This game is very cool, and if I'd owned it in 1998 when I had a boundless fountain of time and patience to pour into any game I managed to get my hands on I would have absolutely adored it. The PC branch of the Lode Runner family tree zooms in on the puzzleyness of the game rather than the action elements, and this entry takes those puzzles into three dimensions on an isomorphic three-axis grid.
It's hard to overstate how appealing the graphics of this game still are. Sprite graphics make lavish detail economical to a degree that 3D games can never be, and the isometric perspective gives this a dimensionality that side-view graphics always lack. In combination, these create lush screens bursting with details that beg you to explore, to peek behind a wall or pass through a tunnel or—using Lode Runner's characteristic mechanic—dig for treasure.
As much as I loved looking at the game, I found actually playing it to be a bit stressful. The pure puzzle levels were great, but it wouldn't be Lode Runner without angry guards after your throat, and navigating around them while locked to the grid of tiles was more than I wanted to subject my exhausted 2022 self to for more than an hour or two. This is the game's core mechanical flaw: the isomorphic grid and the player's movement on it are tailor-made for a turn-based puzzle game, but the words "lode runner" written on the box demand obeisance to the series's action roots.
The action history is also apparent in the game's scoring system, which is based on how quickly you complete the level. In a more modern (or less Lode Runner) game, this would probably be a move counter instead... although there's a real brilliance to its inclusion either way. As contemporary players are busy rediscovering with Neon White, the simple addition of a timer and a leaderboard creates a new dimension of puzzles. Rather than finding any route through the level, the goal is to find the best one—quite a challenge when you have a tool as flexible as Lode Runner's dig command. It's a real shame that this game wasn't released in the era of online leaderboards, because I imagine the competition would have been fierce.
It's hard to overstate how appealing the graphics of this game still are. Sprite graphics make lavish detail economical to a degree that 3D games can never be, and the isometric perspective gives this a dimensionality that side-view graphics always lack. In combination, these create lush screens bursting with details that beg you to explore, to peek behind a wall or pass through a tunnel or—using Lode Runner's characteristic mechanic—dig for treasure.
As much as I loved looking at the game, I found actually playing it to be a bit stressful. The pure puzzle levels were great, but it wouldn't be Lode Runner without angry guards after your throat, and navigating around them while locked to the grid of tiles was more than I wanted to subject my exhausted 2022 self to for more than an hour or two. This is the game's core mechanical flaw: the isomorphic grid and the player's movement on it are tailor-made for a turn-based puzzle game, but the words "lode runner" written on the box demand obeisance to the series's action roots.
The action history is also apparent in the game's scoring system, which is based on how quickly you complete the level. In a more modern (or less Lode Runner) game, this would probably be a move counter instead... although there's a real brilliance to its inclusion either way. As contemporary players are busy rediscovering with Neon White, the simple addition of a timer and a leaderboard creates a new dimension of puzzles. Rather than finding any route through the level, the goal is to find the best one—quite a challenge when you have a tool as flexible as Lode Runner's dig command. It's a real shame that this game wasn't released in the era of online leaderboards, because I imagine the competition would have been fierce.