Delicious FruitElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
I've submitted:
380 Ratings!
380 Reviews!
792 Screenshots!
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380 Games
380 Reviews
ElCochran90
For: Not Another Needle Game
For: Not Another Needle Game
200th FANGAME.
Rating includes all endings (with a focus on the True Ending). Difficulty rating is for bad ending. Consider a difficulty rating of 75 for True Ending.
I'll begin with what might make you hate me more than you already do (probably) due to my rating system: this is The Shawshank Redemption of fangames. It is the most overrated fangame of all times, but certainly a good one. Having one of the highest possible ratings in the site with the most representative sample available (over 130 reviews as of today, even surpassing the Boshy titan), this is a phenomenon that became the new modern measure to measure not only needle fangames, but fangame-making in general.
Onto the good stuff then. Released in 2015, this game exploits everything that can be done in a gimmick fangame and transforms a simple, clichéd premise into an unforgettable experience. Up to this day, I will defend Cube (1997) as an underrated independent sci-fi horror film; the environment and thrilling moments it created were iconic. Transform the horror elements into needle and humor, and add Kayin's love for old good videogame classics and Thenader2's love for neon. You get this: an outstanding amalgamation of style and humor, a challenge that will certainly make you grow bigger and more skillful hands, a celebration of the reach and extent of fangames for the newer generation, and a modern landmark that Thenewgeezer should have charged every penny for, just like Nemega. The effort behind this is tremendous and the creativity seems to be endless. The final result is a rollercoaster of many emotions and a remarkable sense of accomplishment.
The difficulty curve is exceptional, even if kind of uneven, up to the last teleport gimmick. From there, it reaches a fixed level of difficulty and never lets go with random peaks that do add cheap difficulty, such as traps, corners and planes. Well, it's supposed to be a comprehensive needle game, so I will not fully complain against that, although that did cost many frustrating free deaths.
The humor is simple and quite effective during the first half of the game; during the second half, after Bad Ending, it does become dull and forced because you're repeating the same rooms upside down with some modifications to make reasonable challenges. It's even ironic that the creator says "I've got nothing" in different ways many times during the second half. Still, having a protagonist resembling HAL 9000 with a twisted sense of humor and breaking the fourth wall is a tremendous addition throughout and changes the quality of the entire experience. The revelation of who turns out to be the AI is shocking and amazing, and the fact that he has a "master" raises more eyebrows. Who's more powerful than the legendary enemy Geezer?
The music... The music choices are worth making your house windows vibrate. Each song was carefully selected to communicate emotions and create an environment: adventure, fear, dread, desperation, epicness, a climactic foreshadowing of the ending... Everything's here. The second half of the game, after Bad Ending, has actually the best choices and with the final 20-floor challenge I was exploding my house with noise. This is how you close a rollercoaster ride.
Production value is amazing for what is, in essence, a minimalist project and I am surprised that my potato PC didn't explode. With so many screens to conquer, I would be lying if I said there is no variety. Expect great visuals from time to time, especially as you keep progressing, because the first 60 floors are shockingly repetitive visually, the gravity section has a very questionable pixelated background and the triple jump section is, well, you already know IWBTG. However, it stores many surprises. Even if the black and white visuals can be easily replicated and happen to appear in the worst fangames possible such as GGM and Conquer the Blow Game 1, here, the aesthetics are correlated effectively with the music to show why this is such a nice design instead of a lazy choice.
Finally, gimmicks are always a dangerous game, and the game makes a terrific job at using standard ones creatively plus adding new ones, like the famous teleport gimmick which became iconic, and also combining them in very intelligent ways. The most annoying one is combining heavy gravity with jump refreshers because that is just wanting to make your fingers break. However, the second half of the game brings along the goods in this department because it is no longer subject to linearity regarding the introduction of one gimmick per set of 20 floors or to a particular level of difficulty.
Now, not everything is roses. The first 60 floors are so shockingly repetitive that even Thenewgeezer had to acknowledge it: "Disappointed with the level design? At least the platforms aren't brown!" There is a clear confession there, but if you give time to the game and hunt down the secrets, which locations are indirectly told to you through a glitched text box for avoiding using a guide or tutorial videos, everything begins to go upwards. This harms replayability.
Speaking about the difficulty curve, it is puzzling that the most celebrated fangame experience on this site based on numbers alone is a Veteran experience. Why is this puzzling? Not only because it will be the first fangame newcomers will encounter when they make a filter based on votes/popularity, but also because this game presents itself during the beginning as beginner-friendly. It teaches you about align and other difficult jumps, but also teaches you the most basic jumps with illustrations and names! This is knowledge a veteran already has, but for some reason, it is here (btw, the TAS jump is called the "ledge jump" here). What's the real target market of this fangame? It is difficult to tell unless someone else tells you about it.
