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Hi! I like all sorts of fangames, and my reviews are based on how much I liked them!
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PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna Walk Out In The Morning Dew
For: I wanna Walk Out In The Morning Dew
Morning Dew is a game I had quite a weird relationship with before playing it, because I had a strong feeling that I would love it if I ever played it, but I didn’t think I would get to do so. By the time I was getting back into fangames, the news about who the maker was became common knowledge, and that tainted the whole thing greatly. The game always gave me this icky feeling, and it was always something lingering in my head, but at some point that changed, and the details of why it did are far too personal and in-depth to go into in a delfruit review, but the point is that one night, I decided that I would at least try this game, because truth be told, I had only seen like 3% of the game at the absolute most.
The early parts of the game are simple but sweet, I think they do a good job of showing just how interesting needle can be with just a few minor things to spice it up, mostly moving objects. The core platforming of Morning Dew is some of the best I’ve experienced in a fangame, it’s remarkable how distinct the different stages feel even when some stick to just jtool needle, and it’s all fun. The game has some truly amazing aesthetics too, not just in terms of visuals but audio as well, they can really help make a stage pop and really emphasize just how varied the game is because no two stages look alike, even when they don’t have their own gimmick. The gimmicks are definitely what the game is known for but at the beginning they are quite subdued, and the game definitely lets the needle speak for itself.
One of my favorite things about this game is how every stage doesn’t necessarily show you all of the cards in its hands at once. A lot of stages in this game open with just pure needle before actually getting into any gimmicks, and I think that heavily contributes to how the game feels and plays. Even when you reach a stage, you often don’t know what it will throw at you. A lot of the game’s wackiest screens are weird one-off ideas that are just chilling in the middle or end of a stage, and you get this very early. Stage 3 has a random screen where the background kills you at the end, it never really comes up again either, it’s just a thing that happens throughout the game at several points where a stage will pivot to something entirely different before moving on. Beyond that though, some stages that do actually have overarching gimmicks they use throughout don’t always show them all when you start, many of the gimmick stages open with vanilla needle, sometimes this cues you into what the platforming will be like but sometimes it’s just kinda there to open the stage. It keeps you on your toes and really gets you excited for every new screen, because you truly can never guess what comes next.
The game progressively gets more gimmicky and creative and I think the true point where you start to feel that is the Minesweeper stage, which has not one, but two screens which make you do an entirely unique minigame-esque section before you can progress. I think one of the most fascinating things about this game’s design is the fact that sections like this with some of the more out-there ideas are treated like normal screens, the minesweeper stage has a where’s waldo type screen sandwiched between very normal low gravity platforming, and when the stage is done the game mostly goes back to regular platforming! It’s bizarre but endlessly engaging.
For as strong as the first half of the stages are, all of the insane stuff I had heard and knew about is basically all within the second half of the game, and the first of which is the ice stage, also referred to as CBT. This is the first stage where as a player you truly need to adapt to something new, it can be labeled as normal gimmick needle but the truth is that on the ice in this game, you just control completely differently. The snappy nature of the kid is replaced with one which needs to build up speed and is unable to stop on a dime, and it’s not like the game pulls punches with these mechanics, you aren’t gonna adapt by doing 100 easy screens before the real challenge, you are gonna adapt by just doing the challenge, a design philosophy I find heavily admirable because, while unconventional for what “normal game design” is, fangames aren’t normal games, and forcing players to develop skill at something they are inexperienced in can recreate a feeling you can’t really get from traditional platforming. The content after CBT calms down after this, albeit continuing the gradual progression of complexity the game undergoes, but just wait, because my favorite parts are yet to come.
