Delicious Fruitnotmaxwell's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 3, 2025
Bio:
aka 457
every game i've left a rating or review on i have cleared.
clear list is only used for monumental or impactful clears, or my favourite clears.
(My favourite games tab is different to my clears tab).
I don't tend to give rating or difficulty values anymore, since it's meaningless and was demotivating to be placed alongside people who didn't play through the game, or can't tell the difference between a problem with the game or themselves.
I've submitted:
137 Ratings!
64 Reviews!
2 Screenshots!
137 Games
64 Reviews
notmaxwell
For: I wanna Ascend
For: I wanna Ascend
unbelievable,
incredible game, it stands out as one of (but likely) the best needle game of such insane difficulty, it's incredibly well put together in its gameplay, almost every single jump is difficult yet rewarding, and many are unique and interesting, alongside good screen structuring work ontop. I don't really know where to begin on something like this, I obviously have intense admiration for this game, and have so for years, but ignoring all that, it really is damn good and influential. obviously ascend is an ftfa-like, but it does it in a unique way, not visually persay (though the washed out tileset is a good idea, but nothing groundbreaking itself) but more in its gameplay structure and density, instead of trying to fit in a full screens-worth of jumps, ascend decides to place jumps sparingly, usually resulting in less than 5 notable ones per screen. This is a very good idea, ignoring just that it's a unique style that has unironically enough spawned it's own set of games and needle saves inspired by it, in general this idea allows it to refine these jumps to a higher quality standard and create a longer, more intense playing experience. I believe this is the main reason as to ascend's gameplay works so well, it's restrictive in the sense of 32px setup needle but less restrictive in the terms of it's own structuring, jumps are on floating blocks unconnected to anything, spikes too, which is usually considered lazy or poorly-designed but it's redone here to be turned back around into very good design. I don't know if ascend is the first to properly do this idea with an ftfa-like, but I'm extremely confident it's the first to pull it off on this level with such a good job. It's really good, and it's honestly the best type of ftfa-like i've ever played, it allows for the highlights of setup needle to be emphasized even moreso. Screen balancing is also well done here, screens get easier deeper into the save (for the most part, s4 & 5 could be argued as quite similar, but it's certainly not a drastic jump in difficulty), and it's done cleverly in the way that screens get less dense of jumps, and said jumps get more basic, instead of being more lenient on the frame windows (usually). I prefer this a lot over the counterpart of keeping the same amount of density but reducing the difficulty of jumps in later screens, these few jumps have personality and build a lot of suspense. Onto the actual jumps, insane, this game has some of my favourite setup needle jumps outright, and a lot of them, it's incredible, screens 4 to the end are near flawless, and i can't really point out any complaints, genuinely amazing gameplay that's intensely fun to just play over and over again, for this level of difficult making such a feat is extremely impressive. Screen 3 is also great, the 13f (\12f) is good, but I'm not a huge fan of the fist and last jumps, especially the last jump's initial 2f just felt off sometimes, truthfully this is nitpicking though and it's still a great screen. Screen 2 & 1 are sadly the reason I don't want to give this game a perfect rating, I just have small complaints on some jumps here that do genuinely start to become annoyances over time, namely with screen 1's third jump, it's poorly telegraphed and just a pretty awkward jump, it's not too precise or demanding of the player but at the sme time it's not really a setup needle jump, it stands out from it's peers and not in a good way, i found it to be mostly 'feeling-based' which resulted in some times where i'd suck at it since i overthought such feel for it, truthfully not much of a fan, and somewhat similar complaints could be said about screen 2's second jump, mainly in that the corner turnaround does feel pretty nasty at times with that start, but i'd say this jump is more akin to the rest of the game's catalogue. Also had some complaints with scrn1's final jump, mainly the 3f timing, but maybe that's just me. These jumps did detract from the experience a bit, just because the save is balanced in a way where screen 1 & 2 are quite difficult, so alas a lot of time is spent at these jumps that do get bothersome after a while. It's not that bad though, and it's not too detracting but i thought i might aswell mention it as it's the sole reason i'm not giving this game a 10\10 rating.
Overall, plays downright incredibly good for how difficult this game is, as stated before, it's the best option out there right now, and it's incredibly fun which is unbelievable. Some cool QOL aswell, "learning" difficulty has godmode, inf jump & the ability to save anywhere, the latter 2 being quite useful.
It's good, it's well made and has great gameplay to the point where it's influential itself while being an ftfa-like. Not much else to say, if you believe you have the ability to clear this then absolutely play it. I'd honestly even recommend playing through this game on learning and just messing around, it's genuinely fun.
