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!
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ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Competitor
For: I Wanna Be the Competitor
I think this is the spot most of us can agree that Mizudori didn't impress at all this time. 8 stages with non-repetitive bosses (each one is unique in its own way, which is a plus), but gets ruined by the fact that most of them are pattern avoidances plagued with instagibs and extremely precise blind spots that are not obvious at all unless you record your own gameplay and rewatch it. It's a poor exercise in creativity and it is free grinding, which not all of us are into if we're honest. Each attempt you'll last 1.5-2 seconds alive until the next instagib kills you so you can ask: where should I move precisely towards to now??
Stages feature their own gimmick but are recycled from other old-school fangames and had been done to death by that point: single-jumping, making yourself blurry or almost invisible compared to the background, your kid being mirrored in the upper half of the screen such as in "GreeeeN" and countless others, etc. Platforming is not creative at all and traps are frustrating here, unlike in Symmetry, where the big lack of them played in favor of the gimmicks and their enjoyability.
Final Miku, being the best (ugh... least worst) part of the game is not worth the whole journey (ironically, it is not the hardest avoidance), but if you're either into Mizudori or old-school fangames, give it a pass.
So, avoid.
[3] Likes
Stages feature their own gimmick but are recycled from other old-school fangames and had been done to death by that point: single-jumping, making yourself blurry or almost invisible compared to the background, your kid being mirrored in the upper half of the screen such as in "GreeeeN" and countless others, etc. Platforming is not creative at all and traps are frustrating here, unlike in Symmetry, where the big lack of them played in favor of the gimmicks and their enjoyability.
Final Miku, being the best (ugh... least worst) part of the game is not worth the whole journey (ironically, it is not the hardest avoidance), but if you're either into Mizudori or old-school fangames, give it a pass.
So, avoid.
Rating: 3.1 31
Difficulty: 70 70
Jan 27, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the Symmetry
For: I Wanna Be the Symmetry
**I should clarify before anything something factually incorrect stated by Xplayerlol. The orange stage where your keys are reversed, they are actually not. Keys are not randomly locked so you have to restart "until they work". All FOUR arrow keys have a 0.5 probability of being assigned a direction (left or right), and the gimmick is programmed to lock the probability to 1.0 so that only TWO out of the FOUR keys work, which makes the gimmick a wee bit more interesting and original, but not so much. It feels funny, but it is not a glitch in either the V0.9 or V1.01 (I tried both to confirm).**
Rating based on 100% clear including extra, which is only included in version 1.01. Difficulty rating based on normal clear without secrets and Extra (consider a difficulty of 75 for the act of getting all secrets, doing the extra stage and the extra boss).
"A huge ass mixed bag", says DerpyHooves, and I sort of agree, but that definition suits Make It Breaking Out so much better. So here I am, exploring what seems to be the undervalued Mizudori. Evidently, the creator has a gigantic set of gimmick ideas and never fails to deliver playability variety. After playing Breaking Out and Starter, it is evident who was the Touhou fan between him and carua, and also who came up with the structure of the game: hubs with different routes unlocking new hubs, then the extra section after a "final boss" which just turned out to be a gatekeeper, play a new extra stage, a previous extra boss and the definitive final boss. Judging by the needle design here and in Starter, carua is much more creative, including in the visual aspect. Mizudori is the gimmick guy.
Hence, expect tons of gimmicks with atrociously repetitive and generic needle (several stages are gate fests or shuriken fests, so expect tons of those). The difficulty curve has no rhyme or reason, except that it never gets tougher. Imagine a random series, but stationary. That's what to expect here: if you clear the main hub, don't expect something tougher in the future. Just more gimmicks.
The core concept is, obviously, symmetry, and there are some fascinating ideas, so where the game lacks a huge deal in level design, it compensates in variety and gimmick creativity. The symmetry is not always visual; sometimes, you have to picture it, and sometimes, it is about the controls. Those are highly positive points in this fangame. The overall structure of the game, which is almost identical to Breaking Out, is fun, as each stage has no more than 4 screens each.
Is there a great boss variety? Of course not. That was carua's work, but no carua this time (who curiously worked more often in collabs). The game is plagued with big cherries; however, again, the ideas behind are enjoyable, so it is clear that the intention is to experiment with movement and coordination, sometimes creating great results. Some bossess are actually avoidances, not in the traditional sense you'd expect (either Mikus or just projectiles appearing according to a song); however, you beat them avoiding. Some bosses do require puzzle-ish reasoning from you as you determine either the patterns drawn or manipulate them according to your movement. This type of grinds are not frustrating because they make you think about the consequences of your decisions (that sounded deep, but I'm only talking about how The Kid moves).
