Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
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by Raganoxer
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by Raganoxer
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by Wolfiexe
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by Wolfiexe
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by theTics
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by Wolfiexe
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by Raganoxer
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by theTics
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by Wolfiexe
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by Raganoxer
13 Reviews:
PlutoTheThing
This review is based on collecting all 35 yellow coins and all 17 red coins
Gimmick needle is immensely popular, especially now where there's more of it than ever. Yet this seemingly modern style can have it's very roots traced back by a little maker known as Nekoron, a man with many ideas. I don't know Nekoron and at this point it's safe to say I never will, but I have a deep respect for his work, as while LoveTrap is the more influential and iconic game, Charr is the true masterpiece.
Charr graces a player with some incredibly creative yet simple ideas, and nekoron manages to execute them beautifully. Not everything is a total banger, such as the early levels or grinding the Lucky red coin, but considering the age of the game, it's mind blowing what the ideas are. There are many fangames which do not reach this level of creativity even now, and it's just generally fun to play. The style of platforming is immensely satisfying to get good at an execute, and this becomes apparent when you go for the red coins. As the game progresses there is more fun gameplay, with stages like Hurrah, Normal, and Popular being based on Cherry cycles, or the Material stage with these silly RNG cherry chases, Image with an awesome shooting pushblock gimmick, and Orthodox as the ultimate cycle based challenge. This game doesn't mess around in difficulty, it's REALLY tough, and even the most experienced players will get hung up on some of these. There's even some non-platforming based challenges, such as the Kitten secret which is a matching puzzle, or Qualify which is more of a shooting accuracy test. I can't overstate just how fun this game is to play and and experience what this style of gameplay has to offer, because it's just really really good.
There are people who don't like this game. There isn't anything wrong with that, but for some reason that saddens me. There's a lot about this game which is saddening, mostly regarding the fact that it will never be finished. The scope of the game was massive, and it just simply will not be finished as Nekoron is nowhere to be found. It's hard to explain why these things upset me, but I think it's because to me, Charr represents something more than what the game really is. It feels like this style, is reflected even now by modern standards for needle gameplay. It feels like this game is ahead of it's time. It feels like this game is a modern masterpiece from 2011, but some don't see it that way. Some people see the bad production value, or the annoying segments, or the stupid bosses and throw the whole thing away. That's disappointing, because to me, Charr IS gimmick needle. It's gimmick needle in it's most pure form. It's everything good about gimmick needle in as simple of a format as possible. But that's my experience, and others don't have that, and I wish they did. I wish the game was finished and could reach it's full potential. I wish Charr was what I feel like it should be.
When playing this game, I thought of phrase, which is "If LoveTrap is the body the fangames would emulate, then Charr is the soul." I have no idea if this is accurate, I don't even know if I agree with it, but I thought of it. It feels like there's some truth to it, and that's interesting. Charr is eternally interesting, and eternally brilliant. I love Charr.
[8] Likes
Gimmick needle is immensely popular, especially now where there's more of it than ever. Yet this seemingly modern style can have it's very roots traced back by a little maker known as Nekoron, a man with many ideas. I don't know Nekoron and at this point it's safe to say I never will, but I have a deep respect for his work, as while LoveTrap is the more influential and iconic game, Charr is the true masterpiece.
Charr graces a player with some incredibly creative yet simple ideas, and nekoron manages to execute them beautifully. Not everything is a total banger, such as the early levels or grinding the Lucky red coin, but considering the age of the game, it's mind blowing what the ideas are. There are many fangames which do not reach this level of creativity even now, and it's just generally fun to play. The style of platforming is immensely satisfying to get good at an execute, and this becomes apparent when you go for the red coins. As the game progresses there is more fun gameplay, with stages like Hurrah, Normal, and Popular being based on Cherry cycles, or the Material stage with these silly RNG cherry chases, Image with an awesome shooting pushblock gimmick, and Orthodox as the ultimate cycle based challenge. This game doesn't mess around in difficulty, it's REALLY tough, and even the most experienced players will get hung up on some of these. There's even some non-platforming based challenges, such as the Kitten secret which is a matching puzzle, or Qualify which is more of a shooting accuracy test. I can't overstate just how fun this game is to play and and experience what this style of gameplay has to offer, because it's just really really good.
