Scrabdackle

I originally wrote this rant as the steam refund reason, but turns out it was too long and hit the character limit? So I'm here posting as a review instead. The game does not have well telegraphed attacks, options in combat. The dialogue is verbose if not pointless and makes me feel punished for reading through 3 minutes worth of text just to learn 1 new lore information and a rehash of everything I already know. The attack patterns are all RNG or player track with essentially no nuance, which makes every enemy feel stale. The fact that some enemies are up on high grounds and are literally invincible is extremely frustrating to deal with as you take damage and get punished for literally just trying to get to the other side. The sound track is charming but repetitive, easily gave me audio fatigue since from what I could tell, every song on the sound track is like at most a minute long. The strange usage of motifs also contributes to this, as in other games the motifs would be altered to fit in the atmosphere of the track, but in scrabdackle it feels like the main "complete goal" motif is just literally plucked out and stabbed into every part of the soundtrack unchanged, which not only feels jarring but feels frustrating to hear for the billionth time as it slowly loses meaning. The enemies also contributes to the frustrating experience as, from what I could tell, scrabdackle's core philosophy punishes you for thinking and rewards you for reacting, you can't "read" the enemy's "pattern" because there is no pattern, and you just have to react. This is not only frustrating as reacting and putting enemy's attacks into your muscle memory takes time, but also makes combat extremely tedious, as you get jumped, loses 3 health and then miss five shots and the three you do land isn't enough to kill. Not only is the only attack method you have, just absolutely boring to use, there exists no depth to the combat because it's just put cursor on enemy, there's nothing you can actively do to spice up the combat other than an unsatisfying dash that works SOME of the time. There is literally nothing in your tool kit which is weird, especially for a wizard game? Still, the combat would've been better if WHAT could damage you is actually telegraphed, there are times where I randomly fell into the river because I missed a pixel to the bridge apparently (which, why is that even a gimmick??? it's literally just punishing the player for trying to move, which makes it so much worse in the middle of combat) or I accidentally rammed myself into the tall spike trees just to lose a quarter of my health for literally no reason. This combined with the fact that enemy attacks are literally unreadable makes my experience in just trying to get from point A to point B absolutely miserable. Not to mention areas like the duck castle where enemies can just open a gate for infinite enemies to spawn and then lock you in the area until you kill all of them? So the most annoying aspect of the video game is forced upon me for what? Accidentally walking into the sight line of ONE enemy that isn't even properly shown or previously mentioned to me??? How am I supposed to know what the enemy sight line is if you don't tell me what it is? The gate boss for the duck castle has to be, by far, the worse experience I have had in any video game ever, and I have played Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy with a smile on my face. The fact that the guard duck will just, not attack you occasionally even IF you're in range is actually so infuriating because I have no idea of knowing WHEN the duck attacks. So I get at most 2 hits in before I am punished for not knowing when the duck gets into defense stance, like at least have a glowing red aura around it or something so that I know WHEN to not attack? The fact an RNG enemy is thrown in just out of nowhere, in the middle of the fight, is so painful because now I have two things to worry about, two unreadable enemy and if I do ONE thing wrong, I die and have to restart. This is not a difficulty issue, this is the fact that the game gives me no clear indication of when or what attack is going to happen, it's not difficult, it's just annoying to deal with. I KNOW I can beat those enemies I mentioned, and I did, but the process of it was not enjoyable because I can't tell what's going on. If that is intentional, then this game is just not for me. TL;DR I would've preferred: 1. more attack options in combat and a way to deal with enemies on high ground 2. make the following more telegraphed: hostile enemies, damaging background object, attack patterns and interactable objects (levers, fences, destroyable roadblocks etc.) and 3. Less punishment for just trying to get from one side of the map to another, E.G. make it so that roadblocks don't respawn until you save, stealth option that stops enemies from seeing you entirely, or add more fast travel. In general just more QoL so the player doesn't take damage for just wanting to go from point A to B. but if anything in this angry rant of mine conflicts with your vision, feel free to ignore 'em. I've tried to be as constructive as I can, but this game was just really not fun for me, and this is coming from a hard core bullet hell enjoyer.