GG
[2] Likes
incredible game, it stands out as one of (but likely) the best needle game of such insane difficulty, it's incredibly well put together in its gameplay, almost every single jump is difficult yet rewarding, and many are unique and interesting, alongside good screen structuring work ontop. I don't really know where to begin on something like this, I obviously have intense admiration for this game, and have so for years, but ignoring all that, it really is damn good and influential. obviously ascend is an ftfa-like, but it does it in a unique way, not visually persay (though the washed out tileset is a good idea, but nothing groundbreaking itself) but more in its gameplay structure and density, instead of trying to fit in a full screens-worth of jumps, ascend decides to place jumps sparingly, usually resulting in less than 5 notable ones per screen. This is a very good idea, ignoring just that it's a unique style that has unironically enough spawned it's own set of games and needle saves inspired by it, in general this idea allows it to refine these jumps to a higher quality standard and create a longer, more intense playing experience. I believe this is the main reason as to ascend's gameplay works so well, it's restrictive in the sense of 32px setup needle but less restrictive in the terms of it's own structuring, jumps are on floating blocks unconnected to anything, spikes too, which is usually considered lazy or poorly-designed but it's redone here to be turned back around into very good design. I don't know if ascend is the first to properly do this idea with an ftfa-like, but I'm extremely confident it's the first to pull it off on this level with such a good job. It's really good, and it's honestly the best type of ftfa-like i've ever played, it allows for the highlights of setup needle to be emphasized even moreso. Screen balancing is also well done here, screens get easier deeper into the save (for the most part, s4 & 5 could be argued as quite similar, but it's certainly not a drastic jump in difficulty), and it's done cleverly in the way that screens get less dense of jumps, and said jumps get more basic, instead of being more lenient on the frame windows (usually). I prefer this a lot over the counterpart of keeping the same amount of density but reducing the difficulty of jumps in later screens, these few jumps have personality and build a lot of suspense. Onto the actual jumps, insane, this game has some of my favourite setup needle jumps outright, and a lot of them, it's incredible, screens 4 to the end are near flawless, and i can't really point out any complaints, genuinely amazing gameplay that's intensely fun to just play over and over again, for this level of difficult making such a feat is extremely impressive. Screen 3 is also great, the 13f (\12f) is good, but I'm not a huge fan of the fist and last jumps, especially the last jump's initial 2f just felt off sometimes, truthfully this is nitpicking though and it's still a great screen. Screen 2 & 1 are sadly the reason I don't want to give this game a perfect rating, I just have small complaints on some jumps here that do genuinely start to become annoyances over time, namely with screen 1's third jump, it's poorly telegraphed and just a pretty awkward jump, it's not too precise or demanding of the player but at the sme time it's not really a setup needle jump, it stands out from it's peers and not in a good way, i found it to be mostly 'feeling-based' which resulted in some times where i'd suck at it since i overthought such feel for it, truthfully not much of a fan, and somewhat similar complaints could be said about screen 2's second jump, mainly in that the corner turnaround does feel pretty nasty at times with that start, but i'd say this jump is more akin to the rest of the game's catalogue. Also had some complaints with scrn1's final jump, mainly the 3f timing, but maybe that's just me. These jumps did detract from the experience a bit, just because the save is balanced in a way where screen 1 & 2 are quite difficult, so alas a lot of time is spent at these jumps that do get bothersome after a while. It's not that bad though, and it's not too detracting but i thought i might aswell mention it as it's the sole reason i'm not giving this game a 10\10 rating.
Overall, plays downright incredibly good for how difficult this game is, as stated before, it's the best option out there right now, and it's incredibly fun which is unbelievable. Some cool QOL aswell, "learning" difficulty has godmode, inf jump & the ability to save anywhere, the latter 2 being quite useful.
It's good, it's well made and has great gameplay to the point where it's influential itself while being an ftfa-like. Not much else to say, if you believe you have the ability to clear this then absolutely play it. I'd honestly even recommend playing through this game on learning and just messing around, it's genuinely fun.
GG
Rating: 9.8 98
Difficulty: 97 97
Apr 24, 2026
notmaxwell
For: Herald’s Machina Towers
For: Herald’s Machina Towers
rating based off intended mode
Present would be ~5, ~75.
Warning: Malding review. I'm complaining a lot here and some might be nonsensical. It's late at night and I just wrote passionately, there's no hard feelings here
To start off positively, this game has incredible visuals. I love the theme, the tower idea is done well especially how the gameplay is limited horizontally. Very nice stuff, title screen is also sick, menus are cool, and the clear screen is cool too. Screen movement is nice and the game's pacing is cool, I noticed the visuals kinda break a bit when paused, likely due to the instances being stopped when paused, and at the clear fade in it looks like it made the edges of my game white until I paused and it fixed itself, but these are just small nitpicks. Overall visually very cool, and the game sets itself up to be quite nice overall, has good potential, but I cannot say it delivers on the gameplay. The good:
There's some jumps i'm fine with, there's no real jumps I actually love but I generally liked the final jump of screen 1, and the fj 4f for screen 2. Both of these jumps are quite easy though, especially the former, so they're not really significant in the save's gameplay anyway. First 2 jumps of screen 2 are also decent, the djump up to the vine on the first one is obsessionally annoying but that's likely just me. Now is a good time to mention, this game has a gimmick, which plays an essential role in it's traumatic gameplay, where each vine is one-time-use. After jumping off a vine, it'll fall down and you can't use it anymore. Because of this, readjustment isn't viable, and most vine jumps in this game basically run on a "fucking ball it and pray" basis, and because of this gimmick, some vine jumps become incredibly awkward as a result, as for ones with a low enter it's impossible to jump up once to get better height and then jump over, you just have to immediately jump and pray that you did a low enough pause on the jump beforehand (this complaint is most relevant to the 2nd last jump of scrn1). This gimmick hinders this game more then it adds to it, the good vine jumps in this game, ie the first 2 on screen 2 would be completely unaffected if this gimmick didn't exist. It's only used in a way to make preexisting vine jumps just inconsistent and more awkward. That being said it also doesn't affect some of the worst vine jumps since they require 2-3f movement presses anyway.
