Delicious FruitJopagu's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Jan 16, 2022
Bio:
Hi, I'm Jopagu. She/They pronouns please :)
I don’t play much avoidance so my diff ratings on those might be scuffed.
Clears list is all the games I played before I started reviewing them. I'm trying to slowly go through those and replay/review them all.
I review games based on how much I would recommend them to others. 0s are reserved for games I do not recommend for ethical reasons. This does not mean I have anything against people playing or enjoying those games.
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504 Ratings!
499 Reviews!
10 Screenshots!
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504 Games
499 Reviews
Jopagu
For: VoVoVo
For: VoVoVo
VoVoVo is a fantastic needleventure game surrounding the use of Viridian Kid, so expect lots of gravity shenanigans. Aside from that central gimmick, each stage (of which there are several) includes another gimmick, ranging from classic flipping lines, to more unique things like a collectible that let's you break a block. Each gimmick gets used to its fullest, making each stage feel like an awesome self contained exploration of a gimmick, up until a final stage that starts to mix them together. The game also features two 4x4 maze screens, which were super fun to play.
My few qualms mostly involve some jumps that were simply repetitive. The most noticeable is simple diagonals, which seem to be featured constantly. They're all well designed diagonals, so it's not a problem of a bad jump, just that it felt like I was doing the same thing constantly. The second is a particular drop style with the VKid, where you just alter between holding left and right, relying on high vspeed to slide past spikes. It's a cool drop, but it winds up making most of the VKid segments feel the same. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in how the VKid was used in some parts, in many areas it felt like it was only used to unlock a new path, without really having much interesting platforming of it's own.
I know that complaint paragraph was long, but ultimately those are minor gripes; this is still a fantastic game. I simply feel I don't have too much to say about the good parts except "gimmicks cool, pathing creative". This is an easy recommendation to fans of gimmick needle, and well deserving of it's popularity.
[0] Likes
My few qualms mostly involve some jumps that were simply repetitive. The most noticeable is simple diagonals, which seem to be featured constantly. They're all well designed diagonals, so it's not a problem of a bad jump, just that it felt like I was doing the same thing constantly. The second is a particular drop style with the VKid, where you just alter between holding left and right, relying on high vspeed to slide past spikes. It's a cool drop, but it winds up making most of the VKid segments feel the same. Overall, I'm a bit disappointed in how the VKid was used in some parts, in many areas it felt like it was only used to unlock a new path, without really having much interesting platforming of it's own.
I know that complaint paragraph was long, but ultimately those are minor gripes; this is still a fantastic game. I simply feel I don't have too much to say about the good parts except "gimmicks cool, pathing creative". This is an easy recommendation to fans of gimmick needle, and well deserving of it's popularity.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 60 60
Jul 30, 2023
Jopagu
For: I wanna whisper in mirror
For: I wanna whisper in mirror
Really cool needle game that's centered around a gimmick that changes the size of your screen, combined with screenwrap. This makes for some really interesting screen design, and the game really shines in seeing how these screens evolve over time to develop a path to the warp. The needle is more precision focused, but not to an extreme. None of the jumps felt overly precise, although a couple spots were pushing it. One complaint is that there's a screen that starts immediately with a shift, making you sit through an animation every attempt, which is slightly annoying. Overall, just a really neat experience with a cool gimmick and decent, but flawed, platforming. I'd love to see this gimmick used for a more puzzle focused experience, although that's obviously outside of the scope of this game so it's not something that affects my rating.
Tagged as: Needle
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.7 77
Difficulty: 60 60
Jul 30, 2023
Jopagu
For: Crusher's Curse
For: Crusher's Curse
Crusher's Curse is an incredible beginner friendly puzzle game, something that's a bit of a rarity in this community. The central gimmick involves powerups that change your movement keys between their normal function, and a dash (similar to the eponymous Crusher from IWM). The puzzles mainly consist of collecting these pickups in the right order, and figuring out the right place and time to use them to navigate the screens. There is a steady influx of new mechanics over time, although they are all just minor variations on the base powerup, and so the puzzles never become overly complex. The puzzles are all really interesting, enough that I wish the game had a higher difficulty continuation. I feel that the easiness of the game prohibits it from exploring the design space fully, and there are more things that could be done. This isn't points away from the game, there's nothing wrong with sticking to a beginner level, just something I'd love for a sequel. My one minor gripe is that a few puzzles feel more like dexterity challenges than intellectual ones. I think a lot of puzzle-platformers fall into this trap of making levels more platformer than puzzle, and it's always a bit annoying. This game by and large does a good job of avoiding this pitfall, but it does stumble into it on a few screens.