There are people who don't like this game. There isn't anything wrong with that, but for some reason that saddens me. There's a lot about this game which is saddening, mostly regarding the fact that it will never be finished. The scope of the game was massive, and it just simply will not be finished as Nekoron is nowhere to be found. It's hard to explain why these things upset me, but I think it's because to me, Charr represents something more than what the game really is. It feels like this style, is reflected even now by modern standards for needle gameplay. It feels like this game is ahead of it's time. It feels like this game is a modern masterpiece from 2011, but some don't see it that way. Some people see the bad production value, or the annoying segments, or the stupid bosses and throw the whole thing away. That's disappointing, because to me, Charr IS gimmick needle. It's gimmick needle in it's most pure form. It's everything good about gimmick needle in as simple of a format as possible. But that's my experience, and others don't have that, and I wish they did. I wish the game was finished and could reach it's full potential. I wish Charr was what I feel like it should be.
When playing this game, I thought of phrase, which is "If LoveTrap is the body the fangames would emulate, then Charr is the soul." I have no idea if this is accurate, I don't even know if I agree with it, but I thought of it. It feels like there's some truth to it, and that's interesting. Charr is eternally interesting, and eternally brilliant. I love Charr.
Rating: 9.3 93
Difficulty: 86 86
May 21, 2023
theTics
Rating based on all coins and achievements.
Charr is a game that uses secrets in the best way. The reason is that secrets are optional. We know how bad mandatory secrets are. Unless the secret is obvious, you have to take countless risk deaths to find it, which heavily reduces the fun. But if you make the secret obvious, there's no meaning of finding it.
Charr resolves this dilemma by improving the accessibility to secrets. Sometimes you have to play a stage multiple times if you've missed or couldn't find the secrets at one time. Then normally you might have to play the long stage again, or even the entire game. In Charr, however, you start in a hub with several portals. You can go any portals that you want to find secrets or you can just head out and go back at any time. Most of the stages(portals) are also very short, with 2 or 3 rooms, but secrets are still really hard to find. So in that way, the game maintains the essence of secrets while giving the player a choice whether he will go for the secrets or not.
Before talking about secrets, I'll take a moment to think about the normal part of the game. The first few stages are pretty boring, but it starts to get fun from stage 'Fun'. Every stage from then on has unique concepts. Cherry clock(it reflects the real time), water maze, timed repetition... all of them were unlike anything I've seen before.
Some traps are clever, too. The one in Hurrah where one of the cherry cycles stops when you're about to get the first yellow coin, and the one in Jump where one of the blocks doesn't auto-bounce so you can just fall off and die, were great traps. Can't forget the trap that pushed me into the difficulty select screen when I fell into random holes!
Bosses leave a lot to be desired, though. Apple boss is undoubtedly a substandard boss from default-style bad fangames. Bowser might be mediocre because it's unusual, but none of the Pokemons had an appeal for me. They were eight bosses with just eight ordinary patterns.
If you get all yellow coins, chances are you'll be interested in the red coin you've seen on the menu screen. Charr tells you 'this game has secrets' in a natural way. Many people might find their first red coin in Beginner when they just walk forward after getting the yellow coin. If you couldn't find it, you'll eventually find one in Qualify. If you begin to realize all stages have red coins, you'll find the game new and feel the true beauty of Charr.
There are reasons why I found those secrets so charming. First, most of the red coins are really hard to find but hidden in novel ways. I've cleared the majority of the stages at least 5 times to find them. They were usually in the places where I put as the last options because they're hard to reach. Some secrets are not just hidden by fake blocks, but only accessible if certain conditions are satisfied. Orthodox, Easy, and Lucky red coins are great examples.
Speaking of Lucky, I like how stylish RNG in Charr is. In Lucky, you need some degree of luck no matter what coin you're going for. But not pure luck, you can reduce the risk by doing needle jumps. Even with the setup, I always felt a subtle tension when I go down the holes, and waiting for the slot. There's also an RNG spike in the first screen of Normal that falls so fast that you can't just ignore. The RNG spike is set randomly out of 17 spikes, so you have to run for 1/17 chance every time you reset. These moments gave me good scary feelings.
Another reason is the difficulty gap between yellow and red coins. I still remember when I played this game in 2011, I got shocked by the dramatic increase in difficulty after Bowser(30->70). Yet again, I felt so when I was grinding red coins. Jump and Orthodox both took me 20 minutes to beat normally, but they took 12 and 17 hours respectively to get red coins. This kind of gap might be disturbing for someone, but it rather made me excited. It might be the same reason why I found 'I wanna be the Gap' fascinating. For some reason, unexpected change sometimes gives the energy to the game and makes it fun.
