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Creator's Comments:
zanto [Creator]
This is an evil game made to bring pain and misery to the player... It's full of evil/bad trolls, so make sure you have stomach to deal with that.
But I learned a lot making this and it helped me make the sequel, so that's a good thing, right? ... Right?
[12] Likes
But I learned a lot making this and it helped me make the sequel, so that's a good thing, right? ... Right?
Rating: N/A
Difficulty: N/A
Feb 2, 2016
20 Reviews:
Wolfiexe
Dun Wanna be Anything is a monster of an adventure game. It's staggering in both length and difficulty, and often not necessarily in conventional ways, using a huge variety of hazards to drain your soul and test your willpower. Also you're given a pretty good choice at the start of the game with choosing your difficulty (Normal or Hard) and amount of saves (Few, Normal, Many). I played on Hard with Many Saves, and I'd probably strongly recommend against Hard mode as it overbuffs a few bosses to unfair levels, whereas I assume Normal is a much smoother experience.
The game opens up with a few options of your starting stage, each varying pretty wildly in visual theme and the hazards to expect. This made going through them all very fun and often surprising. Bosses are also very abundant across the game which is a testament to the effort put in to create such a wide selection of different boss fights, most of which play very differently. Most bosses are learn-heavy and you'd probably do well not to expect to first try any unless you fluke a bunch of attacks or get some god RNG with attack selection.
The platforming in the game is primarily based around traps and cycle-based hazards, manoeuvring through enemies or trying to not get mindread every other save. I can probably count on one hand the amount of gates and/or diagonals there were in this game, which makes for a very fresh experience gameplay wise. You definitely can't call Zanto lazy. The traps are also varied in the sense that they're not all just flying-spike-gotcha moments (although there are a fair share of those), and actually tend to have some humour worked into them.
Alongside all of this variety and creativity though is a lot of soul-crushing heart-breaking segments. Zanto's review summarises it pretty well, but unless you have the patience of a saint then chances are you're going to get upset a fair few times over the course of your journey. Some examples include bosses hanging out of shootable distance for what can feel like an eternity, or very punishing platforming cycles with some scamp-tier traps lying in wait near the end. The traps were amusing in a lot of cases, but at times it did end up getting me pretty frustrated and drained which is a pretty rare thing to accomplish, hence why I would push people away from playing on Hard to alleviate more frustration than is needed.
I had a pretty fun time with this game despite some real rough moments. If there's one thing I can be sure of, it's that I won't forget this game anytime soon. It's a real experience and very impressive piece of work. It's very different in style and flow to its sequel DWBA2, but still very much worth playing if you can get past the heartbreak.
[6] Likes
The game opens up with a few options of your starting stage, each varying pretty wildly in visual theme and the hazards to expect. This made going through them all very fun and often surprising. Bosses are also very abundant across the game which is a testament to the effort put in to create such a wide selection of different boss fights, most of which play very differently. Most bosses are learn-heavy and you'd probably do well not to expect to first try any unless you fluke a bunch of attacks or get some god RNG with attack selection.
The platforming in the game is primarily based around traps and cycle-based hazards, manoeuvring through enemies or trying to not get mindread every other save. I can probably count on one hand the amount of gates and/or diagonals there were in this game, which makes for a very fresh experience gameplay wise. You definitely can't call Zanto lazy. The traps are also varied in the sense that they're not all just flying-spike-gotcha moments (although there are a fair share of those), and actually tend to have some humour worked into them.
Alongside all of this variety and creativity though is a lot of soul-crushing heart-breaking segments. Zanto's review summarises it pretty well, but unless you have the patience of a saint then chances are you're going to get upset a fair few times over the course of your journey. Some examples include bosses hanging out of shootable distance for what can feel like an eternity, or very punishing platforming cycles with some scamp-tier traps lying in wait near the end. The traps were amusing in a lot of cases, but at times it did end up getting me pretty frustrated and drained which is a pretty rare thing to accomplish, hence why I would push people away from playing on Hard to alleviate more frustration than is needed.
