Delicious FruitElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
I've submitted:
380 Ratings!
380 Reviews!
792 Screenshots!
Twitch Stream
Youtube Channel
TwitterReport this user
380 Games
380 Reviews
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Co-op
For: I wanna be the Co-op
*Cleared on June 30th, 2022*
Rating based on Hard Difficulty and Two-Player Mode with all extra bosses, secrets, extra area and true final boss. Played with ElCochran95 aka advokaiser.
My brother is one of the most valuable persons in my life: he is my blood brother, my brother in Christ, my best friend, my trust partner, my gaming companion, and basically the most mature young person I know. It is the brother anyone would wish to have: loyal, open-minded, and will never give you a "no" for an answer when you need a favor.
Since little, we have played every multiplayer game possible we have owned, from Super Mario Bros. 3 and Kirby Super Star, to this magnum opus of a fangaming spectacle.
This game was glancing at me sexily since 2019, and even more sexily since May 2020 when I beat all difficulties and the Magic Tower Mode (inspired by Tower of the Sorcerer) in I Wanna Be the Cat. I had counted reservations considering that game, especially the impact of the Magic Tower concept necessarily meaning you will get softlocked if you use no guide whatsoever. As the first Steam fangame ever, with a rogue-like characters, powerups, a health system, beautiful original designs, delightful homages to immortal fangames, and a strongly functional multiplayer system. The Magic Tower mode, which is pretty much the core of the experience, frustrated me with more than 2 softlocked replays and a deceiving back-up save system, because you could back-up an already screwed position, so it was just deceiving.
Forget about all the negatives in here.
I had to play this game as intended. I cannot imagine playing this in solo mode, or at least, having as much fun as how it was really intended. I can see there would be a lot of backtracking within the same screen to activate all the triggers to make progress.
So this is how it happened.
My brother and I share almost everything in life. After finishing the great game I Wanna Be The Cat, I had to either play it on 2-Player-Mode or on 2-Player-Mode. There was no other option. I approached my brother and asked him: "Would you be interested in playing Co-Op with me when you reach a point in which you felt comfortable skill-wise? I can prepare you a list of recommended fangames for you to practice, but even before starting with them, I would give you some personal lessons with some screens I especially made for you in this fancy tool called J-Tool. I will teach you all the basics, from jumps to aligns and basic gimmicks." He was extremely enthusiastic with the fact that I had already prepared material for him, and after doing 15 different screens, he mastered in the course of 3 freakin' weeks:
-Gates of all types, diagonals, scrotums, corners of all types, sphincters, upward planes, double diamonds at three different heights, double-ceiling diamonds and single-jumping through a half diamond.
I was in awe, but I also thought to myself: "Who was physically present with me, let alone online, to teach me all of this patiently and step by step?" Nobody, and then again, many people, especially the pioneers, learned by their own. However, this was being a proposal to my brother to do something with me that was of my interest.
It is extremely important to point out that the way I knew fangames personally was thanks to HIM. He played I Wanna Be The Guy back in 2016-2017 and beat it, and he recommended it to me. It looked so primitive to me that I refrained. Oh, my close-mindedness. He focused on how retro and genius it was (an opinion he holds up to this day), and that it was a love letter to the brutal NES days of gaming with tons of humor. I learned to appreciate the original I Wanna Be the Guy until much later, a game that, ironically, gets still a lot of criticism today (unless they play the Remastered version, which the engine we all know, but that it ironically works against the original platforming which was kept intact except for a trap in a very specific secret item room).
So, in a way, I said: "I promise to make this journey enjoyable. Every time you play, I will stop doing what I am doing, if possible or not related to work, and sit down next to you to be your audience to cheer you on." He agreed and his expectations went high.
I prepared the following list of 25 fangames for him, in order:
PRACTICE GAMES
-Advanced Practice Techniques With Edgar Cochran (J-Tool)
-I Wanna Be The My Heart Goes On
-I Wanna Be The Chokochoko
-I Wanna Be The GGM
-I Wanna Enjoy The Game
-I Wanna Play The Rubber Trap
-I Wanna Be The Little Runner
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game 2
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game 3
-I Wanna VANILLA
-I Cannot But Go Ahead Through The Way Of The Starlit Sky
-I Wanna Be The Strongest Fairy
-I Wanna Eat The Rori Girl
-I Wanna Struggle Momentarily
-I Wanna Clear The Easy Miku 2
-I Wanna Be The Zero Game
-For My Valentine
-I Wanna Be The Dark Blue
-I Wanna Get The Yellow Star
-I Wanna Be The Experience
-I Wanna Escape the Mysterious House
-I Wanna Be The Fortress Returns
-I Wanna Be The Fangame!
-I Wanna Kill The Guy
I specifically warned him that many of these choices were picked by me because of the difficulty curve they presented and worked as a decent introduction to develop platforming abilities, not necessarily because of them being good. I also mentioned they were heavily inspired by the first two stages of Kamilia 2. He decided to take the risk.
