Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
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by PlasmaNapkin
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by Anonymous
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by PlasmaNapkin
-
by PlasmaNapkin
-
by PlasmaNapkin
38 Reviews:
YaBoiMarcAntony
Many times in my life, when it came down to it, the only thing I wanted to do was to run away from it all. This want of mine has been for many different reasons all throughout my life, some fair, others admittedly not, but the fact remains that my natural inclination to great strife is to run from it. I don't think this is a unique aspect of my self, and in fact I'd guess that most everyone has at some point in their life felt this inclination. It's just easier to run than it is to stand up to something because to stand up takes courage and bravery, something that can tend to be in short supply for most.
I Wanna Be Far From Home is a game of escapism, or perhaps even a retelling of sorts, I wouldn't know as I'm not the maker. Either way, Far From Home expresses this desire to run and tells a story of running away. The game opens rather oddly with the player in a body of water while an unreachable cliff-side hangs over them, not so much ominously but with no other alternative. From there, you'll soon find that you reside within something of a hub world made up of extremely dense landmasses dotted around in a minimalist fashion. When it comes to the actual design of a given section, there is an unbelievable amount of detail, but thanks to how much room is given, you'll find that this hub world feels serene and pleasant.
There are four different stages that become longer as you go on, the first stage being a single jump while the last stage will probably take a blind player fit for its difficulty anywhere between twenty to forty minutes, depending on the person and their respective skills. In any case, the sense of progression from stage to stage lies not just in the sheer size of each of them, but also in terms of how space is used. The first stage is extremely claustrophobic with a rather tight jump. Aside from that, most all of the screen is dominated by a stuttering black mass. While it is traditionally pretty, there is a sense of negativity associated with the black mass in its totality, not to mention the obvious fact that it kills you upon touching it.
The second stage, however, carves out more room for itself in the black mass, though it is still a rather short stage. Here, you'll find the game beginning to play around with a bit of pathing, the final jump utilizing a vine you use early on in the stage. There's also some tight usage of water, tight in a way that I originally found annoying from a gameplay perspective but grew to enjoy, as well as platforming explicitly around blocks of black. In this way, you cannot simply avoid the reality of this blackness, instead you are forced to come to grips with it and approach it safely in order to beat the stage.
Stage three is where things really begin to open up for the game. Clever pathing can be found all over, with many moments of you returning to a previous section of the stage under a new light, passing through it to get further in the stage. In this way, plasma produces a sort of knot of gameplay in a way reminiscent of the qoqoqo series, though more striking visually thanks to the usage of large screens, and of course it feels different thanks to plasma's extremely unique style of gameplay. There's still platform around bits of the black mass, however you're forced to at times blindly dive into them in order to progress through the stage. The final save ends with a very long fall that takes you through a previous part of the stage in beautiful fashion which then ends simply with you jumping into a warp surrounded by the black mass (I apologize for the repeated usage of the phrase, but it comes up a lot!) In fact, this is the only stage in which you could actually die trying to go for the warp, marking stage three as particularly notable in its usage of this black mass.
The final stage is, as described before, very long. This is, depending on who you ask, to its benefit or a flaw of the game. For my part, I think this length fits perfectly with the theme of the game and also serves the gameplay very well as the length is due to its sheer size. Here, the pathing's genius is not so much in how it retreads old paths but instead in how tightly designed the stage is. There are so many moments where this grand strand comes so close to altogether intertwining with another, and yet there is only one time in which you find yourself touching old ground at any point; otherwise, there are no intersections of any sort, something which stands out to me as a unique form of pathing that I personally love.
Gameplay wise, this stage is also the most difficult by far, utilizing a lot of rather tight jumps and tough maneuvers. With that said, at no point is the black mass involved in any of this, and in that way it begins to feel like this black mass merely existed and that the platforming itself was indeed carved into it, placed there by some unknown being. Finally, the exit warp is hidden away far at the top, surrounded by pillars of water and plus signs. This final warp out feels the most safe of the bunch, both due to the pleasant design of its surroundings and the fact that death at this point is essentially impossible. In stage one, you could plausibly die thanks to, well, idiocy. Stage two there's no chance of death, but the path to the warp is so tight and uncomfortable that it's left feeling unsafe in that way, and of course stage three is the one most plausible to die to.