Screen 1, starts off fine, first jump is alright but it starts the trend of '2-3f tap on vine. win' that for some unknown reason so many jumps use. 2nd jump is nothing, but the middle jump is ... insanity, starts off with 2 long jumps, first jump can be a fj or not, and then a very small pause and another fj, fine so far, into a pretty vague right press to get a optimally high vine grab and then, because i'm sure it needs to be like this, it's a 2-3f movement tap and immediate re-press of the same key afterwards. It's so, so, so, inconsistent, it feels unfathomably arbitrary and stamina based, the movement key repress also sucks since you can press it again too early and overshoot it way too much, it's all just really, really unfun, and it's the same thing, a tiny vine movement press. I'm not against 2fs or 3fs, not at all, but it's spam, there's just so so many of them, hell, after this jump is yet damn again, another tiny vine movement press and repress quickly after. It's the same painful, draining movement right again. And, the jump up to this, is yet again, a long jump with a short pause and a long jump after (since you want to grab the vine at a good height to pass the minispikes). It's painful and inconsistent and awkward as all hell. These 2 jumps aren't hard, they're not very precise, it's not tight or anything, matter of fact, most of this game isn't tight, only screen 3 truly is. It's just unfathomably damn awkward and feels so terrible to play, deaths feel completely faultless and uncontrollable since it's really hard on the hands to pull of some of these movements constantly and they're just so inconsistent and vague. I don't like this screen at all (1), thankfully the final jump is fine, but it's more of just a nothingburger since it's an easy setup with a 2f jump height window and a fj after. Dying to screen 2 pretty much always feels terrible since you get the knowledge that you have to deal with screen 1 which has more jumps that include micro-inputs on vines then jumps that don't. Screen 2 shows that Nick does make good vine gameplay in this style though, as mentioned previously the first 2 jumps here are pretty fine, first is a bit meh sometimes but the 2nd is actually pretty fun to pull off, it's good in isolation but brought down by what's before it. These 2 jumps show that Nick can make peak, but the rest just isn't. 3rd jump of this screen is fine, it's quite easy in comparison but then again nothing in this game is actually tight until the end of scrn2, just awkward. Then there's the diagonal jump into the vine, the diagonal jump is fine, all good there, but then, it's another one of these stupid 2-3f vine movement press and repress. I don't know why there's more. The repress here isn't actually too much of a problem since it's a good bit later so thankfully it's not as terrible as the 2 jumps on screen 1 in that department but the initial press is still just a 2-3f vine press and it's not interesting at all nor does it bring anything to the table that screen 1 hasn't. Jump after that is fine, and the fj 4f is decent. I'm not a fan of the 4f back up much, but it's nowhere near as devastating as the vine jumps. Screen 3 is a bit different, first jump is fine, and the platform jumps up are mediocre. I didn't like them much but I also don't think they're as daunting as the vine jumps in this save, it's inconsistent at first, sure, but they get better with time and truthfully i'll gladly take those over the other jumps this game throws at you, bit weird how you have to delay movement by 1\2f after jumping so it makes it a bit iffy, but it's fine. Now you have the final jump (except the golden area). The final jump here is my least favourite jump I have ever played in a fangame. I cannot think of a single jump that I have ever played that is worse than this jump, and the fact that it is after all the complaints I have had with the rest of this save is actually traumatic. It's the combination of all my complaints with this game plus an added cherry on top of horror at the end. This jump starts with, you know it, fj fj low pause to get over the fruit. Because you start on a platform you can often die to this from platform bhop which kills you to the top spikes, and before this is an incredibly visually vague left input press since you start the djump in a diagonal. After this, you pass the fruit, get given permanent catharsis water, and immediately met with ... a forced 2-3f vine press and even Worse repress than before. Incredible. I'm not gonna say it again but the repress here is very shortly after the intial tiny tap, badly conveyed, ofc inconsistent since for it to be properly consistent you'd have to be doing the same right press length, and feels actually terrible. And it's even harder than it seems since if you don't do it perfectly you'll have a bad enter into the final stutter and likely die. Tremendous. The final stutter is absurd, way harder than it seems or it should be and I don't know why it exists. Water diagonal stutter with a horrific enter at the end of all of this. Great. I died there ~6 times or some amount because it just feels like damned rng at this point, poorly conveyed inputs stacked upon poorly conveyed inputs that rely upon eachother and it's all arbitrary as all hell. It's the most agonizing, unfun, painful jump I have ever played. I cannot think of a jump this bad, awkward and almost fp left press into the middle of a diagonal (that's delayed from jump input too) into fj fj low pause (except you can't do it perfectly since if you do, you might get platform bhop and die!) into vine 2-3f and immediate repress that's so open and awkward into that stutter. Nick I don't know what you were on man, It's kind of impressive that you cooked this up but like ... what the hell dude :sob: I died here a shit ton, obviously, since it's fucking absurd, let alone putting THIS at the end of an already intensely problematic save is just unreasonable. It's not good. And the worst is that it's not the end, there's a choke section after. There's not much to say here except that it's the better side of gameplay even though it's just gates and a diagonal with catharsis water, but it's mean that there's a choke section after that final jump. It's aura though so I'll give it a pass and it would be awesome if the rest of the game's gameplay didn't make it hell to get to.