I think the rocket kid segment of this game is the pinnacle of Morning Dew from a design perspective. Everything I just wrote about CBT is heavily amplified. Most needle gimmicks require you to learn something in the presence of your own personal experience. You know the kid’s jump arc, how he moves, how he feels, so you already have a baseline skill level going into them. Rocket kid is not like that, it’s not platforming, it’s an entirely foreign mechanic which you have 0 knowledge or experience of. It essentially is the distilled essence of being a beginner. You have to figure out how you move, how you control, what you can and can’t do. DIfficulty wise, this stage is nothing special. It certainly takes a while but it’s truly not that hard, nothing is that precise and you have wiggle room for basically every maneuver you will be performing. Rocket kid is only hard because everyone who gets here sucks at it. I think the exact thing I’m writing about is what makes this stage so hated and infamous by some, but loved by others, including myself. The transition into the end of the stage is one of my favorite parts of the game, it’s basically the only time the game builds up to what’s coming next, and you have one of the most infamous saves in probably any fangame. Like I said about the rest of the stage, the race is not really that hard, you just have to get used to it and that’s definitely tricky and takes time, but it’s not insurmountable. As a final addendum, the screen after the race is one of my favorite parts of the game. It would be silly to list absolutely every screen that I found super interesting and engaging, because there’s just so many, but this one really sticks out to me.
The sections after rocket kid maybe don’t match the potency that gimmick has, but are some of my favorites. There’s a rocket kid cameo a few stages later with a fun and chill minigame, and my favorite stage in the game, Fence Jumping! I really love this stage, gimmicks which use the up and down arrows are some of my favorites and far too rare for how fun they are. Figuring out how to control this is wonderful and I love basically every section. At this point it’s maybe not the most mind-blowing thing, but it’s definitely creative. The final save before what’s essentially the last chokepoint of the game is the last save which doesn’t really play like a fangame, it’s a ridiculous game of simon says which hurts my brain, it’s pretty neat.
The red stage is sort of the “final boss” of the game, and it represents another thing in the game I find interesting. Not many times, but certainly enough to be notable, the game throws something which is kinda just tedious. The earliest example is a stage towards the start where you go up and down a column of bouncing jump refreshers, it’s a relatively long save with very minimal gameplay. The red stage is the essence of this design philosophy. In this stage you do menial tasks for several minutes. That’s really all I can describe it as. In spite of this I think you can make an argument that the content of the stage is not the gameplay but the feelings you experience. This stage is really easy. You truly do not need to put in a strong amount of effort to clear. However it’s probably the most tense you’ll ever be pushing a tower of blocks slowly over a gap of spikes, because there’s an understanding that while not difficult, the section is not conventionally fun either, and making a mistake would probably be quite upsetting. It’s for these reasons I found this boring, tedious, and annoying stage, one of the most entertaining parts of the game. It’s a truly fascinating stage to play, I can’t do it justice with words, but I genuinely adore it.
The final stage of Morning Dew almost feels cyclical in a weird sense. In a game that constantly subverts expectations and throws you into the deep end of weird ideas and gimmicks, the final stage is needle. No gimmicks, no bells and whistles, not even really anything particularly special. It’s just good needle, the same thing the game started with that was so unassuming, is used to close it off. When you enter the final warp, you get reminded of everything you played, and it really shows you just how massive this game is, how much you got past, how much you overcame. It’s a harrowing experience, one that’s far from the hardest stuff fangames have to offer but still manages to feel larger than life. Before you know it, it’s over.
Looking back now, I can’t help but feel a little bit of sadness at how things turned out with this game. It’s one of the best fangames I’ve ever played, it embodies the things I love about fangames the most, not just needle but other genres as well even if the game is pure platforming. It’s clearly influenced a lot of games which are also some of my favorite fangames ever, and yet it’s sort of hard to talk about now. At the bare minimum, the game itself is a work of art, and something that I’m glad I got to appreciate at some point, even if it took a while to get to it. I hope that if I can appreciate it this much, others can too.
[7] Likes
The early parts of the game are simple but sweet, I think they do a good job of showing just how interesting needle can be with just a few minor things to spice it up, mostly moving objects. The core platforming of Morning Dew is some of the best I’ve experienced in a fangame, it’s remarkable how distinct the different stages feel even when some stick to just jtool needle, and it’s all fun. The game has some truly amazing aesthetics too, not just in terms of visuals but audio as well, they can really help make a stage pop and really emphasize just how varied the game is because no two stages look alike, even when they don’t have their own gimmick. The gimmicks are definitely what the game is known for but at the beginning they are quite subdued, and the game definitely lets the needle speak for itself.
