Jopagu'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.
I've submitted:
415 Ratings!
413 Reviews!
10 Screenshots!
Youtube Channel
Report this user
415 Games
413 Reviews
Jopagu
For: A written challenge from Death
For: A written challenge from Death
This is a pretty fun game, up until the second half, at which point it gets much worse, and turns into a 2012 trap game.
In the collab section, the left warp is a simple stage with moving platforms and switches that toggle lasers, a simple gimmick that's executed well. The autofire makes it annoying to not double hit switches, but that seems like a case of the collab screwing over the stage. The middle warp is the highlight of the game, where you get to cast a variety of spells using directional inputs. The stage features some annoying trap design, but the gimmick is really fun, and there's a great boss that is good at incentivizing spell usage. Right warp is a series of small stages with varied gimmicks, such as bouncy blocks. None are too complex, but they're used well and make a fun stage.
The second half of the game is a completely different beast. It's 4 short stages, with a few annoying gimmicks such as proximity mine apples. This part of the game reuses a few traps over and over, lacking any creativity. The bosses utilize a gimmick where you can't actually die, so they're completely free. They're designed around some attacks being undodgeable, which is lame. The best strategy is to just stand still shooting the boss while spamming X to get counter attacks. This entire half of the game is anticlimactic, uncreative, and boring. I'd highly recommend stopping after finishing the tower.
[1] Like
In the collab section, the left warp is a simple stage with moving platforms and switches that toggle lasers, a simple gimmick that's executed well. The autofire makes it annoying to not double hit switches, but that seems like a case of the collab screwing over the stage. The middle warp is the highlight of the game, where you get to cast a variety of spells using directional inputs. The stage features some annoying trap design, but the gimmick is really fun, and there's a great boss that is good at incentivizing spell usage. Right warp is a series of small stages with varied gimmicks, such as bouncy blocks. None are too complex, but they're used well and make a fun stage.
The second half of the game is a completely different beast. It's 4 short stages, with a few annoying gimmicks such as proximity mine apples. This part of the game reuses a few traps over and over, lacking any creativity. The bosses utilize a gimmick where you can't actually die, so they're completely free. They're designed around some attacks being undodgeable, which is lame. The best strategy is to just stand still shooting the boss while spamming X to get counter attacks. This entire half of the game is anticlimactic, uncreative, and boring. I'd highly recommend stopping after finishing the tower.
Rating: 6.5 65
Difficulty: 38 38
Jun 27, 2022
Jopagu
For: I wanna ↔
For: I wanna ↔
Decent L-game geared towards beginners. Most of the saves were pretty fun, and had some cool maneuvers. However there is one save that's just a straight up ceiling double diamond. The save after that also sucks, requiring a cramped platform jump.
[1] Like
Rating: 6.3 63
Difficulty: 53 53
Jun 23, 2022
Jopagu
For: I wanna Aurum
For: I wanna Aurum
Quite fun L-needle game, that manages to create interesting jumps while remaining at a much lower level than most of this genre. The game really shines in the extra, which uses gravity flippers to create some cool pathing, like a beginner's version of a Decession style game.
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 45 45
Jun 23, 2022
Jopagu
For: I wanna P
For: I wanna P
Pretty cool game, it's interesting to play the progenitor of L needle and see how the genre has changed since these days. There is some nasty save imbalance, save 2 is much harder than anything else. The visuals are nice, I like seeing custom saves used in an L game, before the L game half save tradition was created. Some interesting jumps, other that are kinda just "do a 1/2 frame", and since numpad is disabled this is keyboard RNG.
[0] Likes
Rating: 6.5 65
Difficulty: 52 52
Jun 23, 2022
Jopagu
For: I wanna Exit from Here
For: I wanna Exit from Here
Unenjoyable experience that would greatly benefit from some consistency and design cohesion. Enemies behave differently with no rhyme or reason. It seems completely random whether a projectile will go through walls or not. Additionally, some enemies are randomly unkillable. I.e. the turret in the first zone is killable, but the bullet bill turret later on isn't. One enemy can't shoot through walls but can shoot through buzzsaws, which you can't shoot through. Those same buzzsaws appear later in a boss and you can shoot through them. The first stage has traps that feature suddenly appearing blue energy balls. It quickly establishes that these balls only come out of a specific background feature, and then, a few saves later, has one come out of no where for a cheap shot kill at the end of a save. These balls return throughout the game, but never use the indicator that the game bothered setting up. The game features vines, and later on there are conveyor vines. But the conveyor vines don't use base vines as a base, and you can't jump off of them. One screen has a winged block from Mario, but unlike in Mario, this is a semisolid platform, not a solid block, a fact which is necessary to know to beat the save. If you're going to borrow gimmicks from other games, why would you change how they work? Additionally, the game uses Mario bouncy note blocks, and despite having the idle animation where the note moves around, they didn't copy the animation for actually bouncing on the block, so you're just bouncing off a completely solid unmoving block. In the area with all these Mario sprites, the game introduces what are effectively P-switches, but instead of using the actual sprite, it has a custom block sprite. It looks out of place, especially when a normal P-switch would fit in with the other things in the stage. In the cave area, when you turn into a dragon, you're immune to lava, however for some reason you're not immune to the fireballs that shoot out of that same lava. Later in the stage's boss, the floor is covered in lava. But instead of using the gimmick you introduced just to drop after a room, you just fall through the lava and die. Any of these things alone would be minor complaints, but together make a very frustrating experience. It feels like the game is constantly doing things completely differently than it did even a few rooms ago.