Overall, a really solid puzzle game and an easy recommendation for anyone with a half hour to kill.
Overall, a really solid puzzle game and an easy recommendation for anyone with a half hour to kill.
Tagged as: Puzzle
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 35 35
Jul 9, 2023
Jopagu
For: I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered
For: I Wanna Be The Guy Remastered
So, I finally got around to playing this after playing somewhere around 300 of its fangames. Even a few days later, it's hard to put my thoughts into words. This is a game I have known about for almost a decade, ever since I played Super Meat Boy. It's sort of poetic that a game I was introduced to when I first developed my love for precision platformers has served as the basis for all the games I play now, at the culmination of my 10 year journey. I have been waiting to play Guy itself until the moment felt right, and last week it finally did, and I embarked on a journey through a game that felt both familiar and nostalgic.
I'll be honest, when I launched the game I was fully prepared to leave this review without a rating. That is, I thought I would hate this game. I was giving a special exemption from rating, since it would've felt inappropriate to give this game a 4/10 16 years after it released, and with my standards built upon a decade of iterating on its design. I was expecting to suffer through an archaic game whose design does not hold up, and who I would appreciate solely for its historical context. I cannot express how happy I felt once I got a few screens in and realized that I would be eating crow on that prediction. I found myself enjoying almost every second of the game. It surprised me to find that this game got famous for a reason, it spawned 12,000 fangames for a reason, and that reason was that it's just a through and through good game.
Now, I do need to elucidate a few thoughts regarding my perfect score. If I had not spent so much time playing fangames, this would not be a 10/10. It would certainly still be high, probably a bit higher than an 8, but in a vacuum I do not think this game deserves the highest possible rating. It is the context of the fangames I've played and the community around them that made this such a great experience. However, these points are not being given just based on Guy's historical merit. Rather, I think playing fangames made this a legitimately more enjoyable experience. I rate games mostly based on how much I liked playing them, and in this case I enjoyed Guy a 10/10 amount due to my prior fangame experience. I know this may be controversial, to rate something not in a vacuum but with context taken into account, but I could not bring myself to do anything different.
To explain what I mean by that a little more, I think that Guy is made more fun due to recognizability and nostalgia, but also by the opposite of those things. It's of course a blast to see the originals of all the famous screens and bosses - from the iconic Guy Tower to the oft referenced Kraidgief fight. The frequent reuse of these things never makes them feel bland or boring, but rather it makes playing the originals like making a holy pilgrimage. But on the other hand, I also found myself being constantly surprised by how much of this game I didn't know. The sheer number of screens that I had never seen before was shocking; and what's even more so is the quality of those screens. It feels like fangames have constantly drawn from the same few parts of this game, to the point that Guy still feels like an untapped gold mine, despite how many fangames exist. Stuff like enemies that knock you back rather than killing, flowy momentum based sections using boost vines, and traps that are reactable rather than guaranteed deaths, and plenty of others I don't feel like listing. All these things are certainly present in other fangames to varying degrees, but those are rare occasions, and I wound up wishing that those aspects of design had been picked up by the community.
Ultimately, Guy doesn't feel like any of the fangames that followed it (barring maybe Fangame). So much of the design we take for granted in fangames really feels like it is heavily divorced from the game design of the original. I love fangames, and there's plenty of things Guy could learn from later iterations, but there's also a lot of stuff in Guy that I wish fangames had learned from. It's an incredible, unique, and nostalgic experience that has something to offer even to those of us who've played hundreds of derivatives. If you still haven't played Guy, I'd really recommend getting around to it, it's a blast seeing what inspired the games you know and love, and also discovering new surprises.
P.S. Massive thanks to the Remaster team for turning what is reputedly a buggy, unstable game into something much easier to enjoy.