I've been using the term 'red coin' instead of 'secret' because the secret is not all about coins. There's the last variety that Charr offers, the achievement. Achievements are even harder than red coins to find; I didn't even know that it existed until I got 9th red coin. There's a fake block in the left wall in the portal room, which leads to the achievement room. When you get achievement, it produces an unusual sound effect and you can check it out in the room. Some of the achievements are quite easy to get, but some of them are extremely difficult to even find. Did you know that there's an achievement for beating the apple boss while standing only in the right down corner? This kind of achievement might be considered unfair, but it is interesting by its existence for anyone seeking achievements.
Playing this game was like looking into an object under a microscope. The actual map always remains the same, but when I peered into the stage, there were far more than meets the eye. I was surprised that the game has more variety than I expected. I was also surprised by the game's high-level platforming and elaborate designs in the earliest fangame era. It was such an astonishing game in many ways.
[8] Likes
Charr is a game that uses secrets in the best way. The reason is that secrets are optional. We know how bad mandatory secrets are. Unless the secret is obvious, you have to take countless risk deaths to find it, which heavily reduces the fun. But if you make the secret obvious, there's no meaning of finding it.
Charr resolves this dilemma by improving the accessibility to secrets. Sometimes you have to play a stage multiple times if you've missed or couldn't find the secrets at one time. Then normally you might have to play the long stage again, or even the entire game. In Charr, however, you start in a hub with several portals. You can go any portals that you want to find secrets or you can just head out and go back at any time. Most of the stages(portals) are also very short, with 2 or 3 rooms, but secrets are still really hard to find. So in that way, the game maintains the essence of secrets while giving the player a choice whether he will go for the secrets or not.
Before talking about secrets, I'll take a moment to think about the normal part of the game. The first few stages are pretty boring, but it starts to get fun from stage 'Fun'. Every stage from then on has unique concepts. Cherry clock(it reflects the real time), water maze, timed repetition... all of them were unlike anything I've seen before.
Some traps are clever, too. The one in Hurrah where one of the cherry cycles stops when you're about to get the first yellow coin, and the one in Jump where one of the blocks doesn't auto-bounce so you can just fall off and die, were great traps. Can't forget the trap that pushed me into the difficulty select screen when I fell into random holes!
Bosses leave a lot to be desired, though. Apple boss is undoubtedly a substandard boss from default-style bad fangames. Bowser might be mediocre because it's unusual, but none of the Pokemons had an appeal for me. They were eight bosses with just eight ordinary patterns.
If you get all yellow coins, chances are you'll be interested in the red coin you've seen on the menu screen. Charr tells you 'this game has secrets' in a natural way. Many people might find their first red coin in Beginner when they just walk forward after getting the yellow coin. If you couldn't find it, you'll eventually find one in Qualify. If you begin to realize all stages have red coins, you'll find the game new and feel the true beauty of Charr.
There are reasons why I found those secrets so charming. First, most of the red coins are really hard to find but hidden in novel ways. I've cleared the majority of the stages at least 5 times to find them. They were usually in the places where I put as the last options because they're hard to reach. Some secrets are not just hidden by fake blocks, but only accessible if certain conditions are satisfied. Orthodox, Easy, and Lucky red coins are great examples.
Speaking of Lucky, I like how stylish RNG in Charr is. In Lucky, you need some degree of luck no matter what coin you're going for. But not pure luck, you can reduce the risk by doing needle jumps. Even with the setup, I always felt a subtle tension when I go down the holes, and waiting for the slot. There's also an RNG spike in the first screen of Normal that falls so fast that you can't just ignore. The RNG spike is set randomly out of 17 spikes, so you have to run for 1/17 chance every time you reset. These moments gave me good scary feelings.
Another reason is the difficulty gap between yellow and red coins. I still remember when I played this game in 2011, I got shocked by the dramatic increase in difficulty after Bowser(30->70). Yet again, I felt so when I was grinding red coins. Jump and Orthodox both took me 20 minutes to beat normally, but they took 12 and 17 hours respectively to get red coins. This kind of gap might be disturbing for someone, but it rather made me excited. It might be the same reason why I found 'I wanna be the Gap' fascinating. For some reason, unexpected change sometimes gives the energy to the game and makes it fun.
I've been using the term 'red coin' instead of 'secret' because the secret is not all about coins. There's the last variety that Charr offers, the achievement. Achievements are even harder than red coins to find; I didn't even know that it existed until I got 9th red coin. There's a fake block in the left wall in the portal room, which leads to the achievement room. When you get achievement, it produces an unusual sound effect and you can check it out in the room. Some of the achievements are quite easy to get, but some of them are extremely difficult to even find. Did you know that there's an achievement for beating the apple boss while standing only in the right down corner? This kind of achievement might be considered unfair, but it is interesting by its existence for anyone seeking achievements.
