Disclaimer: I received a copy of Head Over Heels on the Nintendo Switch from publisher QUByte Interactive as part of 420MacMan's #IndieSelect. The game was given and received without expectation or promise of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared through social media. All words and pictures in this article, unless otherwise noted are from my own experience playing the game.
Systems: Windows, macOS X, BeOS, Linux, Atari Jaguar, Nintendo Switch
Original Release Date: 1986 / 2003
Context is going to be very important in this review of Head Over Heels, so there is going to be a bit of a forward before we get to the meat of the article.
Head Over Heels was developed by Jon Ritman (Batman, Monster Max) for Ocean back in 1987. The game did very well, receiving praise from the video game industry at large, and was included in Tony Mott's "1001 Games You Must Play Before You Die" coming in at 138 (if that is your kind of thing); there might be an article in that book? The point is, Head Over Heels was very well received in 1987 and for years after. In 2003, Retrospec updated the game with more modern graphics and it was then ported to the Atari Jaguar by Piko Interactive in 2019, and finally QUByte Interactive released it on the Nintendo Switch in 2021. There is a history behind this game, one that I admittedly do not know a lot about. The takeaway here is that this was a game that was developed and released originally in 1987 for home computer systems (Commodore 64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, etc) and I am playing it now on a portable gaming console in 2021.
Before I started Head Over Heels, I knew that I was going to be playing an isometric puzzle adventure game. That was it. I did not know anything about the characters, the world, the story, or anything in the game did. But I have played a few video games released in 1987 (Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Contra, Ikari Warriors, Double Dragon, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Final Fantasy, Blades of Steel, Rad Racer, and several others but you get the idea) so I felt that I would be fine just jumping in and figuring it out as I went. Well, that was not a great idea because in Head Over Heels, you play two characters who start in separate rooms and I could not figure out what I was supposed to do with either character and what I needed to do, and how to get out of either of the rooms. The next time I picked the game up, I pretty much just button mashed my way to figure out that the buttons I had the characters standing on were actually transporters that could be activated using the Jump button. I eventually saved the game and then went looking for an instruction manual because, after a couple of attempts at playing, I wanted to know what it was that I was actually doing. I found a couple instruction manuals online (this being the best-looking one). It was here that I found out how much I was missing. That Head and Heels are being held captive, how transporters worked (which I already knew), that Head should learn how to climb the ladder in his cell (which leads you to find the fluffy bunny which gives you extra lives), what the bloated blue angler fish does, and that you should not reach the Market without Head acquiring the Hooter otherwise it could make the game very difficult; the Hooter being the name of Head's gun that shoots doughnuts used to temporarily stun enemies while they lick the doughnuts off of their faces. And you know, I realize I still do not know what the shield icons are about, but I presume that they allow either Head or Heels to take an additional hit without dying.
A lot of this game is trial and error and once I put myself in that mindset, I was better able to appreciate the game, similar to how I approached Dark Souls differently, that sections of the game needed to be learned as opposed to just barging through. And having this mindset I feel is the only way to progress in the game, because progression is going to be slow, at least from my own experience.
You start out the game with each character having eight lives although you can get additional lives by collecting Fluffy Bunnies (because why not). If Head or Heels loses all their lives, they essentially borrow a life from the other character, and losing lives happens a lot in this game because there is no life meter, one hit from anything that is out to kill you will kill you immediately. When you die, you will respawn immediately in the last room transition you made. If you just came through a doorway, you will respawn there. If you fell from a room above, you will respawn falling, and this is where one of my complaints as far as game mechanics comes from.
Early on, there is a jump you have to make with Heels, but if you miss that jump, you fall to the room below where there are two enemies patrolling, one randomly and the other seeking you out. Because you fall slowly in this game, the enemy has time to track you down and fox-guard the area where you are going to land and when you land, you die because the enemy hits you. Now, because this is with Heels, you cannot guide your falls, so you fall straight down until you die and respawn in the same place where you fall and die.
This happens until you either quit the game, or the game ends because you run out of lives. What is frustrating about this happening is that you could be making your way through the game, feeling good about your time spent, and have 20 lives between the two characters, but because of a single misstep/jump, your game is essentially over and you have to load a previous save file.
Let us talk about saving. Hoo boy was this a frustrating mechanic to figure out. Saving in this game is done by pausing the menu and selecting Save, pretty standard stuff. But this can only be performed if you have already collected a Reincarnation Fish (the bloated blue angler fish mentioned above). The instruction manual gives you a vague description of the Reincarnation Fish, but there is more world-building lore about the fish than its actual function. And once you use that fish to save, you cannot save until you find another fish, or if you already have another fish in your inventory. But the thing is, the game does not tell you how many Reincarnation Fish are in your inventory, or essentially, how many more times you can save the game. I do not mind the limited save mechanic in certain instances (Resident Evil for one), but this specific mechanic, as it is implemented here, has completely changed my approach to playing this game. I have to have enough time to play and to get far enough in the game that I feel I can use up a Save. If I save too early, say after 15 minutes, then I feel like might have wasted a save before a series of rooms that were not difficult, but time-consuming to get through, but knowing if a room is difficult to get through and that I should use a save, is usually not something you will be able to decipher on-site.
I get it. Head Over Heels is designed to be a difficult game. It is not supposed to be an easy adventure game, otherwise, you could beat it in
less than an hour, and anyone buying a computer game in 1987 would probably be upset at having spent $20-40 (I could not find an exact cost for Head Over Heels when it was first released so this is just a guess based on game prices in the mid-late 1980s) would probably have been upset at bringing home a new game and beating it in a single sitting. There is supposed to be trial and error, figuring out the best way to approach puzzles and hazards and feel accomplished when you make it far enough to warrant a save. When Retrospec updated the game in 2003, I feel that they could and should have also updated the saving mechanic as well, maybe afforded more than one save per Reincarnation Fish, added an on-screen icon to tell you how many Fish/saves you have left to use, or even allowed you to not die in that one room when you respawn from the ceiling.
All of my complainings aside, Retrospec has done an amazing job with their updated version of the original Head Over Heels and I am pretty impressed with how nearly identical the game plays to what I can tell of the original (or at least the original on the ZX Spectrum). I love that there is no longer a transition between long rooms, that the screen just scrolls while you move through. I am very impressed with the new music composed by Dorian Black and I would love to be able to listen to the music outside of the game, but thanks to the commonness of the game's title and apparently the name of the composer, finding any semblance of this soundtrack has been impossible.
At the moment, I am reserving any recommendation for Head Over Heels until either I finish the game or I reach the point where the game is no longer fun and I throw in the towel. I am enjoying the quirkiness of the characters and the game world, I am loving the music and I would really love to be able to finish this game, more so in a happy mood than a sour one.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