Finally, we have the implications of the True Ending. You have to repeat everything upside down with some modifcations, and this obviously means going through the screens you despised. Not only that; if we take the first 60 screens and multiply that by 2, that's exactly 30% of the game's entire content that is quite uneventful. This is fixed, however, with the more interesting stages being improved with a better soundtrack, amazing flashy effects that make you go disco, a more creative level design (ironically, because everything was upsidw down the whole time) and a more balanced difficulty. Please applaud Geezer for designing an entire game in such a way that it also works upside down: INSANE.
Overall, the game is a punch to the face and it pumps you up throughout. The fact that this game costs $0 but Apple users actually have to pay money for that unspeakably bad abomination called I Wanna Be the Four Elements is a proof that the world should just burst into flames.
The world would have to wait 4 years for having an effort named "Chill Needle 2", which is the closest a needle/gimmick fangame ever got to the quality of this one. I am excluding the CN sequels because their aim is different and are on another league... a league I won't be able to reach for many years still.
[3] Likes
Rating includes all endings (with a focus on the True Ending). Difficulty rating is for bad ending. Consider a difficulty rating of 75 for True Ending.
I'll begin with what might make you hate me more than you already do (probably) due to my rating system: this is The Shawshank Redemption of fangames. It is the most overrated fangame of all times, but certainly a good one. Having one of the highest possible ratings in the site with the most representative sample available (over 130 reviews as of today, even surpassing the Boshy titan), this is a phenomenon that became the new modern measure to measure not only needle fangames, but fangame-making in general.
Onto the good stuff then. Released in 2015, this game exploits everything that can be done in a gimmick fangame and transforms a simple, clichéd premise into an unforgettable experience. Up to this day, I will defend Cube (1997) as an underrated independent sci-fi horror film; the environment and thrilling moments it created were iconic. Transform the horror elements into needle and humor, and add Kayin's love for old good videogame classics and Thenader2's love for neon. You get this: an outstanding amalgamation of style and humor, a challenge that will certainly make you grow bigger and more skillful hands, a celebration of the reach and extent of fangames for the newer generation, and a modern landmark that Thenewgeezer should have charged every penny for, just like Nemega. The effort behind this is tremendous and the creativity seems to be endless. The final result is a rollercoaster of many emotions and a remarkable sense of accomplishment.
The difficulty curve is exceptional, even if kind of uneven, up to the last teleport gimmick. From there, it reaches a fixed level of difficulty and never lets go with random peaks that do add cheap difficulty, such as traps, corners and planes. Well, it's supposed to be a comprehensive needle game, so I will not fully complain against that, although that did cost many frustrating free deaths.
The humor is simple and quite effective during the first half of the game; during the second half, after Bad Ending, it does become dull and forced because you're repeating the same rooms upside down with some modifications to make reasonable challenges. It's even ironic that the creator says "I've got nothing" in different ways many times during the second half. Still, having a protagonist resembling HAL 9000 with a twisted sense of humor and breaking the fourth wall is a tremendous addition throughout and changes the quality of the entire experience. The revelation of who turns out to be the AI is shocking and amazing, and the fact that he has a "master" raises more eyebrows. Who's more powerful than the legendary enemy Geezer?
The music... The music choices are worth making your house windows vibrate. Each song was carefully selected to communicate emotions and create an environment: adventure, fear, dread, desperation, epicness, a climactic foreshadowing of the ending... Everything's here. The second half of the game, after Bad Ending, has actually the best choices and with the final 20-floor challenge I was exploding my house with noise. This is how you close a rollercoaster ride.
Production value is amazing for what is, in essence, a minimalist project and I am surprised that my potato PC didn't explode. With so many screens to conquer, I would be lying if I said there is no variety. Expect great visuals from time to time, especially as you keep progressing, because the first 60 floors are shockingly repetitive visually, the gravity section has a very questionable pixelated background and the triple jump section is, well, you already know IWBTG. However, it stores many surprises. Even if the black and white visuals can be easily replicated and happen to appear in the worst fangames possible such as GGM and Conquer the Blow Game 1, here, the aesthetics are correlated effectively with the music to show why this is such a nice design instead of a lazy choice.
Finally, gimmicks are always a dangerous game, and the game makes a terrific job at using standard ones creatively plus adding new ones, like the famous teleport gimmick which became iconic, and also combining them in very intelligent ways. The most annoying one is combining heavy gravity with jump refreshers because that is just wanting to make your fingers break. However, the second half of the game brings along the goods in this department because it is no longer subject to linearity regarding the introduction of one gimmick per set of 20 floors or to a particular level of difficulty.
