Crazy Scientist

I track a lot of low-budget indie platformers because occasionally one of them punches above its weight class. Crazy Scientist does not. Built in the free Construct 2 engine by solo developer Vyacheslav Shilikhin and released in September 2017, this is a side-scrolling 2D platformer with a single mechanical loop: traverse a level, collect vials, defeat the enemies blocking your path, and advance. Arrow keys to move and jump, chemical balls as your only offensive tool. Twelve levels in total. That is the full scope of the game. On paper, the escalating difficulty structure makes a reasonable case for itself. Early stages ease you in gently enough, and the enemy variety does attempt to keep things interesting: zombies toss brains at you, later stages introduce ghosts that shoot projectiles, and you start with five lives to absorb the learning curve. The core loop is functional. The problem is that functional and engaging are not the same thing. The game sits at Mostly Negative on Steam, with only 37% of 66 reviewers giving it a thumbs up, and community feedback pointed at broken achievement triggers and a general sense that the developer shipped and moved on. One community post bluntly called for a boycott until earlier releases were patched. From a depth-of-decision standpoint, there is essentially nothing here. No build choices, no upgrade paths, no branching level design, no mod support, no co-op. The platforming asks you to memorize short enemy patterns and collect pickups in the right order. That is a perfectly valid game structure for a mobile title or a free browser game, but as a paid PC release it struggles to justify its existence when the average playtime lands around 30 minutes. There is no replayability scaffolding to extend that figure. Who could reasonably enjoy this? Young children being introduced to platformer controls for the first time, or a parent looking for something genuinely all-ages and inoffensive, might get the intended mileage out of it. The animated graphics are cheerful and readable at a glance. But even in that context, the mostly-negative reception and the lack of post-launch support are real concerns. There are free browser games with nearly identical mechanics that carry less friction to access. My honest read: this belongs in a bundle where it contributes a fraction of the price to a larger package, not as a standalone purchase you select deliberately. The Conglomerate 5 bundle exists and that is probably the only context in which Crazy Scientist makes sense to own.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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