He finished them all with style, and considered Dark Boshy in Kill the Guy to be the toughest challenge of the whole package.
After that, I gave my 25 personal recommendations, in order (an order that tried to balance both difficulty and quality at the same time with the condition that they wouldn't be harder than I Wanna Be the Boshy, so both aspects independently would present inconsistencies):
-Echovision
-I Wanna Be The Machinary
-I Wanna Be The Aura
-I Wanna Enjoy The Game2
-I Wanna Be The Octophobia
-I Wanna Challenge 100 Trials!!
-I Wanna Go Across The Rainbow
-I Wanna Be The Knight Of Shining Armor
-I Wanna Be The Overlord
-I Wanna Kill The Troll King
-I Wanna Reach The Moon
-I wanna be the RUKIMIN!7(SEVEN!)
-Not Another VVVVVV Game
-I Wanna Be The 8bit
-I Wanna Get Cultured
-I Wanna Be The Micromedley
-I Wanna Run The Marathon
-I Wanna Warp The Worlds
-I Wanna Find A Cure
-I Wanna Stop The Simulation
-I Wanna Find My Destiny
-I Wanna Take The Timemachine
-I Wanna Be The Cat (all difficulties and Magic Tower mode)
-I Wanna Be The Co-Op***
-I Wanna Take The Timemachine2
***This was the one!
1 year passed, with me as his always loyal audience, and he had a blast, to say the least. There were naturally many that he liked more than others, but in general, he did feel a change in quality, with the exception of Kill the Guy and Be the Fangame!, which he enjoyed equally (as I did once; great minds think alike. However, I like Fangame! more now because it grew in my heart as years went by).
I had more deaths than he did, lol. We both had 2,500+ deaths with the details said above, and to be frank, I don't regret a thing. I had around 100 deaths more than him (circa 2,600+). Were all of these deaths because of how difficult the game was? No! We had fun trolling each other, deactivating a platform so that the other one would die, replaying bosses we enjoyed a lot, intentionally hitting R if one died too soon because we cared about both experiencing as much of the bosses' length as possible, dying on purpose to find secrets, "now you take this way and I'll take that way" moments, etc. In order to maximize the enjoyment out of a pure gem like this one, what was better than my own brother that thinks a lot like me and has the same sense of humor?
Nemega is a genius. The soundtrack is one of my favorites among the world of fangames, with exceptional instrumental/electronic music choices that perfectly fit the mood and the environment of this stage. The bosses are an absolute blast to play. The graphics are extraordinarily good and balances them well with top-notch gameplay. Hunting down the secrets knowing that your reward will be an extra boss is amazing. All the appreciation to Paper Mario is more than well received. The fangame references and the medley section are absolutely fantastic and shows Nemega's self-awareness of displaying his sources of influence. The inclusion of extra stages and a true final boss just builds the hyp even higher, because it is the perfect implementation of: "Wait, there's more, and it's gonna be good!" gimmick. The bosses and some notorious screens are heavily inspired (sometimes replicated) from the patterns and logic of all bosses of I Wanna Be the Cat, so we were exploring similar territory with each new screen and boss, especially with the latter, which made us go: "I recognize that attack!"
Finally, the platforming and the co-op implementation is absolutely brilliant in here. The thing Iappreciate the most is that it indeed opens the possibility to you of being able to choose what task you will do. In order to avoid exerting pressure to my brother, I intentionally did the most difficult tasks first so that he could do the easier ones, so the game is adaptable to different skill levels, and that made the gaming experience for both of us as entertaining and fun as it can get. The chat functionality is amazing, especially when we had to give each other instructions or tips of things one would notice and the other didn't, and the "click-and-!" is a fantastic idea for either giving step-by-step instructions during the platforming parts that had to be very coordinated between us so we both could progress, or simply to say "watch out!" when a boss is about to make an attack and the game does not let you know beforehand with admiration marks. Sometimes, we would click on the screen to signal the blind spots we had to stand on.
I just wish this had a couple more stages and bosses! When a game wants you wanting for more because of everything it offered, you're talking about very good news.
The time I had with this masterpiece is unmatched and, up to the ending of 2022, this is my favorite fangame of all times. I can put this in the same 4.5/5 quality spectrum of Mega Man X1, Crystalis, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Super Mario World, Final Fantasy IV and Pokemon Silver. Fangames are videogames and I will never discriminate between the two. It's just that incredibly good.
To Nemega and the pioneer creators of epic fangames: THANK YOU!
[4] Likes
Rating based on Hard Difficulty and Two-Player Mode with all extra bosses, secrets, extra area and true final boss. Played with ElCochran95 aka advokaiser.
My brother is one of the most valuable persons in my life: he is my blood brother, my brother in Christ, my best friend, my trust partner, my gaming companion, and basically the most mature young person I know. It is the brother anyone would wish to have: loyal, open-minded, and will never give you a "no" for an answer when you need a favor.
