Huck on the Mississippi (2023)

a FREE game by Frank Abbing for Commodore 64

Written for BrewOtaku #001 by Syed Raza

This title is obviously inspired by a true American classic, to be precise it’s inspired by Mark Twain’s novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. The author took himself about 36 years to get this game done. Better late, than never?

Where is Tom?

Let’s get down to the facts. There are a total of ten different levels, while the final one features a boss. Defeat the boss, and you’re essentially done with the game! In the author’s own words, some people might just play along and finish each stage in one go, while others might get stuck after a few easy ones and are forced to try and try again!

While judging the game from the screenshots, it looked good, but once we played it, we honestly expected a bit more. The game isn’t bad, but minor spicing up the gameplay, could have improved the game a lot. You also do spend the whole game cruisin’ on the Mississippi. The music is okay and fits its purpose. Visually, the title screen is very pretty and overall, all in-game graphics are neat. The difficulty increases by time.

Our player, Huck, is boarded on a log. You use your joystick to navigate him up and down to avoid obstacles in the river, which include rhinos, reindeer, and hawks. One contact with either of them and you start over!

Should the game be too hard for you, it has been already trained by the guys from Quantum. Unlimited energy and level skip might help you to end the game even faster. You can find that enhanced version in the dark dungeons of the CSDB.