Girl & Scarecrow Review – I Can’t Stop Thinking About This Video Game, Made Of Clay

How do you explain the concept of war to a child? Do you lie, and tell them it’s a blip, that it’ll be over soon, that they’re safe? Or do you tell the truth, a truth that you cannot even grapple with yourself?

Girl & Scarecrow is a game I happened upon while trawling the Steam indie game pages, and caught my eye due to its unique art style. A claymation visual novel, with a base running time of around 20-25 minutes. Cool, I thought, I’ll dip in and out, I’m sure it’s cute. Well reader, I’ve been thinking about this gut-punching, eerie, funny, utterly eccentric video game for days now.

Created entirely by indie developer and proud New Zealander Joe Renwick, Girl & Scarecrow tells the story of a child moving to the countryside with her mother, after her father disappears fighting in an unravelling war. The mother insists on his eventual return, and the end of said war, all while making sure her capricious child eats her dinner and stays innocent. The rose tinted glasses are shattered, however, when a mysterious and stinky corpse-man knocks on their door (that’s literally his character name). What ensues is a battle to defeat him, and save your mother, and humanity, from his clutches.

Girl & Scarecrow plays like any visual novel, where the player follows the story and the various paths you can take with different dialogue options. If you’re looking for movement, active-based gameplay, this may not be the one for you, and that’s ok. I think visual novels as a genre have just as much merit as others, and I find the discussion bashing them for not being actual “video games” to be tiresome. Excluding them from your hobby means missing out on some real thought-provoking pieces of art. Life is short – play an adult version of the LeapFrog books at least once. You know your millennial-ass will love it.

The theme of Girl & Scarecrow is humanity’s response to war – whether that be a parent trying to survive, or a child trying to understand. All of the creatures the child encounters on her journey through the bush seem to represent a reaction to conflict and warfare, and I’m still trying to work out exactly what these are. I don’t say this as a negative. I only wish that more people would play the game so I can share my theories. What does a girl have to do to start a special interests reddit thread around here?!

A special credit must be given to the eloquent writing which asks all the right questions without overstating itself. As well as engaging character dialogue, Renwick includes whimsical poetry and prose as chapter headers, making it the truly multimedia project that it is. However, my favourite part about the script is how genuinely funny it is. I laughed out loud continuously while playing, which is a rare instance for me who usually plays video games with the expression of a stony-faced iPad kid.

Ok, so the art style. The clay characters are just phenomenal. Each design has a distinct style and magnetism to them, and there’s no denying that video game characters made by actual hand, and not pixels, feels magical. Renwick has made a lot of stop motion content before, whether that be other video games or short films, and you can sense his eye for the little things. For example, the squiggled placement of a bottom eyelid on the mother that conveys that very specific feeling of parental guilt.

The backdrops, such as the house and kitchen, are also handmade – the kitchen containing details that catch your eye on multiple visits. Cabinets made of cardboard, little tulle curtains. God, it makes me so happy. The only thing I craved was more stop-motion-esque movements for the characters whilst they talked. Instead of being frozen until the next line of dialogue, I would’ve loved to see a mouth moving or an eye twitching in-between. However, these remarks certainly did not take away from my overall experience.

There are branching paths you can take depending on how chaotic you’re feeling. There’s one clear ending that Renwick made as the “good” ending, but the “not-so-good” endings are just as fun to discover. There’s a reason why this game originally runs about 25 minutes long, but I’ve racked three hours on the game in total, and still have yet to unlock all the story achievements yet. (P.S unlock the ‘eat the apple’ achievement at your own emotional risk…)

The game faulted at two points during this process, giving me an error page after a dialogue selection saying the game may glitch. I pressed ignore, and it didn’t seem to break the game at all, but it certainly took me out of the moment. These would obviously need to be ironed out, but apart from that, the game loaded and worked well on my macOS laptop.

In conclusion, games like this are why I will never get tired of trawling the steam page late at night on an indie game hunt. Gems like Girl & Scarecrow are just waiting to be found by the everyday person like me, who wants to discover things that speaks to the soul. I urge you to give it a go. Maybe I’ll stop thinking about this game soon. But I hope not.

Ruby reviewed Girl & Scarecrow on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.