Extra stage is short, but fun, the pre-final extra boss is questionably easy (you will first-try it) and the extra boss is the best of them all. It kinda reminded me of RZ's final boss, except this is not luck-based trash and the character's sprite is very nice. Any combination of attacks can have a strategy that will consistently work so that your only biggest problem will be the RNG of the fountain attack (and the obstacle halfway through, unless you place it conveniently).
If you dig experimentation with ideas, go for it. There's more than meets the eye.
[2] Likes
Rating based on 100% clear including extra, which is only included in version 1.01. Difficulty rating based on normal clear without secrets and Extra (consider a difficulty of 75 for the act of getting all secrets, doing the extra stage and the extra boss).
"A huge ass mixed bag", says DerpyHooves, and I sort of agree, but that definition suits Make It Breaking Out so much better. So here I am, exploring what seems to be the undervalued Mizudori. Evidently, the creator has a gigantic set of gimmick ideas and never fails to deliver playability variety. After playing Breaking Out and Starter, it is evident who was the Touhou fan between him and carua, and also who came up with the structure of the game: hubs with different routes unlocking new hubs, then the extra section after a "final boss" which just turned out to be a gatekeeper, play a new extra stage, a previous extra boss and the definitive final boss. Judging by the needle design here and in Starter, carua is much more creative, including in the visual aspect. Mizudori is the gimmick guy.
Hence, expect tons of gimmicks with atrociously repetitive and generic needle (several stages are gate fests or shuriken fests, so expect tons of those). The difficulty curve has no rhyme or reason, except that it never gets tougher. Imagine a random series, but stationary. That's what to expect here: if you clear the main hub, don't expect something tougher in the future. Just more gimmicks.
The core concept is, obviously, symmetry, and there are some fascinating ideas, so where the game lacks a huge deal in level design, it compensates in variety and gimmick creativity. The symmetry is not always visual; sometimes, you have to picture it, and sometimes, it is about the controls. Those are highly positive points in this fangame. The overall structure of the game, which is almost identical to Breaking Out, is fun, as each stage has no more than 4 screens each.
Is there a great boss variety? Of course not. That was carua's work, but no carua this time (who curiously worked more often in collabs). The game is plagued with big cherries; however, again, the ideas behind are enjoyable, so it is clear that the intention is to experiment with movement and coordination, sometimes creating great results. Some bossess are actually avoidances, not in the traditional sense you'd expect (either Mikus or just projectiles appearing according to a song); however, you beat them avoiding. Some bosses do require puzzle-ish reasoning from you as you determine either the patterns drawn or manipulate them according to your movement. This type of grinds are not frustrating because they make you think about the consequences of your decisions (that sounded deep, but I'm only talking about how The Kid moves).
Extra stage is short, but fun, the pre-final extra boss is questionably easy (you will first-try it) and the extra boss is the best of them all. It kinda reminded me of RZ's final boss, except this is not luck-based trash and the character's sprite is very nice. Any combination of attacks can have a strategy that will consistently work so that your only biggest problem will be the RNG of the fountain attack (and the obstacle halfway through, unless you place it conveniently).
If you dig experimentation with ideas, go for it. There's more than meets the eye.
Rating: 4.5 45
Difficulty: 70 70
Jan 24, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the rainbow MIKU
For: I wanna be the rainbow MIKU
Rating based on 100%. Difficulty rating based on the main color Mikus. Extra doesn't add extra points to the difficulty however.
To be honest, the 74.4 difficulty raing here on Del Fruit (previous to my rating) intimidated me, but that rating is an exaggeration, with all due respect, and this comes from someone who:
a) Is bad at avoidances
b) Does avoidances blind (being Contrary my most famous cleared example yet, and all three avoidances of Be the Catastrophe)
This is no Bye the Bye, and is definitely much easier than, let's randomly say, Aleph 0 for putting a famous modern example, which is a single barrage avoidance.
Man, I had fun. It's extremely simplistic, generic in level design (you will absolutely forget about the entire platforming in this game save for a couple of secrets and I guarantee it) and there is not as much gimmick variety as there are colors in the game. However, the avoidances stay with you (some of them, but still).
The premise is simple: you begin in a multicolor hub divided by warps, each warp taking you to the stage of the color you chose. At the end, a Miku of the same color awaits. You will face not more than 5 screens per stage (including the secret of each respective stage). Once you beat all levels, the green stage opens as final.
