Critics are sometimes given a reputation for their occasional harshness. You might hear a critic accused of "wanting to hate something" or "looking for things to nitpick." While there are exceptions to every rule, it should be understood that most highly enjoy the medium they've chosen to review; as such, these complaints - in particular the idea that a reviewer might want to hate something - are largely unfounded. This reviewer always tries to play games with a good sense of empathy and excitement for the work of developers, yet wishing something to reach its potential doesn't make it so.
No amount of empathy and excitement can save a misguided project. For most gamers, the ultimate litmus test in determining a video game's worth is a simple question: was it any fun at all? In the unfortunate case of psyscrolr, the answer is likely to be a resounding no. What begins as a strikingly ambitious and beautiful project winds up a psychological endurance test: sloppy programming, inconsistent performance, and an overall lack of polish make this one difficult to recommend.
The potential of psyscrolr is evident the moment you look at the graphics: there is some fantastic pixelart on display here, managing to pull off a considerable amount of detail while remaining appealingly simple. The use of colour is great, as is the variety in the environments; though everything is put together using the same tiles and objects, you'll rarely feel like you're seeing the same thing twice across levels. The character animations are of particular note, flowing smoothly and mimicking real movement quite well considering their simplicity.
While not as impressive, the music and sound also do a great job of bringing atmosphere and personality to the game's world. A particularly nice touch is the voice acting for psyscrolr's cast, from the spunky Scrolr to the sinister Magi. All right, it may not win any awards, and the recording quality leaves a lot to be desired, but it's enthusiastic and effective enough to lend a significant degree of quirky charisma to the title.
Unfortunately, the extent of pyscrolr's charm ends abruptly with its presentation. Considering the level of passion that's visible in every facet of the aesthetic design, it's a crushing disappointment that the most important element - the gameplay - manages to be so downright unenjoyable. This game will test your patience in all the wrong ways, and one of the biggest problems rears its ugly head right from the beginning: the controls are uncomfortable and just don't work very well.
The Scrolr is controlled using the left stick to move and either the L or A button to jump. He's a magic user, though, and that's where the uncomfortable part comes in. In order to use his abilities, you make use of the GamePad's touch screen. In combat, for example, you can tap far away for long-range projectiles, and tap close for a magical blade attack. This is a creative idea, but it presents two major problems: firstly, manoeuvring a platforming character while using the touch screen in combat - something the game requires you to do frequently in boss battles - is uncomfortable and unintuitive. Secondly, the fact that you constantly need to know where you're tapping makes it pretty much pointless to look at the TV at all.
In defence of this choice, you might think the touch screen would help with the accuracy and precision of combat and puzzle-solving. Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case: psyscrolr is maddeningly unreliable when it comes to both touch and collision detection. Combat can be a nightmare just based on the controls alone, but then there's an early-game boss battle where damaging the lightning-fast enemy is a gamble even if contact is clearly made. Even in slow puzzle-solving sections, nothing is consistent: one sloppily executed dilemma requires you to knock a ball into a hole using moving platforms, but the ball's physics once rolling are embarrassingly, almost hilariously, erratic.
All of these problems, important as they are, are really symptoms of psyscrolr's biggest misfire: the game checks off several boxes on the List of Cardinal Sins in Game Design. Obtuse puzzles where little to no explanation or context is offered for the mechanics? Check. A completely unnecessary vehicular section with inexplicably bad controls and roadblocks to make sure you use that darn vehicle? Check. Long, unskippable cutscenes before difficult sections that must be watched again every time you lose? Check. Repetitive, ear-grating dialogue during boss battles? "HOMING FIREBALL!" Er, check. Again, it's a shame, because the game does have a lot of good ideas - but too many of them fall flat in execution simply because they're not fun.
Conclusion
We really wanted to like psyscrolr; it's a beautiful game with a lot of love put into its presentation and design. Unfortunately, it's impossible to recommend in its current state. Uncomfortable, imprecise controls, highly questionable collision detection, and sloppy programming all add up to a pretty miserable experience. Actos Games has plans to release DLC, but unless this content fixes some of the engine's core problems, all it's likely to do is add more frustration.
Comments 19
That sucks, it looked really nice.
I had my worries when they first announced the game and, mainly, its control scheme. But they assured it worked better in practice than in theory and the trailers looked good so I remained hopeful.
