TheNewDerf's Profile

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Joined on: Jun 28, 2017

Bio:

if you're reading this i'm asleep

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33 Ratings!
24 Reviews!
2 Screenshots!

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24 Reviews

TheNewDerf
For: I wanna sniff it
The sharting California Raisins are a future classic Aiwanna boss, and I want to see more games make use of the garm garm vomit kid gimmick.

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[6] Likes
Rating: N/A       Difficulty: N/A
Dec 31, 2021
TheNewDerf
For: MONMOUTHIAN Cell Dream
LOGICAL CONCLUSION is instantly one of my favourite needle screens. Really inventive and atmospheric game -- loved the music in particular.

(No difficulty rating because I played on Dreams Mode & saved a few times extra in each room. I really appreciate the presence of a mode like this -- my needle skills are generally lower than the community average, and I don't have a lot of free time anymore, so grinding saves is not something I can generally afford to do. A mode like this offered a nice mid-ground of letting me set my own difficulty, whilst still allowing me to see what the game has to offer.)

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[4] Likes
Rating: 9.0 90       Difficulty: N/A
Dec 26, 2021
TheNewDerf
For: I wanna walk to the store
When I think of the fangames that have had the most impact on me, 'I wanna walk to the store' is one of the first that comes to mind. It's a short game, and it's an easy game, but what it does so well is take a aspect not often at the fore-front of fangame design, save length, and spin it into a whole game. Many needle games have famously long saves, of course, but what I'm most drawn to is those games that go straight for the jugular and see how much emotion they can wring out of denying a player the chance to bank their progress.

For instance, the 'Get Lucky' screen in kakoka's 'I Wanna be the Earth Temple' uses its length to produce a farce that only becomes more amusing the longer it progresses; one screen has a relatively benign message telling you that you're almost near the end (of course, you aren't) and the next has that message spammed multiple times across the screen just to twist the knife if you took the first message seriously. On the other hand, pserafi's 'I Wanna be the Wait' asks the player to wait 6 minutes before getting a single attempt to clear a gate jump. Yes, the game might be a 'joke', but at least to me it succeeds in creating a real sense of doubt. Obviously a gate jump is one of the most trivial jumps imaginable, but you have 6 minutes to sit there and psych yourself out into believing you might choke when the time comes.

In distinction to those games, what 'I wanna walk to the store' excels at is producing dread. By forcing the player to make a return journey through a warped version of the level they have just traversed, the game introduces a very specific anxiety: If things in the environment have changed, in what way and how much have they changed? The fact that multiple reviews make reference to an expectation of a jump scare is proof of how much this game primes players to anticipate the worst. In real life going to store is such a trivial task, however when compounded by the well-worn trope of people going out to buy alcohol/cigarettes and never returning, this reference points suddenly adds a thematic weight to the journey the player takes in this game that isn't present in either of other titles I mentioned. That, in short, is what makes this game so special to me.

Anyway, I don't want to go on about this too much -- I'm sure some people were turned away by my serious treatment of a kakoka game. But, I just think there's something so special about these small games that explore such seemingly simple concepts. Because the fangame community is so tight-knit, and because we draw from a very limited (but undeniably rich) source of mechanics, it allows fangame creators to get into the psychology of their players much more easily than a indie dev that has no real connection to their audience making an entirely new game. 'I Wanna be the Wait' draws on the cultural meaning of a gate jump--trivial, but capable (rarely) of being choked. 'I wanna walk to the store' understands the uncertainty that unusually shaped player-killers creates, even if they are ultimately easy to navigate. This is intelligent game design to me, but I think it's easy to ignore it given the length and presentation of these games.

Sometimes I think we're so spoiled by the abundance of long high-quality fangames, that it's easy to dismiss shorter and easier games that aim to deliver a very specific idea/atmosphere within a compact frame. But discussing that gets us away from the point of this review. The last thing I will say is that my fascination with save length and its ability to produce anxiety lead to the creation of XIFT and to the 'depths' area in HB2. Games like this have been, and remain, a big influence on me and how I make fangames.

TL;DR Dopamine made this, so obviously it's great. Duh!

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[7] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100       Difficulty: 10 10
Nov 25, 2020
TheNewDerf
For: japetool
卑劣なツール

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Tagged as: 卑劣なツール
[5] Likes
Rating: 7.4 74       Difficulty: N/A
Nov 24, 2020
TheNewDerf
For: I wanna be the Dallas!
Unfairly maligned piece of fangame history. Maybe you had to be there.

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[8] Likes
Rating: 8.0 80       Difficulty: 28 28
Nov 2, 2020

5 Games

GameDifficultyAverage Rating# of Ratings
Derf Engine 97.0 1.0 4
Holocene Juveniliax 71.0 9.3 6
Homunculus 35.3 7.3 8
Shiz Nits 49.5 8.4 18
XIFT 57.1 7.9 65