Delicious Fruit
Download Game 27 Reviews:
xva
an absolutely fantastic game by two great makers, collaborating to make something truly extraordinary. Klein and Rei outdid themselves, as per usual. Butterfly is nothing quite to the lengths of Emperor, but it's certainly close to it. it's far more varied than Emperor, which makes it more interesting to play for the average fangamer. importantly, the game is cleanly divided into two halves: the first half, which is made by Klein and the second half, which is made by Rei. both halves of the game have their own highlights and are about equally as good. Klein's area displays extremely fun needle design with some fun and simple gimmicks; while Rei's area displays a ton of minigames, more complex and gimmick-heavy platforming. Rei also made far more bosses than Klein, who only made one. to add to this further, this game isn't boss/avoidance heavy at all, so expect to play a lot of different platforming
the platforming is some classic Klein/Rei stuff. I actually think a lot of areas are quite original, even compared to Klein an Rei's various other works. it feels like they poured in more time than usual to think of ideas for this game, further designing things in a more proper and sophisticated fashion. the game has something like 4 hubs filled with stages. it's quite the long play, I wouldn't expect to finish it in one sitting. expect three to four quite long sittings if I had to guess. of course, this depends on your skill but I think if you're even considering playing this game you would be of a fairly high skill level already. the general feel of this game's platforming is quite nice. it's a rare feeling that is really hard to emulate nowadays without it feeling disingenuous. there just aren't many hard and old, classic-style adventure games to go around. this game is just at the lowest echelon of difficulty of what I'd consider the "very difficult old adventure games" group. games like LoveTrap, Emperor, Make it Breaking Out, Destination, Charr, Crimson, Kamilia 3, Noesis all have this same 'old adventure' feeling. it's quite magical and rare, and I really love it. the game is the most varied out of all of these, possessing the largest amount of ideas - perhaps only rivalled by the likes of Make it Breaking Out. fortunately, Butterfly is leagues upon leagues better than Make it Breaking Out, so this comparison is pretty much entirely impossible to make
the bosses aren't plentiful when it comes to Klein's section of the game. he made one boss which uniquely uses one gimmick which I quite enjoyed. it's not Klein's best work, but it's still quite memorable. this boss's stage is also one of my favorites in the entire game. the idea of going all around this large stage that loops into itself from nearly all directions is quite fun. I noticed I had a strangely fun time just exploring, not necessarily even trying to progress. the real bosses are located in the 2nd half of the game - the one designed by Rei. there are bosses sprinkled throughout Rei's section, but the most notable one is of course, the one and only vocaloid we all forget about - Meiko. or, as a wise man once said: "Have some fun with Meiko!". Meiko is the most notable, as it's a super fun and essentially serves as the flagship or hallmark boss of Butterfly. it's a few pattern-ish attacks early on followed by a ton of fun RNG stuff that mainly focuses on density and not speed all too often. you have infinite jump which gives the fight a whole lot more depth. don't think I'll forget to mention the long and boring intro. I can't defend it, honestly. I have no idea why it's in the game and it should be absolutely removed. I'm thankful PDPlayer removed it pretty much entirely in this boss's Last Z variant. it's fairly easy to learn after figuring out the atom pattern at the beginning. now, if Butterfly had a real final boss, it should've been Meiko. it would've made for a much nicer ending, to be fair. however, I won't argue the ending of the game isn't bad per se. I find it super iconic - the way the white fades in as you walk right to the end of the game. it's one of my favorite endings of any fangame yet. the credits are also very beautiful, with the true clear screen being quite nice, but rather unknown. it's a simple logo design but I quite enjoy it, it isn't often talked about