Following the most normal way that people would take, I will briefly evaluate each stage:
-Red Stage: Fun and harmless; it's vanilla needle with some pattern cherries, just like in the classic Go Across the Rainbow (save for the cherries).
-->Red Miku: (Almost) pure love; my third favorite Miku. It's entertaining to enter blindly and develop strats. Song is a classic. Reactable RNG with few instagibs and reasonable patterns that you can first-try. Little Polkka Miku will pose the biggest concern as you need an optimal route while you have Vietnam LoveTrap flashbacks and it's placed in the ending, which could cause frustration.
-Blue Stage: Water, duh. But hey, it's Nekoron water! This goddamn engine will cause you to dying while making one-fra... I mean full jumps, especially in a section with half diamonds required. It's dumb and it's garbage platforming; I have done better things in J-Tool and I'm not even a level designer.
--> Blue Miku: Not exploited to its full capacity considering that the water gimmick is surprisingly preserved in the avoidance, making it rather original. There are instances where you're dropped little cherries across the room and they freeze, but are made invisible; after another spray of cherries, they are all shot out of the screen. It's very easy, but if you have a bad memory, you'll die a lot to this attack. The trajectory, however, is very readable with previous old-school avoidance experience. The rest is just very boring, but very easy because you have the entire screen at your disposal with no platforms to block you.
-Orange Stage: Another vanilla needle stage, for whatever reason, and without cherries in the way. Once again, it is very inspired by LoveTrap needle design, but without the traps. Another fun and harmless one, and my personal favorite. Last save is amusing as you have to calculate the animated sprite of the cherries, but the cherries are moving. Nothing substantially concerning, though.
-->Orange Miku: Forgettable, and the vocaloid is one of those that is not necessarily good, but is very sticky. The design is very similar to Miku 2 in LoveTrap, but without the Polkka mini-Miku. Last attack is frustrating as it requires quick reactions, but the cherries are curved, so it's not very logical to figure out which direction they will curve; expect some deaths there.
-Yellow Stage: This is where the lol's come in, good and bad. This is the stage I was afraid of before entering: traps. And I later reasoned why I was afraid of this being a trap-based stage without even knowing it: Go Across the Rainbow. So it seems like some associate traps with yellow. However it may be, my fears were true. There isn't a single innovative or funny trap, and the color pierces through your eyes painfully. It's just bad, boring and generic. But my boy, the freaking secret. It's beyond ludicrous. To obtain it, you need to know Japanese braille, lmao. The cherries in the final screen are braille; I'm not f***ng around! Just press F. Ask me later.
-->Yellow Miku: I lol'd. First I thought the game had glitched, but no. The X and Y positions are correct and intentional: you ARE between Miku's legs (don't look up Kid!!*). You have to make an avoidance between Miku's legs in this hilariously suggestive avoidance (between her legs and everything is yellow?... ぺる, you're disgusting Kappa). It's not hard, but the last attack requires some precise timing and position-based strats. Vocaloid is bad, and the ending is a very funny instagib (which I avoided only God knows how).
-Pink Stage: Well, it seems like another vanilla nee---- wait, I thought the traps were over! Oh, no. Anyway, it's a combination between Red and Yellow platforming. Nothing to add; plain simple and brainless.
-->Pink Miku: Just OK, Red is still better. It's very repetitive and it takes some time to figure the reasoning behind the spot where a gray cherry appears out of the blue to kill you.
-Purple Stage: A copy-pase of the ideas in Red; trapless platforming with frozen cherries and a leeks screen. This stage has only two stupid screens, plus the secret one. There's a corner jump but you are given the best align and almost the best possible height to do it in a first try. What could have been fun lasts too little and becomes just obvious filler to satisfy all required colors.
-->Purple Miku: It's the hardest, it's tedious and it sucks; it's pretty horrible and the worst hands down. The song is also a terrible choice. The layout is slightly different but getting to the hard stuff is very boring and is too luck based. Final attacks require tough reading from four different angles and they are RNG. I spent in this Miku the same time the entire five previous stages plus Mikus took me. The hell with this boss. Leave it at last so you don't get discouraged.
Final Section Hype
-Green Stage: A single side-scroller screen which is a slightly grindy, yet fun test of consistency as there are no saves; the middle section has a very peculiar setup of corners where you are required to jump over them, but with a block above you that could cause you to bonk). That middle section took most of my deaths. With patience and not rushing things, you can clear it quick enough if you have some platforming experience. There are a couple of rough spots and the final 16px gap is not appreciated (it is either that or going through two corners in the same jump), but ok.
