ScaryGirl

**Tenlo** on Thu Jan 26, 2012 8:41 am

By

TikGames

Price: 800MSP

For many of you the name ScaryGirl will have no meaning whatsoever so its worth actually giving some background to her and her world first. The creation of Australian illustrator Nathan Jurevicius she began life as an online comic before being put in a Flash game which become hugely popular (and still available to play for free). Her tales are usually slightly off-kilter and are often reinterpretations of folklore, but are most famous for the psychedelic and dream-like artwork. So for some ScaryGirl will be a new way to explore her world, but for most of us it's a completely new franchise.

ScaryGirl herself is a bizarre orphan raised by an Octopus called Blister. She has a patch over one eye and a tentacle instead of an arm which is usually found holding a hook. The story itself is just as bizarre with it beginning with ScaryGirl being waken by Blister to investigate the fact that there are leaves floating about which seem to have fallen from the Tree of Knowledge. Confused yet? You probably will be as it seems the writers have assumed that players will have some previous knowledge of the characters. Throughout the game you meet new characters with little explanation about who they are or what they do, which means you get little connection with ScaryGirl and her world. In fact I found the story made a little bit more sense after doing some research into the characters and background though I assume actually reading some of the stories would help more.

The game itself is a 2.5D platformer meaning its essentially a 2D platformer where you will occasionally move into or away from the screen while still maintaining the the 2D plane. You basically have to get from A to B on each level while defeating enemies and the occasional boss. The enemies come in a variety of shapes and sizes and in fact its refreshing to see a game which doesn't have colour swapped enemies and introduces new enemies with different attack patterns in each world. The combat itself is the usual attacks of light, heavy and throw with new combos and weapons available to buy from merchants in various locations. Bosses are of the old school variety where you have to learn move patterns and utilise the space around you to defeat them. There is also a drop in/drop out 2-Player option where a second player can play as ScaryGirls mystic Rabbit guru and help the main character out.

However the game does suffer from the dreaded floaty physics of modern platformers. ScaryGirl maintains momentum when she jumps which wouldn't be bad if some of the platforms were quite small. On more than one occasion I found myself dying repeatedly on the same jump just because she would not quite stay still when she landed. Also the jump mechanic is slightly off as any press of the jump button longer than a second causes ScaryGirl to perform a hovering helicopter move with her tentacle arm. Although this is handy for gauging jumps, sometimes you only need to do a small controlled jump and it becomes frustrating to over shoot the mark due to her almost automatic hovering. I also found a rather over-powered enemy towards the end of the game who I found particularly difficult to beat in large numbers. Although they were not impossible to defeat, this jarring difficulty spike was definitely noticeable whenever they appeared. On the plus side regular checkpoints meant that some frustration was removed as it seemed the designers knew where these difficulty spikes were going to be preventing repeated playing of the same areas.

Graphically the game is stunning. The dream-like artwork of the characters sits perfectly with the world and each location and enemy is brightly coloured and surreal. Personally it reminded me of the style of Samurai Jack artist Genndy Tartakovsky which I love and it is certainly one of the games strongest points. Sadly audio-wise the same can't be said. Although the sound effects and the parts of narration are well done, although the voice of the narrator gets a bit tiresome by the end of the game, the music itself is very plain and dull and nothing is going to be stuck in your head at any point. In fact there were times I had to stop and actually try to distinguish if there was any music playing at all or whether it was all sound effects.

Achievements will come readily to begin with and I managed to accumulate 130GS from just one play-through. The final two achievements will take some time to get especially the Winning achievement which requires a perfect status for each of the 21 levels. This entails getting every gem, destroying every weed and not dying once on each level, where the main difficulty will be not dying as some levels have some nasty platform sections to contend with.

Overall this is a great little platformer marred by some awkward controls and the almost traditional floaty physics of the main character. If you enjoy tough platformers which will bring back memories of the old-school I'd highly recommend it, though don't expect much of the story unless your a fan of the series.

Score - 7/10