this game has a glaring, massive issue to many people. Butterfly has a ton of ideas in it. some are good, some are not so good. to me, it's more so about the greater picture. I have a massive soft spot for Klein's games and I will often give them the benefit of the doubt any time I can. any time any section of the game feels unfair, bad or too difficult, I always try to think about how it fits in to the entire game. isolating the bad areas will only make them feel worse, but fitting them into the entire game will make them feel a lot better. Rei's section of Butterfly contains a lot of unfair and difficult minigames that aren't easy to master and often require luck. on it's own, this may seem like poor design. but if you look at it differently, the minigames were clearly meant to reach a target difficulty of 70+ which was hardly achievable without making them this difficult/luck-based. to be clear, they're not all so bullshit and luck-based, there are genuinely good, skill-based and fun ones. Butterfly in general is very diverse and has a lot of different gimmicks, minigames, puzzles and general gameplay ideas. you will have to expect some wild, wacky and insane stuff you wouldn't quite expect. you will have to also expect some of these aforementioned sections/ideas not to be fun. going into this game as open-minded as possible will greatly improve your experience with it. no matter how stupid something you encounter may seem, try to give the game the benefit of the doubt. you may begin to see that this game is quite the masterpiece. of course, I could be completely wrong and your mileage may greatly vary. I can see why so many people dislike this game, but there's one key idea that you have to grasp when you're evaluating your overall enjoyment of a game: the slope effect, as I like to call it. this 'slope effect' is, to put it in Layman terms: once something goes particularly wrong in a game, everything may begin to seem horrible about it. let's say you're stuck on a save or area for upwards of several hours. if you begin hating this save, it will make the rest of the game arbitrarily look a lot worse even if it isn't. this effect rarely works the other way around, where bad areas are outshined by better areas. or rather, it takes a marginally whole lot better area to outshine an even somewhat bad area. this might depend on a lot of things, but I've observed this happen several times throughout my fangame career. in my opinion, it's important not to let this influence how you think about a game, as it may cloud your judgement
Butterfly has one of the most egregious cases of this effect, where a bad area can absolutely ruin the rest of the game for you. I've seen this happen a few times and it's honestly quite sad, as those people who experienced this have little to no fond memories of Butterfly
I personally will have fond memories of this game, simply because I love it so much. it's the closest we'll ever get to a second Emperor. Klein isn't making any games anymore, nor is Rei. their influence on the world of fangames will forever be felt and that's the most we can ask for
highly recommended
[0] Likes
the platforming is some classic Klein/Rei stuff. I actually think a lot of areas are quite original, even compared to Klein an Rei's various other works. it feels like they poured in more time than usual to think of ideas for this game, further designing things in a more proper and sophisticated fashion. the game has something like 4 hubs filled with stages. it's quite the long play, I wouldn't expect to finish it in one sitting. expect three to four quite long sittings if I had to guess. of course, this depends on your skill but I think if you're even considering playing this game you would be of a fairly high skill level already. the general feel of this game's platforming is quite nice. it's a rare feeling that is really hard to emulate nowadays without it feeling disingenuous. there just aren't many hard and old, classic-style adventure games to go around. this game is just at the lowest echelon of difficulty of what I'd consider the "very difficult old adventure games" group. games like LoveTrap, Emperor, Make it Breaking Out, Destination, Charr, Crimson, Kamilia 3, Noesis all have this same 'old adventure' feeling. it's quite magical and rare, and I really love it. the game is the most varied out of all of these, possessing the largest amount of ideas - perhaps only rivalled by the likes of Make it Breaking Out. fortunately, Butterfly is leagues upon leagues better than Make it Breaking Out, so this comparison is pretty much entirely impossible to make
the bosses aren't plentiful when it comes to Klein's section of the game. he made one boss which uniquely uses one gimmick which I quite enjoyed. it's not Klein's best work, but it's still quite memorable. this boss's stage is also one of my favorites in the entire game. the idea of going all around this large stage that loops into itself from nearly all directions is quite fun. I noticed I had a strangely fun time just exploring, not necessarily even trying to progress. the real bosses are located in the 2nd half of the game - the one designed by Rei. there are bosses sprinkled throughout Rei's section, but the most notable one is of course, the one and only vocaloid we all forget about - Meiko. or, as a wise man once said: "Have some fun with Meiko!". Meiko is the most notable, as it's a super fun and essentially serves as the flagship or hallmark boss of Butterfly. it's a few pattern-ish attacks early on followed by a ton of fun RNG stuff that mainly focuses on density and not speed all too often. you have infinite jump which gives the fight a whole lot more depth. don't think I'll forget