Scrap Garden | A Review
Hello everyone, I am the artificially ficial G.E.M.Simov, a being both machine and man, here to tell you about the game Scrap Garden.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Scrap Garden is a third person puzzle platformer in which the Player controls their Character, situated in the middle of the screen, by using the WASD or Arrow keys to move, the Spacebar to jump (and double jump, if already in the air, though only in some areas) and the mouse to move the camera around.
It becomes immediately apparent that there is something sluggish about the game, initially shown off in the way the menus work (or, rather, barely function), due to the fact that whenever the Player presses a button with the intention of making a selection in one of the menus, there is a delay between the button press and the game’s reaction that can be quantified, in regards to time, to around a second. Even half a second is a lot, and a second is an excruciatingly long amount of time.
Fortunately, that is not present in the game - when the Player presses any of the movement keys, the Player Character (PC) moves almost immediately - though the feeling of sluggishness remains in another manner. When the Player moves their camera (by moving the mouse’s cursor, which is not displayed on the screen) quickly, the camera, instead of just making the rotation that the Player intends, performs a somewhat cinematic zoom onto the PC before pulling back. That gives it the feeling of being sticky, which brings with itself this unwieldy element, and, thus, adds some measure of sluggishness, of tardiness, of unresponsiveness.
The Player can also use the Right Mouse Button (RMB) to pick up certain objects from the ground and to carry them, while sporting the ability to throw them (thus dropping them) by pressing RMB again, while carrying them. It is important to note that the PC can break certain objects by throwing them, revealing rubies.
With that repertoire of skills, the Player must navigate the world space, jump onto platforms, grab certain items and bring them wherever they need to go, as well as pass through floating rubies (to collect, with there being other, more peculiar collectables). Additionally, the Player must evade the attacks of enemies and kill them by jumping on top of them. The enemies leave rubies behind, though only some of them. Oddly enough, enemies are not the only source of damage in the game - the PC can also take damage by falling from too great a height, which is always a relatively baffling decision to implement in a platformer. On top of that, the double jump does not have the ability to negate fall damage if used prior to landing from a great height.
Another odd issue is that the game is almost unplayable in a windowed mode, due to the fact that it does not effectively reign in the mouse cursor, thus allowing for clicks that occur outside of the game’s window to occur outside of it, failing to be registered in the game itself and instead doing whatever they would do in the window that has been clicked. That is not that great an issue, but for folks who prefer playing in windowed mode it is quite bothersome.
The game has other bothersome elements, such as checkpoints that require certain quantities of rubies to have been collected, only to then have those checkpoints consume more rubies than the quantity listed on them (as an example, the checkpoint says 60, but leaves the Player with 0 Rubies even though they previously had 109). In a staggering display of oddness, and in an attempt to remain consistently inconsistent, some levels feature no camera movement, while also limiting the PC’s ability to move, while others feature full camera control and the ability to double jump.
Overall, the game does not go much further than that. Covered in invisible walls and bottomless pits, the world of Scrap Garden both wants to be explored, due to the fact that the Player needs to collect rubies, but the game also somewhat encourages not exploring, because of those two elements on top.
It is very simple, lacking any great complexity, and simply shows off a number of relatively funky in appearance levels, while providing the Player with the (unsatisfying) means to traverse them. There are boss fights, but they are clunky, in the sense that the means of dealing with them are a bit nonsensical and distant from the standard means of dealing with enemies… Well, overall, the way the game is played leaves it feeling clunky. Floaty movement, overwhelming amounts of jank, in the sense that the PC jumps automatically off of certain surfaces or cannot jump off of others, or the fact that stairs can not be stood upon without sliding down them, or the fact that there is a tremendous turn rate that does not affect movement but does affect the ability to aim and throw, the surprisingly harsh checkpoint system, as well as Presentation related issues that affect Gameplay.
Lastly, the game features a few little attempts at emulating what other platformers have done in having slight deviations from its ordinary gameplay, be it through the aforementioned 2D sections, or a section that has the Main Character sliding down a mountain, the top down section, the cart riding section, or the boss fights - it attempts things and they work, mostly, but they only possess a measure of novelty. In fact, all of this game’s Gameplay is just a bit novel, reminiscent of a fledgling developer’s first forays into making games.
