ScaryGirl Demo (video game)

I am looking for something fun to play as I see the demo available for download. With the need to distract myself, I give it a shot.

ScaryGirl is a side-scroller game based on Nathan Jurevicius' line of toys.

Developed by TIK Games (Caterpillar, Panda Craze) and Square Enix (Final Fantasy), Scarygirl carries a great entertainment value.

A small intro plays and you jump straight into controlling the main character.

It follows a simple story: An abandoned girl is found by an octopus which takes care of her; finds her clothes and even builds her a "dream house" (take that, prince charming!) and gives her the name: "ScaryGirl". The plot of the story is: She is having a strange dream about a man and a city. She goes to consult a giant rabbit that helps her realize her dream means a journey she must set out on.

The main character, as the most perceptive of you probably realize by now is Scarygirl; a ragged-doll-like girl dressed in a pirate outfit: a stripped shirt with intermittent light and dark mustard color; a black vest, black ragged skirt, brown socks, a party hat with a skull on it on top of a messy hairstyle, an eye-patch on her left eye and a hook on her right... tentacle, yes, for some reason this girl has tentacles instead of hands.

The demo starts with scarygirl in her room. Here, you can explore a tiny bit of the surroundings. Of the interactive objects I found, were an onion thing that took you to a simple tutorial where you learn the basics every healthy game should have: combat skills; and a ladder that took me to the missions, although I couldn't explain how, exactly. I just jumped and there I was, listening to a voice clip that triggers before every mission.

The levels are simple in nature, but still require some skill to get around.

At first, the game seems to be testing your gamer IQ by withholding certain things from you. For instance: The tutorial teaches you abilities such as hitting enemies, sending them flying into the air, grappling them to throw them or to hit other enemies in a mallet-like fashion. These are the basics it covers, however, while on the first level, you notice you can also float around if you maintain the jump button pressed and that there are some shiny dots which, in certain moments, appear with a purple circle highlighting them, indicating you can grapple from them, but the tutorial for this particular move does not appear until you have been playing for a while, and when it does, you have done that move long enough for it to be irrelevant.

There was a point in the first level where the lovely main character approaches a shiny red-pinkish object and eats it. I did not know what it was, because it all happened so fast I could not compute what was going on. I think she took some sort of hallucinogen, because the section that followed was the tutorial I played at the beginning. Here, I thought the game was kind enough to offer tutorials for advanced moves in the same fashion, but no, it was exactly the same tutorial with the same instructions. Later, I found that the "advanced moves" tutorials were delivered inside in-game speech bubbles.

As you would expect from a game with the word "scary" on the title, it has a lot of monsters as enemies, but they are not the scary type of monsters, although this does not stop you from having a lot of fun beating them up. Every level has its own enemies, there's one that has goats, another one has octopi, another features axe-wielding bandits.

The combat is pretty simple: you beat up guys with a light attack button, and make nice combos combining it with a heavy attack button. You have the help of the grapple move, a roll and you also have a block button, but this one is more a suggestion than an actual necessity, since every time you hit an enemy it gets stunned so you can play throw-around with him and if you are fast enough while attacking, no one will get close enough to harm you. There is an aspect where the game makes up for the name of its main character: Scarymode. This mode can be activated after you gain enough juice on your scary meter. To fill it up, you simply do what you do best: beat up bad guys. Once full, you can engage Scarymode and the real show begins as scarygirl gets angry and beats up the bad guys in more creative ways, like becoming a creature similar to a shark and devouring her enemies.

Throughout the game you collect gems that serve the purpose of being exchanged for equipment and other fun stuff; or to replenish your health, consisting on a group of hearts displayed on the top-left corner of the screen.

The game follows a traditional system: Walk to the right to finish the level, backtrack a bit to find collectibles. It also uses 3D elements for paths and platforms and it manages to keep the feel of a 2D platform game while adding the feel of depth to each level.

The graphics for the game are cartoon-ish, giving the game a playful tone that makes it a delectable visual experience.

The music is really good, it creates a nice atmosphere and you won't mind if some loops are repetitive; you will be busy paying attention to other stuff, like jumping and floating through the air, beating enemies or collecting the gems.

It offers fair challenge without being frustrating, keeping the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you fall down a pit and then when you replay the section you notice the checkpoint was two steps ahead, or, in some cases, behind you.

It appears boss fights were taken out, after all, this is a demo and it is supposed to give the feel of how the game works, but without giving all the fun away.

Does it get your attention enough for you to want to play the full game?

Absolutely! In fact, it makes you feel bad for wasting time downloading the demo when you could be downloading the full version.

I'm done playing and I realize a long time has passed. If the demo was able to give me such immersion and entertainment, I can't imagine what the full game will be like.