to mention the long and boring intro. I can't defend it, honestly. I have no idea why it's in the game and it should be absolutely removed. I'm thankful PDPlayer removed it pretty much entirely in this boss's Last Z variant. it's fairly easy to learn after figuring out the atom pattern at the beginning. now, if Butterfly had a real final boss, it should've been Meiko. it would've made for a much nicer ending, to be fair. however, I won't argue the ending of the game isn't bad per se. I find it super iconic - the way the white fades in as you walk right to the end of the game. it's one of my favorite endings of any fangame yet. the credits are also very beautiful, with the true clear screen being quite nice, but rather unknown. it's a simple logo design but I quite enjoy it, it isn't often talked about
this game has a glaring, massive issue to many people. Butterfly has a ton of ideas in it. some are good, some are not so good. to me, it's more so about the greater picture. I have a massive soft spot for Klein's games and I will often give them the benefit of the doubt any time I can. any time any section of the game feels unfair, bad or too difficult, I always try to think about how it fits in to the entire game. isolating the bad areas will only make them feel worse, but fitting them into the entire game will make them feel a lot better. Rei's section of Butterfly contains a lot of unfair and difficult minigames that aren't easy to master and often require luck. on it's own, this may seem like poor design. but if you look at it differently, the minigames were clearly meant to reach a target difficulty of 70+ which was hardly achievable without making them this difficult/luck-based. to be clear, they're not all so bullshit and luck-based, there are genuinely good, skill-based and fun ones. Butterfly in general is very diverse and has a lot of different gimmicks, minigames, puzzles and general gameplay ideas. you will have to expect some wild, wacky and insane stuff you wouldn't quite expect. you will have to also expect some of these aforementioned sections/ideas not to be fun. going into this game as open-minded as possible will greatly improve your experience with it. no matter how stupid something you encounter may seem, try to give the game the benefit of the doubt. you may begin to see that this game is quite the masterpiece. of course, I could be completely wrong and your mileage may greatly vary. I can see why so many people dislike this game, but there's one key idea that you have to grasp when you're evaluating your overall enjoyment of a game: the slope effect, as I like to call it. this 'slope effect' is, to put it in Layman terms: once something goes particularly wrong in a game, everything may begin to seem horrible about it. let's say you're stuck on a save or area for upwards of several hours. if you begin hating this save, it will make the rest of the game arbitrarily look a lot worse even if it isn't. this effect rarely works the other way around, where bad areas are outshined by better areas. or rather, it takes a marginally whole lot better area to outshine an even somewhat bad area. this might depend on a lot of things, but I've observed this happen several times throughout my fangame career. in my opinion, it's important not to let this influence how you think about a game, as it may cloud your judgement
Butterfly has one of the most egregious cases of this effect, where a bad area can absolutely ruin the rest of the game for you. I've seen this happen a few times and it's honestly quite sad, as those people who experienced this have little to no fond memories of Butterfly
I personally will have fond memories of this game, simply because I love it so much. it's the closest we'll ever get to a second Emperor. Klein isn't making any games anymore, nor is Rei. their influence on the world of fangames will forever be felt and that's the most we can ask for
highly recommended
Rating: 10.0
Difficulty: 74
Mar 28, 2025
ElCochran90
*Cleared on 06/07/2023*
Considering one thing takes to another, there are two main inspirations for the creation of Noesis: Butterfly, and Emperor. Butterfly is an adventure game like almost no other preceding it: borrowing the structure of many creators from ホネ。(End the Blood Festival, Buy the Crayon, White Cherry) and ていく (Device, Diverse) to 水鳥 (Competitor, Symmetry, Unknown, Make It Breaking Out), the guy that made us appreciate the meme-teor stream, vanish needles and challenged us to become the emperor, and that other guy that teamed up with the former guy to be the flower, make their duo peak adventure extravaganza. They take the structure from Unknown and Breaking Out, a structure that consists of evolving hubs and evolve into subsequent challenges, a universe that keeps expanding, and turn it into something of their own. The soundtrack throughout is absolutely fantastic and the production value is through the roof without overdoing it: for 2020s standards, it has aged like fine wine (even though I don’t drink).
