At first, Point Perfect is an extremely confusing game. There’s no tutorial or instructions at all. Given that it’s about using a mouse, I expected that you have to click on the enemies to defeat them. So I was constantly dying and was confused why, but I thought I must have done something right because I had scored points. After much frustration, I ended up trying to find Youtube footage to work out how to play the damn thing.
It turns out you are supposed to click and drag to form a box which defeats any enemy within. You have a limit to how large you can draw it, depicted by green or red.
If you touch an enemy or projectile, then you lose a life. It takes you a few seconds to respawn back in which is very frustrating, and also confusing due to a flashing arrow above your cursor as if it wants you to click repeatedly.
You gain a point every second you survive and a point for defeating an enemy. At certain intervals, you are given a boss/challenge which you can gain bonus points for completing.
You have 2 lives by default and play three rounds. Your two best scores are totalled up, and your aim is to get over 200 points.
At the start of the stage, you are given a choice of perk, from increased scores, increased attack range, or an extra life.
In the three rounds, the stage is randomly selected, although there’s not many stages, so you often play the same ones.
The game doesn’t look that hard, but I really struggled with it, and the game does seem to imply it is hard. Sometimes you are shown a taunt animation, like a sequence instructing you to quit the game, or someone being spanked by a dominatrix. It tries to be “edgy”, I guess.
It’s not as wacky as a game like WarioWare, and it is much slower paced too. I found myself just playing for a few minutes each time and getting bored really quick. It’s not the “high difficulty” that put me off - even when I seemed to be doing well, I didn’t feel like I was having fun.