Now, not everything is roses. The first 60 floors are so shockingly repetitive that even Thenewgeezer had to acknowledge it: "Disappointed with the level design? At least the platforms aren't brown!" There is a clear confession there, but if you give time to the game and hunt down the secrets, which locations are indirectly told to you through a glitched text box for avoiding using a guide or tutorial videos, everything begins to go upwards. This harms replayability.
Speaking about the difficulty curve, it is puzzling that the most celebrated fangame experience on this site based on numbers alone is a Veteran experience. Why is this puzzling? Not only because it will be the first fangame newcomers will encounter when they make a filter based on votes/popularity, but also because this game presents itself during the beginning as beginner-friendly. It teaches you about align and other difficult jumps, but also teaches you the most basic jumps with illustrations and names! This is knowledge a veteran already has, but for some reason, it is here (btw, the TAS jump is called the "ledge jump" here). What's the real target market of this fangame? It is difficult to tell unless someone else tells you about it.
Finally, we have the implications of the True Ending. You have to repeat everything upside down with some modifcations, and this obviously means going through the screens you despised. Not only that; if we take the first 60 screens and multiply that by 2, that's exactly 30% of the game's entire content that is quite uneventful. This is fixed, however, with the more interesting stages being improved with a better soundtrack, amazing flashy effects that make you go disco, a more creative level design (ironically, because everything was upsidw down the whole time) and a more balanced difficulty. Please applaud Geezer for designing an entire game in such a way that it also works upside down: INSANE.
Overall, the game is a punch to the face and it pumps you up throughout. The fact that this game costs $0 but Apple users actually have to pay money for that unspeakably bad abomination called I Wanna Be the Four Elements is a proof that the world should just burst into flames.
The world would have to wait 4 years for having an effort named "Chill Needle 2", which is the closest a needle/gimmick fangame ever got to the quality of this one. I am excluding the CN sequels because their aim is different and are on another league... a league I won't be able to reach for many years still.
Rating: 7.0 70
Difficulty: 70 70
Nov 6, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna a lot of Spike
For: I wanna a lot of Spike
Five minutes wasted. At least the song is catchy but my eyes are bleeding. I can't tell the intentions of this existing.
Thank God I just realized this is my 199th fangame. I will play something worthy next.
[0] Likes
Thank God I just realized this is my 199th fangame. I will play something worthy next.
Rating: 0.8 8
Difficulty: 45 45
Oct 28, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be Friends
For: I wanna be Friends
Like RandomErik, keeping it simple most of the times brings out the best of anything, including fangames. Describing this game would be spoiling it, but I gotta say MrWonderful is probably the fangame maker with the best music taste.
My biggest grudge is the difficulty spike towards the ending, which felt way off compared to everything else. Also, it is too short for me fully getting absorbed by an adventure game, but the comedy is gold and the music puns are top-notch.
Finally, my brother witnessed my first blind playthrough, and we laughed several times. I love having these kind of experiences with fangames.
I relate to this game so much :(
[1] Like
My biggest grudge is the difficulty spike towards the ending, which felt way off compared to everything else. Also, it is too short for me fully getting absorbed by an adventure game, but the comedy is gold and the music puns are top-notch.
Finally, my brother witnessed my first blind playthrough, and we laughed several times. I love having these kind of experiences with fangames.
I relate to this game so much :(
Rating: 5.7 57
Difficulty: 45 45
Oct 28, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the 針ゲ練習
For: I wanna be the 針ゲ練習
I wanna be as frank as possible.
I am currently introducing my younger brother to fangames and tought him advanced techniques with JTool. My goal is that he has enough skill so that both of us can beat Co-Op with a 100% completion (none of us have played this before). Of course, I tought him about the most generic jumps and useful setups for those jumps considered generic and/or difficult.
Long story short, with two sessions of three hours each, he learned and pulled off the following, CONSISTENTLY: all kinds of gates (including drop gates), diagonals, half diamonds, diamonds, double diamonds (not consistent), TAS jumps, nerfed inverts, upward planes, corners of ALL sorts, M-jumps, F-jumps, sphyncters (not consistent), T-bones, pixel allign logic, Water 2, Water 3, and more (heck, we both learned how to single-jump a half diamond !). He practiced one full day again and he now has the skill that I had to learn by myself in five months. How many screens did I make? 15 in total.
So, I make better generic screens than this game. This has no reason for existing, especially if this is a 2015 submission!!
