The tried-and-true Perfect Pencil of a surreal and delicious platform game

When John finds himself headless on the dock of an unknown world, all he can do is walk right, following a faint light. On the way, he meets a strange character who lives under a lighthouse, who makes him realize that he is not the first person to find himself in this situation, and who replaces the skull with a camera. Now John can better observe the world around him and examine certain objects using his head so to speak, framing them for directions, clues and collectibles. Where is here? Why did he come there? Who is the strange man helping him? What can he do to return to reality?

to find out what we have I tried The Perfect Pencil demoan all-Italian metroidvania with a surreal style that really impressed us.

surreal style

After the intro, John enters the first area: a strange cave filled with plants and herbs. weird characters. Here he gets his main weapon – a giant pencil. There’s no big explanation as to why the place is filled with adults pretending to be children and trying to stop the protagonist, but the whole scenario gives off a strong sense of surrender, as if he’d given up on growing up and not growing up. They want nothing more than to be trapped in their own little world. So there are some slender men crawling in cages around the platforms, others wrapped in mattresses that rolled when they saw John and still others on pillows crawling like caterpillars. John confronts while holding his giant pencil with which he can initiate simple, charged or healing slashes, the latter necessary to restore lost energy. There are also more traditional enemies around the map, such as plants exploding by emitting poisonous gases.

The visual style is what stands out the most and in a way makes The Perfect Pencil’s gameplay unique. The demo takes about an hour and a half and lets you visit the first area until the crash. boss: a determined man who dresses like a newborn baby, feels unloved and just wants to sleep like other people who fill the level. The fight is not very difficult, but nevertheless pleasant due to the peculiarities of the crying enemy, who rolls against John and tries to hit him with tears. After going through, there is a twist that we won’t mention (download the demo, it’s very free), so you’re being sent back to the last version that doesn’t have a release date yet to continue.

game mechanics

But let’s take a step back. in terms of game mechanics Perfect Pencil is not much different from the average metroidvania, even though it has some features that make it unique in a certain sense. By the way, the use of the camera to study the above-mentioned objects, also from which some interaction with the possibility of multiple choice is derived. Also, with the management of the map and inventory, it allows you to catalog and interact with found objects, the first consisting of finding and breaking certain objects, and the second contributing decisively (at least apparently) to the construction of the story. For the rest, expect to jump from platform to platform eliminating enemies, hunt for secrets (there are so many) and collect lots of items, retracing your steps if necessary.

the most striking part of the title Studio Cima The narrative, which is certainly not just the texts, but also some visual elements that hold the whole experience alone and motivate the player to continue to the end.

Although the demo ends without great explanations about what we’ve been through (as it naturally does), it contains a story and makes poor John want to give an answer to all the questions that are puzzling his mind. Between dialogues and surreal situations, The Perfect Pencil seems to be perfectly composed in this respect. However, we obviously want to avoid any comments based solely on the demo. The particular underlying theme is actually intuitive, but we don’t want it to be just a hoax and the final version to hide something else. However, it is clear that the representation has a strong metaphorical value and that the whole play draws some of its strength from it.

checkpoint

The only system that made us turn the demo’s nose up a little bit, checkpoint, they are definitely too far apart. As a result, when we died several times, we had to redo long parts of the level. Nothing dramatic, but we did suffer a bit again. Of course, we can try to explore areas better by taking different branches this way, but the truth is, facing the same enemies multiple times in a row isn’t exactly the best.

That said, if latest version Capable of captivating us as it was in the demo, The Perfect Pencil definitely deserves more than a positive judgment. All that remains is to wait to know when we can continue John’s adventure.