The first hub has four main worlds:
-Red warp.- The most standard one, and the least fun due to its stupidly precise platforming; the first save is a good intro for this: there will be blood. The third screen, which is the second area of this world, is an infamous one as you are asked to shoot four switches in a row perfectly while falling and then do an A-jump. Then figuring out what to do with the moving spike is mysterious, but the trap after it literally makes your soul escape your body for three seconds. The fifth screen, which corresponds to the third area of this outer-space-like world, was the most difficult for me in the entire game and I don’t exaggerate: the ascending and descending water costed me 11% (rounded) of the total amount of deaths in the entire game, and do mind the game is very long. This screen, with all honesty, is AIDS. The seventh screen, which corresponds to the fourth area of this world, has two saves. The first required jump of the second save is unspoken of, but at least it gives you the proper align for the TAS landing. The last jump of the final screen of this world is also terrifying, but it looks more intimidating than it really is: if you have built the required memory muscle beforehand, you’ll pull it off correctly faster than you might think.
-Green warp: Trigger fiesta, but the first screen is the hardest by a ridiculous margin in the stage. The traps are brutal, and knowing what will happen does not tell you the very specific set of strats and inputs you must apply to pass the screen, and this applies even more to the very first save. Once past the two first screens, the game plays with terrific gravity and jumping gimmicks in screens 3-6 that amount for a fantastic experience. I found a funny glitch in screen 5 which allows you to walk in air infinitely, but the game still registers the shift inputs for jumping.
-Orange warp: For better or for worse, it happened: a v-string stage. Holy moly. Opening with 2 16px diagonals in a row, this stage obligates you to thing about your vertical velocity for making it through specific gaps. The precision is not the one you’re used to, as old fangames used to be ruled by 32px and 16px logic, but not here. It will be less memory muscle and more constant calculation. This stage is often hated the most by regular players, but the implementation is utmost effective: exploit the concept without being horribly unfair with it. Also, the song is beautiful and the overall atmosphere is engrossing.
-Blue warp: The Legend of Zelda time, with a fangame touch of its own! It’s a modest and short, yet fully fleshed out adventure quest within a greater game: puzzles, chests, items, secrets, and a map. Just, how? This is commitment for certain. Needle difficulty is lax as backtracks are required and you can sometimes take more than one route. It must be played to be fully grasped.
From here on, consider even heavier spoilers, as the rest of the game is encouraged to be played blind past this point at the least:
--
A new warp opens, and you enter a sort of underworld, creepy and colorless, where you have to replay a specific screen of each stage and gather items again: it gives the feeling that something became unstable, and its balance must be restored. I love open lore like this. Achieving this leads to a Destination-like buildup to a ridiculous cherry boss, which I am pretty sure is a parody of all the fangames that relied on this type of boss, tilesets and the theme of Megaman 2. Obviously, this can’t be the end? What lies ahead now?
Everything was just the opening. To put it in a way, it was the typical intro scene of the game for background or context, except you were not an NPC in it: you played it. The intro theme plays, introducing the lore of the butterfly: Kid has a crush for Gigachad Mario but doesn’t care for Remilia Scarlet. Maybe he gay??? Maybe canonical sequel of GB?
The variety displayed from here onwards is outstanding: low gravity in a huge scroller area, jump gimmicks involving triggers, and a brand new, very different hub divided into two challenges. The left one is, literally a new hub that sections into three parts: a New Super Mario Bros. tribute, a shoot-the-target collection of challenges (where a significant portion of your playtime will be spent as you figure out optimal routing strategies), and a sensational collection of minigames with the rules explained beforehand. The game keeps expanding upon its original premise and places the stakes higher and higher, and all stages genuinely seemed as planned to be playable and offer something interesting rather than a “let’s see if this works” brainstorm of concepts, such as Make It Breaking Out. The minigames test your memory skills, aim, speed, needle skills (punishing you per spike touched), and much more! This is a terrific concept for actually being self-aware about your skills and how it is affecting gameplay per second. Out of all levels, the latter one has a boss. If it’s not memorable at worst, it’s creative at best. It takes some time figuring it out, but it plays more as a minigame than as a normal boss.
Finish the new hub, and an extra challenge appears: a race that will certainly remain with you. Reading the smaller sprites of the enemy and how they dance around you is weird and inconsistent. Nevertheless, it’s a recap of most of the previous challenges and does wonders at creating tension. The final moment of the chase is terrifically animated. You’re transported, then again, to the hub referenced beforehand. The right side remains. This right portal has a continuation of the aforementioned jump gimmick triggers section, and a brand-new hub, like the left portal had. This one has five challenges.
