Adventures of Lolo - Floor 9

This was one of those series that always looked intriguing to me back when it came out on the NES, but that I never got into. I'm kind of glad I didn't, because at age nine, I don't think I would have appreciated it.

Adventures of Lolo is a puzzle game where on each level, the screen is divided into a grid. Your character, Lolo, starts on one square of the grid and the other squares are populated by environmental objects like trees, water, and desert, enemies of various sorts, and items like emerald framers, heart framers, and the treasure chest. On each level, you have to figure out how to collect all of the heart framers and the jewel from the chest without being killed by enemies or trapped by either enemies or the environmental objects. Since enemies always behave the same, the game requires logical thinking of how to block them in/avoid them so as to get everywhere you need to go. A lot of the game is block-pushing puzzles (like Sokoban), but the addition of the enemies adds a new and more interesting element.

I'm generally a huge fan of logic puzzles and this game is very fulfilling in that regard. The ramp up in difficulty is very nice. Each floor has five rooms and, once learning the pattern of how enemies work, I didn't really have much trouble until floor 6 or so. After several hours of play, I've managed to get up to floor 9 where I couldn't immediately solve a room and took a break.

In all, I'm really surprised at how awesome this game is. I guess it holds up well since the game is mostly puzzles, but this will definitely make it into my Top 50 NES games list whenever I decide to make a new iteration of that.