Since little, we have played every multiplayer game possible we have owned, from Super Mario Bros. 3 and Kirby Super Star, to this magnum opus of a fangaming spectacle.
This game was glancing at me sexily since 2019, and even more sexily since May 2020 when I beat all difficulties and the Magic Tower Mode (inspired by Tower of the Sorcerer) in I Wanna Be the Cat. I had counted reservations considering that game, especially the impact of the Magic Tower concept necessarily meaning you will get softlocked if you use no guide whatsoever. As the first Steam fangame ever, with a rogue-like characters, powerups, a health system, beautiful original designs, delightful homages to immortal fangames, and a strongly functional multiplayer system. The Magic Tower mode, which is pretty much the core of the experience, frustrated me with more than 2 softlocked replays and a deceiving back-up save system, because you could back-up an already screwed position, so it was just deceiving.
Forget about all the negatives in here.
I had to play this game as intended. I cannot imagine playing this in solo mode, or at least, having as much fun as how it was really intended. I can see there would be a lot of backtracking within the same screen to activate all the triggers to make progress.
So this is how it happened.
My brother and I share almost everything in life. After finishing the great game I Wanna Be The Cat, I had to either play it on 2-Player-Mode or on 2-Player-Mode. There was no other option. I approached my brother and asked him: "Would you be interested in playing Co-Op with me when you reach a point in which you felt comfortable skill-wise? I can prepare you a list of recommended fangames for you to practice, but even before starting with them, I would give you some personal lessons with some screens I especially made for you in this fancy tool called J-Tool. I will teach you all the basics, from jumps to aligns and basic gimmicks." He was extremely enthusiastic with the fact that I had already prepared material for him, and after doing 15 different screens, he mastered in the course of 3 freakin' weeks:
-Gates of all types, diagonals, scrotums, corners of all types, sphincters, upward planes, double diamonds at three different heights, double-ceiling diamonds and single-jumping through a half diamond.
I was in awe, but I also thought to myself: "Who was physically present with me, let alone online, to teach me all of this patiently and step by step?" Nobody, and then again, many people, especially the pioneers, learned by their own. However, this was being a proposal to my brother to do something with me that was of my interest.
It is extremely important to point out that the way I knew fangames personally was thanks to HIM. He played I Wanna Be The Guy back in 2016-2017 and beat it, and he recommended it to me. It looked so primitive to me that I refrained. Oh, my close-mindedness. He focused on how retro and genius it was (an opinion he holds up to this day), and that it was a love letter to the brutal NES days of gaming with tons of humor. I learned to appreciate the original I Wanna Be the Guy until much later, a game that, ironically, gets still a lot of criticism today (unless they play the Remastered version, which the engine we all know, but that it ironically works against the original platforming which was kept intact except for a trap in a very specific secret item room).
So, in a way, I said: "I promise to make this journey enjoyable. Every time you play, I will stop doing what I am doing, if possible or not related to work, and sit down next to you to be your audience to cheer you on." He agreed and his expectations went high.
I prepared the following list of 25 fangames for him, in order:
PRACTICE GAMES
-Advanced Practice Techniques With Edgar Cochran (J-Tool)
-I Wanna Be The My Heart Goes On
-I Wanna Be The Chokochoko
-I Wanna Be The GGM
-I Wanna Enjoy The Game
-I Wanna Play The Rubber Trap
-I Wanna Be The Little Runner
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game 2
-I Wanna Conquer The Blow Game 3
-I Wanna VANILLA
-I Cannot But Go Ahead Through The Way Of The Starlit Sky
-I Wanna Be The Strongest Fairy
-I Wanna Eat The Rori Girl
-I Wanna Struggle Momentarily
-I Wanna Clear The Easy Miku 2
-I Wanna Be The Zero Game
-For My Valentine
-I Wanna Be The Dark Blue
-I Wanna Get The Yellow Star
-I Wanna Be The Experience
-I Wanna Escape the Mysterious House
-I Wanna Be The Fortress Returns
-I Wanna Be The Fangame!
-I Wanna Kill The Guy
I specifically warned him that many of these choices were picked by me because of the difficulty curve they presented and worked as a decent introduction to develop platforming abilities, not necessarily because of them being good. I also mentioned they were heavily inspired by the first two stages of Kamilia 2. He decided to take the risk.
He finished them all with style, and considered Dark Boshy in Kill the Guy to be the toughest challenge of the whole package.
After that, I gave my 25 personal recommendations, in order (an order that tried to balance both difficulty and quality at the same time with the condition that they wouldn't be harder than I Wanna Be the Boshy, so both aspects independently would present inconsistencies):
-Echovision
-I Wanna Be The Machinary
-I Wanna Be The Aura
-I Wanna Enjoy The Game2
-I Wanna Be The Octophobia
-I Wanna Challenge 100 Trials!!