I'm sorry if i sound like an asshole, I don't blame nick or think he's a bad creator at all, I just can't say I think this game has good gameplay, it has the same few problematic inputs copied all over, and then merged into a demonic creation at the very end. It's also worth talking about the present difficulty I guess. It's weird, the saves are placed in incredibly odd spots, for some reason the final save is at the end of scrn2 so you have to do 3 deathless which is really messed up and quite likely the hardest by a good bit, and the first save forces you to do one of the agonizing scrn1 jumps from the start which is also pretty difficult. Some other saves in this mode are like, free, and are only separated by the non-problematic jumps. This game as a whole is basically just a few horrifying jumps separated by some fine jumps that become upsetting due to the knowledge of having to play the horrifying jumps everytime you die. I wouldn't recommend playing this, maybe play it on present difficulty but don't go any further than that.
Sorry nick for the negative review, I might've been pretty harsh here but as you probably can tell I'm quite passionate, no actual hate ofc, and i mean you cooked like crazy on the visuals
[1] Like
Present would be ~5, ~75.
Warning: Malding review. I'm complaining a lot here and some might be nonsensical. It's late at night and I just wrote passionately, there's no hard feelings here
To start off positively, this game has incredible visuals. I love the theme, the tower idea is done well especially how the gameplay is limited horizontally. Very nice stuff, title screen is also sick, menus are cool, and the clear screen is cool too. Screen movement is nice and the game's pacing is cool, I noticed the visuals kinda break a bit when paused, likely due to the instances being stopped when paused, and at the clear fade in it looks like it made the edges of my game white until I paused and it fixed itself, but these are just small nitpicks. Overall visually very cool, and the game sets itself up to be quite nice overall, has good potential, but I cannot say it delivers on the gameplay. The good:
There's some jumps i'm fine with, there's no real jumps I actually love but I generally liked the final jump of screen 1, and the fj 4f for screen 2. Both of these jumps are quite easy though, especially the former, so they're not really significant in the save's gameplay anyway. First 2 jumps of screen 2 are also decent, the djump up to the vine on the first one is obsessionally annoying but that's likely just me. Now is a good time to mention, this game has a gimmick, which plays an essential role in it's traumatic gameplay, where each vine is one-time-use. After jumping off a vine, it'll fall down and you can't use it anymore. Because of this, readjustment isn't viable, and most vine jumps in this game basically run on a "fucking ball it and pray" basis, and because of this gimmick, some vine jumps become incredibly awkward as a result, as for ones with a low enter it's impossible to jump up once to get better height and then jump over, you just have to immediately jump and pray that you did a low enough pause on the jump beforehand (this complaint is most relevant to the 2nd last jump of scrn1). This gimmick hinders this game more then it adds to it, the good vine jumps in this game, ie the first 2 on screen 2 would be completely unaffected if this gimmick didn't exist. It's only used in a way to make preexisting vine jumps just inconsistent and more awkward. That being said it also doesn't affect some of the worst vine jumps since they require 2-3f movement presses anyway.
