[#6] Well I'm Certainly Scarred Now...

Review by beast4321 on Sunday, August 20th 2017

Well this game is by Therandomuser.

Its a platformer, which I am painfully aware of from the thumbnail. The blockhead stares back at me from a plain white background that almost hurts my eyes its so bland. The random user had requested I review this on my page. Its the first review request I've actually had, despite the fact that my profile does ask for review requests, I've had almost none.

So what is the game like? Expectations are low, I've had a completely random request of a member I've never heard with no publicity at all. All I have to go on is a poor thumb nail with a complete lack of anything, the only noticeable thing the absence of things. His other games don't looks impressive either.

Scars is a very odd game. I don't mind odd. Sometimes odd is good. A completely unique which experiments with various oddities can often turn out brilliantly. This is not a good odd though.

I will now analyse this game before answering the all important question; is Scars feature worthy?

Story:

There is no story to scars. This disappoints me. Scars is a pretty cool title, and from this and the thumbnail I was hoping for some grim, black and white puzzle plat about someone in a coma on a mental quest to waking up. I think that'd be really cool. Feel free to use that story, Therandomuser, I think that actually having a story for your next game, a reason for it to exist, would be of benefit. It would certaintly make the game a lot less odd. And I wouldn't mind no story too much if there was more substance to this game. Instead, all the lack of anything commendable does is draw attention to the purposelessness of the player running along a dozen corridors. All the description declares is "short but hard"

Like your brain.

Gameplay:

(As lots of elements go into gameplay, I will analyse them all before explaining the combinded effect.)

We'll start with placement and level design:

How to say this?

Pro tip: Only design games when you are sober.

Level design, to be perfectly honest, is a mess. Its a series of random sequences all with random doors in random places, like halfway up walls, or sometimes even missing the walls themselves! Therandomuser, is there a door halfway up a wall in your house? No? REALLY? DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT BE TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT ARCHITECTS AREN'T DRUNK WHEN THEY DESIGN HOUSES?

And that says it all. There is a sequence where you drop down what really should be a vertical tunnel but isn't due to a lack of walls, so you can fall out. If you don't, then you land on an orange perm switch, which sticks out like a sore thumb, and then move into a teleporter which just stands in the middle of nowhere, like a drunk who designs a game and forgets that teleporters should really be put against walls because if you don't you can jump over it and escape the game.

Oopsy.

Play this game. Try escaping it. I achieved it twice. See if you can beat that. In a game that can be played in half a minute, that's appalling level design.

The entire game is a series of floating tunnels and rooms with no regard for the laws of nature. Now if that had been justified, perhaps by the story, then that would've been fine. If this had been a tale of a mental struggle it would've made sense. If if if. As it is, its messy.

And the placement gets worse. There is the most bizzarest seqeunce were four incongruously placed steamers launch the player up into a few probes, but the sequence is placed in such a way that all the probes but one have flown past you out of range, so you take almost no damage. Right after there is a crusher so you can escape the probes almost immediately, and I was just left thinking, what? Every action sequence is a string of randomly placed hazards that you can run through with almost no damage taken, or that you take lots of damage for for an unfair reason.

Puzzles and traps:

This paragraph is likely going to be the only positive one. The puzzles in scarred are interesting. The first one in particular was very clever. You're stuck in a room and have to try and work out how to get out. This would be difficult, but in the thumbnail, you can see an invisible switch which breaks a burst tile. This was a very clever idea, and not something I've seen before. I only hesitate in calling it unique due to my lack of experience with puzzle plats, but credit where it's due.

A while later, you have another puzzle. You have a one way door on either side of you. The two doors look like the only way out, but they only lead to pits of lava, so if you step through them you are effectively trapped. Many players will try and explore these two rooms, not realising that the invisible switch trick is once more in play. The first bit of the game is definitely the best, and that is simply due to the puzzles. However, after the switch puzzle is repeated for the fourth time, it becomes simply annoying. What stops the puzzle being good is a lack of consistency; after all, jumping madly at a wall does not make a game; a solid flow of new ideas does, something this game doesn't even try.

Difficulty and Gameplay

I have combined these two paragraphs because Scars is a short game, and two short paragraphs makes no sense when I could fit everything into one. Scars is hard. For all the wrong reasons.

Losing health is fine in most circumstances. In a fight with an AI, it is almost certain you will take some damage. That's fine. What isn't is having sloppy gameplay which effectively gives you no choice but to take damage for things that aren't your fault. There are about twenty laser beams on top of each other once, and due to the lag as you step through them, you take a fair bit of damage. There is another sequence where you dive under a crusher where a Mongol waits. There are also two turrets in range, so there is no way to get past that without getting a face full of lasers. The fact is that the action in this is simply too cramped. It tries to force every single enemy and hazard into a few corridors and the lack of placement means that too much is happening at once. The first part of the game is fine, but the action in the second isn't. Therandomuser, I get you were trying to have a couple of adrenalin filled battles, but spread things out in your next game. Add some health as well. Having a wall of enemies doesn't work. Try testing sequences as well so that they work better.

Scenery:

There is no scenery in Scars. The tile selection is clearly random as it is first purple tiles, then the default tile, both on a background showing ice, all of which is very random. A few statues at the least would've been nice. The only other I can mention is the use of slopes and stairs which give the game a nice rounded feel. As there's nothing else to it, I'm going to cut this paragraph short.

Ratings:

Story: N.A

Placement: /_____

Puzzles: ___/_____

Difficulty: _/_____

Gameplay: __/_____

Scenery: _/_____

Overall: __/_____

Conclusion:

Therandomuser, this isn't a bad game. You used burst tiles very well and the slopes look nice. This may sound half and I'm sorry, but it's the truth. I think that if you added some scenery and a bit more consistency with... Well everything, you'd make something good. Just keep trying.

Everyone else, thanks for reading! If you want a review, please tell me, and I will take a look at it. I'm not on the forums so I actually encourage advertising on my page. Ask me to review something and I probably will.

Bye now!