Scarygirl originally started its life as a graphic novel which doesn’t surprise as the game is literally dripping with artistic charm. You would be excused for looking at Scarygirl and wondering if Tim Burton had worked on the game or it was based off one of his franchises as it echoes his odd artistic values. Scarygirl herself is certainly not scary, and instead is just pretty much odd. The heroine you’ll be playing as sports an askew pirate hat, an eye patch, skull earrings, one hand that is simply a bone sticking out, and the other that is a tentacle adorned with a hook. The story isn’t any more conventional then it’s protagonist either.
The bulk of Scarygirl is your standard platformer, though I never thought I’d use the word standard for anything having to do with a tentacle wielding girl. It doesn’t subscribe to the tight controls of Mario, but instead is closer to the floaty feeling jumping mechanic of something like LittleBigPlanet. Scarygirl isn’t so much about navigating the environment or tricky jumps though as she has an ability that lets you hold down the jump button to helicopter her tentacle and float above gaps. Other tricks are introduced like climbing certain walls, swinging with your tentacle from hooks, and sometimes other mechanics are introduced like using glow mushrooms in the fantastic spider cave level. Overall though the focus lies mostly on combat with platforming just serving a way to get through the stage from left to right.
Scarygirl’s combat system is not extremely deep and the controls can be a little loose, but overall I had a lot of fun once I got the feel for it. Basically you have your standard attack, your heavy attack which launches baddies skyward, and your tentacle grab. Generally you’ll beat enemies down with a combo of standard and launch attacks and then once stunned you can grab them in your tentacle. At this point you can either toss the enemy at another bad guy or you can keep him in your tentacle and use him as a melee weapon until he dies. These attacks do a lot more than your standard attacks and after a while you’ll find yourself combo attacking like a master leaping from enemy to enemy and using their own defeated friends against them. It’s great fun when it works.
In each level you’ll be able to collect gems that add up and you can purchase upgrades for Scarygirl with them, such as an anchor for her tentacle instead of a hook to boost attack power or additional moves for combat. Also on sale are duplicates of the vinyls that you can actually physically purchase offline based on the enemies and characters of the Scarygirl universe. It’s a nice touch that gives you a little more reason to collect these random gems, though I took issue with the fact that the merchants you purchase items from seem to be few and far between.
Scarygirl can also team up with Guru Bunny in a fantastically simple drop in, drop out multiplayer. By simply pressing the A button, a second player takes control of Scarygirl’s kung-fu friend. Guru Bunny is capable of every move that the main protagonist is, but instead of a simple palette switch they have separate animations.
It’s a nice touch and the ability to pause the game and remove the second player makes it so easy for someone to just come by and start playing. It seems that this kind of simplicity in drop in, drop out is fading away with most games and I certainly appreciated it. You don’t share lives so once the second player dies it’s up to player one to reach the next checkpoint where Guru Bunny is revived. My six year old boy and I played the entire game together and it made for a fun experience, as I was able to proceed without him if I so choose.
Score: 7 out of 10
A copy of this game was provided to Unexpected Parcel by the publisher for review purposes.
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