‘Hunting Pearl Creek’ is a 2D platformer that is developed and published by Pearl Creek Gaming & Tim Bonderud, which takes you on an adventure to survive the perilous woods layed out before you.  

When first loading the game, it can take a good period of time for the game to appear on the screen. At first, I thought this was an issue with my computer but eventually found out it wasn’t a fault on my end. Eventually, when it does load we get a cute little menu screen and some funky music. When we do click “New Game” we are directly thrown into the deep end without any tutorial or thought in the world.

The only thing we’re told is to “Not forget the dynamite or sticks”. This can be quite confusing as the player doesn’t really know why they would need to collect these items to move on. It would have been quite nice if there was a tutorial though, instead of us just dropping directly into the gameplay. 

The controls are what you’d expect for a 2D platformer title with A/D to move around. Hunting Pearl Creek involves shooting certain enemies which uses the left mouse button to shoot the gun. There is a wide variety of enemies that appear throughout the titles like; ducks, bees, bears, birds, and more hazardous creatures. There is quite a lot of shooting and dodging that needs to be done. When an enemy is killed, we get given points which goes towards a high score.

This high score seems to be just a local high score and not a worldwide/nationwide high score which is an interesting idea as you compete against yourself. When fighting these enemies they do outlandish damage to the player, however, which can make playing through a level quite difficult. I went from full HP to having none after being barely hit by a bear once.  

When we do play a level, we’re directly thrown into the level without much warning, and it was quite confusing as I wasn’t expecting to be attacked by a squirrel and other types of wildlife straight out the gate. After my first death I understood I should try and shoot as many animals as I can see. Over time, there are flying enemies introduced to that spawn so it makes it so you can’t hide in a corner and wait for a certain animal or thing to change. The difficulty I had with Hunting Pearl Creek was the replayability. There isn’t a lot to bring you back.

The controls were quite simple and easy to remember, even if playing for the first time. Nonetheless, when we do first load into the game, we’re able to check out the Controls Page that has all the information one would need to play.

My main issue is having the Escape key as the key to quit the game and most users are used to the escape key being mostly for pausing the game. A cool feature that I do like though is the Instructions Page, as it lets you know what you need to know about the game and what will be expected from you when you do play. 

The graphics are decent with it’s the cartoonishness charm that you’d expect from a game like this. The animal designs are really great to look at and suit each of the 9 environments. The environment is quite decent as well, as the background can change if you’re in a different area or even have things added to the background like a beaver’s nest.

The character of the Hunter’s design is also quite nice, matching the overall theme, as he’s prepared for an adventure! 

The audio, on the other hand, is quite difficult to listen to. The main problem with the audio has to be the music, as it has a continuous song that plays whenever you’re playing and the song can get old very quickly. I tended to mute the music quite soon after loading into the game to play.

The gun sounds however do indeed sound decent and the animal sounds also liven up the experience, but the music itself is just so hard to listen to over and over again. When we do eventually die, the character lets out quite a scream, which did surprise me when it first happened, but it seems quite over the top in this type of situation.

In conclusion, Hunting Pearl Creek seems like a game that can be fun for those types of players who enjoy playing 2D Platformers, but it doesn’t seem like a game that has much replayability as it’s the exact same 9 levels over and over again. It would be nice to see more levels added to give it more of a variety. The music is difficult to deal with when playing after a long time, however and is quick to be muted. I couldn’t return to Hunting Pearl Creek after finishing it, which is just disappointing.

Written by: Mitchell Batchelor