NightShark, stop leading me to dark corners.
[1] Like
I am currently introducing my younger brother to fangames and tought him advanced techniques with JTool. My goal is that he has enough skill so that both of us can beat Co-Op with a 100% completion (none of us have played this before). Of course, I tought him about the most generic jumps and useful setups for those jumps considered generic and/or difficult.
Long story short, with two sessions of three hours each, he learned and pulled off the following, CONSISTENTLY: all kinds of gates (including drop gates), diagonals, half diamonds, diamonds, double diamonds (not consistent), TAS jumps, nerfed inverts, upward planes, corners of ALL sorts, M-jumps, F-jumps, sphyncters (not consistent), T-bones, pixel allign logic, Water 2, Water 3, and more (heck, we both learned how to single-jump a half diamond !). He practiced one full day again and he now has the skill that I had to learn by myself in five months. How many screens did I make? 15 in total.
So, I make better generic screens than this game. This has no reason for existing, especially if this is a 2015 submission!!
NightShark, stop leading me to dark corners.
Rating: 0.4 4
Difficulty: 40 40
Oct 27, 2019
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Flower
For: I wanna be the Flower
Oh...
Difficult to put into words. This is not an entire waste and there are parts I'd recommend.
The bad first.
70% of the game is horrible, and of this 70%, there's a 30% that is very interesting. The game is so uneven in style, quality and production value that it seems like a random collab by a bunch of people. This is not the case. It has only two makers. There are four main areas in total, plus three additional ones once you beat the game. The description of the areas is as follows:
-Intro is the most generic thing you will ever see. Not even worth talking about it.
-Yellow area is one huge challenge. There are complaints against this one because you have to endure entire screens without saves, regardless of the difficulty you choose. It certainly was a downer when you die towards the end of a third or fourth screen, but the lack of saves is compensated with a toned-down difficulty, to be frank. Also, when the challenge is not exaggerated (hello Appreciate Meteor Stream!), my consistency is very solid. This was one of the lesser complaints against the memorable and charming Micromedley, but that was never an issue for me. Under pressure, I execute in a similar way unless you surpass the 7-8 minute mark (which means I will never conquer Soulless). Interesting section, bizarre variety, not always of the greatest quality. It's a challenge that not everyone will enjoy, but I'm glad I took it and also that it didn't consist of too many phases, but only three.
-Black area is the blandest area ever. It requires only skill and patience with traps here and there, and an awful "boss". It is a waste of time and horribly uneventful.
-Green area is fun, with a nice background and simplistic (but not bad) graphics and tilesets. The traps here, however, do get frustrating, especially when placed towards the end of a save. Also, gimmicks are very inconsistent, such as that of the leafs falling because it is never clear when you can jump or double-jump. Buffed jumps add to your detah count for free, especially in the first screen.
-Blue area has a fantastic soundtrack and a horrible design, featuring a dark blue that kills your eyes. Kamilia 3 borrowed two strings from this one. Traps abound here so bring extra patience because you might run out of it (like I did), including lots of fake blocks and secret paths that are not always that obvious to figure out. It also has an unspeakably bad maze that will make you beg for a guide if you're impatient. At least 200 free deaths await you here. There is a """hint""", but that "hint" does not really help at all once that I think about it.
Once this is done, extra areas appear:
-The Touhou fight is giving me an amazing opportunity to say not only that I adore Suwako, but that Native Faith is my favorite Touhou song ever. The sprite is not the best one Suwako could be represented with, but the background is ok-ish (suiting enough at least) and the Touhou mechanics are well implemented. Also, it has interesting patterns and out of the 10, only 1 was meh. Funny fight and sort of entertaining.
-Kagamine Rin's inclusion shocked me because I just became the Contrary with the vocaloid song Antichlorobenzene. I thought I would die thousands of times again, especially because the song brought me flashbacks, but I only used 1.5 hours on her. I reckon the avoidance can be "hard", but most of it is pattern you must learn. I literally first-tried the last third of the avoidance, which made me feel powerful and glad. The avoidance, please notice, is the best thing about the game and I'm convinced it was made by the guy that didn't do the worst parts of the game.... Or I could be totally wrong. It is so good that I cannot explain how it is in a game like this.
-The extra stage is just a stupid preamble for the intentionally stupid and undeniably funny bizarre collection of instances preceding the credits. This is where the game experiments with bad jokes and it works so well that, again, questioned if I was even playing the same fangame.
Also, as far as I understand, this game was a 2012 submission, and Kamilia 3 was a 2013 submission. This game mocks Taisa, so it is not a reference to Kamilia 3, but to the original Black??? Mindblowing to say the least.