-->Green Miku: Tons of fun, and my second favorite Miku from the game. It is also arguably the second hardest, but it is not a bad thing in this case as the rought moments come precisely from pattern attacks. Very fun patterns with some precise blind spots like Catastrophe's Miku (some attacks also resemble Catastrophe's avoidances, such as the counter-clockwise expanding cherries each time faster). I don't care about the song choice at all in terms of personal taste but it ironically works wonderfully for the pacing of the attacks. Probably the hardest attacks are the spirals of all previous colors where you have to move at very precise blind spots, but thankfully they are pattern and very rewarding to dominate (I call that red and blue will be the hardest, but they are the first ones at least). I enjoyed it a lot.
***EXTRA TIME!***
No stage, it's just.... Rainbow Miku!
This is a very special avoidance:
-Almost entirely RNG-made
-A beautiful, slow avoidance (one of my favorites; at some instances it even seems that a real woman is singing)
-Slow attacks
-Exactly 6:30 minutes in length
This is not your usual avoidance, and I tremendously enjoyed it for that. Barrage enthusiasts and fast-paced avoidance fans, better stay away and call it a day. This one is a different kind of grind, almost simulating like if Miku is trying to make peace with The Kid but she must test his skills for the last time (what am I even talking about?)
Back to the topic: It's the best of them all. Since it is basically almost entirely RNG, all attacks are slow and 80% of them are reactable. Miku, with the pace of the beautiful song, invokes all attacks from all previous 7 Mikus. It has questionable instagibs, and the final attack is going to either make you laugh or cry; there is also that tough moment where it employs the attack of Green Miku where green cherries go left and yellow ones go right after being scattered all over the place, but it took me less than half the time of the stupid Purple Miku, and the maker ensured the balancing of the attacks was fair. The red star, which appears three times, *might* get you into trouble due to RNG but I haven't spotted a single instance of impossible RNG (the few times I died to it was bad positioning, alas, the very left corner; you need space to move from left to right given that a wall is not impossible to form, but if you're not in the very corner, you can walk beneath it).
Credits are very rewarding.
Play it for the avoidances, not for the platforming, which really bad and dated. You'll have an entertaining time.
*On second thought, after so much you have been through, you deserve it Kid. You are 15 and she's 16. Claim your fun times Keepo.
[3] Likes
To be honest, the 74.4 difficulty raing here on Del Fruit (previous to my rating) intimidated me, but that rating is an exaggeration, with all due respect, and this comes from someone who:
a) Is bad at avoidances
b) Does avoidances blind (being Contrary my most famous cleared example yet, and all three avoidances of Be the Catastrophe)
This is no Bye the Bye, and is definitely much easier than, let's randomly say, Aleph 0 for putting a famous modern example, which is a single barrage avoidance.
Man, I had fun. It's extremely simplistic, generic in level design (you will absolutely forget about the entire platforming in this game save for a couple of secrets and I guarantee it) and there is not as much gimmick variety as there are colors in the game. However, the avoidances stay with you (some of them, but still).
The premise is simple: you begin in a multicolor hub divided by warps, each warp taking you to the stage of the color you chose. At the end, a Miku of the same color awaits. You will face not more than 5 screens per stage (including the secret of each respective stage). Once you beat all levels, the green stage opens as final.
Following the most normal way that people would take, I will briefly evaluate each stage:
-Red Stage: Fun and harmless; it's vanilla needle with some pattern cherries, just like in the classic Go Across the Rainbow (save for the cherries).
-->Red Miku: (Almost) pure love; my third favorite Miku. It's entertaining to enter blindly and develop strats. Song is a classic. Reactable RNG with few instagibs and reasonable patterns that you can first-try. Little Polkka Miku will pose the biggest concern as you need an optimal route while you have Vietnam LoveTrap flashbacks and it's placed in the ending, which could cause frustration.
-Blue Stage: Water, duh. But hey, it's Nekoron water! This goddamn engine will cause you to dying while making one-fra... I mean full jumps, especially in a section with half diamonds required. It's dumb and it's garbage platforming; I have done better things in J-Tool and I'm not even a level designer.
