dark in nature (especially one right at the end of episode 2). There are only a handful of characters that Jacob has any real interaction with but the ones that are in place are well voice acted and come with their own little idiosyncrasies that set them apart. Little details such as the rage fuelled Coach and his bulging eyes or one of Jacob’s bunk-mates’ runny nose and chronic snot bubble problem made for some just adorable people. Then there’s the Bigfoot, the star attraction. Biggie, as he’s known, is a lovable furry lump with a friendly demeanour and a joyfully silly dog disguise. Getting the Bigfoot right was essential. Lucid games nailed him.

The meat of the game is in the puzzling. Although there is a world to explore and some folk to chat to, most of the gameplay is devoted to single screen puzzles à la the Professor Layton games on the Nintendo DS. The puzzles are an assortment of logic, sliding block and maths puzzles and will mostly offer a good brain teasing without being annoying. I came across one puzzle I found a bit confusing but that could be just as well down to the fact I’m not so great at maths puzzles. Give me a Sudoku and I’ll probably just draw pictures of hedgehogs on it and run away with my hands in the air and cackling like a maniac. Luckily, my hand wasn’t forced like that in Jacob Jones. With the exception of the maths puzzle I found the puzzle screens to be eminently satisfying and engaging. Sometimes the puzzle instructions could be a little vague on what needed to be done, but everything is presented excellently and more often than not the game of the puzzle comes to you instinctively.

A handy feature is the memo screen that lets you doodle over the screen to keep track of your puzzle progress. It’s a testament to how well made the puzzles are constructed in that at no point did I resort to doodling hedgehogs on the memo screen in frustration. If you do find yourself stuck, there is a hint system that lets you exchange soda cans (that the environmentally minded Jacob has picked up) for a nod in the right direction. Using his phone, Jacob can get either a vague hint from his friends, a more specific push from his brother or a fairly explicit direction from his uncle. It all works well and keeps the game flowing nicely.

I would have liked the environmental interaction to be a bit more developed. There isn’t really much to do in the world. It looks lovely but it serves as little more than a way to link the unconnected puzzles together. It would have been nice to have more to do than pick up soda cans and bother gophers. As basic as the movement controls are, they are still a bit wonky. The keyboard shortcuts for rotating the screen are Q and E but the keys for moving the view around are the arrow keys. This can be done with the mouse but doing both movements at the same time makes your mouse cursor pretty unreliable. The game was originally made for the touch screens on mobile devises but I would have liked more thought given to how the controls work on a PC, or at least to give an option to change the controls myself or use a control pad.

The game does lack configuration options in general. Volume, full screen on/off and resolution are the only options available. This irritated me specifically because I desperately wanted to turn off the damn depth of field which gave the screen a constant blurring around the edges that I found incredibly off-putting. The game is made with the Unreal Engine so tinkering with the .ini files to get the graphics settings you want is usually an option, but even that couldn’t remove the effects I found so obnoxious. Likewise, there was a constant gentle sway to the whole game that seemed entirely unnecessary but I found no way to turn it off and keep the damn screen still.

These are relatively minor quibbles to a game that I had a lot of fun with. I picked the episode one and two pack for a fiver on Steam and got around five hours worth of delightful puzzling. It may be short but I found it to be well worth the price for the amount of fun I had playing it. I’m now looking forward to episode three, assuming there will be one. I could serious go on for far longer talking about how charming it is. Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery has stomped its way into my heart and rekindled my love of Bigfoot. I love you Biggie.

From Coffee Break Gaming.

Shorter than the first one by about half, it felt like. Still fun. Some different puzzles, more logic, and more of what made the first one fun, just not as much of it. Hope that part 3 comes out fairly speedily.

Second episode is a bit shorter than the first one. 1 hour and a half is the length as opposed to 2-3 hours in the first episode.

There is some quirky and charming stuff in there. It also gets strangely dark towards the end?

I'm still quite enjoying this game. Potential complaints would be that it's not always obvious which puzzles are mandatory for story progression and that's it not possible to skip those puzzles. The hints system is very handy and it will usually give you most of the answer (but not fully). In some puzzles I knew what to do but still managed to do something wrong somehow. In that case I wish there was a "you tried and failed this puzzle for atleast 10 times now, skip it?" prompt.

Note that the solutions for all the puzzles are available online, so you can always check the solution there.

+ Pretty graphics
+ Good voice acting
+ Optional puzzles
+ Puzzles are generally fun to solve

- Puzzles seem a tad easier
- Seems even shorter than the first episode
- Unsatisfying beginning (thanks to the first episode's 'cliffhanger')

[Rating: 80/100]

Still a well made Puzzler with fun characters and dialog. Puzzles differ enough from the first one. Some are real brain scratchers but also very satisfying.