I recommend only 30% of it, so expect many, if not several awful instances of bad gameplay and quality. If you asked me right now if the whole game is worth the extra, I still wouldn't be able to say. There's more good than bad, that's for sure.
P.S. I expected this game to be much harder, but surprisingly for me, it wasn't. Guess I am good in Adventure fangames and suck at Needle fangames (as a boring fact, I replayed Clear 50 Neon Floors prior to this for practice and I still ended up dying more times, with it not being a trap game like this one).
[2] Likes
Difficult to put into words. This is not an entire waste and there are parts I'd recommend.
The bad first.
70% of the game is horrible, and of this 70%, there's a 30% that is very interesting. The game is so uneven in style, quality and production value that it seems like a random collab by a bunch of people. This is not the case. It has only two makers. There are four main areas in total, plus three additional ones once you beat the game. The description of the areas is as follows:
-Intro is the most generic thing you will ever see. Not even worth talking about it.
-Yellow area is one huge challenge. There are complaints against this one because you have to endure entire screens without saves, regardless of the difficulty you choose. It certainly was a downer when you die towards the end of a third or fourth screen, but the lack of saves is compensated with a toned-down difficulty, to be frank. Also, when the challenge is not exaggerated (hello Appreciate Meteor Stream!), my consistency is very solid. This was one of the lesser complaints against the memorable and charming Micromedley, but that was never an issue for me. Under pressure, I execute in a similar way unless you surpass the 7-8 minute mark (which means I will never conquer Soulless). Interesting section, bizarre variety, not always of the greatest quality. It's a challenge that not everyone will enjoy, but I'm glad I took it and also that it didn't consist of too many phases, but only three.
-Black area is the blandest area ever. It requires only skill and patience with traps here and there, and an awful "boss". It is a waste of time and horribly uneventful.
-Green area is fun, with a nice background and simplistic (but not bad) graphics and tilesets. The traps here, however, do get frustrating, especially when placed towards the end of a save. Also, gimmicks are very inconsistent, such as that of the leafs falling because it is never clear when you can jump or double-jump. Buffed jumps add to your detah count for free, especially in the first screen.
-Blue area has a fantastic soundtrack and a horrible design, featuring a dark blue that kills your eyes. Kamilia 3 borrowed two strings from this one. Traps abound here so bring extra patience because you might run out of it (like I did), including lots of fake blocks and secret paths that are not always that obvious to figure out. It also has an unspeakably bad maze that will make you beg for a guide if you're impatient. At least 200 free deaths await you here. There is a """hint""", but that "hint" does not really help at all once that I think about it.
Once this is done, extra areas appear:
-The Touhou fight is giving me an amazing opportunity to say not only that I adore Suwako, but that Native Faith is my favorite Touhou song ever. The sprite is not the best one Suwako could be represented with, but the background is ok-ish (suiting enough at least) and the Touhou mechanics are well implemented. Also, it has interesting patterns and out of the 10, only 1 was meh. Funny fight and sort of entertaining.
-Kagamine Rin's inclusion shocked me because I just became the Contrary with the vocaloid song Antichlorobenzene. I thought I would die thousands of times again, especially because the song brought me flashbacks, but I only used 1.5 hours on her. I reckon the avoidance can be "hard", but most of it is pattern you must learn. I literally first-tried the last third of the avoidance, which made me feel powerful and glad. The avoidance, please notice, is the best thing about the game and I'm convinced it was made by the guy that didn't do the worst parts of the game.... Or I could be totally wrong. It is so good that I cannot explain how it is in a game like this.
-The extra stage is just a stupid preamble for the intentionally stupid and undeniably funny bizarre collection of instances preceding the credits. This is where the game experiments with bad jokes and it works so well that, again, questioned if I was even playing the same fangame.
Also, as far as I understand, this game was a 2012 submission, and Kamilia 3 was a 2013 submission. This game mocks Taisa, so it is not a reference to Kamilia 3, but to the original Black??? Mindblowing to say the least.
I recommend only 30% of it, so expect many, if not several awful instances of bad gameplay and quality. If you asked me right now if the whole game is worth the extra, I still wouldn't be able to say. There's more good than bad, that's for sure.
P.S. I expected this game to be much harder, but surprisingly for me, it wasn't. Guess I am good in Adventure fangames and suck at Needle fangames (as a boring fact, I replayed Clear 50 Neon Floors prior to this for practice and I still ended up dying more times, with it not being a trap game like this one).
Rating: 3.6 36
Difficulty: 65 65
Oct 27, 2019
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