--> Blue Miku: Not exploited to its full capacity considering that the water gimmick is surprisingly preserved in the avoidance, making it rather original. There are instances where you're dropped little cherries across the room and they freeze, but are made invisible; after another spray of cherries, they are all shot out of the screen. It's very easy, but if you have a bad memory, you'll die a lot to this attack. The trajectory, however, is very readable with previous old-school avoidance experience. The rest is just very boring, but very easy because you have the entire screen at your disposal with no platforms to block you.
-Orange Stage: Another vanilla needle stage, for whatever reason, and without cherries in the way. Once again, it is very inspired by LoveTrap needle design, but without the traps. Another fun and harmless one, and my personal favorite. Last save is amusing as you have to calculate the animated sprite of the cherries, but the cherries are moving. Nothing substantially concerning, though.
-->Orange Miku: Forgettable, and the vocaloid is one of those that is not necessarily good, but is very sticky. The design is very similar to Miku 2 in LoveTrap, but without the Polkka mini-Miku. Last attack is frustrating as it requires quick reactions, but the cherries are curved, so it's not very logical to figure out which direction they will curve; expect some deaths there.
-Yellow Stage: This is where the lol's come in, good and bad. This is the stage I was afraid of before entering: traps. And I later reasoned why I was afraid of this being a trap-based stage without even knowing it: Go Across the Rainbow. So it seems like some associate traps with yellow. However it may be, my fears were true. There isn't a single innovative or funny trap, and the color pierces through your eyes painfully. It's just bad, boring and generic. But my boy, the freaking secret. It's beyond ludicrous. To obtain it, you need to know Japanese braille, lmao. The cherries in the final screen are braille; I'm not f***ng around! Just press F. Ask me later.
-->Yellow Miku: I lol'd. First I thought the game had glitched, but no. The X and Y positions are correct and intentional: you ARE between Miku's legs (don't look up Kid!!*). You have to make an avoidance between Miku's legs in this hilariously suggestive avoidance (between her legs and everything is yellow?... ぺる, you're disgusting Kappa). It's not hard, but the last attack requires some precise timing and position-based strats. Vocaloid is bad, and the ending is a very funny instagib (which I avoided only God knows how).
-Pink Stage: Well, it seems like another vanilla nee---- wait, I thought the traps were over! Oh, no. Anyway, it's a combination between Red and Yellow platforming. Nothing to add; plain simple and brainless.
-->Pink Miku: Just OK, Red is still better. It's very repetitive and it takes some time to figure the reasoning behind the spot where a gray cherry appears out of the blue to kill you.
-Purple Stage: A copy-pase of the ideas in Red; trapless platforming with frozen cherries and a leeks screen. This stage has only two stupid screens, plus the secret one. There's a corner jump but you are given the best align and almost the best possible height to do it in a first try. What could have been fun lasts too little and becomes just obvious filler to satisfy all required colors.
-->Purple Miku: It's the hardest, it's tedious and it sucks; it's pretty horrible and the worst hands down. The song is also a terrible choice. The layout is slightly different but getting to the hard stuff is very boring and is too luck based. Final attacks require tough reading from four different angles and they are RNG. I spent in this Miku the same time the entire five previous stages plus Mikus took me. The hell with this boss. Leave it at last so you don't get discouraged.
Final Section Hype
-Green Stage: A single side-scroller screen which is a slightly grindy, yet fun test of consistency as there are no saves; the middle section has a very peculiar setup of corners where you are required to jump over them, but with a block above you that could cause you to bonk). That middle section took most of my deaths. With patience and not rushing things, you can clear it quick enough if you have some platforming experience. There are a couple of rough spots and the final 16px gap is not appreciated (it is either that or going through two corners in the same jump), but ok.
-->Green Miku: Tons of fun, and my second favorite Miku from the game. It is also arguably the second hardest, but it is not a bad thing in this case as the rought moments come precisely from pattern attacks. Very fun patterns with some precise blind spots like Catastrophe's Miku (some attacks also resemble Catastrophe's avoidances, such as the counter-clockwise expanding cherries each time faster). I don't care about the song choice at all in terms of personal taste but it ironically works wonderfully for the pacing of the attacks. Probably the hardest attacks are the spirals of all previous colors where you have to move at very precise blind spots, but thankfully they are pattern and very rewarding to dominate (I call that red and blue will be the hardest, but they are the first ones at least). I enjoyed it a lot.
***EXTRA TIME!***
No stage, it's just.... Rainbow Miku!