One of my favorite things about this game is how every stage doesn’t necessarily show you all of the cards in its hands at once. A lot of stages in this game open with just pure needle before actually getting into any gimmicks, and I think that heavily contributes to how the game feels and plays. Even when you reach a stage, you often don’t know what it will throw at you. A lot of the game’s wackiest screens are weird one-off ideas that are just chilling in the middle or end of a stage, and you get this very early. Stage 3 has a random screen where the background kills you at the end, it never really comes up again either, it’s just a thing that happens throughout the game at several points where a stage will pivot to something entirely different before moving on. Beyond that though, some stages that do actually have overarching gimmicks they use throughout don’t always show them all when you start, many of the gimmick stages open with vanilla needle, sometimes this cues you into what the platforming will be like but sometimes it’s just kinda there to open the stage. It keeps you on your toes and really gets you excited for every new screen, because you truly can never guess what comes next.
The game progressively gets more gimmicky and creative and I think the true point where you start to feel that is the Minesweeper stage, which has not one, but two screens which make you do an entirely unique minigame-esque section before you can progress. I think one of the most fascinating things about this game’s design is the fact that sections like this with some of the more out-there ideas are treated like normal screens, the minesweeper stage has a where’s waldo type screen sandwiched between very normal low gravity platforming, and when the stage is done the game mostly goes back to regular platforming! It’s bizarre but endlessly engaging.
For as strong as the first half of the stages are, all of the insane stuff I had heard and knew about is basically all within the second half of the game, and the first of which is the ice stage, also referred to as CBT. This is the first stage where as a player you truly need to adapt to something new, it can be labeled as normal gimmick needle but the truth is that on the ice in this game, you just control completely differently. The snappy nature of the kid is replaced with one which needs to build up speed and is unable to stop on a dime, and it’s not like the game pulls punches with these mechanics, you aren’t gonna adapt by doing 100 easy screens before the real challenge, you are gonna adapt by just doing the challenge, a design philosophy I find heavily admirable because, while unconventional for what “normal game design” is, fangames aren’t normal games, and forcing players to develop skill at something they are inexperienced in can recreate a feeling you can’t really get from traditional platforming. The content after CBT calms down after this, albeit continuing the gradual progression of complexity the game undergoes, but just wait, because my favorite parts are yet to come.
I think the rocket kid segment of this game is the pinnacle of Morning Dew from a design perspective. Everything I just wrote about CBT is heavily amplified. Most needle gimmicks require you to learn something in the presence of your own personal experience. You know the kid’s jump arc, how he moves, how he feels, so you already have a baseline skill level going into them. Rocket kid is not like that, it’s not platforming, it’s an entirely foreign mechanic which you have 0 knowledge or experience of. It essentially is the distilled essence of being a beginner. You have to figure out how you move, how you control, what you can and can’t do. DIfficulty wise, this stage is nothing special. It certainly takes a while but it’s truly not that hard, nothing is that precise and you have wiggle room for basically every maneuver you will be performing. Rocket kid is only hard because everyone who gets here sucks at it. I think the exact thing I’m writing about is what makes this stage so hated and infamous by some, but loved by others, including myself. The transition into the end of the stage is one of my favorite parts of the game, it’s basically the only time the game builds up to what’s coming next, and you have one of the most infamous saves in probably any fangame. Like I said about the rest of the stage, the race is not really that hard, you just have to get used to it and that’s definitely tricky and takes time, but it’s not insurmountable. As a final addendum, the screen after the race is one of my favorite parts of the game. It would be silly to list absolutely every screen that I found super interesting and engaging, because there’s just so many, but this one really sticks out to me.
The sections after rocket kid maybe don’t match the potency that gimmick has, but are some of my favorites. There’s a rocket kid cameo a few stages later with a fun and chill minigame, and my favorite stage in the game, Fence Jumping! I really love this stage, gimmicks which use the up and down arrows are some of my favorites and far too rare for how fun they are. Figuring out how to control this is wonderful and I love basically every section. At this point it’s maybe not the most mind-blowing thing, but it’s definitely creative. The final save before what’s essentially the last chokepoint of the game is the last save which doesn’t really play like a fangame, it’s a ridiculous game of simon says which hurts my brain, it’s pretty neat.
