Revisiting Jill of the Jungle, the last game Tim Sweeney designed
Boy, was 1992 a different time for computer games. Epic MegaGames’ Jill of the Jungle illustrates that as well as any other title from the era. Designed and programmed by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the game was meant to prove that console-style games of the original Nintendo era could work just as well on PCs. (Later, the onus of proof would often be in the reverse direction.)
Also, it had a female protagonist, which Sweeney saw as a notable differentiator at the time. That’s pretty wild to think about in an era of Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft, Horizon Forbidden West‘s Aloy, Life is Strange‘s Max Caulfield, Returnal‘s Selene Vassos, Control‘s Jesse Faden, The Last of Us‘ Ellie Williams, and a seemingly endless list of others—to say nothing of the fact that many players of all genders who played the games Mass Effect and Cyberpunk 2077 seem to agree that the female protagonist options in those are more compelling than their male alternatives.
As wacky as it is to remember that the idea of a female character was seen as exceptional at any point (and with the acknowledgement that this game was nonetheless not the first to do that), it’s still neat to see how forward-thinking Sweeney was in many respects—and not just in terms of cultural norms in gaming.
Gameplay to stand the test of time
Having been born in the early 80s to a computer programmer father, I grew up on MS-DOS games the way many kids did on Atari, Nintendo, or PlayStation. Even I’ll admit that, as much as I enjoyed the DOS platformers, they don’t hold up very well against their console counterparts. (Other genres are another story, of course.)
I know this is blasphemy for some of my background and persuasion, but Commander Keen‘s weird, floaty controls are frustrating, and what today’s designers call the “game feel” just isn’t quite right.
Too many platformer games on PC in the ’80s and ’90s were frustrating to play, and they offered very little ammunition for a PC user to use in an argument with a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) owner to convince them that PC that costs thousands of dollars is better for those types of games than the much-cheaper consoles; there were both technical and cultural reasons for this
With Jill of the Jungle, Sweeney was one of the first to give PC players that ammunition.
I replayed the entire trilogy of episodes, which is bundled into one package on GOG, in one afternoon recently. It was fun as hell. The movement and jumping are as responsive as you want them to be, and the level design is ingeniously creative. It ramps up in difficulty across the episodes at an appropriate pace, but it’s never unfairly frustrating.
Even the graphics have aged decently well. Yeah, they look retro—but in the fun, nostalgic way Super Nintendo games look retro as they’re rediscovered by new generations, not in the “look, you had to be there” way that a lot of its PC platformer peers do.
An artifact of historical relevance
Tim Sweeney, who founded Potomac Computer Systems turned Epic MegaGames turned Epic Games, is obviously a looming figure in the technology, gaming, and entertainment industries today. His company’s Unreal Engine is the default choice for AA and AAA game developers who want a ready-made game engine, and it’s widely used in Hollywood productions like Disney’s The Mandalorian, too.
Fortnite, the flagship game of Unreal Engine, is one of the most popular games in history, and was one of the main drivers of the tech industry’s obsession with the “metaverse” in the early 2020s. To this day, major gaming publishers are trying (and largely failing) to copy Fortnite‘s success.
And Sweeney is an outspoken corporate activist—whether you agree with him or not, and no matter how you judge his sincerity and personal incentives—against platform gatekeepers like Apple and Google, who many feel leverage their positions unfairly.
So all that means Jill of the Jungle would be interesting even if it wasn’t fun, simply because it was the last game Sweeney (who was originally a programmer) personally designed.
Unreal, the 1998 breakthrough game that arguably made Epic Games’ current industry prominence possible, was designed by then-up-and-comer Cliff Bleszinski; Sweeney only worked on it as a programmer, though, of course, engineering was arguably just as big a part of that game’s success as its design.
Jill of the Jungle is a marvel of technical polish and what game designers call “juice”—all the little extra touches that add up to make a game feel great and seem extra—for its time. But it’s also a beautifully designed platformer, with amazingly creative levels.
I don’t always agree with Sweeney’s opinionated stances in the industry, and while many independent game developers champion him as a hero for standing up to the big platforms, I don’t trust his long-term ambitions any more than I do Apple’s. But playing Jill of the Jungle, it’s abundantly clear why he’s been as successful as he is.
There simply aren’t many people in the games industry who can claim equal mastery of engineering and business acumen, and those who have both are often pretty successful. But Jill of the Jungle‘s refined and clever game design also proves that Sweeney understands the creative dimension, too. There are even fewer people who have all three of those skills.
The game is worth a spin just for fun and nostalgia, even if you don’t care about its historical relevance. Maybe I have nostalgia glasses on, but I think it has aged quite well.
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Samuel Axon is the editorial lead for tech and gaming coverage at Ars Technica. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.
