So I’ve… never actually watched Pocahontas. I’m not really sure if that’s a shock or a surprise or whatever — most of my formative kids films were ones released in the early 2000s — though from what I’ve heard I didn’t particularly miss much. I could be wrong (I don’t like making value judgements on things I haven’t fully experienced) but most criticisms seem to centre around how it both-sides the colonization and genocide of the native people by simplifying the entire conflict into 'we should learn to get along despite our differences'. While I can’t claim to know much about the history of America’s colonization, being Australian, I do happen to know what the settlers did to our indigenous people, and… yeah, no, simplifying invasion and genocide like that is… at best irresponsible — this is history, and to provide a (literally) whitewashed and distorted view of it for public consumption erases the narrative of what really happened all in favour of commodifying and appropriating it in a way that lets anyone who benefited by the suffering of the Indigenous people ignore the implications of what provided the building blocks of where they live.

But I guess, ultimately, I’m actually talking about the video game adaptation, and while its attempt to communicate and rush through the movie’s plot provides a hilarious attempt at trying to convey the same themes, this is still a game that’s more about how it plays than what it’s about.

You play both as Pocahontas and her raccoon friend Meeko, who must use each other’s special abilities in order to navigate their way through the level. It feels… mostly like a puzzle platformer at times, and while you have to fight enemies and make precise jumps, emphasis is placed more on figuring out how you’re meant to get forward over either of the other two things. Across the game’s four levels are animals that want Pocahontas to help or challenge them, and through taking them on you’re able to gain abilities that upgrade your capabilities — letting you swim, run faster, shoot a projectile, etc. — which then allow you to pass obstacles you previously couldn’t break through. Along the way the game tries to explain the plot of the movie through text dumps and cutscenes, even doing its best to recreate what I presume to be sequences from the movie, which is… valiant, but rather clunky in execution, coming off as goofy imitations more than really recreating… whatever the original scene was meant to get across.

Still, as a puzzle platformer, it’s mostly solid, and there are sections that I positively vibed with — the puzzles are simple, but fun to solve, and the last level is one where you use all your abilities in a mad dash to beat a time limit which… mostly works as a platform challenge and works to bring the game full circle. I like the way the game uses Meeko to illustrate your capabilities: initially, without any of your animal abilities, you’re reliant on Meeko to clear a path for you, and Meeko is reliant on you to get him to where he can’t quite jump. As the game progresses, and you get more abilities, the balance shifts where you primarily have to get Meeko around, to where Meeko is only used for extra little challenges for collectables, to the point where in the final level you don’t control Meeko at all, which is a neat way to communicate Pocahontas’s growth. Sadly, though, the game controls… rather clunkily. Everything feels so rigid. Jumping is kind of delicate and it’s easy to over or undershoot given how jump length is tied to how fast you’re running beforehand. Death from either a bottomless pit or an enemy is instant and with no opportunity to get out of it, and it’s entirely possible to jump, fall, and when you land find out that there’s a settler right in front of you and you’re close enough to the point where the game locks you out of doing anything about it. I also felt left in the dark regarding mechanics and how certain things worked, but I’m assuming that’s more on the method I played it — presumably there was an instruction manual with this game originally that I can’t access playing it emulated.

Still, it’s decent. Nothing particularly to write home about, but it was an okay way to spend a couple hours, and while some of the platforming hasn’t aged well the artstyle has — with some insanely detailed sprites and backgrounds and some rather pretty environments. Ultimately… I won’t lie, I’m probably going to forget I played this game after a couple of months, aside from its connection to the work it’s adapted from, but for a licensed game you could certainly do much worse. 6/10.