Along with Fearmonium and Constance, The Perfect Pencil is another recent metroidvania that tries to tackle mental health issues and is, by far, the weirdest. It stars John, a man who ends up with a projector for a head, which is only the beginning of a game that seemingly crosses logic and any synonyms right out of the dictionary. It openly embraces the absurd and, on occasion, ends up disturbing.
Of course, everything starts somewhat innocently enough, surrounded by lush green foliage in an underground area. However, that soon gives way to the bizarre: enemies from men wrapped in blankets or pillows to trapped in cages, weird human/animal hybrids and more. While the enemies are merely weird, the bosses are truly horrifying and apparent manifestations of John’s worst fears and concerns. The Perfect Pencil is one of the more detailed indie games that has personally been played, with every corner painstakingly created, so this game should have been a blast to explore and progress in. Unfortunately, issues soon arise.
John’s head scans everything around and is aided by a radar that turns different colours and starts to beep if there is anything of interest. This helps with navigation, but the game prides itself on being cryptic. Nowhere is this better seen than the locked doors that require four digits. While clues are scattered here and there, they are often hard to see or require separate puzzles for each number. Sometimes the prizes behind these doors are worthwhile, but other times they are disappointing and aren’t proportionate to the effort needed to open them.
What hurts exploration, beyond the ambiguous clues, is the lack of warp points, which are activated late. Considering that, expect lengthy backtracking several times throughout the game. Even with the fast travel, you first need to warp to a central location and then find a specific warp point, one per region. There also aren’t enough save points, so losses can feel especially painful. Plus there is one of the worst corpse runs in any metroidvania; you have to find a hidden NPC using the scanner, and sometimes he is far away and hard to spot. It’s usually seen as just two eyes in a dark crevice. The map is a combination of needing to find glowing green balls that display a small portion and, after that, filling in the gaps as you go. Most of the green balls are easy to spot or find, but a few are out of the way.
The music and sound effects might strike some as excessively unsettling, especially later parts of the game with shrieks and more abrasive music. The Perfect Pencil offers poor map marking options, providing only a few tacks. Furthermore, the lack of fast travel actively discourages you from backtracking to find new items, even after unlocking crucial movement upgrades like the air dash, wall climb, and midair platform. Thankfully, by metroidvania standards, the game tends to be more on the linear side – this could have been even more problematic in a more open world. Once the traversal abilities and fast travel arrive, The Perfect Pencil is a lot more enjoyable to move around in.
The late-game bosses are tough and made harder by a healing mechanic that isn’t as functional or forgiving as it could be. The Hollow Knight way is probably the best: get some space, press a button, wait a little, and be healed. Granted that can be interrupted by enemy strikes, but it’s intuitive.
In The Perfect Pencil, healing is directly tied to the courage meter and John’s offense. Courage accumulates with each strike against a foe, and the meter is divided into multiple bars, with each bar allowing John to heal 1 HP. Once a bar is filled, John can initiate a heal at the expense of that bar, but he must strike an enemy within a short amount of time to complete it.
It might seem logical to wait for an enemy or boss to be off-screen or far away for some breathing room, but if it takes too long to reach them, the charge and courage bar are wasted, leaving John still in need of healing. Other times, it’s easy to simply swing and miss, which also leads to lost courage and no healing. There are times when enemy hitboxes feel slightly off, or perhaps just a little more punishing than they should be.
The key treasures to seek out across the map are tea bags (25 in total), and willpower and courage shards; finding four permanently increases HP or courage. Currency is also somewhat useful, but there are items where there is no idea what to do with them, like a leg cast costing 2000. John can also find Perspectives, each offering a worthwhile benefit at the cost of a drawback, but none ever feel worth using, as the drawback was usually just as significant as the benefit. For this system to work, the benefits need to outweigh the drawbacks slightly to incentivise engaging with it.
