Delicious FruitCthaere's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: May 25, 2020
Bio:
I play fangames or stuff.
I try rating game compared to what they are trying to achieve rather than compared to fangames as a whole, and with knowledge of what you're getting into; If I rate a corridor needle game, I assume the person reading the review wants to play corridor needle, as if they don't they shouldn't bother playing it anyway. With that said, I tend to be very generous on needle ratings while being very skimpy on avoidances (although you likely won't see it as if I'd give it less than a 7 I just won't clear it instead).
with extremely rare exceptions, 9/10+ is reserved to games that have left deep emotional impact, while 10/10 is reserved for games I love unconditionally.
If I reviewed it and the review doesn't say otherwise, it's safe to assume I cleared it. I try adding my clears to df but I never really cared to keep track, so some might be missing.
don't expect diff ratings to be very accurate.
I've submitted:
237 Ratings!
158 Reviews!
9 Screenshots!
237 Games
158 Reviews
Cthaere
For: Wifie Present
For: Wifie Present
A 4 stage needle game, with starkly different needle style between each stage, and a wild difficulty curve to accompany it: Stage 1 starts off with the hardest screen first, perhaps to deter newcomers from continuing on further, and quickly deescalates. The needle feels pleasant and very much reminiscent of Kale's style, helped further by the visuals. Song is a banger, and the stage overall is excellent.
Stage 2 has a couple of gimmicks: A 1 use rocket launcher that allows you to break certain blocks, and a glider that slows your descent to nearly nothing, but disappears upon landing on a block (not a platform). The glider felt very good to control and allowed for some impressive maneuvers, while the rocket has made for clever paths. A very well done stage.
Stage 3 is focused around jump refreshers, and is very much reminiscent of the first few floors in Alphazetica. Unfortunately, it is possible to skip the second screen entirely by going straight to the jump refresher that leads to the portal (on v1.01), and the game autosaves so I wasn't able to redo the screen legit. As for the stage, I felt that certain jumps were too tight, and certain jumps required setups which weren't fun to perform, but overall the pathing was nice and the jumps felt good, and it ended up being a fun stage.
Stage 4 opens up with a bit of a curveball, including a raised double diamond, a platform uplane and a 4f dplane. This screen would be pretty fun in any other needle game, and so would a couple other screens later on that have a very similar style, but they feel incredibly out of place in this game especially when the rest of the stage is similar to the rest, and that causes them to become frustrating to the unaware player, which is why my rating isn't higher. Still, this stage is as good as the others when you disregard those screens, and they are still fun when taken with the right mindset, however the player is not going to have that mindset based on playing the rest of the needle.
In conclusion, I would recommend playing up to the final stage, and would encourage you to clear it as well, as long as you understand what you're getting into.
Stage 2 has a couple of gimmicks: A 1 use rocket launcher that allows you to break certain blocks, and a glider that slows your descent to nearly nothing, but disappears upon landing on a block (not a platform). The glider felt very good to control and allowed for some impressive maneuvers, while the rocket has made for clever paths. A very well done stage.
Stage 3 is focused around jump refreshers, and is very much reminiscent of the first few floors in Alphazetica. Unfortunately, it is possible to skip the second screen entirely by going straight to the jump refresher that leads to the portal (on v1.01), and the game autosaves so I wasn't able to redo the screen legit. As for the stage, I felt that certain jumps were too tight, and certain jumps required setups which weren't fun to perform, but overall the pathing was nice and the jumps felt good, and it ended up being a fun stage.
Stage 4 opens up with a bit of a curveball, including a raised double diamond, a platform uplane and a 4f dplane. This screen would be pretty fun in any other needle game, and so would a couple other screens later on that have a very similar style, but they feel incredibly out of place in this game especially when the rest of the stage is similar to the rest, and that causes them to become frustrating to the unaware player, which is why my rating isn't higher. Still, this stage is as good as the others when you disregard those screens, and they are still fun when taken with the right mindset, however the player is not going to have that mindset based on playing the rest of the needle.
In conclusion, I would recommend playing up to the final stage, and would encourage you to clear it as well, as long as you understand what you're getting into.
