An enjoyable game with somewhat awkward controls – Stagehand: A Reverse Platformer Review

Overall this a pretty fun game with some of the usual downsides of touch-based games. The game can feel a bit repetitive, but this is alleviated somewhat by the randomly generated levels. And it looks like once you reach a certain score, you begin to unlock some other characters. The controls are a bit awkward. I never feel like I'm in great control of what's going on. I don't think this is fully the fault of the game. Part of it is just the reality of playing a game on a touch screen. This game can become pretty fast paced and require some quick and precise inputs to get past certain parts, and our dumb imprecise fingers on a relatively small screen can make this a challenge - and not a fun one. I've found my right pointer finger to be easiest to use, and of course then I'm covering the right half of the screen with my hand as I play, limiting how far ahead I can see the terrain that's coming. Again, just a reality of touchscreen games. I would say the game has at least one problem of occasionally throwing walls at you that seemingly go down too far for you to get under, leading to an instant game over. The game is tough enough without that, so running into them can be pretty discouraging. It isn't clear if this is a bug, or if you actually can pull the ground down far enough, but the small lip of my phone case prevents me from micro-managing the very edge of my phone screen. Hopefully the controls and levels are tweaked in future updates to prevent things like this.
Review by shlemas on Stagehand: A Reverse Platformer.