[2] Likes
I'll be honest, when I launched the game I was fully prepared to leave this review without a rating. That is, I thought I would hate this game. I was giving a special exemption from rating, since it would've felt inappropriate to give this game a 4/10 16 years after it released, and with my standards built upon a decade of iterating on its design. I was expecting to suffer through an archaic game whose design does not hold up, and who I would appreciate solely for its historical context. I cannot express how happy I felt once I got a few screens in and realized that I would be eating crow on that prediction. I found myself enjoying almost every second of the game. It surprised me to find that this game got famous for a reason, it spawned 12,000 fangames for a reason, and that reason was that it's just a through and through good game.
Now, I do need to elucidate a few thoughts regarding my perfect score. If I had not spent so much time playing fangames, this would not be a 10/10. It would certainly still be high, probably a bit higher than an 8, but in a vacuum I do not think this game deserves the highest possible rating. It is the context of the fangames I've played and the community around them that made this such a great experience. However, these points are not being given just based on Guy's historical merit. Rather, I think playing fangames made this a legitimately more enjoyable experience. I rate games mostly based on how much I liked playing them, and in this case I enjoyed Guy a 10/10 amount due to my prior fangame experience. I know this may be controversial, to rate something not in a vacuum but with context taken into account, but I could not bring myself to do anything different.
To explain what I mean by that a little more, I think that Guy is made more fun due to recognizability and nostalgia, but also by the opposite of those things. It's of course a blast to see the originals of all the famous screens and bosses - from the iconic Guy Tower to the oft referenced Kraidgief fight. The frequent reuse of these things never makes them feel bland or boring, but rather it makes playing the originals like making a holy pilgrimage. But on the other hand, I also found myself being constantly surprised by how much of this game I didn't know. The sheer number of screens that I had never seen before was shocking; and what's even more so is the quality of those screens. It feels like fangames have constantly drawn from the same few parts of this game, to the point that Guy still feels like an untapped gold mine, despite how many fangames exist. Stuff like enemies that knock you back rather than killing, flowy momentum based sections using boost vines, and traps that are reactable rather than guaranteed deaths, and plenty of others I don't feel like listing. All these things are certainly present in other fangames to varying degrees, but those are rare occasions, and I wound up wishing that those aspects of design had been picked up by the community.
Ultimately, Guy doesn't feel like any of the fangames that followed it (barring maybe Fangame). So much of the design we take for granted in fangames really feels like it is heavily divorced from the game design of the original. I love fangames, and there's plenty of things Guy could learn from later iterations, but there's also a lot of stuff in Guy that I wish fangames had learned from. It's an incredible, unique, and nostalgic experience that has something to offer even to those of us who've played hundreds of derivatives. If you still haven't played Guy, I'd really recommend getting around to it, it's a blast seeing what inspired the games you know and love, and also discovering new surprises.
P.S. Massive thanks to the Remaster team for turning what is reputedly a buggy, unstable game into something much easier to enjoy.
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 50 50
Jul 7, 2023
Jopagu
For: I wanna be the Ultimate Gravity
For: I wanna be the Ultimate Gravity
An extremely conceptually interesting avoidance, in which the entire thing is a single, trivially easy attack. Instead, the difficulty comes from the application of complex visual modifiers, such as screen rotation or zoom. The challenge becomes a test of reading in extreme scenarios, as you must adapt to figure out how to properly dodge bullets while the screen is spinning at mach 20. This lends itself to a super unique and enjoyable experience. The game is hampered a bit by the ending set of modifiers being significantly harder than everything else, such that you quickly find yourself mindlessly going through a minute of attacks that you never die to before getting to the challenging part. However, overall the experience is still really fun, and I can easily recommend this to those looking for an outside of the box avoidance game.
Tagged as: Avoidance
[2] Likes
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 60 60
Jun 27, 2023
3 Games
| Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| I Wanna Free the Fortress | 59.0 | 8.3 | 10 |
| The "Needle" | 53.0 | 6.8 | 16 |
| I Wanna [Expunged] the [Expunged] | 19.3 | 8.9 | 7 |
70 Favorite Games
68 Cleared Games