Tagged as: Needle
[0] Likes
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 75 75
Sep 15, 2020
Cthaere
For: Summer Feast Needle 2020
For: Summer Feast Needle 2020
A fairly long gimmick needle collab divided into 5 stages, progressed through in a linear order. As a collab, this game outdoes itself in terms of variety; Every stage feels distinct and stands out from the others, both in gimmick choice, needle design and visuals/atmosphere. Unfortunately, this variety extends into difficulty as well, and makes for a difficulty curve which feels unbalanced, which is not helped by a few individual saves also being significantly harder than normal within their area. Still, the needle itself is nearly always great, and takes away much of the frustration and annoyance brought by grinding the same save for a long time. With that said, we can start covering each one individually, by order of appearance:
Cloakman: A stage divided into two parts. The first part utilizes a gimmick wherein the player picks up a 1-use rocket launcher which can break certain blocks in order to clear himself a path, while the second one is focused around flipping a series of lightswitches to find the path to the end, which will turn off after a short while, sending you back to darkness. This was one of the weaker areas for me, as I felt the gimmick in the first part was not brought to its full potential, and I usually have an aversion to vision-obstructing gimmicks. I was also not a big fan of the metallic visuals, which felt out of place in a gimmick needle game. Still, the needle was fairly decent and the area as a whole was by no means bad, and the fact this was one of the weaker stages for me serves to show how good this game is as a whole.
Chance: An area using lines as both killers and platforms, with a healthy dose of cycle needle mixed in. This was probably the most solid stage for me, and consistently had the highest lows while still managing to score some fairly high highs. My only issue with this stage is the recurring theme of standing on top of a 1 pixel wide line, which felt incredibly awkward; Other than that, this stage managed to do an incredible job of exploring a variety of ways to combine cycles with line needle, with nearly each screen containing something unique to it.
Ef: A stage centered around water which includes two new varieties of it: Orange water, which doesn't cap your fall speed but gives you a bit of upwards momentum to slow your fall until eventually you're going to start rising up, and some variant of catharsis water which I still don't fully understand; My best guess is that it gives you extremely low gravity, but only while falling down. The gimmicks in this one felt extremely janky, yet despite that they were also some of the most fun. Clever setups and appropriate save positioning alleviates most of the frustration that would come about from being robbed of clearing a save due to the seemingly unpredictable gimmicks, and leaves only the clever pathing and the satisfying maneuvers behind. One of the better stages for me.
Q123: A stage focused around single-use apple-shaped NANG stars, featuring heavy puzzle elements, mindblowing pathing and a good serving of triple-jump needle. This stage, as brilliant as it is, is going to be one of the most divisive ones: Due to the gimmick and pathing, backtracking over and over is an integral part of the stage, and with only 2 saves per screen, each using the space allocated to it in the most efficient way, each save ends up feeling over a screen and a half long while only having a third of that in terms of jump variety. These saves can very quickly become gruesome to grind, and the sheer length of it all makes this stage feel like a giant difficulty spike even though each individual jump is forgiving. All of this peaks in the last save, which is given a full screen, and is where I would have quit if I hadn't found a major skip (version 1.1 for reference). If you love long saves, this is the area for you; If you don't, you might quit here. I personally had fun with this, but I certainly wished it would end sooner once I got far enough in.
_Xp_: A magnificent stumble-themed area, using nearly every "common" gimmick in the book: Default engine gimmicks, CN3 shoot refreshers, catharsis water, cycles, triggers, and many more that I would rather not spoil. This was by and large my favorite area, as the needle itself feels like it was refined to near perfection: The cycles work seamlessly, the trigger based sections feeling like the timing is just tight enough, the jumps themselves feeling completely natural and immensely satisfying to pull off. Aside from one save that felt awkward, inconsistent, and noticeably harder than the rest, this area would easily be a 10/10 for me. I would recommend those who had to drag themselves through the previous area to find the willpower to do so, as this one is definitely worth playing.
So there you have it. An incredible game, but not without its downsides, ending on a very high note while being very fun and fresh throughout. A must-play to everyone who likes long-save gimmick needle and can handle it.
[3] Likes
Cloakman: A stage divided into two parts. The first part utilizes a gimmick wherein the player picks up a 1-use rocket launcher which can break certain blocks in order to clear himself a path, while the second one is focused around flipping a series of lightswitches to find the path to the end, which will turn off after a short while, sending you back to darkness. This was one of the weaker areas for me, as I felt the gimmick in the first part was not brought to its full potential, and I usually have an aversion to vision-obstructing gimmicks. I was also not a big fan of the metallic visuals, which felt out of place in a gimmick needle game. Still, the needle was fairly decent and the area as a whole was by no means bad, and the fact this was one of the weaker stages for me serves to show how good this game is as a whole.
