GAME CLEAR No. 264 -- Pumpkin Jack

Pumpkin Jack (2020, Multiplatform)

Developer: Evil Raptor (Nicolas Meyssonnier)
Publisher: Headup
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 10/31/25

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Why should I care?
Pumpkin Jack is a great homage to the heyday of 3D platformers with ample ideas and identity of its own.

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Gourd evening

We’re rounding out October here as on-theme as ever. A complement to Halloween Forever, Pumpkin Jack is a three-dimensional platformer starring a pumpkin-head man. It’s particularly interesting because it is a one-man project and rather grand in scope given that constraint. It was developed almost entirely by Nicolas Meyssonnier with music composed by Yohan Jager. It’s not just impressive because of its small staff, though, Pumpkin Jack is a jolly good game by any standard.

The game stars its eponymous character (apparently of legend) in a quest from the Devil himself. See, the Kingdom of Arc En Ciel has enjoyed peace and prosperity for far too long. The Devil takes umbrage with this and casts a curse of chaos and a plague of monsters upon the land. A great Wizard, Champion of the humans, uses magic of his own to hold the monsters at bay. Frustrated by this, the Devil puts the soul of Stingy Jack in a pumpkin and sends him to Earth as his own agent of evil to challenge the Wizard.

To have been entrusted with such a mission, Jack’s abilities are pretty limited. He can run, jump, double jump, and swing the various melee weapons he acquires throughout his adventure. He also befriends a crow in the first stage of the game that grants him a single-target projectile attack with a significant cooldown. Oh, he can also slam his weapon down for a little AoE attack after a double jump. And that’s it for old Jack.

You’ll find it’s more than enough for the ghouls and ghosts you’ll encounter in the various autumnal landscapes of the game. The monsters the Devil summoned, it turns out, are too stupid to tell the difference between Jack and the humans they were sent to destroy. Tough break. Between bits of platforming, you’ll have to deal with swarms of them. These are the least exciting bits of the game. If any bit of this game could’ve used a bit more time in the oven, it’s the combat. It’s quite unvaried and just doesn’t feel very good. Hitting guys is pretty mushy, and Jack doesn’t seem to quite have the post-hit invincibility frames you might expect, so getting attacked by more than a couple enemies at once can really melt your health bar. It doesn’t feel all that much more sophisticated than the combat system I had in the game I made for my game design class in college. If the enemies died in a hit or two, this would be more tolerable, but they often take considerably more wailing than that, even with ostensibly upgraded weaponry.

And I’m perhaps making it sound a bit worse than it is. The combat sequences are seldom tough enough to actually kill you, so it’s not a huge deal that they’re not particularly exciting. Just feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The game makes up for this weakness with pretty solid platforming sections and terrific vibes. In these regards, the game feels like a peer to any of the great 3D platformers that came out in the ’90s and ’00s. Jack controls well and his jump feels well tuned for the challenges the game presents. Meyssonnier keeps things interesting by introducing new concepts and ideas at a pretty regular clip. This applies not only to platforming but also the puzzle and on-rails sequences that break up each stage. During certain sections, Jack has to remove his head to do a short puzzle section, crawling around with his vines for legs. In others, a horseback or minecart ride might break up the action and demand sharper reflexes than the regular gameplay. It’s a nice mixup and indicative of a developer that wanted to try lots of concepts. I think he hit more than he missed.

The stages and characters have great designs and art direction, and the modeling and lighting work alone is just staggering for one guy to have done by himself or even with a little help. The Fall feeling is strong in each level, and the accompanying music is so much more complimentary of the action and scenery than most games dare to be these days. It hearkens back to the old days of video games with exciting, distinct, and melodic themes.

I’ve made reference multiple times to the ways Pumpkin Jack feels like a game from yesteryear, but something that’s so critical for that to succeed is that it’s also very much an original work. Unlike Yooka-Laylee or Mighty No. 9 or Bloodstained or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (or so many others), Pumpkin Jack never gives the impression that it is trying to be some other game. Its leans on tropes from the golden age of 3D platformers, but it never feels like it’s trying to be legally distinct Banjo-Kazooie or Croc or whatever else. Meyssonnier shows confidence in his concepts and characters and in so doing made his very own game for people to enjoy without relying on cheap heat. I love it.

When the unsurprisingly brief credits roll on Pumpkin Jack, development screenshots are shown on either side of the credited names. They show the very earliest prototypes of the game and moving Jack through a gray void on through to the final touches of a finished work. It’s a very emotional thing to me. I’ve documented some of my own solo game dev on this very blog, but I fell off not so long after I started experimenting with the Atari 2600. This is the kind of motivating thing that makes me want to get back to it. I have an idea I’ve been sitting on for awhile that I can’t wait to really sit down and start working on. I have some other things on my plate at the moment, so I may not be starting just yet, but the itch is definitely back. I gotta get back on the horse.

I hope I can make something a fraction as interesting, cool, or fun as Pumpkin Jack.