-I Wanna Go Across The Rainbow
-I Wanna Be The Knight Of Shining Armor
-I Wanna Be The Overlord
-I Wanna Kill The Troll King
-I Wanna Reach The Moon
-I wanna be the RUKIMIN!7(SEVEN!)
-Not Another VVVVVV Game
-I Wanna Be The 8bit
-I Wanna Get Cultured
-I Wanna Be The Micromedley
-I Wanna Run The Marathon
-I Wanna Warp The Worlds
-I Wanna Find A Cure
-I Wanna Stop The Simulation
-I Wanna Find My Destiny
-I Wanna Take The Timemachine
-I Wanna Be The Cat (all difficulties and Magic Tower mode)
-I Wanna Be The Co-Op***
-I Wanna Take The Timemachine2
***This was the one!
1 year passed, with me as his always loyal audience, and he had a blast, to say the least. There were naturally many that he liked more than others, but in general, he did feel a change in quality, with the exception of Kill the Guy and Be the Fangame!, which he enjoyed equally (as I did once; great minds think alike. However, I like Fangame! more now because it grew in my heart as years went by).
I had more deaths than he did, lol. We both had 2,500+ deaths with the details said above, and to be frank, I don't regret a thing. I had around 100 deaths more than him (circa 2,600+). Were all of these deaths because of how difficult the game was? No! We had fun trolling each other, deactivating a platform so that the other one would die, replaying bosses we enjoyed a lot, intentionally hitting R if one died too soon because we cared about both experiencing as much of the bosses' length as possible, dying on purpose to find secrets, "now you take this way and I'll take that way" moments, etc. In order to maximize the enjoyment out of a pure gem like this one, what was better than my own brother that thinks a lot like me and has the same sense of humor?
Nemega is a genius. The soundtrack is one of my favorites among the world of fangames, with exceptional instrumental/electronic music choices that perfectly fit the mood and the environment of this stage. The bosses are an absolute blast to play. The graphics are extraordinarily good and balances them well with top-notch gameplay. Hunting down the secrets knowing that your reward will be an extra boss is amazing. All the appreciation to Paper Mario is more than well received. The fangame references and the medley section are absolutely fantastic and shows Nemega's self-awareness of displaying his sources of influence. The inclusion of extra stages and a true final boss just builds the hyp even higher, because it is the perfect implementation of: "Wait, there's more, and it's gonna be good!" gimmick. The bosses and some notorious screens are heavily inspired (sometimes replicated) from the patterns and logic of all bosses of I Wanna Be the Cat, so we were exploring similar territory with each new screen and boss, especially with the latter, which made us go: "I recognize that attack!"
Finally, the platforming and the co-op implementation is absolutely brilliant in here. The thing Iappreciate the most is that it indeed opens the possibility to you of being able to choose what task you will do. In order to avoid exerting pressure to my brother, I intentionally did the most difficult tasks first so that he could do the easier ones, so the game is adaptable to different skill levels, and that made the gaming experience for both of us as entertaining and fun as it can get. The chat functionality is amazing, especially when we had to give each other instructions or tips of things one would notice and the other didn't, and the "click-and-!" is a fantastic idea for either giving step-by-step instructions during the platforming parts that had to be very coordinated between us so we both could progress, or simply to say "watch out!" when a boss is about to make an attack and the game does not let you know beforehand with admiration marks. Sometimes, we would click on the screen to signal the blind spots we had to stand on.
I just wish this had a couple more stages and bosses! When a game wants you wanting for more because of everything it offered, you're talking about very good news.
The time I had with this masterpiece is unmatched and, up to the ending of 2022, this is my favorite fangame of all times. I can put this in the same 4.5/5 quality spectrum of Mega Man X1, Crystalis, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Super Mario World, Final Fantasy IV and Pokemon Silver. Fangames are videogames and I will never discriminate between the two. It's just that incredibly good.
To Nemega and the pioneer creators of epic fangames: THANK YOU!
Rating: 9.2 92
Difficulty: 60 60
Jan 1, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Justice easy ver
For: I wanna be the Justice easy ver
Raced on July 7th, 2022.
For the second time ever, since I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered, I won't be rating the game in any of the two indicators, because this is a nerfed version of the original game, which is good and highly recommended. My thoughts can be found here: https://delicious-fruit.com/ratings/game_details.php?id=10817
I am still marking this as cleared because, even if I decided never to play this (as with Go the Dotkid! easy ver.), this brings one of my fondest memories in the IWC. I have never been able to fully cope with the Del-Fruit community in general: I don't understand many inside jokes, their humor, their pop-culture and other more obscure references because they completely fly over my head. I also don't have much time in the community to know all present and past users, let alone being up-to-date with their releases. My life priorities are:
1) God
2) My family
3) My friends in Mexico
4) My work, which takes 80% of my everyday life except for weekends
5) Films
Fangames do not make it into the Top 5; it's not something I dream of becoming an expert on, although I won't say no to the next reasonably tougher challenge.