The red stage is sort of the “final boss” of the game, and it represents another thing in the game I find interesting. Not many times, but certainly enough to be notable, the game throws something which is kinda just tedious. The earliest example is a stage towards the start where you go up and down a column of bouncing jump refreshers, it’s a relatively long save with very minimal gameplay. The red stage is the essence of this design philosophy. In this stage you do menial tasks for several minutes. That’s really all I can describe it as. In spite of this I think you can make an argument that the content of the stage is not the gameplay but the feelings you experience. This stage is really easy. You truly do not need to put in a strong amount of effort to clear. However it’s probably the most tense you’ll ever be pushing a tower of blocks slowly over a gap of spikes, because there’s an understanding that while not difficult, the section is not conventionally fun either, and making a mistake would probably be quite upsetting. It’s for these reasons I found this boring, tedious, and annoying stage, one of the most entertaining parts of the game. It’s a truly fascinating stage to play, I can’t do it justice with words, but I genuinely adore it.
The final stage of Morning Dew almost feels cyclical in a weird sense. In a game that constantly subverts expectations and throws you into the deep end of weird ideas and gimmicks, the final stage is needle. No gimmicks, no bells and whistles, not even really anything particularly special. It’s just good needle, the same thing the game started with that was so unassuming, is used to close it off. When you enter the final warp, you get reminded of everything you played, and it really shows you just how massive this game is, how much you got past, how much you overcame. It’s a harrowing experience, one that’s far from the hardest stuff fangames have to offer but still manages to feel larger than life. Before you know it, it’s over.
Looking back now, I can’t help but feel a little bit of sadness at how things turned out with this game. It’s one of the best fangames I’ve ever played, it embodies the things I love about fangames the most, not just needle but other genres as well even if the game is pure platforming. It’s clearly influenced a lot of games which are also some of my favorite fangames ever, and yet it’s sort of hard to talk about now. At the bare minimum, the game itself is a work of art, and something that I’m glad I got to appreciate at some point, even if it took a while to get to it. I hope that if I can appreciate it this much, others can too.
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 74 74
Jan 15, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna Go Frantic
For: I wanna Go Frantic
Great trap game, in particular the sound design really stands out, a lot of the traps are combined with a sound effect which commonly made me laugh out loud. There's quite a few mind games at play and really funny bits, the bosses are also quite good, they are all super different from each other but I enjoyed them all. There's some saves in the third stage I think went a little overboard at times, but besides that my complaints are extremely minimal, very good game.
[1] Like
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 43 43
Jan 13, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna gain the ability
For: I wanna gain the ability
Pretty amazing adventure game, it's got a ton of unique sections for one with most screens bringing a new idea that feels distinct, and some of the most fun gimmicks I've seen in a fangame, in particular the third stage has this gimmick where you play as a gun and it's lovely, one of my favorite fangame stages and some of the coolest platforming I've seen. Top that off with some great bosses and you have an amazing game, a very impressive show case of brilliant ideas and fantastic level design, highly recommended.
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.5 95
Difficulty: 52 52
Jan 12, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: Summer Feast Needle 2021
For: Summer Feast Needle 2021
Quite a fun needle game focused around pathing and gimmicks, there's a lot of really fun points, the one small thing I didn't really care for was the fourth stage, it just introduced so many mechanics so fast it felt difficult to really grasp them properly. Besides that I thoroughly enjoyed all the stages, in particular stage 2 and the last one were my favorites. Very solid platforming.
[1] Like
Rating: 8.7 87
Difficulty: 66 66
Jan 12, 2024
PlutoTheThing
For: I wanna see the Meteor Shower
For: I wanna see the Meteor Shower
Very enjoyable trap-heavy adventure, every save contains at least a few but they are usually something you aren't gonna expect and are fun to see and learn, they tend to be pretty minimalistic but still are good at being comedic or clever. The platforming is quite fun, usually based on cycles and enemies, and the bosses are nice too, especially the avoidance at the end which is great. Highly recommended if you have the patience for learny games.
[2] Likes
Rating: 8.7 87
Difficulty: 44 44
Jan 11, 2024
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