The Perfect Pencil

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Spoilers! Watch ourt developers did not mark the choice for Endings in a decent way and lock you out of ending during playtrough! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thatt 1 thing above killed all excitement from competing the game, spending 15+ hours into the game just for the knowledge that "You got robbed" Otherwise it's nicely made. Fun combat decent powers and map. Can be criptic at times. @Developers please mark the point of no return better for the players! At least give them big warning... Maybe add a save duplication option... Something!

A video review can be watched here: https://youtu.be/JBbVPw1yyX4 For those who do not wish to watch the video: Playtime: 19 hours Completion Rate: About 90% (with 2 out of reportedly 6 endings achieved) Pros: - The Perfect Pencil tackles some very serious subject matter, with the nature of fear, shame and the lengths to which people are willing to go in order to avoid discomfort being dominant themes that permeate nearly every aspect of the plot in interesting ways. Its incredibly imaginative world is densely populated by a large cast of strange and eccentric characters, all of whom have a very specific role to fulfil, with each and every one of them being largely symbolic not only of certain human emotions but also the reasoning behind said emotions, which in turn leads to some surprisingly insightful conversations that may appear simplistic at first, but get progressively profound the more you think about them. - The game boasts some of the most meaningfully creative biomes I have had the pleasure of traversing, all of which hold intense symbolism related to aspects of the human condition, effectively giving way to multilayered interpretations of their design. - The map overview is incredibly detailed in terms of logistical structure as well as background art, making it very easy to locate major points of interest. Map rooms are not immediately visible the moment you enter them, but require of you to break a number of orbs hidden in each room in order for their outline to appear on the overview, at which point they also mark the locations of save points, some important NPCs, merchants as well as fast travel locations. - Platforming-wise, The Perfect Pencil doesn’t really do anything to stand out, though the few somewhat challenging acrobatic sections it featured were still enjoyable. You’re not going to find anything that will test your mettle here, but I would be lying if I said that you won’t need at least a bit of skill to get through some of its trickier parts. - The same can be said about the game’s combat, which is completely straightforward and simplistic, though does work well for what it aims to be. In essence, John is only capable of taking down enemies in melee by using his pencil sword, which actually carries some satisfying weight, making each hit feel hefty and powerful. Your battle prowess is further enhanced by the aforementioned perspectives, which are trinkets that you can equip either through save points or by finding a special merchant, and function as balanced offerings by simultaneously providing a positive and negative effect, thus bringing some serious tactical thinking to the table. Each perspective evolves as you’re using it, for a maximum of two evolutions, resulting in more powerful versions that yield even greater advantages but also more detrimental disadvantages, effectively becoming the epitome of high-risk, high-reward trinkets. Switching between perspective mutations does cost Babls, so think carefully about your loadout to avoid unnecessary costs. You start off with only one perspective slot available, but can unlock more by purchasing them from a merchant for a maximum of four total slots. Healing is carried out during combat and is the result of a powered strike that you activate at the cost of courage, which returns one point of health to you if your attack lands successfully and can be repeated as long your courage meter has enough juice, which you replenish by hitting enemies and special flowers. - Moving on to bosses, the big bads here were actually quite fun to fight, though most of them felt weaker that I would have liked. In essence, while their attack patterns were really fun to anticipate and avoid, I think a lot of the villains here could have used a larger health bar, since the vast majority was defeated relatively quickly to the point where they came across more like mini-bosses. That’s not to say that they were not a threat, but adding a couple more minutes to their fights would have benefited their overall danger levels. Still, they did give me a good time for as long as our bouts lasted, so they get a thumbs up! Cons: - As much as I enjoyed the game's engaging story, ironically, it is that very narrative depth that ends up being a double-edged sword, at times working in favor of the game while others against it. You