However, I participated in a blind race of this fangame with AliceNobodi, wonderfulxx, Flavia, Placements, Kiyoshi, Arzzt and Anuj (available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz6dBwdVpT0). I obviously did horribly bad (750 deaths, 2:41:29 in-game-time), and finished in 6th place out of 8 (one person quit because of a personal errand and the other one was kinda drunk, so that technical), but I never imagined I could be even considered for being involved in a blind race given how people on the community perceive me in general.
The game is much more accessible for novice adventure players and it is a really good place to start with Carnival fangames. Justice was his transition between the old-school pre-K2 style and the newer generation of fangames experimenting with more visuals and mechanics. This nerfed version stands very solidly on its own and is guaranteed to give you a great time. I still prefer the original, but this is one of the best choices you have for racing against others.
Thanks to everyone from the bottom of my heart.
[3] Likes
For the second time ever, since I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered, I won't be rating the game in any of the two indicators, because this is a nerfed version of the original game, which is good and highly recommended. My thoughts can be found here: https://delicious-fruit.com/ratings/game_details.php?id=10817
I am still marking this as cleared because, even if I decided never to play this (as with Go the Dotkid! easy ver.), this brings one of my fondest memories in the IWC. I have never been able to fully cope with the Del-Fruit community in general: I don't understand many inside jokes, their humor, their pop-culture and other more obscure references because they completely fly over my head. I also don't have much time in the community to know all present and past users, let alone being up-to-date with their releases. My life priorities are:
1) God
2) My family
3) My friends in Mexico
4) My work, which takes 80% of my everyday life except for weekends
5) Films
Fangames do not make it into the Top 5; it's not something I dream of becoming an expert on, although I won't say no to the next reasonably tougher challenge.
However, I participated in a blind race of this fangame with AliceNobodi, wonderfulxx, Flavia, Placements, Kiyoshi, Arzzt and Anuj (available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz6dBwdVpT0). I obviously did horribly bad (750 deaths, 2:41:29 in-game-time), and finished in 6th place out of 8 (one person quit because of a personal errand and the other one was kinda drunk, so that technical), but I never imagined I could be even considered for being involved in a blind race given how people on the community perceive me in general.
The game is much more accessible for novice adventure players and it is a really good place to start with Carnival fangames. Justice was his transition between the old-school pre-K2 style and the newer generation of fangames experimenting with more visuals and mechanics. This nerfed version stands very solidly on its own and is guaranteed to give you a great time. I still prefer the original, but this is one of the best choices you have for racing against others.
Thanks to everyone from the bottom of my heart.
Rating: N/A
Difficulty: N/A
Jan 1, 2023
ElCochran90
For: I wanna Arcana of the Tarot
For: I wanna Arcana of the Tarot
Beaten on June 16th, 2022, live.
Review written while listening to the song "Universum" by Laur, from the album "The Angel's Message", which is, objectively, the most proper song to use to write about Arcana of the Tarot.
trap
/trap/
noun
noun: trap; plural noun: traps
1.
a device or enclosure designed to catch and retain animals, typically by allowing entry but not exit or by catching hold of a part of the body.
2.
a situation in which people lie in wait to make a surprise attack.
3.
a container or device used to collect a specified thing.
verb
a) prevent (someone) from escaping from a place.
b) have (something, typically a part of the body) held tightly by something so that it cannot move or be freed.
c) induce (someone), by means of trickery or deception, to do something they would not otherwise want to do
When Kayin envisioned I Wanna Be the Guy, the game evolved into an adventure comedy, one that was tough as nails. Upon closer inspection, it really was an exercise of frustration, one that experimented freely with the patience of the player, unrestrained, balls-to-the-wall deception while giving surprises save after save. The response of the player pretty much determined how much he/she was understanding the purpose of the game. Those that smashed their keyboards or screamed in anger are used to quick progress; those that laughed or gasped were open-mindedly accepting a new branch of adventure experimentation.
The reason why I bring the original to the table is because the adventure feeling made it more alive, and remains a favorite of mine after thousands of fangame renditions and derivatives. After 15 years, things have evolved to specific genres and can be pretty much classified, unless something new comes along and is tagged as "Special". The exploration was made in the style of a Metroidvania, and the endless references to original retro masterpieces, with some mixes of modernity, made it a classic.
This is an adventure trap game that works as a comedy. If you take it as such, this will prove to be an insanely creative experience. After Outbreak and Cloudburst, this is the perfect closure for the thematic gems that lilly created, and with marimario aboard, a maker with tons of year of experience, this wonder comes out. The difficulty curve is perfect, culminating in the most satisfying challenges, and the traps literally, I dare to say, reinvented the genre for fangames.