Screen 1, starts off fine, first jump is alright but it starts the trend of '2-3f tap on vine. win' that for some unknown reason so many jumps use. 2nd jump is nothing, but the middle jump is ... insanity, starts off with 2 long jumps, first jump can be a fj or not, and then a very small pause and another fj, fine so far, into a pretty vague right press to get a optimally high vine grab and then, because i'm sure it needs to be like this, it's a 2-3f movement tap and immediate re-press of the same key afterwards. It's so, so, so, inconsistent, it feels unfathomably arbitrary and stamina based, the movement key repress also sucks since you can press it again too early and overshoot it way too much, it's all just really, really unfun, and it's the same thing, a tiny vine movement press. I'm not against 2fs or 3fs, not at all, but it's spam, there's just so so many of them, hell, after this jump is yet damn again, another tiny vine movement press and repress quickly after. It's the same painful, draining movement right again. And, the jump up to this, is yet again, a long jump with a short pause and a long jump after (since you want to grab the vine at a good height to pass the minispikes). It's painful and inconsistent and awkward as all hell. These 2 jumps aren't hard, they're not very precise, it's not tight or anything, matter of fact, most of this game isn't tight, only screen 3 truly is. It's just unfathomably damn awkward and feels so terrible to play, deaths feel completely faultless and uncontrollable since it's really hard on the hands to pull of some of these movements constantly and they're just so inconsistent and vague. I don't like this screen at all (1), thankfully the final jump is fine, but it's more of just a nothingburger since it's an easy setup with a 2f jump height window and a fj after. Dying to screen 2 pretty much always feels terrible since you get the knowledge that you have to deal with screen 1 which has more jumps that include micro-inputs on vines then jumps that don't. Screen 2 shows that Nick does make good vine gameplay in this style though, as mentioned previously the first 2 jumps here are pretty fine, first is a bit meh sometimes but the 2nd is actually pretty fun to pull off, it's good in isolation but brought down by what's before it. These 2 jumps show that Nick can make peak, but the rest just isn't. 3rd jump of this screen is fine, it's quite easy in comparison but then again nothing in this game is actually tight until the end of scrn2, just awkward. Then there's the diagonal jump into the vine, the diagonal jump is fine, all good there, but then, it's another one of these stupid 2-3f vine movement press and repress. I don't know why there's more. The repress here isn't actually too much of a problem since it's a good bit later so thankfully it's not as terrible as the 2 jumps on screen 1 in that department but the initial press is still just a 2-3f vine press and it's not interesting at all nor does it bring anything to the table that screen 1 hasn't. Jump after that is fine, and the fj 4f is decent. I'm not a fan of the 4f back up much, but it's nowhere near as devastating as the vine jumps. Screen 3 is a bit different, first jump is fine, and the platform jumps up are mediocre. I didn't like them much but I also don't think they're as daunting as the vine jumps in this save, it's inconsistent at first, sure, but they get better with time and truthfully i'll gladly take those over the other jumps this game throws at you, bit weird how you have to delay movement by 1\2f after jumping so it makes it a bit iffy, but it's fine. Now you have the final jump (except the golden area). The final jump here is my least favourite jump I have ever played in a fangame. I cannot think of a single jump that I have ever played that is worse than this jump, and the fact that it is after all the complaints I have had with the rest of this save is actually traumatic. It's the combination of all my complaints with this game plus an added cherry on top of horror at the end. This jump starts with, you know it, fj fj low pause to get over the fruit. Because you start on a platform you can often die to this from platform bhop which kills you to the top spikes, and before this is an incredibly visually vague left input press since you start the djump in a diagonal. After this, you pass the fruit, get given permanent catharsis water, and immediately met with ... a forced 2-3f vine press and even Worse repress than before. Incredible. I'm not gonna say it again but the repress here is very shortly after the intial tiny tap, badly conveyed, ofc inconsistent since for it to be properly consistent you'd have to be doing the same right press length, and feels actually terrible. And it's even harder than it seems since if you don't do it perfectly you'll have a bad enter into the final stutter and likely die. Tremendous. The final stutter is absurd, way harder than it seems or it should be and I don't know why it exists. Water diagonal stutter with a horrific enter at the end of all of this. Great. I died there ~6 times or some amount because it just feels like damned rng at this point, poorly conveyed inputs stacked upon poorly conveyed inputs that rely upon eachother and it's all arbitrary as all hell. It's the most agonizing, unfun, painful jump I have ever played. I cannot think of a jump this bad, awkward and almost fp left press into the middle of a diagonal (that's delayed from jump input too) into fj fj low pause (except you can't do it perfectly since if you do, you might get platform bhop and die!) into vine 2-3f and immediate repress that's so open and awkward into that stutter. Nick I don't know what you were on man, It's kind of impressive that you cooked this up but like ... what the hell dude :sob: I died here a shit ton, obviously, since it's fucking absurd, let alone putting THIS at the end of an already intensely problematic save is just unreasonable. It's not good. And the worst is that it's not the end, there's a choke section after. There's not much to say here except that it's the better side of gameplay even though it's just gates and a diagonal with catharsis water, but it's mean that there's a choke section after that final jump. It's aura though so I'll give it a pass and it would be awesome if the rest of the game's gameplay didn't make it hell to get to.