This is a very special avoidance:
-Almost entirely RNG-made
-A beautiful, slow avoidance (one of my favorites; at some instances it even seems that a real woman is singing)
-Slow attacks
-Exactly 6:30 minutes in length
This is not your usual avoidance, and I tremendously enjoyed it for that. Barrage enthusiasts and fast-paced avoidance fans, better stay away and call it a day. This one is a different kind of grind, almost simulating like if Miku is trying to make peace with The Kid but she must test his skills for the last time (what am I even talking about?)
Back to the topic: It's the best of them all. Since it is basically almost entirely RNG, all attacks are slow and 80% of them are reactable. Miku, with the pace of the beautiful song, invokes all attacks from all previous 7 Mikus. It has questionable instagibs, and the final attack is going to either make you laugh or cry; there is also that tough moment where it employs the attack of Green Miku where green cherries go left and yellow ones go right after being scattered all over the place, but it took me less than half the time of the stupid Purple Miku, and the maker ensured the balancing of the attacks was fair. The red star, which appears three times, *might* get you into trouble due to RNG but I haven't spotted a single instance of impossible RNG (the few times I died to it was bad positioning, alas, the very left corner; you need space to move from left to right given that a wall is not impossible to form, but if you're not in the very corner, you can walk beneath it).
Credits are very rewarding.
Play it for the avoidances, not for the platforming, which really bad and dated. You'll have an entertaining time.
*On second thought, after so much you have been through, you deserve it Kid. You are 15 and she's 16. Claim your fun times Keepo.
Rating: 5.1 51
Difficulty: 65 65
Jan 20, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Destination
For: I wanna be the Destination
***HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! LAST CLEAR OF 2021, and finishing my review 2.5 hours before New Year! Based!***
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
[8] Likes
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 89 89
Jan 1, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I Wanna Be the JK
For: I Wanna Be the JK
I owed this to someone; thanks for the rec.
Primarily, this is one of the many fangames that copies the entire screens structure of I Wanna Be The Guy, starting in the famous brown corridors screen. The entire layout is the same and you can choose going up (the screen with trees and cherries), down (the invisible spawning blocks screen) or left (the moving platforms and spikes screen). There are no more paths.
The catch is that every time you would normally reach an area that references a classic videogame in the original game by Kayin, you stumble upon a different game. The fangame does well at recreating some retro experiences, but none of them translate well to the engine with one exception. Whereas the level design is extremely bland and forgettable, the bosses stand out as funny oddities and are entertaining to play. My biggest difficulty issue concerning the bosses is that two of them require really fast reflexes and the attacks are random, so they don't follow always the same order. Those fights are: Megaman Battle Network and the final Sans fight. The former takes a lot to get used to, but there are some straight-up impossible combination of attacks that leaves you zero squares to move, assuring your death. The latter is ok, but in a LoveTrap fashion, you have to wait for 15 seconds until trying the boss again, and these kind of time losses get on my nerves (well, not that drastically, but it's so boring!).
As the original game, this one has also one secret per stage and they are much less cryptic to obtain.
The sequel does the same exercise this fangame did, but around I Wanna Be The Fangame! I will probably check it out just to see what other retro experiments get adapted to the engine.
For some reason this got tagged as an avoidance game, but it isn't.
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Primarily, this is one of the many fangames that copies the entire screens structure of I Wanna Be The Guy, starting in the famous brown corridors screen. The entire layout is the same and you can choose going up (the screen with trees and cherries), down (the invisible spawning blocks screen) or left (the moving platforms and spikes screen). There are no more paths.
The catch is that every time you would normally reach an area that references a classic videogame in the original game by Kayin, you stumble upon a different game. The fangame does well at recreating some retro experiences, but none of them translate well to the engine with one exception. Whereas the level design is extremely bland and forgettable, the bosses stand out as funny oddities and are entertaining to play. My biggest difficulty issue concerning the bosses is that two of them require really fast reflexes and the attacks are random, so they don't follow always the same order. Those fights are: Megaman Battle Network and the final Sans fight. The former takes a lot to get used to, but there are some straight-up impossible combination of attacks that leaves you zero squares to move, assuring your death. The latter is ok, but in a LoveTrap fashion, you have to wait for 15 seconds until trying the boss again, and these kind of time losses get on my nerves (well, not that drastically, but it's so boring!).
As the original game, this one has also one secret per stage and they are much less cryptic to obtain.
The sequel does the same exercise this fangame did, but around I Wanna Be The Fangame! I will probably check it out just to see what other retro experiments get adapted to the engine.
For some reason this got tagged as an avoidance game, but it isn't.
Rating: 3.5 35
Difficulty: 60 60
Dec 31, 2021
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