see, when I said that the game’s setting is home to many NPCs, I wasn’t exaggerating. The Perfect Pencil probably has the biggest number of interactable characters I have seen in a metroidvania, and almost all of them have a good number of dialogue lines to offer. Now, while I normally don’t have an issue with dialogue-heavy instances in metroidvanias, the problem here is that this aspect of the game can frequently result in disruptions related to pacing. In general, many of the characters in the game relate to a certain theme depending on the biome you are traversing, meaning that most of them would speak to me about the same thing but from a slightly different perspective, making some instances of dialogue engaging while others redundant and, consequently, rendering the disruption of my gameplay flow a bit frustrating. It also didn’t help that, at times, the game can be vague about what it is that you need to do to progress by explaining your next goal in a whimsical way that, while thematically appropriate, is also cryptic, effectively resulting in instances of just wandering across the map in search of meaningful progress, something that was mostly prominent around the middle of the adventure. One last thing that affected the game’s pacing was the inclusion of several mini-games and riddles that you could partake in. Now, while I do enjoy the occasional distraction from the main goal when it comes to metroidvanias, and am always up for a good brainteaser, some of the mini-games here, while in line with the game’s themes, kind of overstayed their welcome, and some of the riddles, most of which were aimed toward you figuring out codes for door locks, were quite tricky to solve, at least for me, resulting in the impression that, at times, I was playing a point and click adventure game disguised as a metroidvania. - When it comes to the map, the game doesn’t offer any way to mark collectibles on the it, neither automatically nor manually, which can be a cause of frustration since it forces you to solely rely on your memory if you want to go for 100% completion. - The fast travel system is very, very inconvenient. Aside from the fact that you unlock it considerably late in the game, said system takes the form of specific shortcuts which connect biomes together, with all of them being accessible via a central hub room. The main problem with this system is that, in order to access it, you need to walk to one of the shortcuts, thus leading to inconvenient traversal if you want to get from one biome to another quicker that you would on foot. You do eventually gain access to an item that can teleport you to the hub, but that item is optional and some people might miss it, so there’s that. - Speaking about inconvenient traversal, the early hours of the game were plagued by some runbacks, which were the result of sparse save points in combination with lack of early, or efficient, fast-traveling, leading to me having to do long walks back to the point that I perished, though, to be fair, said runbacks were always eventually eliminated by the opening of great shortcuts, so the scales balanced out. TL:DR: All in all, The Perfect Pencil is a worthwhile game that boasts a very emotional and meaningful narrative, even if gameplay sometimes takes a backseat in favor of it. If you enjoy story-driven metroidvanias you should definitely give it a chance, but, if not, then this probably won't change your mind. Final Grade: 7.2/10

我就想问一句，旅馆选择睡100小时直接减少两格血上限是哪个小天才设计出来的啊？也没人提示说这么普普通通的选择会有这么严重的不可逆的惩罚啊，是个正常人的游戏这么严重的惩罚前不提示玩家？本来类银探图是最大的乐趣，你这么一整我连血上限都没了怎么探啊？你哪怕直接在告诉我去哪里可以把血上限还给我我都不说什么了，然后在那里谜语人说这是给你的惩罚，后面也许会还给你。怎么你强行惩罚玩家还说是玩家自己选的惩罚，我玩了1000+h类银了，第一次写测评想骂人，怎么会有这么离谱的设计的啊？莫名其妙一个毫无提示的选项，强行扣除玩家血上限，然后还嘲讽一句你自己选的，我知道选了有什么后果啊？逆天设计师

This game has the infamous UNITY STUTTER issue. I have contacted the devs on reddit. Hopefully together we can get this game fixed. It is the biggest issue with the game by far. Aside from that, this game stands out for its originality despite being a soulslike metroidvania. Instead of cornifer or no map you have cornifer orbs in each room to find, which reveal the whole room when you destroy all orbs. The orbs also give you money, which is pretty cool. You have charms that evolve as you wear them, and of course the setting of the game is completely different from a soulslike metroidvania. After having played 19 hours I have unfortunately dropped this game, I just wasnt having fun anymore. There is no single reason for this, it is a toxic combination of features in the game that, by themself are perfectly fine, but which combined eventually sap all the fun out of this game. Those features are: 1, the lack of any warp gates, 2 a somewhat linear world design, 3 the corpse run loot (if it triggers) being in a random hidden location that you may or may not find, and... uh. I forgot the 4th one. Ultimately, I think this should not have been a metroidvania, it would have worked really great as a 2D platformer.