For this right-side hub, my humble recommendation is: if you wish to have a true sense of final boss, as the game doesn’t really have one because it is more focused on being an adventure game of many ideas as trials and took less care of a climactic rendition for an adventure story, then take the upper teleporter last.
-Left teleporter is a creative crossover between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s three lifelines, and the fangames based on numbered, individual jump / needle challenges. This has a boss that I think is more a parody on how many fangames use the Suki Suki Suki bouncing cherry of LoveTrap as a boss than anything else, since it is the second type of boss in this game (the one in the Mario stage was more relevant).
-Right teleporter takes you to a Megaman stage. It’s brief and quite uninspired unlike many other fangame attempts to bring this concept to life, even if it’s not the core idea of the fangame such as Be the Rockman (take the secret challenges of Be the Overlord, for example). Also, the main save is really long. In spite of this, the boss works really well as an original concept instead of dodge and shoot, or memorize and dodge.
-Downwards left teleporter is nothing special: trap screens with only one notable gimmick. The real meat is the scoreless cherry avoidance. Fun to do, but might be tedious for some.
-Downwards right teleporter is the most generic and I would personally take this first. It consists in many generic screens with Kirby’s music in a heavy Carnival fashion that has a counter for every screen: either how many jumps you do, or how many pixels you’re moving left or right. The latter has a big opportunity window, but the former is stricter, as there’s only one way to do every screen. Boss is, well, Kirby, and has the quality of 2011 aqua’s fangames in average. Also really easy.
The top teleporter has the only vocaloid avoidance of the game and will be the second highest grind after the shoot-the-target one imo: Meiko. Much of it is pattern, which can throw some people off, and save for the long intro you can’t skip, attacks are in perfect sync and the balance between pattern and RNG is just fair. Pattern segments can be too precise at times, but they will never change, so it’s up to you to find the blind spots. The entire avoidance has the infinite jump gimmick and there are no platforms, utilizing the entire screen at its advantage, and yes, you will go throughout the entire screen. In short, it’s fun, creative and surpasses the memorable Rin “Benzen” avoidance of Flower.
After this, you’re taken to a final platforming section which is just the epilogue and lighter in difficulty, and the structure is bizarre as heck in the best way. Here, the game throws all the bizarre jokes in for good measure and finding the true exit becomes a task. It’s no daunting task as the game knows exactly what you will try to do and has a special trap or joke prepared in there, so it even gives you the feeling of hopefully not missing any. This is the epilogue of all times.
As a conclusion, the game is unique and most of the ideas work splendorously; the quality gap between Flower and this is pretty much doubled. Every continuous expansion the game makes will make you go “there is more!” instead of “please just end”. The inert underworld version of the first hub was great and just the intro for the grand variety that lied ahead. The game does consider you can go to any hub in any order, so this results in several difficulty curves being all over the place. These are minor observations and I am no game creator in any way, but if I could change the pacing and order of the game instead of giving too much freedom, I would lock the right warp of the third hub (the one after everything goes colorless underworld mode) and make it available until the left one is completed. Then, when you enter the right one, I would leave only the four teleporters at your sides visible and make the top one (Meiko’s) visible once you pass all four to give a feeling of a final boss. Anyway, this still can be done by yourself in this way, and for those willing to do it in a different order, well, what can I say?
Immediate favorite. If you haven’t played this, change that stat now!
[0] Likes
Considering one thing takes to another, there are two main inspirations for the creation of Noesis: Butterfly, and Emperor. Butterfly is an adventure game like almost no other preceding it: borrowing the structure of many creators from ホネ。(End the Blood Festival, Buy the Crayon, White Cherry) and ていく (Device, Diverse) to 水鳥 (Competitor, Symmetry, Unknown, Make It Breaking Out), the guy that made us appreciate the meme-teor stream, vanish needles and challenged us to become the emperor, and that other guy that teamed up with the former guy to be the flower, make their duo peak adventure extravaganza. They take the structure from Unknown and Breaking Out, a structure that consists of evolving hubs and evolve into subsequent challenges, a universe that keeps expanding, and turn it into something of their own. The soundtrack throughout is absolutely fantastic and the production value is through the roof without overdoing it: for 2020s standards, it has aged like fine wine (even though I don’t drink).