Scrap Garden does not succeed as much as it fails, but it is not terrible in that regard either. There are some interesting ideas that pop up, though it is very difficult to call the puzzles in the game proper puzzles, or the encounters and challenges truly challenging. Perhaps due to the fact that the intended audience is made up of children, or perhaps because of some other design choice, but, ultimately, it is not nearly as engaging as a game like this should be, and it does not feel anywhere near as responsive as a game like it should.
1/3
Presentation
As stated in the Gameplay section, Scrap Garden is a 3D platformer, throwing the Player into a mixture of intricately entertaining and bizzarely desolate levels with varying amounts of elevation and decoration. Some of them look very particular and very neat, while others seem to simply be ticking off a list of ‘looks’. The first level is very neat and quite interesting, but everything following it is simply a surface-level exploration of an idea.
The same applies for the rest of the game’s visuals. It has animations that simply work, and model-work that is all over the place. The robots (including the main character) all look very nice, while everything else, with scant few exceptions, is more reminiscent of a thing that someone might see on an asset shop, simply jammed into the game as a means of having ‘varied’ enemies.
That said, some of the lackluster animations - particularly in cutscenes - are used to surprisingly comedic effect. The same accounts for some of the rough models in play. It’s… It’s sometimes funny, even if it was not trying to be, and when it is, it does get a bit of an exhalation out of yours truly.
This game features a tutorial made up of little prompts and messages that fade into vision on the screen, and then fade out, which roughly inform the Player how to play the game, but there is a number of things that they neglect to mention, which makes the tutorial itself (which does a decent enough job and introducing the most basic concepts of the game decently well) somewhat lackluster, as the things that are not mentioned are exceedingly important.
Scrap Garden has a narrator who narrates things, but there is a very unpleasant de-synchronization between the words spoken by the narrator and the subtitles that show what the narrator has said. This is ever present, even when it is not the narrator talking, but instead another Character, and really puts a stopper to the game’s intention of creating any sort of immersive atmosphere.
Staying on the audio track, this game has a few musical tracks that accompany it, and they are not bad themselves, but they are excruciatingly loud, especially the ‘spoooky’ track, which absolutely blows up the Player’s eardrums, while other tracks are very quiet and are barely audible. Similarly, there are sound effects in the game that have a reasonable loudness, while others are explosively intense, leading to unintentional moments of startling ‘bangs’ and ‘pangs’ whenever the PC bumps into something and it crashes violently.
Ultimately, the game presents itself well enough, and that is, oddly enough, its strongest suit, regardless of all the kinks that show up here and there.
2/3
Story
Scrap Garden’s story is exceptionally simple. Canny, an old robot whose power source was in the process of getting repurposed, wakes up far into the future, with all the other robots having run out of power. He goes on a little adventure to figure out what happened, meeting up with one other robot who fills him in and sends him on a grand quest to turn on all the thingies so that the big thingie can work and grant power to all robots.
The story is not only simple, but also sports some weird inconsistencies, with characters knowing about one another and their tasks without having communicated, with characters understanding one another even though one of them speaks in beeps and the other has not seen a robot, having only heard of robots from his grand grandparents, and there are also funny conveniences and contrivances - such as there being no audio communication at the penultimate location, and straight up no communication at the last location.
It is curious enough for a kid, perhaps, but for an adult? It’s very uninteresting, and perhaps also rather uninspired. It does feature a few easter eggs, but its story is, ultimately, just there as a reason for the character Canny to go from point A to point B.
1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No, Scrap Garden does not get the Legendary Point. It was short enough to not be a chore to play through, but there was nothing drawing me in, making me want to keep playing it. Thus, it’s nothing special. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. A generous score for a game so middling that I was left more upset by the fact that it wanted me to replay it than by anything else. It is definitely something that a kid would, most likely, enjoy, but for anyone else… I would not recommend it.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes, to gather dust for all eternity.