I'm sorry if i sound like an asshole, I don't blame nick or think he's a bad creator at all, I just can't say I think this game has good gameplay, it has the same few problematic inputs copied all over, and then merged into a demonic creation at the very end. It's also worth talking about the present difficulty I guess. It's weird, the saves are placed in incredibly odd spots, for some reason the final save is at the end of scrn2 so you have to do 3 deathless which is really messed up and quite likely the hardest by a good bit, and the first save forces you to do one of the agonizing scrn1 jumps from the start which is also pretty difficult. Some other saves in this mode are like, free, and are only separated by the non-problematic jumps. This game as a whole is basically just a few horrifying jumps separated by some fine jumps that become upsetting due to the knowledge of having to play the horrifying jumps everytime you die. I wouldn't recommend playing this, maybe play it on present difficulty but don't go any further than that.
Sorry nick for the negative review, I might've been pretty harsh here but as you probably can tell I'm quite passionate, no actual hate ofc, and i mean you cooked like crazy on the visuals
Rating: 2.0 20
Difficulty: 91 91
Apr 11, 2026
notmaxwell
For: Isopropylacrylamide
For: Isopropylacrylamide
banger??
Really enjoyable needle game, uses 32px strictly (including fruit in a cool way at the final screen), and plays very nicely with it. 4 Screens long & each screen gets easier and less dense (Screen 3 might seem more dense than 2, but it's not since the vine and water jumps are basically just all fjs). It's got some good visuals too, somewhat of an eerie vibe to it especially with the bgm which made it quite pleasant to play, nothing obnoxious and overall it's actually quite calm. Gameplay is for the most part phenomenal, I absolutely love most of it, screen 2 - 4 are some of the most consistent & fun 32px needle i've played, it's practically the perfect difficulty aswell, it doesn't feel like the screen is overbuffed or too dense and some jumps are easier than others but that's good. I'm not sure if i'd even call this setup-needle, although there are setups and a lot of the harder jumps require frame perfect heights it just has that kind of 'flow' to it, screens get unbelievably consistent, especially 3 & 4. Screen 4 i absolutely love, yes, it starts off with an animation-dependent fruit jump but it's very consistent and made in a way where it's a really unique and good jump, rest of the screen isn't much but isn't bad either, screen 3 flows great aswell, overall this game's usage of water jumps and vines are minimal yet really good for 32px needle, albeit quite easy for the most part in comparison to the rest of the gameplay, but it's used tastefully for breaking up difficult jumps such as how it separates the first and final jump of screen 3. I really like this gameplay, it's really good, perfect mix of setup jumps & other intuitive things that just flow all so damn well. Even your usual complaints that i have with jumps such as visual unintuitive-ness isn't really prominent here. Although, sadly, screen 1 has a few problematic jumps, specifically 2, the plane-corner & the final jump. The former of such is kind of obvious as to why it's questionable, it's the hardest jump of the whole game by a decent bit, and it's pretty awkward to pull off (atleast I found it to be), it does get consistent but at a slower rate than everything else in the game due to it's difficulty. It is indeed also a bit vague on that initial jump height. The final jump is also a bit weird, it's basically a buffed 4.5, or plays similarly, as you're required to do a 1-2p before fj, it can be pretty awkward hitting this & the turnaround required, and truthfully it's kinda hardware dependent. These 2 jumps make screen 1 the hardest screen in the game by a good margin (imo), but i did find it to get pretty consistent anyway even with the troublemaker jumps, it's a bit of a shame though since without those 2 the game would be absolutely sublime in gameplay, it's still quite a lot of fun though, getting attempts past those 2 jumps feels very rewarding and the screens afterwards are all incredible. Other than those 2 jumps in a save with ~20 jumps I genuinely don't have a single gameplay complaint. That's how good I think the last 3 screens are, it's actually amazing.
Another neat touch is the screen death counter, I think it fits pretty well here and it's pretty cool to see the numbers go up over time, good addition and i'd see it helping the mental game for a difficult clear like this. Clear screen is okay, it's a bit lackluster, but I don't really mind too much.
I'd really recommend playing this if you're interested in it, It's a lot of fun and flows incredibly well for a long 32px needle save.