プレイしていて、あまり気持ち良い部分がない作品でした。 たぶん私が選択肢を間違えて選んでしまったせいだと思うのですが、選択肢（主人公のセリフ）で個人を乏しめないと進めないような状況になったので、そこでギブアップです。 他にも色々な場面で選択肢が登場しますが、一癖二癖ある選択肢が多く、終始選びづらいな…と思いながらプレイしていました。 〇選択肢のこと以外で気になったところ ・どっちにいこうかな、と進んでみたら、前のステージに戻れなくなった。 ファストトラベルは後半あたりでできるようになるとのことですが、そこまで続かなかった。 ・雑魚キャラからの被弾が多く、ゲームオーバーになりやすいが、体力回復もしづらいし、セーブポイントも少ない。 まず雑魚キャラはみな攻撃間隔が短くスパアマです。 それに対して主人公は歩くのがちょっと遅いし、攻撃の振りもちょっと遅いのでかなり丁寧に立ち回らないと被弾します。 被弾してもささっと回復できれば上記は気にならなかったと思いますが、雑魚を倒してもHP回復なアイテムは落とさないし、回復の仕方も独特です。 一応回復の手順を書きますと、敵を殴ったときにもらえるゲージがある程度たまるとLTボタン長押しで光をまとうことが出来ます。 その状態のまま敵を殴るとHPが1回復します。（体力の初期値は３） まとった光は３秒くらい？で消えてしまうので、それまでに雑魚キャラを殴る必要があります。 この回復手段と被弾が多い雑魚キャラとが負のシナジーを生み出していて、プレイするのがきつかったです。 加えて、セーブポイントが本当に少ないんですね。 一応ある程度ダンジョンを攻略すると、ショートカットが出来るようになってはいるのですが、ショートカット作るならセーブポイントもっとくれ…と切実に思いました。 ・主人公の攻撃とため攻撃で出てくるエフェクトより当たり判定が若干短い。 このせいで、今の当たらなかったの！？→被弾のパターンも多かったです。 ・若干ではあるがマップが見づらいし、アイコンになって表示されるNPCと表示されないNPCとがいるのでちょっとやりづらかった。 開発者様が独自性をだしたい！と思ったところが私にはあいませんでした。 対戦ありがとうございました。

The perfect pencil is the most confusing metroidvania i've ever played, from a complete nonsensical story with unclear endings to gameplay systems that are obtuse, random and hard to understand. It's also the most dialogue bloated metroidvania i've ever played, and i suffered through every conversation in nine sols. At least that game had consistent writing and some really good moments but this one has at least twice as many with no quality to show for it. Every single conversation is filled with so many filler lines that are both nonsensical and meant to pad out gametime. In my roughly 15 hours of playing i must've spent at least two full hours reading lines which you can't skip over as progression is tied to SOME dialogues. Which ones you ask? God knows, because there's no rime or reason to them so you end up having to speak to everyone to not get stuck. I'm a fast reader as well so it might take some people EVEN longer to get through the game. It doesn't even form a satisfying or coherent narrative because you can't make sense of it. It deals with heavy themes and subject matter such as depression, resolve and hope but it does them a disservice by constantly shifting between serious and ridiculous. It's trying very hard to be deep and introspective but fails spectacularly. I thought that maybe it would all fall into place in the end but there's a new character introduced right at the end which came out of nowhere. If i could do the other endings i might make some sense of it but i had no clue how to achieve these as there's no logic or explanation for them anywhere. Afterwards i found out by a dev comment in the steam discussions that there is a point of no return choice which isn't telegraphed at all (the game hints at there only being one choice). So i'm effectively locked out of some endings but worse yet a vital movement ability. Yes the movement upgrades, a core aspect of a metroidvania, are locked behind a nonsensical story choice. Thus i was unable to fully explore the map, something i always strive for in my MV's but i sure as hell wasn't gonna start a new playthrough. In fact i missed many achievements because i simply have no idea how to unlock them, completionists beware. If you wanna try and find everything you'll mostly find items that do nothing but give you even more reading. In the first hours i read all of those, hopeful for some context but about halfway through i stopped bothering. You also need codes every now and then to open special doors which are found (in)directly in these notes but they're the same for everyone so i just found them in the steam forums. This wasn't the only time i had to find outside help because at certain points in the game your character gets a negative effect that limits your explorable area to that biome untill you do a specific thing that is very poorly described. These moments signified by a green note were terribly annoying but not the only time the game takes away your agency without warning. Right at the end near the bottom of the map your fast travel is dissabled untill you reach the final biome at the top of the map. You thus have to cross the ENTIRE map without fast travel for no reason at all. Not like the fast travel is that usefull anyways as first of all it only unlocks after like 10 hours and is annoyingly tedious to use. Going from one fast travel point to another takes you to a hub first which then takes upwards of a minute to navigate before you can come out the other end. At least navigating