Now go back to the definitions of "trap" because I'm pretty sure you skimmed them. When used as a noun:
-In definition 1, the animal is The Kid
-In definition 2, the attacker is the maker
-In definition 3, the container is the entire game
When used as a verb:
-In definition a), it's the ominous premise of the game; you know that will happen countless times
-In definition b), don't worry; the entire body of the kid is ensured to explode because of the most inexplicable and unexpected things and phenomena
-In definition c), it's the spirit of trap fangames
This is one of the few fangames which I have that fully understands and simultaneously applies all of the concepts from above. A falling spike is something you can predict. What about a whole giant block? What about changes in dimensions? What about the design of the game trolling you a la Duck Amuck (1953)? Back in 2007, traps were designed to anticipate how the players would think. Once the player does a plan b), the game anticipates plan b). Arcana of the Tarot, pretty much like Outbreak and Cloudburst, anticipates plans c) and d) (and takes this even to a plan f). Every single betrayal is insane as hell, and funny as Neil Breen.
When you punish the progresses of your audiences with traps, there must be a reward: give them a memorable moment; give them inventive gimmicks, establish their rules and then twist them; play with the game's design; give them something to remember so that they will want to share it with friends so they can react with a "WTF".
Today, the YouTube video "I Wanna Be the Guy - Death By Cutscene" is 14 years old and has 200K views, 1.6 K likes and only 35 dislikes. The majority of the comments are very old, but are all positive, and people keep commenting on it. One that reads "This video really captures the feeling of the whole game in less than a minute..." posted 5 years ago is one of my favorites because that comes from a person that understands the game. This is the art of breaking the rules.
After many fun gimmicks that can be considered simple and others quite fun despite borrowed (such as the Super Mario 64 one), there is nothing that will be able to properly prepare you for the wacky shenanigans throughout that will twist the entire stages. Some might look and be described as ordinarily themed ("the cave stage", "the ice stage", "the factory stage"); however reinventing twists at every turn is what sells this as a trap game.
However, even if the core of the game is trap, it is also an adventure and there is a high emphasis on this. There is a journey to fulfill, and said journey requires variety. The journey has a specific theme: travelling through worlds activating tarot cards after beating stages and thematic bosses. Recreating original videogame tilesets is always allowed as long as you make a memorable tribute to said game. The makers here don't opt for that, and decide to create a world of their own.
When both envisionings are correctly applied, the high-sky production value is more than welcome, because it will add to the game instead of being distracting. Today, many players reinforce the idea that "production value does not equal enjoyment value". Here, the visuals work in favor of the visual design of the adventure spirit and the absolutely mental traps. The latter two factors are added and then multiplied by the production value, and the result is true bliss.
I have mentioned countless times before that the trap genre frustrates me, but it all comes down to the generic conventionalisms and effortless generic deaths that the majority of makers have encapsulated the genre in. This game, after offering a plethora of 100% unpredictable tricks under the hat, never saves a trap before hitting the next save, ergo, removing the desperation of doing an entire save all over again, unlike old-school Carnival. Other lilly trap games do the exact same correct decision.
This is where the final stage comes in: the peak of lilly's creativity and style along with marimario's adventure expertise. It can barely be described with words beyond "an enchanted forest that unleashes the most unexpected troll demons at midnight". It even goes to the extent of going meta and becoming self-aware, culminating in moments of truly freaking based grandiosity.
It is impossible not to mention the bosses, especially when one has gone through Outbreak and Cloudburst: they are masterfully done, and just like the aforementioned games, they save the best for last. Still, the rest of the stage bosses are done with passion and a unique style. They are not grindy, or troll avoidances. They give the correct visual cues to react and learn the expected attacks and reactions, and implement gimmicks fantastically.
The final boss is a masterpiece: two Touhou characters at the magnificent rhythm, harmony and dubstep madness mixture of Universum by Laur. As predictable as the theme of the boss is, the boss itself is not: five stages that escalate spectacularly in difficulty with extraordinary sound editing and visual effects without saturating the screen or creating visual obstacles for knowing where your character is. The boss, moreover, has wonderful small details that I greatly appreciate, because everything adds (some may go consciously unnoticed by many, but unconsciously they allow you to enjoy the final boss much more):
-Every attack is named and has its English translation for us mortals that weren't born on the East
-When you get to the top of the screen, all titles and legends are removed so you don't lose visibility of yourself, unlike the title cards of many medleys
-Attacks are not really hard by themselves because of you requiring to do an exhausting trial and error: they hint the blind spots, announce themselves coming as a next phase, have a correct and reactable timing, and are not confusing at all. The skills required to beat them are calculation and observation.
-This is my favorite aspect and is the most beautiful thing ever: the battle syncs extraordinarily with the song. I am not freaking kidding! How can you be such a programming genius in this sense?? It is not an avoidance!! Well... During your first successful casual playthroughs, you'll realize that by the time the song says "Seek out your enemy", you'll be watching the transition to Phase 3; by the time the dubstep kicks in, you'll be doing the most intense attacks of Phase 3 with the position-based purple energy balls; exactly when the transition towards Phase 4 ends, the piano kicks in, and the avoidance starts at the same time; finally, when phase 5 starts, the song is approaching to its end and the most intense part of Phase 5, which definitely is the most pulse-pounding and epic part, the chant of the song intensifies.
