Scroll the Pain Away

Scroll the Pain Away is one of those games where I liked the idea more than the execution. The best part is making scrolls for customers with different reasons for wanting one. You can basically create whatever you want, then read what happened afterward at the end of the day, which I found pretty fun. The biggest problem is how cluttered the workspace gets. The scroll, rune book, and desk items all compete for the same space, so things constantly overlap. Sometimes the scroll covers part of the rune book, other objects can block it too, and items even fall off the desk. Some things also feel weirdly oversized compared to everything around them. I also really disliked the main character. Their attitude is rude and depressing, and while I understand their shop is failing, watching them treat family and friends badly when those people are just trying to care about them made me feel worse than anything else. It felt especially unnecessary because acting that way doesn't affect the plot anyway. I will say, the atmosphere was nice. It's cozy enough that I wanted to keep playing just to exist in that little space, but unfortunately, that's not really what the game is about. There's …

I gotta admit, I nearly fell out of my chair from laughter when I gave the kid the ludicrous fire explosion spell for his prank and heard the explosion go off in the distance. I did not expect something that unhinged in the slightest. Even though this game was clearly made by someone with a deep desire to watch the world burn, its good for a couple of quick laughs. I hope this games gets picked up by streamers with a big community, as the character editor has so much meme potential. I'd hate to see all the potential humor go to waste here.

Cute art, music and general vibes; I liked the glowing effect after each scroll was completed too. I do wish the game was a little longer story-wise, and that Indigo had less of an attitude, I was tempted to quit before Day 1 was up because she just oozed negativity in almost every text. The spells also aren't very intuitive and I had to find an achievement guide just to learn that the glyphs had to be placed on top of each other, extra glyphs had to be drawn twice, etc. Giving this a 6/10 since it had just enough good moments to make up for the shortcomings.

Starts off as a simple game with a lot of tools. Once you get the hang of what's going on the game becomes a fun experiment of what kind of things you could create for your customers, from finding the spell that works perfectly to finding the spell that KILLS EVERYONE and whatever's in between Sorta lost on the overall plot but that's mostly intentionally vague I believe, the characters themselves are simple and have plenty of funny moments. The art is also LOVELY and everyone looks very cute even when they're angry at you

Really love the concept of this game as well as the art style for it, but the glyph recognition is honestly a pain. It feels like no matter how many times I try to draw it it always comes up with 'invalid'. Despite the inconvient and small flaw, it is still pretty cute :)

While the gameplay cycle is a lesser version of potioncraft, this game does have the potential to scale further than potioncraft if the developer decides to do so. This game has a pretty cool concept of spellcraft despite being rather minimalist.