I'll still keep an eye on this in case patches clear up some of the problems and I'll find a few more reviews hoping this reviewers bad experience wasn't the same for everyone. This is one I'm still interested in, so, while I'm disappointed, I'm still hoping for the best.
A real shame. But at the same time, it leaves some hope, since most of these issues sound like they can be corrected through patches in a comparably small time frame - hopefully, the developers realize this chance to set right what went wrong here.
That is to bad, it looks like a game that has potential.
Why they didn't use the right analog stick for long-range attacks is beyond me. Seems obvious.
@BLPs It's a journalistic style thing. Many publications, including NL, frown upon using first person perspective in articles and reviews. In place of that, we often write "we" (as if we're speaking AS the collective publication) or "this writer/reviewer" to avoid that. It comes across as a little strange sometimes, but that's journalism.
Glad I got it for free by backing another game. Everything annoying that Jowi brought up is literally in the first world. The lack of polish is unsettling. I don't mind the game forcing me to look at the touch screen, though I am surprised nobody's capitalized on the asymmetry it opens up.
I can't fault a game for wanting to use the damn touchpad, but there are exactly three ways to use it. 100% touch, a support screen you only need to briefly poke (if at all), or don't. The touch pad has the same issue my 3DS XL has when I need its touch screen; its too heavy to wield one handed when you need to work buttons too. (Ironically, the stand they give you with Kid Icarus is a godsend for the XL) The weight issue is only made worse by the decision to use the L button to jump, when there is a ZL button happily living on the ridge Nintendo put there to make holding the thing comfortable.
Also, am I the only one who thinks controlling a 2D game with a thumbstick is awkward? If there's no variance of speed, the Dpad works just fine. But no, Psyscrolr demands you play it's way. Blek. It's not a nightmare, but you feel every moment of poor design.
Unless they fix the issues I am going to have to pass on this one. There are too many great games I have yet to play to make me even consider an ok one.
@BLPs Definitely! It's a bit of a weird position for me, because as reviewers we're writing from two perspectives simultaneously — we're giving both our individual opinion as well as representing NL's take on a game. It can get confusing.
My reasoning this time around stems from the fact that the conclusion portion of our reviews usually appear on Metacritic and other critical aggregation sites, so I switched to the collective pronoun to speak in my capacity as NL's representative.
It's not technically grammatically correct in that it lacks clarity, but again — it's a weird stylistic thing (like AP style dropping Oxford commas, which I also think hurts clarity). I'm pretty sure most people who read these reviews are aware that we are writing in a dual role and understand that "we" means the publication and not necessarily an actual collective.
Either way, the consensus seems to be that the game's disappointing — look, there's our collective! (Just kidding.)
This is a real shame, because I actually liked what I saw in the trailer. Oh well. Moving on to the next potentially great indie game.
Thanks for the criticism Jowi! We're taking it to heart and releasing a patch ASAP to fix some of the issues (block puzzle, controls). Glad to fix them!
@ActosGames Sounds wonderful!
We also apologize for the state the game was in when it was released. Our first foray into GamePad-exclusive controls and we know better now. Especially after feedback we've received we are dedicated to not only improving the game, but releasing great content additions.
@ActosGames awesome!! Get that patch and dlc going and I'm in!! Great to see a developer who cares!! Nothing worse than buying a video game that you end up not playing due to a difficult control scheme! Thanks and I look forward to the corrections!
@ActosGames Oh my goodness, this is so great to hear! I have to be honest, it's never been more painful for me to give a bad score — I specifically requested to review this one because the trailer got me so excited.
I can't overstate how outstanding it is to see a developer taking responsibility and listening to criticism. I know it's probably not the easiest thing to do, but there's clearly so much passion in this project and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
I'll be looking forward to seeing where this goes in the future! Keep up that awesome attitude!
To put it simply, yes, it is poor form to move between the singular first person in one paragraph and a collective pronoun in the next. It's weird. We get the 'we' bit, that wasn't the point'. The point was mixing 'I' and 'we', and it was a correct and useful one.
One can create a videogame starting from the gameplay and then adding the graphics, one can do the opposite. Result may vary.
A pity, it could have been fun.
@HylianJowi "In defence of this choice"
NL is always poking fun at NintendoNuggets for grammar, love the irony here.
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