notmaxwell's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 3, 2025
Bio:
aka 457
every game i've left a rating or review on i have cleared.
clear list is only used for monumental or impactful clears, or my favourite clears.
(My favourite games tab is different to my clears tab).
I don't tend to give rating or difficulty values anymore, since it's meaningless and was demotivating to be placed alongside people who didn't play through the game, or can't tell the difference between a problem with the game or themselves.
I've submitted:
137 Ratings!
64 Reviews!
2 Screenshots!
137 Games
64 Reviews
For: I wanna see you one last time
intimidating atmosphere, the visuals are quite interesting and cool, background and tiles are pretty unique, i don't usually comment on bgm but i think it suits quite well. any% clear is alright, 1 save which is pretty decent, i don't love some of the jumps, mainly the 2nd & 4th but there's some good ones to make up for it.
2nd screen is the requirement for a normal clear, it's kind of awesome that there's an absurdly hard save with text saying "you can't..." on the clearscreen, the needle is interesting, the structuring is pretty unique, and most of it is condensed on the right side of the screen. There aren't too many jumps, but most jumps included are extremely precise and difficult, i quite like the last 4, but i'm not as much of a fan of the first few. the downards plane is quite fun with 1f 1f, the bonk afterwards is pretty cool, i like how the djump isn't forced but the left press into the 2nd squished diagonal should not be underestimated, final jump vstring is very cool albeit extremely easy to die at, and the prefinal jump i found to be extremely satisfying, i think the final 4 jumps are quite interesting and cool, they're extremely rough and somewhat inconsistent by nature (prefinal mainly, somewhat depending on strats) but i quite prefer it over the first few, i can't say im as big of a fan with the start of the save, it seems a lot less creative with the jumps being well known named ones, the ex15 at this height is rough, 4.5 is fine except i feel like it's a bit frustrating to put at the start of the save, jump afterwards is also alright, and i'm not a fan of the leehe jump but it's possibly due to a skill issue. For the 6f strat with the double invert, a pretty lengthy valign setup is basically required, alongside requiring the player to know exactly how they do a leehe jump most commonly, i rarely think i ever got to the inverts with impossible valign, but there's a 20% chance with my setup that i would get there with an even tighter range that made the movements more lenient, i will say it's a bit of a shame this isn't always the case, having the setup be before the leehe jump is also unfortunate, as it felt like playing from the start of the save was quite tiring from having to do the 4.5 and setup almost every attempt. The 2nd valign setup is much less troublesome as it's not too lengthy and there's a good chunk of room, and it's pretty deep into the save. I think this is a cool save being honest, it's quite evil but it doesn't appear to be mindlessly put together or designed, i do wish the entirety of the save was more like the latter half, but combined with the visuals and atmosphere it's pretty awesome, i'm glad this exists.
game doesnt save if you clear the needle on the clearscreen, which is a bit of a shame, also im not sure if it was intentional to use a different save sprite on the clearscreen (nitpick, it was just hard to tell if i saved or not)
For: I wanna Archean
Final save is the hardest by quite a lot, I will say that i found it to be a bit unbalanced, the top row and half of the middle row felt a lot more consistent than the middle-ish section mainly due to the 2 bhop jumps, the latter of which requiring a frame perfect rejump on the first frame. I didn't like this jump much, it's a cool jump but I felt like it was far too deep into the save, it's quite hard to tell if you jumped 1st or 2nd frame and consistency develops slowly at this jump compared to most other ones, which kind of made it feel like a wall. I also am not too big of a fan of the 9f planes, i like the spin with the first one requiring a bhop, i commend it for impressiveness, but i can't say i found it to play too well. Also on this topic, I can't say i enjoyed the 4f fj in the bottom row, mainly due to the required valign range, it felt quite frustrating at times having to setup for .48 or .49 with barely any space to jump around, and considering this is at the start of the save i would have to do this almost every attempt, which kind of felt like a frustrating time waster after a while. This isn't nearly as much of a problem with the final jump, which also requires this range (if you use the non-bhop strat i did) as you can bonk and due to it being at the end of the save, the pacing isn't impacted. I loved the 2nd half of this save though, and the first few jumps are pretty cool too, it's kind of repetitive but the jumps feel extremely intuitive for the most part, and especially the 10f feel great, and the bhop in the middle is quite interesting and feels surprisingly good for how easily volatile inputs like that (high jump, low pause djump) can be.
I want to talk about the update in this game though, as i don't really understand some of it. I played a bit of save 1 before the update, and it kind of feels like quality was sacrificed in some spots to make the game harder. In the middle of the save, there's now a required 6f with a tight and awkward turnaround, which isn't really a 'ftfa-like' jump (s2 also has this with the 14f in the top left), which was added in the update, It's a minor nitpick but it was a bit of a shame. That being said, i can understand some of the changes, mainly the ones that make some jumps considerably more interesting (such as at the end of save 3).
Also this is kind of another nitpick, but i would love if the game displayed more than 2 valign decimals. Mainly because there's a few jumps which require extremely tight ranges, and due to gamemaker rounding with 2 decimals you have to consciously make some ranges tighter (such as in the final save, if you were to jump on .47 there's a ~50% chance you aren't in the right range). This isn't the norm so I don't blame the creator or anything, but I want to mention it since maybe it can be.
It's quite a good ftfa-like. Brings a lot of very cool and interesting jumps to the table, so i really commend it for that. I think it sadly falls a bit in terms of balance and with how some of the actual jumps turn out to play, but It's pretty good overall.