I had a pretty fun time with this game despite some real rough moments. If there's one thing I can be sure of, it's that I won't forget this game anytime soon. It's a real experience and very impressive piece of work. It's very different in style and flow to its sequel DWBA2, but still very much worth playing if you can get past the heartbreak.
Rating: 7.8 78
Difficulty: 80 80
Aug 4, 2019
Xplayerlol
Rating based on the easiest possible setting (Normal mode, many saves) because it's the most reasonable one.
Really long adventure game with lots of cool stuff and lots of awful stuff as well. Let's start with the good parts. The visuals are incredibly good, with very few exceptions (Including a stage where the tiles show some ugly line divisions and, obviously, areas with the mostly unfitting gray spikes), and so are the musics. The death sound isn't annoying, and the musics don't restart. There's a lot of variety in the platforming, with huge amounts of unique gimmicks and obstacles scattered through the stages, one of these gimmicks being a really well-designed space shooter segment that is probably my favorite part of the game. There's an actual tutorial that teaches new players about the basics of fangames. There's also a really nice and quite funny storyline, as well as extra collectible items, plenty of achievements and some funny jokes here and there (The ending and the credits made me laugh a lot).
However, even a game with so many amazing details and interesting stuff can still be easily ruined by poor design choices, and that's exactly what happens in this game. The first issue we have in the game are the bosses. Some of them are incredibly hard to damage, like Magna Centipede, which can spend huge amounts of time in the ceiling, shooting stuff at you while you can't even damage him at all, or the Beholder, which can only be damaged when he uses a specific attack. Bosses like Yellow Devil and Magna Centipede can corner you really easily with their constant movement (Yellow Devil's jumps and Magna Centipede's teleporting), and then finish you off with another attack that can't be avoided at short range. Some can use the classic RNG attacks of shooting stuff everywhere, like the Emperor of Delicious Fruit or the Tower of Creation, while you can only hope that none of the projectiles hits you because they are way too fast, spawn way too close to you or simply don't give you a gap to dodge at all. Some can create shields, like Centaurman, or become invulnerable for absurd amounts of time, like Celsius and Yellow Devil, for no reason at all other than wasting your time while you're trying to learn the other attacks (And maybe killing you once or twice while they are at it). And many of them combine some of these annoying factors, or even all of them, into a single fight where you still have to learn how to dodge the dodgeable attacks. Imagine a luck-based boss that is hard to damage, with plenty of attacks that are hard to learn. Such is the case of bosses like the Yellow Devil and Magna Centipede.
The last boss deserves a special topic, because she's a bit different from the other ones. You have a HP bar, and you're going to need it. It's one of those bosses with two phases whose first phase's only objective is to waste your time (And HP) while the second phase kills you over and over. The first phase is all about learning attacks, and in this phase she has 4 different attacks that allow her to fly. And guess what? You can't damage her while she's flying. And she can COMBINE three of these attacks to fly for as long as she wants to. More than once, I've seen her fly for more than 5 attacks in a row, and these attacks are quite long. It's awfully boring. The second phase features some wonders like an attack where she grabs you and throws you outside the map, instantly killing you and the whole purpose of the HP bar, and a triple wall of fire that I wonder if you can even get through without taking damage at all.
Leaving the bosses aside and heading for the platforming, there are a couple funny traps, but there are also some really stupid generic traps. They aren't too bad for the most part, but some stages like the desert stage really overuse them, and some place them at really unpleasant points. Worse than the traps, however, are some of the gimmicks. Variety doesn't mean quality, and this game shows that very well. Gimmicks like the falling Megamen (Awfully luck-based), the quicksand (Requires an awful amount of mashing if you want to go up), the balloon duck (Controlling that thing is horrible), and others, are things that simply shouldn't exist. As if that wasn't enough, even gimmicks that aren't really bad at all are ruined by the way the game uses them. A good example is the 'don't jump' sign in the RPG stage, which isn't bad by itself, but becomes one of the most annoying parts of the game when combined with horribly slow moving platforms and really precise movements. Another great example of terrible use of a decent gimmick is the mirror segment, where you have to look at both halves of the mirror because some obstacles can only be seen at the top half or at the lower half. Not a bad idea at all, but the design of this segment makes it so that you can't react to some of the obstacles unless you know about them beforehand, which turns it into a memory game where you just die over and over while you try to learn how to dodge every obstacle. The Dark Kid's trials work in a similar way, and are almost as boring.