Secondly, the game doesn't feel very cohesive. The first area is on a spaceship, and halfway through the spaceship gets attacked by aliens. The robot guards are all destroyed and hostile aliens roam the stage. Finally, you get to the boss of the stage, and it's just like a guy. This attempt at storytelling is abandoned and the rest of the levels don't have any sort of events happening. After the spaceship, you go to a flowery field, then a forest that leads to a cave, and then from the bottom of the cave to another spaceship! Why aren't the spaceship levels connected in any way?!? The third boss is a giant super meat boy. Despite fighting this in what looks like hell, it doesn't use super meat boy's actual hell boss. The super meat boy is protected by cute little fairies that don't fit in at all. If you want to use this gimmick in a meat boy boss have floating bandage girls or something! Why are there fairies?? This game didn't feel like a proper adventure game, but rather an incoherent sequence of stages and bosses drawn out of a hat.
In addition, I feel like the choice of a custom engine was the wrong move for this game. I have nothing against nonstandard engines, but if you're going to make a fangame without fangame physics you should have a reason. This game never benefits from its engine, and it only serves to make certain sections clunky and annoying when they would be more fun with normal physics. The game uses normal named jumps, like diagonals, but they're way more annoying and can't be done as smoothly with these physics. The worst offender is the vines. Firstly, the vines have no slowdown effect when you slide on them, making staying on a vine frustrating. Multiple areas require you to fall onto a vine at high speed. With normal vine physics, this would be a normal maneuver, but instead it becomes a finicky test pressing jump at the right moment. Secondly, you can't shoot while on a vine, even when facing away from it, with you gun half a block away from anything that could reasonably resemble part of the vine. This is even true on the conveyor vines, which as stated, don't actually work like vines. The game has multiple sections where you need to shoot gimmicks or fight enemies while on vines. This includes the final boss!! If the vines just worked like they look like they should, these would be normal segments. Instead, they just become awkward, with you having to do small jumps off of the vine to shoot, then go back onto the vine. I can't see any good reason for these vine changes, and just having vines work like normal would directly improve several sections. The game also messes with controls, changing jump/shoot into Z/X instead of Shift/Z. Your hands are in the exact same spot except jump is harder to hit. How does this change add anything except unfamiliarity, increasing the already clunky nature of the physics. Finally, a small pet peeve of mine, you can't quit the game by pressing esc, you have to go back to the menu and select the exit option. This is just annoying and slow UI design.
This game does have a lot of good ideas. I particularly like the transformations into a spaceship and a dragon. Additionally, the game has a lot of production value, and looks great (but why is restarting music a thing??). This has the seeds of a great game, but it suffers from a slew of minor mistakes that just make nothing feel like it should. Some small changes, and following some rules of game design, would make this into a top notch game. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it as it has too many small issues adding up into an unpleasant game.
[1] Like
Secondly, the game doesn't feel very cohesive. The first area is on a spaceship, and halfway through the spaceship gets attacked by aliens. The robot guards are all destroyed and hostile aliens roam the stage. Finally, you get to the boss of the stage, and it's just like a guy. This attempt at storytelling is abandoned and the rest of the levels don't have any sort of events happening. After the spaceship, you go to a flowery field, then a forest that leads to a cave, and then from the bottom of the cave to another spaceship! Why aren't the spaceship levels connected in any way?!? The third boss is a giant super meat boy. Despite fighting this in what looks like hell, it doesn't use super meat boy's actual hell boss. The super meat boy is protected by cute little fairies that don't fit in at all. If you want to use this gimmick in a meat boy boss have floating bandage girls or something! Why are there fairies?? This game didn't feel like a proper adventure game, but rather an incoherent sequence of stages and bosses drawn out of a hat.
In addition, I feel like the choice of a custom engine was the wrong move for this game. I have nothing against nonstandard engines, but if you're going to make a fangame without fangame physics you should have a reason. This game never benefits from its engine, and it only serves to make certain sections clunky and annoying when they would be more fun with normal physics. The game uses normal named jumps, like diagonals, but they're way more annoying and can't be done as smoothly with these physics. The worst offender is the vines. Firstly, the vines have no slowdown effect when you slide on them, making staying on a vine frustrating. Multiple areas require you to fall onto a vine at high speed. With normal vine physics, this would be a normal maneuver, but instead it becomes a finicky test pressing jump at the right moment. Secondly, you can't shoot while on a vine, even when facing away from it, with you gun half a block away from anything that could reasonably resemble part of the vine. This is even true on the conveyor vines, which as stated, don't actually work like vines. The game has multiple sections where you need to shoot gimmicks or fight enemies while on vines. This includes the final boss!! If the vines just worked like they look like they should, these would be normal segments. Instead, they just become awkward, with you having to do small jumps off of the vine to shoot, then go back onto the vine. I can't see any good reason for these vine changes, and just having vines work like normal would directly improve several sections. The game also messes with controls, changing jump/shoot into Z/X instead of Shift/Z. Your hands are in the exact same spot except jump is harder to hit. How does this change add anything except unfamiliarity, increasing the already clunky nature of the physics. Finally, a small pet peeve of mine, you can't quit the game by pressing esc, you have to go back to the menu and select the exit option. This is just annoying and slow UI design.
This game does have a lot of good ideas. I particularly like the transformations into a spaceship and a dragon. Additionally, the game has a lot of production value, and looks great (but why is restarting music a thing??). This has the seeds of a great game, but it suffers from a slew of minor mistakes that just make nothing feel like it should. Some small changes, and following some rules of game design, would make this into a top notch game. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it as it has too many small issues adding up into an unpleasant game.
Rating: 4.7 47
Difficulty: 40 40
Jun 23, 2022
3 Games
Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
---|---|---|---|
I Wanna Free the Fortress | 59.0 | 8.3 | 10 |
The "Needle" | 53.0 | 6.7 | 15 |
I Wanna [Expunged] the [Expunged] | 19.3 | 8.9 | 7 |
59 Favorite Games
User's clear list is empty!