the world is somewhat fun due to decent level design filled with unlockable shortcuts which alleviates backtracking a bit but not enough to counteract the massive map and poor fast travel. There's tons of secrets to find though and they're well telegraphed which makes exploration suprisingly fun. However as mentioned before it's not rewarding since most things you find are just meaningless trinkets. The whole progression in the game is rather undercooked as you barely feel stronger by the end. Especially since the one thing that does increase your power, the charms or 'perspectives', always come with a major downside that often just makes them unusable. Otherwise you barely have any progression while enemies get a lot tankier as the game goes on. Which leads me to one of the worst aspects of the game, the combat. There's nothing inherently wrong with it except for the fact that this game has the most annoying healing mechanic known to mankind. Not only do you have to build up 'courage' by hitting enemies, you then have to channel to imbue your weapon with a healing strike before having to actually hit them with it to gain a heal. If you're not fast enough it times out, if you miss the attack it's gone, if you get hit it wears off. This single mechanic ruins the otherwise decent combat since you get hit easily and often as the dash has no I-frames and there's contact damage... You also get knocked back very far if you take damage which makes enemies a nuissance during exploration. Regular enemies are fine albeit way too tanky but the bosses are something else... For starters there's no boss health bars but they're also VERY tanky. Openings to heal are limited as even building up the 'courage' is hard given the few opportunities to attack. That is because most bosses love to teleport all over the place, often right on top of you, dealing contact damage... Combat as a whole is just frustrating because of this, further compounded by two of my least favorite mechanics, corpe running and runbacks. If you die there's a chance a thief takes all your currency and you'll have to find him hidden somewhere so you can scan him and get it back. Not that this currency has much usage as shops barely give anything worthwhile with the exception of one dude who gives new combat moves, which were usefull. The aforementioned runbacks are the real dealbreaker though, every biome has two at most three checkpoints which are miles apart. They're often quite a ways of from the bosses too which makes these frustrating encounters even worse. Fortunately the platforming is pretty solid thanks to tight controls and fun platforming sections but since the combat sprinkled inbetween is so annoying and the exploration being so unrewarding this aspect is overshadowed a bit. Still credit where it's due, the platforming and level design is solid and uncovering parts of the map by breaking map 'beads' was a fun loop in its own right. The map is massive and it's nicely interconnected with suprising passages and halways looping back on themself. During your exploration you will come across many strange places as this game has some of the most unique biomes. The first three major ones are the best in my opinion, with the sponge biome being particularly unique and memorable. The visuals are unique and distinct but they were ugly though, in a very deliberate manner. Don't get me wrong there were some decent vistas left and right but the game is very off-putting and weird, again very intentionally so. Same goes for the music which was just odd, it fit the game for sure but that didn't make it pleasant to listen to. Not something i would ever want to listen to again outside of the game but it worked well enough while playing. What didn't work sufficiently though was the performance, i had a few minor fps drops but that can be forgiven. However the actual crash and multiple softlocks are inexcusable, these often happened during bosses which just stopped moving alltogether requiring a restart to fix them. These technical issues paired with the annoying mechanics and lack of good narrative make this game fall apart. What it does well in uniqueness and level design gets overshadowed by these mediocre elements creating an experience that is memorable for the wrong reasons. After my 8th hour i was ready to be done with the game but i was only halfway with the 2nd half completely souring the experience as the flaws shone through.