I wanted to like this game, but I can't bring myself to. The terrible parts outweigh the great ones by far, to the point where the great parts are hardly worth playing for. Wouldn't recommend.
[5] Likes
Really long adventure game with lots of cool stuff and lots of awful stuff as well. Let's start with the good parts. The visuals are incredibly good, with very few exceptions (Including a stage where the tiles show some ugly line divisions and, obviously, areas with the mostly unfitting gray spikes), and so are the musics. The death sound isn't annoying, and the musics don't restart. There's a lot of variety in the platforming, with huge amounts of unique gimmicks and obstacles scattered through the stages, one of these gimmicks being a really well-designed space shooter segment that is probably my favorite part of the game. There's an actual tutorial that teaches new players about the basics of fangames. There's also a really nice and quite funny storyline, as well as extra collectible items, plenty of achievements and some funny jokes here and there (The ending and the credits made me laugh a lot).
However, even a game with so many amazing details and interesting stuff can still be easily ruined by poor design choices, and that's exactly what happens in this game. The first issue we have in the game are the bosses. Some of them are incredibly hard to damage, like Magna Centipede, which can spend huge amounts of time in the ceiling, shooting stuff at you while you can't even damage him at all, or the Beholder, which can only be damaged when he uses a specific attack. Bosses like Yellow Devil and Magna Centipede can corner you really easily with their constant movement (Yellow Devil's jumps and Magna Centipede's teleporting), and then finish you off with another attack that can't be avoided at short range. Some can use the classic RNG attacks of shooting stuff everywhere, like the Emperor of Delicious Fruit or the Tower of Creation, while you can only hope that none of the projectiles hits you because they are way too fast, spawn way too close to you or simply don't give you a gap to dodge at all. Some can create shields, like Centaurman, or become invulnerable for absurd amounts of time, like Celsius and Yellow Devil, for no reason at all other than wasting your time while you're trying to learn the other attacks (And maybe killing you once or twice while they are at it). And many of them combine some of these annoying factors, or even all of them, into a single fight where you still have to learn how to dodge the dodgeable attacks. Imagine a luck-based boss that is hard to damage, with plenty of attacks that are hard to learn. Such is the case of bosses like the Yellow Devil and Magna Centipede.
The last boss deserves a special topic, because she's a bit different from the other ones. You have a HP bar, and you're going to need it. It's one of those bosses with two phases whose first phase's only objective is to waste your time (And HP) while the second phase kills you over and over. The first phase is all about learning attacks, and in this phase she has 4 different attacks that allow her to fly. And guess what? You can't damage her while she's flying. And she can COMBINE three of these attacks to fly for as long as she wants to. More than once, I've seen her fly for more than 5 attacks in a row, and these attacks are quite long. It's awfully boring. The second phase features some wonders like an attack where she grabs you and throws you outside the map, instantly killing you and the whole purpose of the HP bar, and a triple wall of fire that I wonder if you can even get through without taking damage at all.