Upon clearing the final stage, you find yourself in a position of being able to jump all the way back down to the cliffside, which now hangs below rather than above, and leaving the hub to go to the end. You find yourself in an area that feels less welcoming than the hub world of the previous, a small tower at the top of which lies a grand chasm filled with red water, water which you are forced to dive into. Any attempt to jump out forces you further down, and as you go down the screen fades to black, leaving us with this exchange:
"I am sorry I took so long."
"Welcome home."
What I find especially harrowing about this game is that this ending is not in itself a particularly positive one in tone. The entire game sees the player essentially just biding time until they come home, with each stage's increasing length feeling like its own form of running away. In this way, it feels like the black mass is life itself whereas that which makes up the stages themselves is a manifestation of the player character. As you traverse each stage, this black mass becomes more and more of a looming presence until it peaks in stage three, a peak you'd traditionally expect at stage four. If this game were about facing your fears or troubles and not running away, it'd only be natural that the final confrontation, as it were, would be a culmination of a previously-established pattern. With each stage, more and more of the black mass becomes relevant to the platforming, and yet that isn't so with Far From Home. Instead, the final stage is a self-made tribulation, as if it's the player knowing their return home is inevitable and they're doing anything they can to keep that reality away.
So, in the end, it feels less like the player's coming to terms with what they have to do and more like them knowing it's an inevitability. The player's final dive into the red water is less so them standing up to what they've been running away from for so long and more so as if they've been coerced to it by the reality of life. Running away forever is simply not feasible, not unless you give up altogether. Some day, somehow, you'll have to stand up to what you've been running from, and in this case that end came by force.
I Wanna Be Far From Home is a wish, one that's made knowing how futile it is, a concept I'm far too familiar with. Every day I wake up, I wish so desperately that things could just magically change and be like old times or somehow improve, and that day never comes. I wish I could just leave all this behind and live a new life, and yet I know that I could never do it. I wish, in short, I could be anywhere but here, a wish I've had time and time again, and yet I know that it could never become true. Admittedly, I don't think my life would be better if it did come true, but it pains me now to know I just can't run away, no matter how much I want to. Yet, in all this wishing and hoping, all this dreaming of running away from here, I realize now that I've been running away all this time.
And so I come home.
I Wanna Be Far From Home is a game of escapism, or perhaps even a retelling of sorts, I wouldn't know as I'm not the maker. Either way, Far From Home expresses this desire to run and tells a story of running away. The game opens rather oddly with the player in a body of water while an unreachable cliff-side hangs over them, not so much ominously but with no other alternative. From there, you'll soon find that you reside within something of a hub world made up of extremely dense landmasses dotted around in a minimalist fashion. When it comes to the actual design of a given section, there is an unbelievable amount of detail, but thanks to how much room is given, you'll find that this hub world feels serene and pleasant.
There are four different stages that become longer as you go on, the first stage being a single jump while the last stage will probably take a blind player fit for its difficulty anywhere between twenty to forty minutes, depending on the person and their respective skills. In any case, the sense of progression from stage to stage lies not just in the sheer size of each of them, but also in terms of how space is used. The first stage is extremely claustrophobic with a rather tight jump. Aside from that, most all of the screen is dominated by a stuttering black mass. While it is traditionally pretty, there is a sense of negativity associated with the black mass in its totality, not to mention the obvious fact that it kills you upon touching it.
The second stage, however, carves out more room for itself in the black mass, though it is still a rather short stage. Here, you'll find the game beginning to play around with a bit of pathing, the final jump utilizing a vine you use early on in the stage. There's also some tight usage of water, tight in a way that I originally found annoying from a gameplay perspective but grew to enjoy, as well as platforming explicitly around blocks of black. In this way, you cannot simply avoid the reality of this blackness, instead you are forced to come to grips with it and approach it safely in order to beat the stage.
Stage three is where things really begin to open up for the game. Clever pathing can be found all over, with many moments of you returning to a previous section of the stage under a new light, passing through it to get further in the stage. In this way, plasma produces a sort of knot of gameplay in a way reminiscent of the qoqoqo series, though more striking visually thanks to the usage of large screens, and of course it feels different thanks to plasma's extremely unique style of gameplay. There's still platform around bits of the black mass, however you're forced to at times blindly dive into them in order to progress through the stage. The final save ends with a very long fall that takes you through a previous part of the stage in beautiful fashion which then ends simply with you jumping into a warp surrounded by the black mass (I apologize for the repeated usage of the phrase, but it comes up a lot!) In fact, this is the only stage in which you could actually die trying to go for the warp, marking stage three as particularly notable in its usage of this black mass.