Playing this game was like looking into an object under a microscope. The actual map always remains the same, but when I peered into the stage, there were far more than meets the eye. I was surprised that the game has more variety than I expected. I was also surprised by the game's high-level platforming and elaborate designs in the earliest fangame era. It was such an astonishing game in many ways.
Rating: 9.6 96
Difficulty: 92 92
Jul 26, 2020
thenewsaika
In fact, we still haven't fully discovered all the secrets of the game.I think even after ten years, the difficulty of this game can still reach K3 or CN3 and so on.This forced me to make such a rating.
It is the teacher of Noesis.
This game has the most difficult single save since I played all I wannas.Can you imagine that I spent more than ten hours just to get a red coin in "Jump" "Orthobox" & "Popular"?Many jumps are set so ingenious, it needs you not to have 1 frame deviation, but it needn't any x-align requirement.This just Nekoron's the tip of the iceberg of wise.
In "Delicious" stage, Nekoron made an exploration between kid and delicious fruit.Here we surprisingly come to the conclusion that the width of Kid(11px) plus the width of delicious fruit(21px) is equal to the width of a block(32px)!This may indirectly explain Kid's limit through width,also indicates the emergence of X-aligns.(Of course, this is my personal thought).
In "Normal" stage, Nekoron set some special codes,Delicious fruits turn round with local time.I had never seen this design.
Achievements are harder.
I don't know about "Author's statement".Allegedly there is a achievement in a certain Eevee BOSS, it's only 1 in 8192 probability.If you achieve this and you don't decompile, your death may be a astronomical figures!!!This one of why I set 99 difficulty reasons.
I admire Nekoron very much.Sadly, his/her contact information are all failed.If anyone knows, please tell me some messages about him/her.
The pause mechanism for this game is: You can only pause on standing on saves. In achievement Kitten, it requires you to beat the puzzle without stand on the ground (not to triggered spike).At this time, Kid drops at 9.4 pixels for each frame .....50fps.....600px height....1.27SECONDS!!!! Somebody solved it in a way that I couldn't understand, he paused kid and fruits, and ????? v=HCGhnyhK0s4 .Anyway, I think it is impossible to do that under normal circumstances, also, this must be against the will of the maker.So I consider that 99 difficulty is sensible.
[6] Likes
It is the teacher of Noesis.
This game has the most difficult single save since I played all I wannas.Can you imagine that I spent more than ten hours just to get a red coin in "Jump" "Orthobox" & "Popular"?Many jumps are set so ingenious, it needs you not to have 1 frame deviation, but it needn't any x-align requirement.This just Nekoron's the tip of the iceberg of wise.
In "Delicious" stage, Nekoron made an exploration between kid and delicious fruit.Here we surprisingly come to the conclusion that the width of Kid(11px) plus the width of delicious fruit(21px) is equal to the width of a block(32px)!This may indirectly explain Kid's limit through width,also indicates the emergence of X-aligns.(Of course, this is my personal thought).
In "Normal" stage, Nekoron set some special codes,Delicious fruits turn round with local time.I had never seen this design.
Achievements are harder.
I don't know about "Author's statement".Allegedly there is a achievement in a certain Eevee BOSS, it's only 1 in 8192 probability.If you achieve this and you don't decompile, your death may be a astronomical figures!!!This one of why I set 99 difficulty reasons.
I admire Nekoron very much.Sadly, his/her contact information are all failed.If anyone knows, please tell me some messages about him/her.
The pause mechanism for this game is: You can only pause on standing on saves. In achievement Kitten, it requires you to beat the puzzle without stand on the ground (not to triggered spike).At this time, Kid drops at 9.4 pixels for each frame .....50fps.....600px height....1.27SECONDS!!!! Somebody solved it in a way that I couldn't understand, he paused kid and fruits, and ????? v=HCGhnyhK0s4 .Anyway, I think it is impossible to do that under normal circumstances, also, this must be against the will of the maker.So I consider that 99 difficulty is sensible.
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 99 99
Jan 22, 2022
Wolfiexe
Rating based on All Red Coins.
Charr is a very old collectathon fangame dating back to 2011, featuring 17 stages each corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. There are also a few bosses scattered in-between the stage hubs however whilst they definitely aren't trivial, they're not really what you'll be playing the game for and not at all where the strengths lie.