The first hub has four main worlds:
-Red warp.- The most standard one, and the least fun due to its stupidly precise platforming; the first save is a good intro for this: there will be blood. The third screen, which is the second area of this world, is an infamous one as you are asked to shoot four switches in a row perfectly while falling and then do an A-jump. Then figuring out what to do with the moving spike is mysterious, but the trap after it literally makes your soul escape your body for three seconds. The fifth screen, which corresponds to the third area of this outer-space-like world, was the most difficult for me in the entire game and I don’t exaggerate: the ascending and descending water costed me 11% (rounded) of the total amount of deaths in the entire game, and do mind the game is very long. This screen, with all honesty, is AIDS. The seventh screen, which corresponds to the fourth area of this world, has two saves. The first required jump of the second save is unspoken of, but at least it gives you the proper align for the TAS landing. The last jump of the final screen of this world is also terrifying, but it looks more intimidating than it really is: if you have built the required memory muscle beforehand, you’ll pull it off correctly faster than you might think.
-Green warp: Trigger fiesta, but the first screen is the hardest by a ridiculous margin in the stage. The traps are brutal, and knowing what will happen does not tell you the very specific set of strats and inputs you must apply to pass the screen, and this applies even more to the very first save. Once past the two first screens, the game plays with terrific gravity and jumping gimmicks in screens 3-6 that amount for a fantastic experience. I found a funny glitch in screen 5 which allows you to walk in air infinitely, but the game still registers the shift inputs for jumping.
-Orange warp: For better or for worse, it happened: a v-string stage. Holy moly. Opening with 2 16px diagonals in a row, this stage obligates you to thing about your vertical velocity for making it through specific gaps. The precision is not the one you’re used to, as old fangames used to be ruled by 32px and 16px logic, but not here. It will be less memory muscle and more constant calculation. This stage is often hated the most by regular players, but the implementation is utmost effective: exploit the concept without being horribly unfair with it. Also, the song is beautiful and the overall atmosphere is engrossing.
-Blue warp: The Legend of Zelda time, with a fangame touch of its own! It’s a modest and short, yet fully fleshed out adventure quest within a greater game: puzzles, chests, items, secrets, and a map. Just, how? This is commitment for certain. Needle difficulty is lax as backtracks are required and you can sometimes take more than one route. It must be played to be fully grasped.
From here on, consider even heavier spoilers, as the rest of the game is encouraged to be played blind past this point at the least:
--
A new warp opens, and you enter a sort of underworld, creepy and colorless, where you have to replay a specific screen of each stage and gather items again: it gives the feeling that something became unstable, and its balance must be restored. I love open lore like this. Achieving this leads to a Destination-like buildup to a ridiculous cherry boss, which I am pretty sure is a parody of all the fangames that relied on this type of boss, tilesets and the theme of Megaman 2. Obviously, this can’t be the end? What lies ahead now?
Everything was just the opening. To put it in a way, it was the typical intro scene of the game for background or context, except you were not an NPC in it: you played it. The intro theme plays, introducing the lore of the butterfly: Kid has a crush for Gigachad Mario but doesn’t care for Remilia Scarlet. Maybe he gay??? Maybe canonical sequel of GB?
The variety displayed from here onwards is outstanding: low gravity in a huge scroller area, jump gimmicks involving triggers, and a brand new, very different hub divided into two challenges. The left one is, literally a new hub that sections into three parts: a New Super Mario Bros. tribute, a shoot-the-target collection of challenges (where a significant portion of your playtime will be spent as you figure out optimal routing strategies), and a sensational collection of minigames with the rules explained beforehand. The game keeps expanding upon its original premise and places the stakes higher and higher, and all stages genuinely seemed as planned to be playable and offer something interesting rather than a “let’s see if this works” brainstorm of concepts, such as Make It Breaking Out. The minigames test your memory skills, aim, speed, needle skills (punishing you per spike touched), and much more! This is a terrific concept for actually being self-aware about your skills and how it is affecting gameplay per second. Out of all levels, the latter one has a boss. If it’s not memorable at worst, it’s creative at best. It takes some time figuring it out, but it plays more as a minigame than as a normal boss.