Leaving the bosses aside and heading for the platforming, there are a couple funny traps, but there are also some really stupid generic traps. They aren't too bad for the most part, but some stages like the desert stage really overuse them, and some place them at really unpleasant points. Worse than the traps, however, are some of the gimmicks. Variety doesn't mean quality, and this game shows that very well. Gimmicks like the falling Megamen (Awfully luck-based), the quicksand (Requires an awful amount of mashing if you want to go up), the balloon duck (Controlling that thing is horrible), and others, are things that simply shouldn't exist. As if that wasn't enough, even gimmicks that aren't really bad at all are ruined by the way the game uses them. A good example is the 'don't jump' sign in the RPG stage, which isn't bad by itself, but becomes one of the most annoying parts of the game when combined with horribly slow moving platforms and really precise movements. Another great example of terrible use of a decent gimmick is the mirror segment, where you have to look at both halves of the mirror because some obstacles can only be seen at the top half or at the lower half. Not a bad idea at all, but the design of this segment makes it so that you can't react to some of the obstacles unless you know about them beforehand, which turns it into a memory game where you just die over and over while you try to learn how to dodge every obstacle. The Dark Kid's trials work in a similar way, and are almost as boring.
I wanted to like this game, but I can't bring myself to. The terrible parts outweigh the great ones by far, to the point where the great parts are hardly worth playing for. Wouldn't recommend.
Rating: 5.0 50
Difficulty: 76 76
Apr 8, 2016
shign
Review based on normal mode, many saves and version 1.7 (so tha latest which change many things).
A few months ago, I started to have the first symptomes of depression which are not getting motivated and interested by anything. When I was at work, I just wanted to go home and when at home, I was doing nothing. Even tho I have a bunch of already started fangames (including many good ones like cn3) I didn't wanted to play them and every try to force ended in my quitting after 5 min in.
When adventure FSR B-side was announced, I thought it could be a good time to finally get diamond rank after leaving on the final boss of 3 games for my last game before getting the rank. I looked at what I had left and dun be anything 2 was the most tempting but I personally like playing series in order, so I looked at this game. Some reviews were a bit scarry, both enjoyement and difficulty wise but I thought I had nothing to loose by giving it a try.
I asked in IWC server what save setting is recommended because the easiest one didn't looked like the intended one but piece told me that easiest is the way to go and that even zanto would probably say the same.
My first impression of the game was "cool but harsh and punitive". There are traps, and even if they are mostly cool, some have hard execution with sometimes tight timing. Same for bosses, the first boss is a good resume of what they will be : learny. You will clearly spend some time to learn how to react to each attack, which lead to that strange feeling where you first hate them because they at first look stupid, then end up liking them because they are very satisfying to beat once you know what to do, and the best example of that is of course the infamous yellow devil.
But the more I was playing it, the more my motivation got back and the more I was loving it. Despite some flaws, this is honestly how I would imagine an old-shcool adventure game, a bit beefy but a good experience. I could however totally understand if someone hates it, especially if his resistance to traps is pretty low, but I would recommend everyone to at least try it and give it a little push because it's the kind of games you like more the more you play.
Overall a very pleasant experience, what prevent me to give it more are a few bosses I wasn't a huge fan (they are really hit or miss even if most were hit for me) but I really didn't expected to like it that much. If you like older adventure games, this one is honestly underlooked and should have more attention.
[4] Likes
A few months ago, I started to have the first symptomes of depression which are not getting motivated and interested by anything. When I was at work, I just wanted to go home and when at home, I was doing nothing. Even tho I have a bunch of already started fangames (including many good ones like cn3) I didn't wanted to play them and every try to force ended in my quitting after 5 min in.
When adventure FSR B-side was announced, I thought it could be a good time to finally get diamond rank after leaving on the final boss of 3 games for my last game before getting the rank. I looked at what I had left and dun be anything 2 was the most tempting but I personally like playing series in order, so I looked at this game. Some reviews were a bit scarry, both enjoyement and difficulty wise but I thought I had nothing to loose by giving it a try.
I asked in IWC server what save setting is recommended because the easiest one didn't looked like the intended one but piece told me that easiest is the way to go and that even zanto would probably say the same.