EDIT: APPARENTLY ITS A CUSTOM SETTING YOU HAVE TO TURN ON. ALTHOUGH IT TURNS OUT THE SWINGS ARE JUST TOO SLOW AND THE GAME SEEMED TO REALLY BE DESIGNED AGAINST THE IDEA SO SIMPLY TURNING IT ON UNFORTUNATELY DOES NOT FIX THE ISSUE. ATTACK SPEED NEEDS TO BE INCREASED OR WORLD BUILDING NEEDS TO BE ADJUSTED TO GIVE ROOM TO EVEN BE EVEN BE ABLE TO POGO. PREFERABLY ATTACK SPEED BECAUSE THE BALANCING WITH SOME ENEMIES AND HOW SLOW YOUR ATTACKS ARE DONT MAKE IT HARD THEY MAKE IT KIND OF DUMB. THE GAME UNFORTUNATELY NEEDS MORE TWEAKING. MAYBE I WILL REVISIT IN A YEAR OR SO BUT IM NOT GOING TO WASTE MY TIME WITH SOMETHING THAT APPARENLY JUDGED A PLAYSTYLE TO A POINT THEY THOUGHT IT WOULD MAKE THE GAME HARDER WHEN ITS MORE ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY THAT ISNT REALLY HARD AND JUST MEANS YOU HAVE TO SPEND A HELL OF A LOT LONGER FIGHTING, HIT, MOVE, HIT. THAT IS NOT HARD AND ITS DIFFICULT CALLING IT ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY. IT IS A HUGE BUMMER BECAUSE IF IT WAS DESIGNED MORE FOR THE FAST PLAYSTYLE AND RAPID COMBAT IT WOULD NOT ONLY KEEP YOU HOOKED INSTANTLY BUT IT WOULD BE EXHILIRHATING AND FUN. THIS IS UNFORTUANTELY JUST BORING. I HOPE THAT MAKES SENSE, PLEASE FIX THIS, YOU DESIGNED A CHARACTER THAT WOULD BE PERFECT FOR THE FLUID COMBAT STYLE! EVEN HIS FLOATY JUMP AND MOVEMENT IS PERFECT AND THAN FOR SOME REASON YOU TONED COMBAT ALL THE WAY DOWN WHERE IT ALMOST FEELS TURN BASED, IF THAT MAKES SENSE. I FEEL LIKE THE INTENT WAS TO MAKE IT SEEM STRATEGIC, BUT IT FALLS VERY FLAT ON THAT. THIS REALLY CAN BE A 10/10. IM STILL NOT GIVING UP ON IT AND HOPE YOU SOMEHOW SEE THIS FEEDBACK AND EVEN IF YOU RELEASE LIKE BETA CHANGES OR A BETA VERSION OF IT OR SOMETHING OR ADD THE FLUENT COMBAT INTO THE SETTINGS LIKE THE POGO THAT WOULD BE COOL. BUT TO BE BLUNT IT WOULD BE AN ALL AROUND BETTER GAME AND EXPERIENCE IF IT WAS DESIGNED AROUND THAT. CURRENTLY IT IS A LOW TIER METROIDVANIA, THOUGH WITH THESE CHANGES COULD LITERALLY BE ELEVATED TO HOLLOW KNIGHT LEGENDARY STATUS. ITS SO HEARTBREAKING THAT YOU DIDNT LEAN INTO THAT. NO ONE WOULD SEE IT AS A CLONE, MIMICRY IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY AFTER ALL AND OBVIOUSLY IT MOVES DIFFERENT THAN HORNET. THIS WAS JUST AN EXAMPLE OF FLUID FAST PACED COMBAT THAT THIS GAME COULD HAVE AND STILL CAN DELIVER UPON (ALBEIT WITH MUCH DEVELOPING WORK, THOUGH THE GROUNDWORK IS THERE AND WOULD LITERALLY ELEVATE THIS GAME TO LEGENDARY STATUS AND ACTUALLY MAKE IT FUN). Here's to hoping I guess 37 minutes in and well into the hotel. The vibe is cool and all. However the simple fact that you cannot pogo as many times as you want or strike more than once per jump ruins its. Which is a shame cause it has massive potential. I have the strike multiple time upgrades. So I understand the mechanic and that was the way they decided to go. Although the timings are not polished enough to really make it flow the way they wanted. Pogo'ing and striking as many times as you want as well as moving while having the strike charged would fix it all. I am going to have to refund this. Let me be