The final stage is, as described before, very long. This is, depending on who you ask, to its benefit or a flaw of the game. For my part, I think this length fits perfectly with the theme of the game and also serves the gameplay very well as the length is due to its sheer size. Here, the pathing's genius is not so much in how it retreads old paths but instead in how tightly designed the stage is. There are so many moments where this grand strand comes so close to altogether intertwining with another, and yet there is only one time in which you find yourself touching old ground at any point; otherwise, there are no intersections of any sort, something which stands out to me as a unique form of pathing that I personally love.
Gameplay wise, this stage is also the most difficult by far, utilizing a lot of rather tight jumps and tough maneuvers. With that said, at no point is the black mass involved in any of this, and in that way it begins to feel like this black mass merely existed and that the platforming itself was indeed carved into it, placed there by some unknown being. Finally, the exit warp is hidden away far at the top, surrounded by pillars of water and plus signs. This final warp out feels the most safe of the bunch, both due to the pleasant design of its surroundings and the fact that death at this point is essentially impossible. In stage one, you could plausibly die thanks to, well, idiocy. Stage two there's no chance of death, but the path to the warp is so tight and uncomfortable that it's left feeling unsafe in that way, and of course stage three is the one most plausible to die to.
Upon clearing the final stage, you find yourself in a position of being able to jump all the way back down to the cliffside, which now hangs below rather than above, and leaving the hub to go to the end. You find yourself in an area that feels less welcoming than the hub world of the previous, a small tower at the top of which lies a grand chasm filled with red water, water which you are forced to dive into. Any attempt to jump out forces you further down, and as you go down the screen fades to black, leaving us with this exchange:
"I am sorry I took so long."
"Welcome home."
What I find especially harrowing about this game is that this ending is not in itself a particularly positive one in tone. The entire game sees the player essentially just biding time until they come home, with each stage's increasing length feeling like its own form of running away. In this way, it feels like the black mass is life itself whereas that which makes up the stages themselves is a manifestation of the player character. As you traverse each stage, this black mass becomes more and more of a looming presence until it peaks in stage three, a peak you'd traditionally expect at stage four. If this game were about facing your fears or troubles and not running away, it'd only be natural that the final confrontation, as it were, would be a culmination of a previously-established pattern. With each stage, more and more of the black mass becomes relevant to the platforming, and yet that isn't so with Far From Home. Instead, the final stage is a self-made tribulation, as if it's the player knowing their return home is inevitable and they're doing anything they can to keep that reality away.
So, in the end, it feels less like the player's coming to terms with what they have to do and more like them knowing it's an inevitability. The player's final dive into the red water is less so them standing up to what they've been running away from for so long and more so as if they've been coerced to it by the reality of life. Running away forever is simply not feasible, not unless you give up altogether. Some day, somehow, you'll have to stand up to what you've been running from, and in this case that end came by force.
I Wanna Be Far From Home is a wish, one that's made knowing how futile it is, a concept I'm far too familiar with. Every day I wake up, I wish so desperately that things could just magically change and be like old times or somehow improve, and that day never comes. I wish I could just leave all this behind and live a new life, and yet I know that I could never do it. I wish, in short, I could be anywhere but here, a wish I've had time and time again, and yet I know that it could never become true. Admittedly, I don't think my life would be better if it did come true, but it pains me now to know I just can't run away, no matter how much I want to. Yet, in all this wishing and hoping, all this dreaming of running away from here, I realize now that I've been running away all this time.
And so I come home.
Tagged as: Needle
[4] Likes
Rating: 9.5 95
Difficulty: 70 70
May 14, 2022
Gaborro
Plasma's level of pathing is amazing and I love how this game shows a buildup of his mastery of that type of level design. I found one save in the final stage to be a little bit annoying, but everything else was a blast to play through.
[2] Likes
Rating: 8.5 85
Difficulty: 70 70
Nov 2, 2022
Religion
Charming atmosphere as well as unique level design.
[1] Like
Rating: 8.8 88
Difficulty: 70 70
Nov 26, 2023