There are times where I think developers are creating indie games in lieu of getting therapy. While the medium is a fantastic way to express a feeling and a personal story, there are some games that hint at greater issues that need to be worked upon, probably with professional assistance. Some games are very direct and clear, such as with the heartbreaking classic That Dragon, Cancer. On the other hand, others seek to obfuscate the deeper meaning with a lot of artistic choices and unusual gameplay: I may love Yume Nikki, but it’s not the easiest to dissect. Sometimes, I want to put down the controller and pick up the phone, if only to try to connect personally. With that in mind, let’s bear down on Studio Cima’s curious tale, The Perfect Pencil.

You are John, a being with a camera for a head, a snappy little cape for an accessory, and a general state of amnesia. You’ve awakened in the land of the White Beast, and vague hints suggest you’ve been here before. Not really having anything else to do, John decides to venture forward to either escape the land or defeat the White Beast, whichever ends up being more convenient to help reach an end game. John will encounter a number of different beings and entities in various states of distress, delusion and madness, and all will look slightly similar in a way you can’t quite put your finger on.  John must dash, slash and piece together the way forward if he ever hopes to regain his senses and find his way out, whichever way that may go.

The Perfect Pencil is a metroidvania, though an oddly clunky one in design. John has to traverse pretty large tracks of screen and area before finding any sort of save spots that give him respite and a respawn area, as shown in the very opening of the game. Early hints of inaccessible items and out-of-reach areas let you know the possibility of returning exists, but being able to conveniently return isn’t something that’s readily available. Instead, you generally move forward, checking for breakaway walls and camouflaged areas in order to exercise your curiosity and find the all important map orbs. Each larger zone has several of these orbs that, when broken, will give you a generalized layout of your current habitat. You can’t zoom in close enough to make out a lot of detail, but there’s enough to give you a sense of where you can and should go next.

There are several things that I encountered that I quite enjoyed about The Perfect Pencil. While the map procession did feel a little strange, a majority of the areas were well populated with a series of secrets to find, enemies to destroy and design to, essentially, admire. As a camera-headed person, you have the ability to “scan” things in front of you, with the benefit of there being multiple locations that simply add flavor text and atmosphere to what you’re seeing. While it does help to move the story forward and allows you to better engage with some NPCs, a lot of the “scan” points simply exist to help underline John’s mental state and the development of the world around him. As heavy handed as some of the allegories and elements may be, there’s no denying the powerful use of symbolism throughout the zones.

Additionally, John’s character develops both through traditional and non-traditional means in the combat role. As your weapon is a pencil, you’re doing a ton of melee engagement, and you get to add more and more to it nicely over the course of the first few interactions. There’s a training being who appears and, for a price, will teach you new techniques. Like so many games of this cloth, you don’t strictly need to learn how to do a powered up slice, or how to add a dashing strike to your damage repertoire. But the fact that many of these learned skills are not only attainable but also reasonably spaced out allows players to develop and learn in a good frame of time.

In that same vein, I actually really appreciated some skills being taught to John simply by the virtue of the game’s storytelling. When you finally learn how to do a dash, it’s not just picking up some skill orb and calling it a day. John is lured into the idea of giving up and staying inert and safe, never moving forward but also never failing. When he finally breaks out of this alluring ennui, it coincides with the birth of his new ability, which can be put to use immediately. It gives the improvement of the character more gravity and purpose than simply “I got stronger.” Given what an important deal the game places on the psychological aspects, this was a great win for the development team.

The Perfect Pencil also strikes a fairly decent balance between challenge and story telling. Instead of health items being dropped errantly, you recharge your health by doing a separate charged strike (with its own limited bar) and you have one chance to land the blow. A double bladed experience, you can easily get your health back and promptly lose it without blinking. It requires you to get very good at dodging and recognizing attack patterns if you want to make upward momentum in healing yourself, which, as a result, improves your battle skills and lessens the need to heal. It balances perfectly, theoretically.

But the design of the game is also part of its undoing. For example, you really might travel a fairly long distance between save points, which, to be fair, is par for the course with metroidvanias. Dying doesn’t feel like a big deal, however: you lose some currency and have to find this entity who is hiding (poorly) when you return to approximately where you died. In comparison to Hollow Knight’s shade, the challenge of getting your money back is a positive cakewalk. The biggest pain is just needing to trek back, which is more time consuming than challenging.

Additionally, what if you’re actually good at the game? If you are able to go into certain encounters being a flawless angel of pure power and destruction, you might literally miss parts of the storytelling. The Perfect Pencil had a moment where I was knocked out by the first major boss I encountered and, instead of the normal respawn dance, I was whisked away into a liminal space where more storyline was teased and tantalized for me to speculate upon. Surely, there’s some kind of condition in place where you’ll encounter this moment regardless, but I’m not so sure. I’m concerned that the devs hung their hat on the notion that everyone would die there at least once, and, let me assure you, the attack patterns are not so complex that someone might not be able to do it the first time even without watching it beforehand. 

Having said that, I did really enjoy my time with The Perfect Pencil. The fact that all the enemies and most of the NPCs are clearly variations of what John must look like without a camera head really underlines the inner struggle that he’s combatting on the regular. It gave strong The Binding of Isaac vibes without any of the toilet humor. This is only further showcased with different NPCs exemplifying the splintered issues that John must surely be dealing with: crushing responsibility, imposter syndrome, the desire to just retreat somewhere safe, and the despair that can be tied to all of it. The fact that an NPC gives you a quest to find him a cast, not because he needs it, but so he can blame his inaction on having a cast, speaks volumes about a type of person that we have all encountered and may have inside ourselves.

The artistic styling did grow on me, over time. Initially, I was pretty put off by some of the coloring and spritework, but I gradually saw the grotesque parody effect of it all as something effective to let the character and, by proxy, the player, see how John must view himself in different ways. A crawling worm of a man, a child literally trapped in an adult body, or even just a flailing dervish of emotions…none of it is pleasant to behold, but all of it is highly evocative. When you combine that with the scraps of dialogue that we get from the NPCs who are willing to talk and not just fight, you really piece together a bit of John, and you may not like it, but you can identify with it.

The Perfect Pencil, ironically, is not perfect in the gameplay or pacing, but it does stand out in concept and delivery. While some moments are a trifle ham fisted, it nonetheless promises and delivers a unique metroidvania that keeps you moving, keeps you exploring and does a lot for fans of the genre wanting to try things from another angle. I’m not sure if I’m the ideal audience, but I listened, and I think I was able to hear John clearly. I hope others can, too.

Graphics: 7.0 Good concept for different areas and the variety of layout designs. The map left something to be desired as it was mostly ornamental. Having the same base for each enemy does mean seeking similar faces over and over, which could be tiring.	Gameplay: 6.5 Fairly standard metroidvania exploration with a couple of personalized tweaks. Didn’t love the long stretches between save points. Combat was decent and scaled well. Sidequests varied from “super straightforward” to “elongated sagas,” with the former being more satisfying.
Sound: 7.0 The composition was well suited to match the areas, though most of the sounds were shot through with a sinister vibe to let you know something was off. The soundscape relied a bit too much on silence to convey uneasiness, but it worked to great effect.	Fun Factor: 6.5 The story and the meaning had value and importance in terms of expressing ideas and concepts fundemental to the creators. The delivery method, through this game, was a little clunky at times, but it did come through. An interesting experience, but not necessarily a repeatable one.
Final Verdict: 6.5

The Perfect Pencil is available now on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of The Perfect Pencil was provided by the publisher.