An unpolished game in the "difficult platformer" genre, with an okay story, decent music, and hit & miss art that suffers from technical issues. The final nail in the coffin is the inconsistent difficulty, and uninspired level design. Short-ish, as well.

Prenarium is a game, that on paper sounds like I'd absolutely love it, but after completing it, I don't have much good to say about it.

I'm a big fan of nice pixel art, and Prenarium's artist isn't bad, but the way the art is used makes it look sloppy and unpolished; there are scaling issues, inconsistent pixel sizes, roatated pixels etc. etc. Some of the sprites also look like placeholders, waiting to be replaced with something that better fits the rest of the art.
The controls aren't bad, per se, but combined with the collision detection / hitboxes, make for a... wonky experience. This isn't helped by the sloppy level design, that doesn't seem to take the movement limitations of the character into account.

Another big problem is the inconsistent difficulty. The difficulty progression is all over the place, coming to a head in the last three levels; I was stuck at the third-to-last level, 28 for well over an hour of non-stop playing. After finally completing the level after countless attempts, I didn't feel a sense of achievement, I was just annoyed. I beat the next level on the first try, and the final level in five or six tries.
I enjoy difficult games, even punishingly difficult ones, but most of the difficulty in Penarium is very artificial, either based on heavy randomization, lengthy sequences or near-pixel-perfect jumps.

The best part about the game is the story, and even that is basically four cutscenes riddled with the same graphical quirks as the rest of the game, and a few lines of in-game dialogue.

Penarium consists of three stages, where players are expected to complete one of fourth objectives, while avoiding a variety of traps. The most common, and least annoying, of the objectives is "smashin" (i.e. colliding with) a certain number of barrels. The other two are popping a sequence of balloons, which heavily suffers from the fact that 99% of the balloons are just high enough not to be reachable without jumping, which coupled with the fact that the jump height is fixed makes some of the balloon sequences annoying. The third objective is collecting five of each red, blue and green potions into matchingly colored cauldrons, it's basically like the barrel smashing game, but with a slight twist.
The fourth objective is a game of Simon on four buttons, and is easily the most annoying part of the game. Simon is Simon, no matter which way you twist it, and it's just not engaging or enjoyable, and feels totally out of place, like a sequence where you need to file your taxes in the middle of a Doom level.

With an arcade mode in addition to the campaign, I wouldn't complain about the lenght if the game was good, but it bears mentioning, I completed the campaign and got all but six achievements (one of which is "Die 1000 times") in a single ~7h session. Someone more proficient in precise platforming could easily complete the game in 3-4 hours, but the thing is, Penarium overstays it's welcome well before that.

The back story and world of Penarium is interesting, the premise of the gameplay is promising and the artists seem competent, but the whole game feels unpolished and not very well thought out, which is a shame, because the game definitely feels like it could be excellent, if a little bit more work had gone into it. As it stands, however, I can't think of anyone I'd recommend Penarium to, everything it tries to do, many other games to better, and even at it's best, it's mediocre and bland.

[h1]tl;dr[/h1] An unpolished game in the "[i]difficult platformer[/i]" genre, with an okay story, decent music, and hit & miss art that suffers from technical issues. The final nail in the coffin is the inconsistent difficulty, and uninspired level design. Short-ish, as well. [h1]words[/h1] Prenarium is a game, that on paper sounds like I'd absolutely love it, but after completing it, I don't have much good to say about it. I'm a big fan of nice pixel art, and Prenarium's artist isn't bad, but the way the art is used makes it look sloppy and unpolished; there are scaling issues, inconsistent pixel sizes, roatated pixels etc. etc. Some of the sprites also look like placeholders, waiting to be replaced with something that better fits the rest of the art. The controls aren't bad, per se, but combined with the collision detection / hitboxes, make for a... wonky experience. This isn't helped by the sloppy level design, that doesn't seem to take the movement limitations of the character into account. Another big problem is the inconsistent difficulty. The difficulty progression is all over the place, coming to a head in the last three levels; I was stuck at the third-to-last level, 28 for well over an hour of non-stop playing. After finally completing the level after countless attempts, I didn't feel a sense of achievement, I was just annoyed. I beat the next level on the first try, and the final level in five or six tries. I enjoy difficult games, even punishingly difficult ones, but most of the difficulty in Penarium is very artificial, either based on heavy randomization, lengthy sequences or near-pixel-perfect jumps. The best part about the game is the story, and even that is basically four cutscenes riddled with the same graphical quirks as the rest of the game, and a few lines of in-game dialogue. Penarium consists of three stages, where players are expected to complete one of fourth objectives, while avoiding a variety of traps. The most common, and least annoying, of the objectives is "smashin" (i.e. colliding with) a certain number of barrels. The other two are popping a sequence of balloons, which heavily suffers from the fact that 99% of the balloons are [b]just[/b] high enough not to be reachable without jumping, which coupled with the fact that the jump height is fixed makes some of the balloon sequences annoying. The third objective is collecting five of each red, blue and green potions into matchingly colored cauldrons, it's basically like the barrel smashing game, but with a slight twist. The fourth objective is a game of Simon on four buttons, and is [b]easily[/b] the most annoying part of the game. Simon is Simon, no matter which way you twist it, and it's just not engaging or enjoyable, and feels totally out of place, like a sequence where you need to file your taxes in the middle of a Doom level. With an arcade mode in addition to the campaign, I wouldn't complain about the lenght if the game was good, but it bears mentioning, I completed the campaign and got all but six achievements (one of which is "Die 1000 times") in a single ~7h session. Someone more proficient in precise platforming could easily complete the game in 3-4 hours, but the thing is, Penarium overstays it's welcome well before that. The back story and world of Penarium is interesting, the premise of the gameplay is promising and the artists seem competent, but the whole game feels unpolished and not very well thought out, which is a shame, because the game definitely feels like it could be excellent, if a little bit more work had gone into it. As it stands, however, I can't think of anyone I'd recommend Penarium to, everything it tries to do, many other games to better, and even at it's best, it's mediocre and bland.