Really enjoyable needle game, uses 32px strictly (including fruit in a cool way at the final screen), and plays very nicely with it. 4 Screens long & each screen gets easier and less dense (Screen 3 might seem more dense than 2, but it's not since the vine and water jumps are basically just all fjs). It's got some good visuals too, somewhat of an eerie vibe to it especially with the bgm which made it quite pleasant to play, nothing obnoxious and overall it's actually quite calm. Gameplay is for the most part phenomenal, I absolutely love most of it, screen 2 - 4 are some of the most consistent & fun 32px needle i've played, it's practically the perfect difficulty aswell, it doesn't feel like the screen is overbuffed or too dense and some jumps are easier than others but that's good. I'm not sure if i'd even call this setup-needle, although there are setups and a lot of the harder jumps require frame perfect heights it just has that kind of 'flow' to it, screens get unbelievably consistent, especially 3 & 4. Screen 4 i absolutely love, yes, it starts off with an animation-dependent fruit jump but it's very consistent and made in a way where it's a really unique and good jump, rest of the screen isn't much but isn't bad either, screen 3 flows great aswell, overall this game's usage of water jumps and vines are minimal yet really good for 32px needle, albeit quite easy for the most part in comparison to the rest of the gameplay, but it's used tastefully for breaking up difficult jumps such as how it separates the first and final jump of screen 3. I really like this gameplay, it's really good, perfect mix of setup jumps & other intuitive things that just flow all so damn well. Even your usual complaints that i have with jumps such as visual unintuitive-ness isn't really prominent here. Although, sadly, screen 1 has a few problematic jumps, specifically 2, the plane-corner & the final jump. The former of such is kind of obvious as to why it's questionable, it's the hardest jump of the whole game by a decent bit, and it's pretty awkward to pull off (atleast I found it to be), it does get consistent but at a slower rate than everything else in the game due to it's difficulty. It is indeed also a bit vague on that initial jump height. The final jump is also a bit weird, it's basically a buffed 4.5, or plays similarly, as you're required to do a 1-2p before fj, it can be pretty awkward hitting this & the turnaround required, and truthfully it's kinda hardware dependent. These 2 jumps make screen 1 the hardest screen in the game by a good margin (imo), but i did find it to get pretty consistent anyway even with the troublemaker jumps, it's a bit of a shame though since without those 2 the game would be absolutely sublime in gameplay, it's still quite a lot of fun though, getting attempts past those 2 jumps feels very rewarding and the screens afterwards are all incredible. Other than those 2 jumps in a save with ~20 jumps I genuinely don't have a single gameplay complaint. That's how good I think the last 3 screens are, it's actually amazing.
Another neat touch is the screen death counter, I think it fits pretty well here and it's pretty cool to see the numbers go up over time, good addition and i'd see it helping the mental game for a difficult clear like this. Clear screen is okay, it's a bit lackluster, but I don't really mind too much.
I'd really recommend playing this if you're interested in it, It's a lot of fun and flows incredibly well for a long 32px needle save.
Tagged as: Needle
[0] Likes
Rating: 9.2 92
Difficulty: 89 89
Apr 6, 2026
notmaxwell
For: I wanna Tomodati Backwards
For: I wanna Tomodati Backwards
Evil needle game
I'll keep it real, I didn't enjoy this game all that much. It's fine visually, it's fine to look at and i presume it's not really meant to do all much with it's inspiration so it's all fine, no real problems in that department. However, considering the game's length and et cetra you'd expect it to be pretty decent in the gameplay department, to which in my opinion I think it is certainly not. Starting off with the good, the middle row contains some pretty cool and fun jumps, the valign dependent 12f is quite good, the 4f afterwards is also a personal favourite, very good jump, and the 2 jumps after that are both quite nice aswell. Sadly you never really get to play and enjoy these jumps because 95% of playtime will be spent on the first 2 jumps (or pretty much the first row), as especially the 2nd jump contains the majority of the whole game's difficulty, and also so much frustration. This jump in particular is so awkward and arbitrary, for example the movement presses just feel vague and off, it certainly doesn't help that it's from a bad align ledge too, but my main problem with the jump is that it's so difficult to get better at it. It seems like you die in practically the same position if you do the 15f jump height but mess up the movement left press by 1f too late, to if you did the movement perfectly but a 14f. Those 2 deaths look the same, and many other deaths have that same problem such as delaying the left press by 1f too late, etc, it makes it so damn hard to actually improve muscle memory at the jump since it's difficult to tell how you actually died other than intuition. I also just didn't find it fun, it never truly got consistent for me and pair it with the first jump which isn't bad but the bad align ledge gets a bit annoying at times just makes for an incredibly frustrating and boring experience where you die to the first 2 jumps repeatedly. As mentioned, the 2nd jump is by far the hardest jump in the game, it's kind of insane how difficult it is, it's absurd, this jump alone is harder than the entire top row, so the game's balanced in a way where everything past said jump feels like an extension to the jump as a result, it doesn't feel like your playing the rest of the game more does it feel like your playing the jumps past the 2nd, it turns the 2nd jump into the focal point of the whole gameplay. I wouldn't really recommend this, some good jumps in the middle especially but it's not worth it to clear over, even moreso that you won't even really experience the good parts as you'll be stuck playing that one jump over and over again. I have beef with that one jump. It's personal.