Needless to say, this is a strange hybrid with hyper-contemporary adventure set-pieces aimed to cause a reaction and leave a very satisfying feel of accomplishment at the end.
[1] Like
Review written while listening to the song "Universum" by Laur, from the album "The Angel's Message", which is, objectively, the most proper song to use to write about Arcana of the Tarot.
trap
/trap/
noun
noun: trap; plural noun: traps
1.
a device or enclosure designed to catch and retain animals, typically by allowing entry but not exit or by catching hold of a part of the body.
2.
a situation in which people lie in wait to make a surprise attack.
3.
a container or device used to collect a specified thing.
verb
a) prevent (someone) from escaping from a place.
b) have (something, typically a part of the body) held tightly by something so that it cannot move or be freed.
c) induce (someone), by means of trickery or deception, to do something they would not otherwise want to do
When Kayin envisioned I Wanna Be the Guy, the game evolved into an adventure comedy, one that was tough as nails. Upon closer inspection, it really was an exercise of frustration, one that experimented freely with the patience of the player, unrestrained, balls-to-the-wall deception while giving surprises save after save. The response of the player pretty much determined how much he/she was understanding the purpose of the game. Those that smashed their keyboards or screamed in anger are used to quick progress; those that laughed or gasped were open-mindedly accepting a new branch of adventure experimentation.
The reason why I bring the original to the table is because the adventure feeling made it more alive, and remains a favorite of mine after thousands of fangame renditions and derivatives. After 15 years, things have evolved to specific genres and can be pretty much classified, unless something new comes along and is tagged as "Special". The exploration was made in the style of a Metroidvania, and the endless references to original retro masterpieces, with some mixes of modernity, made it a classic.
This is an adventure trap game that works as a comedy. If you take it as such, this will prove to be an insanely creative experience. After Outbreak and Cloudburst, this is the perfect closure for the thematic gems that lilly created, and with marimario aboard, a maker with tons of year of experience, this wonder comes out. The difficulty curve is perfect, culminating in the most satisfying challenges, and the traps literally, I dare to say, reinvented the genre for fangames.
Now go back to the definitions of "trap" because I'm pretty sure you skimmed them. When used as a noun:
-In definition 1, the animal is The Kid
-In definition 2, the attacker is the maker
-In definition 3, the container is the entire game
When used as a verb:
-In definition a), it's the ominous premise of the game; you know that will happen countless times
-In definition b), don't worry; the entire body of the kid is ensured to explode because of the most inexplicable and unexpected things and phenomena
-In definition c), it's the spirit of trap fangames
This is one of the few fangames which I have that fully understands and simultaneously applies all of the concepts from above. A falling spike is something you can predict. What about a whole giant block? What about changes in dimensions? What about the design of the game trolling you a la Duck Amuck (1953)? Back in 2007, traps were designed to anticipate how the players would think. Once the player does a plan b), the game anticipates plan b). Arcana of the Tarot, pretty much like Outbreak and Cloudburst, anticipates plans c) and d) (and takes this even to a plan f). Every single betrayal is insane as hell, and funny as Neil Breen.
When you punish the progresses of your audiences with traps, there must be a reward: give them a memorable moment; give them inventive gimmicks, establish their rules and then twist them; play with the game's design; give them something to remember so that they will want to share it with friends so they can react with a "WTF".
Today, the YouTube video "I Wanna Be the Guy - Death By Cutscene" is 14 years old and has 200K views, 1.6 K likes and only 35 dislikes. The majority of the comments are very old, but are all positive, and people keep commenting on it. One that reads "This video really captures the feeling of the whole game in less than a minute..." posted 5 years ago is one of my favorites because that comes from a person that understands the game. This is the art of breaking the rules.
After many fun gimmicks that can be considered simple and others quite fun despite borrowed (such as the Super Mario 64 one), there is nothing that will be able to properly prepare you for the wacky shenanigans throughout that will twist the entire stages. Some might look and be described as ordinarily themed ("the cave stage", "the ice stage", "the factory stage"); however reinventing twists at every turn is what sells this as a trap game.
However, even if the core of the game is trap, it is also an adventure and there is a high emphasis on this. There is a journey to fulfill, and said journey requires variety. The journey has a specific theme: travelling through worlds activating tarot cards after beating stages and thematic bosses. Recreating original videogame tilesets is always allowed as long as you make a memorable tribute to said game. The makers here don't opt for that, and decide to create a world of their own.
When both envisionings are correctly applied, the high-sky production value is more than welcome, because it will add to the game instead of being distracting. Today, many players reinforce the idea that "production value does not equal enjoyment value". Here, the visuals work in favor of the visual design of the adventure spirit and the absolutely mental traps. The latter two factors are added and then multiplied by the production value, and the result is true bliss.