Finish the new hub, and an extra challenge appears: a race that will certainly remain with you. Reading the smaller sprites of the enemy and how they dance around you is weird and inconsistent. Nevertheless, it’s a recap of most of the previous challenges and does wonders at creating tension. The final moment of the chase is terrifically animated. You’re transported, then again, to the hub referenced beforehand. The right side remains. This right portal has a continuation of the aforementioned jump gimmick triggers section, and a brand-new hub, like the left portal had. This one has five challenges.
For this right-side hub, my humble recommendation is: if you wish to have a true sense of final boss, as the game doesn’t really have one because it is more focused on being an adventure game of many ideas as trials and took less care of a climactic rendition for an adventure story, then take the upper teleporter last.
-Left teleporter is a creative crossover between Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s three lifelines, and the fangames based on numbered, individual jump / needle challenges. This has a boss that I think is more a parody on how many fangames use the Suki Suki Suki bouncing cherry of LoveTrap as a boss than anything else, since it is the second type of boss in this game (the one in the Mario stage was more relevant).
-Right teleporter takes you to a Megaman stage. It’s brief and quite uninspired unlike many other fangame attempts to bring this concept to life, even if it’s not the core idea of the fangame such as Be the Rockman (take the secret challenges of Be the Overlord, for example). Also, the main save is really long. In spite of this, the boss works really well as an original concept instead of dodge and shoot, or memorize and dodge.
-Downwards left teleporter is nothing special: trap screens with only one notable gimmick. The real meat is the scoreless cherry avoidance. Fun to do, but might be tedious for some.
-Downwards right teleporter is the most generic and I would personally take this first. It consists in many generic screens with Kirby’s music in a heavy Carnival fashion that has a counter for every screen: either how many jumps you do, or how many pixels you’re moving left or right. The latter has a big opportunity window, but the former is stricter, as there’s only one way to do every screen. Boss is, well, Kirby, and has the quality of 2011 aqua’s fangames in average. Also really easy.
The top teleporter has the only vocaloid avoidance of the game and will be the second highest grind after the shoot-the-target one imo: Meiko. Much of it is pattern, which can throw some people off, and save for the long intro you can’t skip, attacks are in perfect sync and the balance between pattern and RNG is just fair. Pattern segments can be too precise at times, but they will never change, so it’s up to you to find the blind spots. The entire avoidance has the infinite jump gimmick and there are no platforms, utilizing the entire screen at its advantage, and yes, you will go throughout the entire screen. In short, it’s fun, creative and surpasses the memorable Rin “Benzen” avoidance of Flower.
After this, you’re taken to a final platforming section which is just the epilogue and lighter in difficulty, and the structure is bizarre as heck in the best way. Here, the game throws all the bizarre jokes in for good measure and finding the true exit becomes a task. It’s no daunting task as the game knows exactly what you will try to do and has a special trap or joke prepared in there, so it even gives you the feeling of hopefully not missing any. This is the epilogue of all times.
As a conclusion, the game is unique and most of the ideas work splendorously; the quality gap between Flower and this is pretty much doubled. Every continuous expansion the game makes will make you go “there is more!” instead of “please just end”. The inert underworld version of the first hub was great and just the intro for the grand variety that lied ahead. The game does consider you can go to any hub in any order, so this results in several difficulty curves being all over the place. These are minor observations and I am no game creator in any way, but if I could change the pacing and order of the game instead of giving too much freedom, I would lock the right warp of the third hub (the one after everything goes colorless underworld mode) and make it available until the left one is completed. Then, when you enter the right one, I would leave only the four teleporters at your sides visible and make the top one (Meiko’s) visible once you pass all four to give a feeling of a final boss. Anyway, this still can be done by yourself in this way, and for those willing to do it in a different order, well, what can I say?
Immediate favorite. If you haven’t played this, change that stat now!
Rating: 7.0
Difficulty: 80
Nov 11, 2023
gourdladle
The difficulty is just for the 大輪の花 avoidance
[0] Likes
Rating: 8.1
Difficulty: 64
Nov 27, 2020
Sheepness
A great fangame to play on Hard or Very Hard.
[0] Likes
Rating: 9.5
Difficulty: 75
Dec 12, 2016
