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Once I approached this as a puzzle game instead of as an RPG, it made a whole lot more sense. Completed Ep. 1 and 2. Looking forward to 3, 4, and 5. It's a fun little diversion! Neat little character graphics and absolutely stonking music.

Cool. I suspected the shop thing was a bug as I did notice the behavior you describe (shop out of stock after buying something, dying, and restarting), but I didn't want to call it out explicitly :-) I'll try playing it the way you describe, which makes it seem more like a puzzle game and less like an RPG adventure. I did fling you a couple of bucks for Ep. 1. I'll grab Ep. 2 with that updated version of Ep. 1 now I guess.

Wells have no water, constantly get poisoned, hardly any food anywhere, shops never have anything in stock, strength runs out so quickly... has this been playtested? Just seems so hard to progress anywhere. I'm really enjoying the mechanics and the presentation (both sound and graphics), but it just seems like the odds are weirdly stacked against the player. Is it just a case of trying over and over until you get a lucky run? I'll keep trying, I guess.

Woohoo, finally finished on normal difficulty. Had been holding out for the physical version, but as that's taking so long, I downloaded and played on my UII+ plugged into original hardware. Played through legitimately without cheats or save states. Man was it tough, took a couple of weeks on and off, but it was worth it. Fantastic game beautifully presented. It's oldskool, so you don't get mid-level checkpoints or free saves. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it provides a good challenge and a greater sense of satisfaction when you beat a level. On the other hand, it was hard to figure out exactly what you're supposed to be doing at many points, so you end up going all over the map and flailing around trying to avoid flying enemies in an often fruitless attempt to figure out what on Earth the next task is. Very frustrating, and a lot of deaths felt a bit cheap because of this. You can try to read the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen for hints, but you'll often find your hands too full avoiding airborne pests to pay attention to the scroller. Levels 2-5 may have benefited from being split into two. The fairly easy (once you figure it out) surface section of Level 5, for instance, was absolute tedium to complete every single time just to get to the challenging underground part, which is what I needed to spend time practicing. Split that surface section off into a mini level, I say. It's beautiful, just like the rest of the game, and fun on its own, and it deserves to be in there, but not as a speed bump. Don't make me perform a menial task over and over just so I can get at the main part of the level. The pestilent and incessantly respawing flying enemies in later levels can be utter killjoys. They will converge on your position, and if they manage to reach your little piggy before you can blast them out of the air, they will smother the poor blighter. Once they're on top of you, you can't just blast them--you have to move left or right and then fire a shot back at them. The problem is that this can sometimes be nigh on impossible in confined spaces. Watch on hopelessly as your health is drained quite unfairly in these situations. Upon contact, such enemies should, having taken away some of your health, themselves perish. Controls are responsive, and the platforming is spot on, for the most part. Music and SFX are great. The variety of tracks is wonderful and each is appropriate to the setting. Graphically, the game is an absolute feast, a true labor of love. Just visually stunning all the way through, never boring for a second. This game is a masterpiece.

The shooting controls are clunky and stopping on every screen to spot cheaply hidden baddies quickly gets tedious. Atlantis was way more enjoyable. I've only just picked this game up and it already feels like a slog. I'm going to give it a few more goes on original hardware, but if it annoys me any further, out comes the emulator and save states. Graphically it's nice, though.

They flash in the C64 version of Bounty Bob Strikes Back

I agree with AmyMor's assessment, but I think you misunderstand.  There's no need for less-demanding levels. The difficulty itself is fine. In fact, making it easier would make it less engaging, in my opinion. It's the fact that you only have 3 lives and no continues that is frustrating. Once you learn a level, it becomes quite a bit easier and a lot more satisfying. But it takes quite a lot of tries on some levels to learn how to do it properly. For me at least, having to play through all the earlier levels again and again just to have another 3 tries at, say, Level 6 is really annoying and time consuming. I have a job and a family; I don't have time to grind through 5 levels all day just to have a couple of shots at the one level I'm trying to practice. In the end, I just grabbed a trained version off CSDb so I could practice it with infinite lives (I did pay for the official version too, though, just fyi). This made it soooo much more enjoyable. It's a great game and I love it, and once I'm good at all the levels, I'm hoping to run through it on a single life, or at least on a single credit.

I know I could boot up Vice and use save states too, but it's so much more fun on a breadbin and CRT!

Also, I know this is a classic arcade style game, and maybe that's why you only give the player 3 lives and no continues. But in the arcade, the whole point of being stingy with lives was to make the player drop coins into the machine, not to make it impossible to get good at the game in a reasonable timeframe. And remember that some of the best arcade conversions for home systems gave you a bunch of credits to have fun with. I know, though, that a lot of home console games in the 80s were pretty difficult and stingy with lives too. But it's 2022 now, dude. At the very least, I would suggest providing a feature to allow the player to practice any level of choice in isolation. But then again, if you're a tragic C64 fanboi, you know where to find trainers, pokes, and the like anyway...

Like I said, I love the game, and I'm definitely going to be playing this for while. Great graphics, music, controls, and gameplay. If I had to gripe (apart from the time-consuming lives thing), I would say this. (a) Your robot feels like a snail. Does he have lead boots or something? (b) Some of the hazards are too hard to see at first. Once you've learned a level, you know where they are, so it doesn't matter so much. But initially, it's extremely frustrating to die because you brushed past a spike that's barely visible or blended into the background, or fall through a platform that you can't stand on (despite it initially looking like you can stand on it). These are cheap deaths, and it's very easy to lose all your lives in short order because of this and have to return all the way back to the start of the world, making it take longer and longer to learn the level that's giving you problems. Arrrrrrgh. But this complaint would be pretty much erased if you provided a level practice feature. (c) This is hands down the most annoying thing for me: Why the heck do you die just because you bump into the ceiling? Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh, so dumb. I hate it when games do cheap stuff like that.

But to end on a positive note: It's awesome, thanks for making this.