For: distant hold
quite cool vibe, extremely relaxed which is pretty nice to see, very impressively made with solely 32px.
saves 1 & 3 are the main killers, especially 3. save 3 requires an insane double cactus into frame perfect 6f with extremely precise movements (1f stutter, two 1f delayed corners) alongside it. It's an extremely precise jump and so damn hard and each input after the double cactus somewhat feels like filters stacked upon eachother to lower the chances of passing the jump. alongside this, there's a very volatile 2nd jump afterwards, which requires some tight stutters and a 4f, very easy to fumble. This save is really cool though, it's impressive just how difficult the first jump is, although it is kind of draining to play at times due to it feeling so damn difficult to pass.
Save 1 is pretty cool, first jump is a nice cactus and the 2nd similarly too (which also has a frame perfect shoot timing, i find this really cool and underutilized in many precision games), both jumps of save 2 require 1f stutters (technically not for the first jump) but it's also quite fun, save 4 is generally quite easy in comparison but it's not harmful. Almost every jump (with the exception of the final save 4 jump, which isn't bad just not too technically impressive) is extremely impressively hard, especially for 32px needle, and very interesting too.
Recommend if interested in this kind of thing. It's epic
For: Eradicate.
I loved screens 1-4, infact screen 3 is one of my favourite trials screens i've ever played, and i enjoyed 1,2 & 4 a lot aswell. 1 & 2 don't display anything too in-depth other than some possible strat deviations, to which i'd suggest 9f 2f in the middle of scrn2 to skip the left side of the water & 9f 1f in the middle of screen 1. Screen 4 is great, the beginning is extremely difficult and the water fj out to the middle of the screen is really cool, you also don't have to do a platform mini f at the end as you can grab the platform quite low and 1f up. It's a really fun screen, was quite consistent towards the end and was pretty cool to figure out.
Screen 3 is great, stratfinding was really interesting and it's quite an interesting screen. I highly recommend 2f for valign (.45) then bonk 1+1, immediately jump off the vine which then lets you 1f 15f in the invert and then manually do the last vine jump. It's quite a fun input string to pull off, and considering it's all hold-right strats (except for the final vine jump, which is fine) it's really cool, big fan of this screen. Each screen is also symmetrical, which makes saves 3 & 4 even more impressive, the tileset isn't incredible (partly due to the blocks being recoloured from annihilate) but it's atmospheric enough to not be detracting.
But sadly all this amazing needle is just overshadowed by the hell that is the final save. In terms of balance, no prior save comes close. And in terms of quality, if save 3 was an olympic athlete, save 5 would be a cockroach in a swimming race. The 2 chained linkage jumps are the focal point here, which already highlights a very important problem, you can't have the good align for both of these jumps, one of them has a tighter cancel than the other (you cannot 1+3 the 2nd jump, and hovering is a bit harder in the 2nd) alongside this, you have to hover and 1f before the cancel to properly get good vstring, which is extremely difficult and adds extra inconsistencies into the save, it's extremely easy to either 1) die while hovering, 2) cancel on the wrong frame, 3) die to being late on the jump after the cancel or get overwhelmed and mess up the inputs anyway, it's absurdly difficult, and truthfully it's not the most fun.
I can respect this save for it's simplicity, but the linkage jumps are just so volatile, sometimes you can be consistent at them and at other times it's just worthless. Alongside this, the start and the end of the save are not simple, I found 5f 2f to let you grab the final platform with a 1f, which is a lot easier to pull off under pressure than a 1+1 turnaround, but it's still so easy to die to the 5f 2f, and the turnaround itself, the jump is yet again so volatile, consistency is unreliable and dying there a lot is expected. Alongside the final jump, there's the prefinal 1f\cancel, which should not be underestimated since it's a bastard that will kill you multiple times past the linkage jumps. It feels terrible since it's a fail past the linkage jumps, yet not at the final jump, and the jump itself feels really awkward and arbitrary, a theme that is displayed entirely throughout this save. The first jump also feels a bit off, the walkoff jump is okay-ish in that it gets consistent, the cancel dplane into turnaround similarly too but it can be frustrating at times, 3f included. But it mainly serves as a filter for attempts at the linkage jumps, you have to be more consistent at them than you would expect because of the jumps before them, and with the first jump and dplane being quite prone to random consistency droughts, it just further adds to the frustration with the linkage jumps and everything past it. I don't like this save, i really respect it for being this difficult and symmetrical, while sticking to 32px\16px grid, aesthetically it's really nice but it just feels so arbitrary and volatile to play, even at best it was frustrating to die to the prefinal and final jump only to suddenly get worse, it's a rollercoaster but with linkage jumps and no real highs.
Not too sure how i feel about this game, I wouldn't recommend clearing it because of the final save but everything before it was great.
For: I wanna see a black light
Needle is good for the most part, i like the originality although almost every screen suffered from 1 major problem, mainly balance. Some screens would have quite a few fj vines with the idea of having to keep your jump for quite a bit, sadly this meant that in some spots you'd have 'timewasters\filler' spots and then the difficulty would ramp up drastically at one area, then usually back down. Some vines also had a bit too tight movement inputs compared to the majority of other vines, it's not really problematic though and it's an easy mistake to make when creating vine needle like this, especially with limited screen room.
I'd recommend it
2 Games
| Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| crude riverbed | 63.3 | 7.0 | 5 |
| Vaisravana | 75.0 | N/A | 2 |
46 Favorite Games
45 Cleared Games
Delicious Fruit