It’s one thing to remaster a past classic; it’s another to reimagine a disaster. Hot on the heels of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, which has given fans an update they’ve demanded for years, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore takes a slightly different approach: creating a 2D platformer inspired by two of the most reviled, heavily memed games of their generation, from a console no-one particularly cared for.
Like Lunistice before it, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is a superb game inspired by the past–a clear love letter to its source material, crafted with care and attention. It somehow transforms the inspiration provided by two infamous Philips CD-i releases–Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon–to create one of the best indie hits of 2024 so far.
It’s all thanks to the passion of Seedy Eye Software, a studio name based on a fantastic pun, even if it comes at the expense of making itself sound like the new rights-holder for Leisure Suit Larry. Its passion for all things CD-i has created something truly enjoyable and unique–and, like Tomb Raider 1-3, it delivers a female lead who deserves a trilogy of her very own.
On the face of things, Arzette feels like a game that could go one of two ways: a niche joke taken too far, or a competent platformer with a wicked sense of humor. Luckily, it quickly becomes clear it’s the latter, as you’re introduced to a motley crew of heroes and villains of a past battle, as well as its deliberately manufactured storyline.
Overacting class
Ten years before the events of The Jewel of Faramore, the evil Daimur was defeated by Princess Arzette and the warrior Dail before being sealed in a book by the titular gem. The jewel was then split into pieces and scattered across the land to prevent his return. Dail retired; Arzette continued to train. After a decade of peace, Duke Nodelki–an imprisoned kingdom betrayer sentenced to hard labor for cozying up to Daimur–secretly collected the pieces to free him.
Nodelki unlocks the book and frees his old ally. Daimur immediately summons his four-strong counsel of hilariously unlikely minions, each with a delightful lack of back-story. There’s a teleporting scarecrow with a Deep South drawl; a Roman-armor-wearing horse with a mohawk hairstyle; a sexy pirate cat; and, best of all, a dragon dressed like Irwin R. Schyster, Ted DiBiase’s WWE tag-team partner in the 90s.
While this madness plays out, you can tell Arzette’s actors had a field day recording their lines. They practically chew the scenery into the mic with preposterous performances. Everything’s just a little bit off in that CDi way–sound quality and levels jump, emotions never quite hit their intended highs or lows, and dialogue is outlandish. I swear there are at least two lines where you can hear the voice artist stifle a laugh. All the while, MS Paint-style graphics offer inspired interpretations of their actions. Arzette remains the only normal person in the cast–a masterstroke that makes you appreciate the overacting even more.
Before you jump into the action, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore adopts the classic, mid-90s storyline trick of peppering its set-up with deliberately contrived excuses for the gameplay to come. To defeat Daimur, you have to dispel dark tapestries to win back the jewel shards. To do this, you need sacred candles. To get these, you need powers and abilities. To find these, you need to strike beacons to dispel fog. To arrive there, you need teleportation scrolls. Of course.
Onto the action
Arzette comes in two difficulties: a classic normal mode where you’re restricted to three hearts per area, and an easier mode with health pickups from fallen enemies. The standard option is the best way to play it, though. It’s initially quite difficult–without timing and planning, you’ll get a few “try again” screens–but it’s the best option if you want a challenge. Thankfully, once you enter a new section, death takes you back to the beginning of it, making things a lot less punishing than they could be.
Platforming in Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is tight, predictable, and bug-free, while enemies are varied, tough, and silly. Early in the game, projectile-throwing baddies prove to be the bane of your existence, but this is quickly counteracted by your first ability: a ring-like shield that absorbs anything thrown your way. This is a sign of things to come–you’ll eventually become armed with bombs, guns, and much more.
Aside from bosses, no enemy takes more than four hits to kill, though you can’t spam them; a grace period gives them temporary immunity between strikes, meaning you have to time your blows carefully. Again, none of these adversaries have any story, which only makes their farcical designs all the more hilarious–expect haunted tree stumps, coal-powered iron soldiers, and dagger-wielding pig men.
Each of the game’s 15 areas is short–even the longest and most difficult levels only take five minutes to clear, with a bit of luck. Initially, they’re restricted to railroaded areas, as paths lie behind barriers you unlock as you get new abilities and weapons. It’s an impressive achievement, as lands unlock and evolve as the game goes on.
Each level also has its fair share of collectibles and challenges, handily marked on the map screen. Chief among these are the bonus levels, fever dreams that encapsulate the acid-house-style madness of 90s special stages that shared precisely nothing with the core game they were attached to. If you win, an announcer shouts “Got Rubies!”, which will uncover involuntary memories in anyone who endured 16-bit gaming in its pomp.
As Arzette’s tale progresses, you’re encouraged to revisit areas for side quests, which grant you a growing range of abilities to unlock new paths. If you’re playing Arzette in short bursts, you may find yourself forgetting where you need to go–the exclamation marks that encourage you to return to certain levels favor small side-quests. On a couple of occasions, I found myself revisiting levels one by one to find which one was the gateway to my next ability or power-up.
Nonetheless, progression is cleverly paced thanks to a range of mini-quests that reward you with game-altering power-ups. Naturally, these are set by even more nonsensical characters you meet along your journey.
To name a few off the top of my head, there’s a spelunking pipe smoker, a lava-bathing SoCal elf, a magical French gunsmith, and a pathetic sailor who doesn’t understand doors. A personal highlight is a fairy, with eyes like dinner plates, who offers you fairy dust with such fervor that you can only assume she’s giving you pre-cut cocaine.
Sprint to the finish
Arzette’s pacing and difficulty have a slight exponential curve. Enemies get tougher, levels get more unforgiving, and sacred candles go from piecemeal rewards to ubiquitous discoveries. Suddenly, you’re in the end game–something that’s over a little too quickly but still feels satisfying.
You can mainline Arzette’s base campaign in around three hours. This might sound a bit short for its $20 price tag, but my playthrough ended with a paltry 51% completion rate, and new characters and story threads appeared until the very end. several late-stage unlockables and abilities, there were still plenty of paths waiting to be explored, and it’s one of those rare games in which you’ll watch the end titles, then jump straight back in.
If you want even more of a challenge, you can order the special edition of Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, which comes with a replica CD-i controller compatible with Switch and PC–a bit of kit that’s true to the original, to the point the D-pad is bang-average and the other inputs don’t make sense, again playing into the game’s ethos of its forerunners being a bit rubbish. Even its promo materials say it “may not be the best way to plat Arzette (or any game, for that matter), but it’s certainly the most authentic!” Too true.
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is a celebration of a long-lost format: games that wanted to be more than games, but lacked the talent to pull it off. The era’s programmers were at the bleeding edge of niche consoles, taking it upon themselves to be designers, voice actors, and scriptwriters, inspiring those who’d learn from their mistakes in the years and decades that followed.
Seedy Eye Software might’ve taken over 30 years to right past wrongs and nearly perfect the imperfectable, but Arzette is a triumph: a best-in-class game for a worst-in-class genre, and hopefully the start of a series that will continue to take things to new heights–even if it needs to be shackled to stupidity to achieve it.
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is now available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