My first impression of the game was "cool but harsh and punitive". There are traps, and even if they are mostly cool, some have hard execution with sometimes tight timing. Same for bosses, the first boss is a good resume of what they will be : learny. You will clearly spend some time to learn how to react to each attack, which lead to that strange feeling where you first hate them because they at first look stupid, then end up liking them because they are very satisfying to beat once you know what to do, and the best example of that is of course the infamous yellow devil.
But the more I was playing it, the more my motivation got back and the more I was loving it. Despite some flaws, this is honestly how I would imagine an old-shcool adventure game, a bit beefy but a good experience. I could however totally understand if someone hates it, especially if his resistance to traps is pretty low, but I would recommend everyone to at least try it and give it a little push because it's the kind of games you like more the more you play.
Overall a very pleasant experience, what prevent me to give it more are a few bosses I wasn't a huge fan (they are really hit or miss even if most were hit for me) but I really didn't expected to like it that much. If you like older adventure games, this one is honestly underlooked and should have more attention.
Rating: 9.5 95
Difficulty: 73 73
May 20, 2022
Bob
I really liked this game. It's a trap filled journey through different levels based off of games from the NES and SNES. The production value is through the roof. Every stage has its own gimmicks and the platforming is very diverse, so you never get bored with it. The only problem with it is that some triggers / segments are very precise to pull off without dying, but that's the nature of the game.
The bosses are the main source of suffering from this game. Every boss is different, though most of them follow the random attack pattern. These guys are no joke. They have a lot of HP, and some attacks are just plain unfair. The worst offender was that scorpion guy in the megaman stage. Every boss kill feels like you just jumped over a gigantic hurdle.
If you are not a very patient person, you will not enjoy this game. It requires a lot of grinding and learning. But for me this game was still fun, and I think I would recommend this game if you are willing to take the time to beat it.
[2] Likes
The bosses are the main source of suffering from this game. Every boss is different, though most of them follow the random attack pattern. These guys are no joke. They have a lot of HP, and some attacks are just plain unfair. The worst offender was that scorpion guy in the megaman stage. Every boss kill feels like you just jumped over a gigantic hurdle.
If you are not a very patient person, you will not enjoy this game. It requires a lot of grinding and learning. But for me this game was still fun, and I think I would recommend this game if you are willing to take the time to beat it.
Rating: 8.8 88
Difficulty: 75 75
Mar 18, 2015
PlutoTheThing
Considering I hated the sequel to this game, I wasn't super optimistic heading into this game, but I was very pleasantly surprised. I actually like this game quite a bit, it's got pretty fun platforming with a large variety of gimmicks and unlike the sequel, a lot less cycle based stuff. It's still there, but it's not so omnipresent such that it takes up a ridiculous amount of your time. There's lots of creativity in this department, and the traps are alright. Some rooms have too many, or have them in places they shouldn't be, but for the most part they are fine.
The bosses are a sorta mixed bag, leaning positively. The big issue with most of them is that they often have that ONE attack which is so hard, your best chance of clearing is just hoping they don't use it. It can sometimes lead to some unsatisfying victories, one of which I had to the final boss as in phase 2 they just spammed the same attack so I got a super easy win. They are fun though, there's a learning curve but they feel natural and it's not just learning simple patterns for the entire game, again an issue I had with the sequel.
Overall IDWBA1 is underrated in my opinion, I'm happy I played it and while it's rough around the edges, it's a truly solid adventure game.
[1] Like
The bosses are a sorta mixed bag, leaning positively. The big issue with most of them is that they often have that ONE attack which is so hard, your best chance of clearing is just hoping they don't use it. It can sometimes lead to some unsatisfying victories, one of which I had to the final boss as in phase 2 they just spammed the same attack so I got a super easy win. They are fun though, there's a learning curve but they feel natural and it's not just learning simple patterns for the entire game, again an issue I had with the sequel.
Overall IDWBA1 is underrated in my opinion, I'm happy I played it and while it's rough around the edges, it's a truly solid adventure game.
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 66 66
May 21, 2023