clear THE COMBAT IS NOT HARD. IT IS NOT POLISHED ENOUGH THOUGH TO FLOW WITHOUT THESE ADJUSTMENTS. WILL PURCHASE AGAIN IF THIS IS CORRECTED. IT MAKES THE GAME UNENJOYABLE, WHICH IS A BUMMER CAUSE THERES A COOL GAME UNDERNEATH. IT IS NOT HARD ENOUGH TO NOT AT LEAST BE ABLE TO HAVE FUN AND FIGHT HOWEVER YOU WISH. IT WOULD ALSO MAKE THE MULTIPLE HIT ABILITIES EVEN MORE FUN AS YOU COULD TAILOR THEM MORE SPECIFICALLY. IF YOU WERE ALSO UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU COULD POGO UNLIMITED AND STRIKE HOWEVER YOU WANTED FROM THE UPDATE THEY RELEASED, BE WARNED THIS IS NOT THE CASE. YOU MADE A COOL GAME AND I GET YOU WENT A CERTAIN WAY WITH IT, RESPECT. BUT IT JUST DOESNT WORK AND MAKES THE GAMEPLAY TOO BORING, AGAIN ITS NOT EVEN THAT ITS CHALLENGING. Which is fine but at least let us enjoy the world you created. I can not recommend in current state. I REITERATE, I WILL PURCHASE AGAIN IF THIS IS FIXED, THOUGH CONSIDERING I THOUGHT IT WAS I DO NOT HAVE FAITH TO HOLD ON TO IT AND WAIT. Best of luck to all! :)

This game is amazing! The environment is visually stunning and deeply meaningful, perfectly reflecting the themes of the story. What truly stands out is the portrayal of emotions and the way the character reacts to them, which is both beautiful and highly engaging. RECOMMENDED!

Men dressed like children are far more disturbing and frightening as enemies than cute bugs.

I really like this game. Its unique but familiar and walking around there is always something just around the corner to get interested in. There are so many little areas or puzzles that you can completely bypass but it you don't and you say the right thing you get items that are useful hours later. its just so engaging with all the little mini games and strange crazy people. - It seems like it was going to be like hollow knight or ori but its not. The fighting is almost secondary not primary its more about experiencing the strange world and all the people but with platforming mixed in so you are engaged in the exploring of it all. - I wasn't happy that you couldn't pogo off enemies or that there wasn't a sprint feature but now that I have played it longer it makes sense why they did that. You get a platform mid game as the double jump equivalent and that really changed how you can fight and maneuver in a unique way - also if there was sprint I think you would miss a lot of the random stuff you can pick up by blowing passed it ( it still would be nice to get at the very end for item gathering though ... in the game I found some playdough put it in a machine and picked traits that created running shoes!! I thought for sure they where going to let me sprint but nope You had to put them back to create something else that gave you a shard ... any way you will see ) - Not only is the world great but it is beautiful what brings this games world over the top is the graphics for sure --- I'm currently trying not to finish it because I don't want it to be over. The last game to come out that i liked this much was Mio and i am not sure when another one like this will be coming out so try it