The game consists of a few hubs, each of which is unlocked when all yellow coins in the previous hub stages have been collected. Every stage brings something a bit different. To list a few, J (Jump) has you auto-jumping (or bouncing) everywhere you move. L (Lucky) is exactly as the name suggests, having you travel through a short segment to increase your odds of hitting the jackpot on a slot machine at the end. M (Material) aside some spooky cherry platforming features a reverse-spotlight maze spanning multiple screens with Mr. X-equivalent cherries lurking within. I could go on and there are certainly a few stages that didn't stand out too much, but the amount of variety and uniqueness on show is pretty impressive, despite the very lacklustre production value.
Every stage features a red coin, which is essentially the secret of the stage. Out of the 17 red coins, a couple of them took me longer than all the rest combined (Jump and Orthodox) which means if you're going for what is essentially All Clear (minus some questionable achievements) then you'll be in for quite a grind in parts. Still, it's worth experimenting and giving them a try as just like the main stages, the red coins stay very varied in design.
A big minus on the game is the production value, although given the age of this game it's not really expected for it to be any visual or audio marvel. Guy Rock features prominently throughout with the odd song change here and there, and everyone's favourite classic tilesets will follow you throughout the bulk of the stages.
Charr also features a little achievement room hidden to the left of the hub-portal. There aren't too many achievements although a couple secrets in the game allow you to unlock some additional costumes for The Kid which is a nice touch. Some of the achievements I'm aware of sound a bit too much (I'm unsure if anyone has ever gotten the Orthodox achievement to do like 30+ loops of a certain segment without dying), so I'm not really factoring that into the rating here.
I was slightly unsure on how to rate the difficulty of this, given there's no real GG screen or ending, although I can agree the most likely conclusion would be after beating all 17 stages with just the yellow coins. With that alone, I'd estimate it to maybe a 75~, although going for the red coins proves a very tricky challenge which ramped it up moreso for my final rating, just to give some context for my score.
Overall though, Charr is quite an interesting game. If you can look past the often shoddy production value and shaky segments, you'll find something unique in here. I find it very impressive in regards to the ideas and creative design in a game that stands as 8 years old now. I can't ever see it being finished, but I think it could stand as a great concept for a game for others to follow-up on.
[3] Likes
Charr is a very old collectathon fangame dating back to 2011, featuring 17 stages each corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. There are also a few bosses scattered in-between the stage hubs however whilst they definitely aren't trivial, they're not really what you'll be playing the game for and not at all where the strengths lie.
The game consists of a few hubs, each of which is unlocked when all yellow coins in the previous hub stages have been collected. Every stage brings something a bit different. To list a few, J (Jump) has you auto-jumping (or bouncing) everywhere you move. L (Lucky) is exactly as the name suggests, having you travel through a short segment to increase your odds of hitting the jackpot on a slot machine at the end. M (Material) aside some spooky cherry platforming features a reverse-spotlight maze spanning multiple screens with Mr. X-equivalent cherries lurking within. I could go on and there are certainly a few stages that didn't stand out too much, but the amount of variety and uniqueness on show is pretty impressive, despite the very lacklustre production value.
Every stage features a red coin, which is essentially the secret of the stage. Out of the 17 red coins, a couple of them took me longer than all the rest combined (Jump and Orthodox) which means if you're going for what is essentially All Clear (minus some questionable achievements) then you'll be in for quite a grind in parts. Still, it's worth experimenting and giving them a try as just like the main stages, the red coins stay very varied in design.
A big minus on the game is the production value, although given the age of this game it's not really expected for it to be any visual or audio marvel. Guy Rock features prominently throughout with the odd song change here and there, and everyone's favourite classic tilesets will follow you throughout the bulk of the stages.
Charr also features a little achievement room hidden to the left of the hub-portal. There aren't too many achievements although a couple secrets in the game allow you to unlock some additional costumes for The Kid which is a nice touch. Some of the achievements I'm aware of sound a bit too much (I'm unsure if anyone has ever gotten the Orthodox achievement to do like 30+ loops of a certain segment without dying), so I'm not really factoring that into the rating here.
I was slightly unsure on how to rate the difficulty of this, given there's no real GG screen or ending, although I can agree the most likely conclusion would be after beating all 17 stages with just the yellow coins. With that alone, I'd estimate it to maybe a 75~, although going for the red coins proves a very tricky challenge which ramped it up moreso for my final rating, just to give some context for my score.
Overall though, Charr is quite an interesting game. If you can look past the often shoddy production value and shaky segments, you'll find something unique in here. I find it very impressive in regards to the ideas and creative design in a game that stands as 8 years old now. I can't ever see it being finished, but I think it could stand as a great concept for a game for others to follow-up on.
Rating: 7.2 72
Difficulty: 90 90
May 8, 2019