I have mentioned countless times before that the trap genre frustrates me, but it all comes down to the generic conventionalisms and effortless generic deaths that the majority of makers have encapsulated the genre in. This game, after offering a plethora of 100% unpredictable tricks under the hat, never saves a trap before hitting the next save, ergo, removing the desperation of doing an entire save all over again, unlike old-school Carnival. Other lilly trap games do the exact same correct decision.
This is where the final stage comes in: the peak of lilly's creativity and style along with marimario's adventure expertise. It can barely be described with words beyond "an enchanted forest that unleashes the most unexpected troll demons at midnight". It even goes to the extent of going meta and becoming self-aware, culminating in moments of truly freaking based grandiosity.
It is impossible not to mention the bosses, especially when one has gone through Outbreak and Cloudburst: they are masterfully done, and just like the aforementioned games, they save the best for last. Still, the rest of the stage bosses are done with passion and a unique style. They are not grindy, or troll avoidances. They give the correct visual cues to react and learn the expected attacks and reactions, and implement gimmicks fantastically.
The final boss is a masterpiece: two Touhou characters at the magnificent rhythm, harmony and dubstep madness mixture of Universum by Laur. As predictable as the theme of the boss is, the boss itself is not: five stages that escalate spectacularly in difficulty with extraordinary sound editing and visual effects without saturating the screen or creating visual obstacles for knowing where your character is. The boss, moreover, has wonderful small details that I greatly appreciate, because everything adds (some may go consciously unnoticed by many, but unconsciously they allow you to enjoy the final boss much more):
-Every attack is named and has its English translation for us mortals that weren't born on the East
-When you get to the top of the screen, all titles and legends are removed so you don't lose visibility of yourself, unlike the title cards of many medleys
-Attacks are not really hard by themselves because of you requiring to do an exhausting trial and error: they hint the blind spots, announce themselves coming as a next phase, have a correct and reactable timing, and are not confusing at all. The skills required to beat them are calculation and observation.
-This is my favorite aspect and is the most beautiful thing ever: the battle syncs extraordinarily with the song. I am not freaking kidding! How can you be such a programming genius in this sense?? It is not an avoidance!! Well... During your first successful casual playthroughs, you'll realize that by the time the song says "Seek out your enemy", you'll be watching the transition to Phase 3; by the time the dubstep kicks in, you'll be doing the most intense attacks of Phase 3 with the position-based purple energy balls; exactly when the transition towards Phase 4 ends, the piano kicks in, and the avoidance starts at the same time; finally, when phase 5 starts, the song is approaching to its end and the most intense part of Phase 5, which definitely is the most pulse-pounding and epic part, the chant of the song intensifies.
Needless to say, this is a strange hybrid with hyper-contemporary adventure set-pieces aimed to cause a reaction and leave a very satisfying feel of accomplishment at the end.
Rating: 8.4 84
Difficulty: 60 60
Jul 18, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna have a good WiFi
For: I wanna have a good WiFi
fanyone improves on the 3 Traps 1 Room formula by implementing some Bigger P**** influence on how spontaneous and creative the traps can be. Trap games should aim at least for these standards; even if the game is too short for its own merit and had very interesting ideas that were not exploited to their fullest capacity (not enough Wi-Fi jokes, or the online Kids making more creative trollish shenanigans for adding variety to the traps), it's still gets a modest work done.
Bigger P**** is still the model followed in this dying genre full of generic traps, flying spikes and invisible blocks. This game also suffers from some of the aforementioned tropes, but then reinvents them in a way that becomes exciting to figure out how will the trap will behave to its fullest.
Fan of trap games that actually have the intention of exploring every single possibility of dying? Try this one out.
[0] Likes
Bigger P**** is still the model followed in this dying genre full of generic traps, flying spikes and invisible blocks. This game also suffers from some of the aforementioned tropes, but then reinvents them in a way that becomes exciting to figure out how will the trap will behave to its fullest.
Fan of trap games that actually have the intention of exploring every single possibility of dying? Try this one out.
Rating: 5.5 55
Difficulty: 40 40
Jun 14, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna keep on dancing 2
For: I wanna keep on dancing 2
Relaxing after the trash I previously played, short, and chill, very forgettable, nothing special to look for in here rather than the cheap Uhuhu-like background (although not really).
Also, difficulty rating is because of the first jump in the first save of the 7th screen. I swear that was frame-perfect & pixel-perfect, and way tougher than the unnecessary plane & corners shortcuts I took for the lols.
[0] Likes
Also, difficulty rating is because of the first jump in the first save of the 7th screen. I swear that was frame-perfect & pixel-perfect, and way tougher than the unnecessary plane & corners shortcuts I took for the lols.
Rating: 3.1 31
Difficulty: 45 45
May 26, 2022
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