I’d never heard of the Timberman series of games, but had strangely known of how they play, due to enjoying Arcade Paradise as it featured a mini-game strikingly similar to the original Timberman. Anyway, developer Digital Melody and publisher Forever Entertainment S. A. bring you Timberman: The Big Adventure.

“Follow the lumberjack’s story and join him on a rescue mission to help his bear friend reunite with the family. Challenge Evil Corp not only to save friends but also the entire forest from the hands of industrialization.”

I’m getting straight to the point with this review. Timberman: The Big Adventure is great. It does away with the simple, chop-down trees via a rhythm-based mechanic of the original game (though that is a hidden extra in this) and goes for a full-on action-platformer instead.

Playing as Timberman, or his bear friend called… Mr Bear, you’ll be running and jumping around levels, rescuing critters, collecting coins, avoiding traps, cutting down trees and yelling “TIMBER!” a lot. Timberman: The Big Adventure is straight-up, 16-bit stylised platforming fun. There are secrets to find, enemies to smash, bosses to defeat and even a few semi-puzzles to solve.

With a really striking and cute-looking art style, Timberman: The Big Adventure’s looks can be a tad deceiving because, this does get pretty tricky in the later levels. Still without being punishingly hard, the game has a very nice difficulty curve that just slowly but surely ramps up the more you play and is a really great game to enjoy in co-op with a friend. Timberman: The Big Adventure is a modern-retro game with a lot of charm and great gameplay that is just so damn fun to play. It took me back to the SNES days and that’s a good thing.

I do have a bit of a niggle with this though. Whenever I’d start a new level or lose a life, the game would start in two-player mode automatically with the second character on screen, even though I was only playing in single-player mode. I’d have to go into the menu and disable the second player each and every time. Yup, this got pretty annoying and is a bug that I hope the devs will fix. Other than that, I couldn’t find any fault.

Only £5! Yup, that is how much Timberman: The Big Adventure will cost you (or less, depending on the platform)… and I was genuinely surprised. Honestly, you get a lot of game for your money here, it’s a great game too. I was expecting a bigger price tag on this one. For £5, this is an absolute steal as this is a tip-top old-school platformer that gives you s lot of genuinely great gameplay for a low price. If you like retro platformers, then this is an absolute must-buy. In fact, it’s so cheap that you should buy a copy for a friend too. Available now on PC and all the consoles. TIMBER!