[1] Like
I'll keep it real, I didn't enjoy this game all that much. It's fine visually, it's fine to look at and i presume it's not really meant to do all much with it's inspiration so it's all fine, no real problems in that department. However, considering the game's length and et cetra you'd expect it to be pretty decent in the gameplay department, to which in my opinion I think it is certainly not. Starting off with the good, the middle row contains some pretty cool and fun jumps, the valign dependent 12f is quite good, the 4f afterwards is also a personal favourite, very good jump, and the 2 jumps after that are both quite nice aswell. Sadly you never really get to play and enjoy these jumps because 95% of playtime will be spent on the first 2 jumps (or pretty much the first row), as especially the 2nd jump contains the majority of the whole game's difficulty, and also so much frustration. This jump in particular is so awkward and arbitrary, for example the movement presses just feel vague and off, it certainly doesn't help that it's from a bad align ledge too, but my main problem with the jump is that it's so difficult to get better at it. It seems like you die in practically the same position if you do the 15f jump height but mess up the movement left press by 1f too late, to if you did the movement perfectly but a 14f. Those 2 deaths look the same, and many other deaths have that same problem such as delaying the left press by 1f too late, etc, it makes it so damn hard to actually improve muscle memory at the jump since it's difficult to tell how you actually died other than intuition. I also just didn't find it fun, it never truly got consistent for me and pair it with the first jump which isn't bad but the bad align ledge gets a bit annoying at times just makes for an incredibly frustrating and boring experience where you die to the first 2 jumps repeatedly. As mentioned, the 2nd jump is by far the hardest jump in the game, it's kind of insane how difficult it is, it's absurd, this jump alone is harder than the entire top row, so the game's balanced in a way where everything past said jump feels like an extension to the jump as a result, it doesn't feel like your playing the rest of the game more does it feel like your playing the jumps past the 2nd, it turns the 2nd jump into the focal point of the whole gameplay. I wouldn't really recommend this, some good jumps in the middle especially but it's not worth it to clear over, even moreso that you won't even really experience the good parts as you'll be stuck playing that one jump over and over again. I have beef with that one jump. It's personal.
Rating: 1.3 13
Difficulty: 91 91
Mar 30, 2026
notmaxwell
For: I wanna Look Up
For: I wanna Look Up
Okay 32px 'ftfa-like' game, visually not very interesting & a bit too faithful to where nothing is really brought to the table, menu being guyrock and clearscreen being a bit boring makes the game not too enticing. Gameplay is actually great for the first 2 saves (out of 3), I really enjoyed playing the first save, the challenge of the save is mainly condensed into the corner to the final water jump, and all of those got incredibly consistent very quickly and felt quite nice to play, even the water jump which is somewhat questionable. I found it to be a quite fun save and had a very linear experience with it, pretty nice. Screen 2 is the easiest out of the 3 by a very large margin, there's not much to say other than it wasn't problematic and had some cool jumps in it. No complaints and enjoyed it aswell. Save 3 is where my issues arise, I just can't get behind the top left jump and a few other questionable ones. The 2nd half of this screen is great, I did the 1fbh 21f fj strat for the final jump and found it quite a lot of fun, 15f was fun, etc, it's just the first half of this save is infuriating as all hell. The water jumps are certainly unique, but I don't love it, the jump into them feels a bit awkward and un-intuitive, it just doesn't really click well and it doesn't help that it's not really a ftfa-like jump either, so it's kind of an outlier. The prominent water jump of screen 1 also had this same problem, but I found that one actually enjoyable and very consistent to pull off, this wasn't. This includes the djump timing which just feels a bit off & having it before the Demonic turnaround jump that effectively acts as a sphincter in the top left is just a back to back evil combo. The djump after the water plane is also a bit weird to me but I didn't really spend much time checking if there was better strats for good vstring or not. First jump is fine, corner is fine, jump up with the water is awkward and irritating. Overall found Screen 3 to be a bit harder than screen 1, likely due to it being a lot more unbearable.
Worth noting this game had insane performance issues and a weird fullscreen shader problem (or whatever it's called), one of the kids eyes was 6px wide and while debugger fixed it to an extent it still persisted but as 2px, really weird. Alongside this the game had a diabolical ~6f of input delay before I extracted the exe & used debugger, likely some win11 stuff since this engine on studio 1.49 is always incredibly odd for my hardware, but be warned, I found this game to have a more troublesome engine than ones used for Crimson Needle or Seven Trials. This also exemplified me finding screen 3 very frustrating as 2 inputs on 1 frame & 1f movements are very inconsistent and weird. Play with caution if your on a win11 laptop I guess.
[0] Likes
Worth noting this game had insane performance issues and a weird fullscreen shader problem (or whatever it's called), one of the kids eyes was 6px wide and while debugger fixed it to an extent it still persisted but as 2px, really weird. Alongside this the game had a diabolical ~6f of input delay before I extracted the exe & used debugger, likely some win11 stuff since this engine on studio 1.49 is always incredibly odd for my hardware, but be warned, I found this game to have a more troublesome engine than ones used for Crimson Needle or Seven Trials. This also exemplified me finding screen 3 very frustrating as 2 inputs on 1 frame & 1f movements are very inconsistent and weird. Play with caution if your on a win11 laptop I guess.
Rating: 5.0 50
Difficulty: 86 86
Mar 29, 2026
2 Games
| Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| crude riverbed | 63.3 | 7.0 | 5 |
| Vaisravana | 75.0 | N/A | 2 |
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