Chance: An area using lines as both killers and platforms, with a healthy dose of cycle needle mixed in. This was probably the most solid stage for me, and consistently had the highest lows while still managing to score some fairly high highs. My only issue with this stage is the recurring theme of standing on top of a 1 pixel wide line, which felt incredibly awkward; Other than that, this stage managed to do an incredible job of exploring a variety of ways to combine cycles with line needle, with nearly each screen containing something unique to it.
Ef: A stage centered around water which includes two new varieties of it: Orange water, which doesn't cap your fall speed but gives you a bit of upwards momentum to slow your fall until eventually you're going to start rising up, and some variant of catharsis water which I still don't fully understand; My best guess is that it gives you extremely low gravity, but only while falling down. The gimmicks in this one felt extremely janky, yet despite that they were also some of the most fun. Clever setups and appropriate save positioning alleviates most of the frustration that would come about from being robbed of clearing a save due to the seemingly unpredictable gimmicks, and leaves only the clever pathing and the satisfying maneuvers behind. One of the better stages for me.
Q123: A stage focused around single-use apple-shaped NANG stars, featuring heavy puzzle elements, mindblowing pathing and a good serving of triple-jump needle. This stage, as brilliant as it is, is going to be one of the most divisive ones: Due to the gimmick and pathing, backtracking over and over is an integral part of the stage, and with only 2 saves per screen, each using the space allocated to it in the most efficient way, each save ends up feeling over a screen and a half long while only having a third of that in terms of jump variety. These saves can very quickly become gruesome to grind, and the sheer length of it all makes this stage feel like a giant difficulty spike even though each individual jump is forgiving. All of this peaks in the last save, which is given a full screen, and is where I would have quit if I hadn't found a major skip (version 1.1 for reference). If you love long saves, this is the area for you; If you don't, you might quit here. I personally had fun with this, but I certainly wished it would end sooner once I got far enough in.
_Xp_: A magnificent stumble-themed area, using nearly every "common" gimmick in the book: Default engine gimmicks, CN3 shoot refreshers, catharsis water, cycles, triggers, and many more that I would rather not spoil. This was by and large my favorite area, as the needle itself feels like it was refined to near perfection: The cycles work seamlessly, the trigger based sections feeling like the timing is just tight enough, the jumps themselves feeling completely natural and immensely satisfying to pull off. Aside from one save that felt awkward, inconsistent, and noticeably harder than the rest, this area would easily be a 10/10 for me. I would recommend those who had to drag themselves through the previous area to find the willpower to do so, as this one is definitely worth playing.
So there you have it. An incredible game, but not without its downsides, ending on a very high note while being very fun and fresh throughout. A must-play to everyone who likes long-save gimmick needle and can handle it.
Rating: 9.1 91
Difficulty: 81 81
Sep 12, 2020
Cthaere
For: 2011 needle hole
For: 2011 needle hole
Fun & chill 32 pixel needle with a gloomy atmosphere, which consists of good usage of generic jumps as well as some interesting maneuvers utilizing the default engine gimmicks. Would recommend.
Tagged as: Needle
[1] Like
Rating: 7.3 73
Difficulty: 48 48
Sep 8, 2020
Cthaere
For: I Wanna Ride The Desert Bus
For: I Wanna Ride The Desert Bus
Only do this if you have a day to waste, while in a call the entire time (preferably with people playing this as well, or while also streaming) and with an alarm reminding of you of the game in the background. If you follow these rules and don't die along the way, this would be an experience that's unpleasant, bonding, tense and surreal, one that I personally am glad to have had, and you might too. If you do die along the way... Let's say I would not have given this as high of a rating as I have.
Tagged as: Special
[1] Like
Rating: 5.0 50
Difficulty: N/A
Aug 29, 2020
Cthaere
For: I wanna break break
For: I wanna break break
5 screens of needle where you are given the choice of taking a moving block to skip the entire screen instead of doing the needle. The needle itself is around 60 difficulty, although screen 4 was significantly harder than the rest. It has only 1 save per screen, and it's pretty fun, using a mix of well-placed generic jumps and a few more esoteric ones, with quite a few drops sprinkled in which feel fairly satisfying. Would recommend as a needle game if you can handle it, especially since you can skip screens you'd rather not do.
Tagged as: Needle
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.0 70
Difficulty: 0 0
Aug 22, 2020
2 Games
| Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| I wanna Musiclock | 74.7 | 9.3 | 20 |
| I wanna Xanadu | 60.7 | 7.7 | 8 |
32 Favorite Games
143 Cleared Games