kurath
Synopsis: This is an amazingly well-produced, intricately designed marathon game that is worth the time of any experienced fangame player and has few flaws (some of which won't even matter to many). It is not recommended for new players.
The Long:
Find a Cure is the third marathon game and continues the trend of phenomenal production value composing of areas inspired from other retro and contemporary classics. It has a minor, over-arching tie to bring it all together and contains a wide mix of hand-drawn art and well incorporated game assets to tie together the core of those games with core fangame concepts.
The stages are, for the most part, excellent and in a vacuum are all near as good as can be expected in a fangame concept. The whole, however, is much less than the sum of its parts. If you don't care about the flow of the game, feel free to ignore this, but the macro design of the game had many flaws for me that made the game feel far less than it could be. The middle of the game feels very homogenous and you will spend something like 2/3 to 3/4 of your entire playtime of the game without fighting a single boss. For an adventure game, this is bad. And I don't feel its quite that simple, specifically the following stages (which, again, are individually good) Reveal SpoilerFrom the Cuphead area onward, you have the two longest sections of the game as well as two additional stages with no bosses. Not only is there no bosses but these areas have many similarities. End is Nigh is a straight left to right area, pure platforming area. It has an autoscroller pure platforming 'boss'. This follows with runner, a left-to-right autoscroller area, pure platforming area with an autoscroller pure platforming 'boss'. This follows with Celeste, built around an alternate control style (like runner) and again, another pure platforming boss. All three of these areas don't really have interactive gimmicks, just alternate control schemes/timing based killers. Along with that - no traps, no puzzles, just a lot of similarity. This leads into the metroid area, a monstrous platforming area (though it atleast has enemies) with many similar concepts. This further ruined the gameflow because you spend literally half your playtime in a single area.
Along with that, I found the metroid area quite unpleasant. While there's undoubtedly a personal disfavor towards long saves, most enemies also felt tedious and were best handled by slowrolling them from range (which all aspects of the game motivated the player to do) and many platforming sections where huge amounts of open filler space with one odd choke jump. Still, the detail in the design and production was very impressive.
The other problems I had with it are purely subjective and do not factor into the rating and will be spoilered out because otherwise its just a wall of text that most people don't care about. I'd urge the developers to consider it though, should they participate next year at the least. Of course, for anyone, feel free to not care.
Reveal SpoilerThis game, for me, was an incredible letdown. Not as a game, it was still a great game but as a marathon game. It has a unique place and presence as the marathon game because it garners a lot of attention and hype but more importantly because there are many people who do not regularly watch fangames but do tune in for parts of the marathon, including this. I have a couple such friends and they were much less impressed by this game because it felt like it had a lot less personality for the most part. The production is great, for a fangame, but for outsiders - they don't care.
There's a lot less accessible humor in this game and a lot more fangame references that frankly suck for outsiders. I had a friend whose first fangame was marathon because he loved the variety - the silly traps, the zany golf stage was among his favorites, the wild miku and the wacky pokemon stuff. Very few stages in this game embodied this. He played a few more fangames but got caught up in RL stuff and lost interest. Asked me again earlier this summer for some recommendations and watched part of the marathon. This game did not interest him - fortunately he had the chance to see a Reach the Moon playthrough which did.
I thought about it too, with the recent set of streamers out of the community playing Run the Marathon - would they want to play find the cure? I highly doubt it and their viewers probably wouldn't be as interested either. Its extremely beginner unfriendly in some places with numerous stages with long saves longer than anything in previous games. Not to mention the metroid area. Please, for the love of god, never even consider putting anything remotely close to that into a marathon game in the future. Not just because I wasn't a fan of it, but that kind of design is excessively punishing to a new player. Long saves require consistency which new players generally will not have, having hitpoints does not mitigate this when they hit a jump that will cost them many tries just to figure out and lose tons of progress or the potential for chain hits due to the hit knockback/teleportation. The single jumps after long sections such as before switches (the red switch comes to mind, or the room with nothing but a 4-spike jump with one at the top among other instances) are easy enough for an experienced player but will ruin a new player experience.
On top of that, again, the ruined variety. My friend took some 20 hours to beat Marathon. That's a long time, extrapolating that over (even assuming the games were the same length, when they're not), that's 15 hours of play time without a boss, without a humorous trap, without a puzzle (outside of general exploration) to break it up.
Every one of the people involved in this game is a talented maker and because of that perhaps my expectations were unfairly high but again, I'd urge anyone doing the marathon game next year to consider that this is a powerful project for the community we all care about and think about what opportunities it offers. I understand that there is no obligation to make the game meet those expectations and it was never expressly intended that the marathon game should to some degree be the face of the community but it does have that power. Run the Marathon and to a lesser degree Warp the Worlds truly had that power and I'd love to see that again.
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12]
Likes
Rating: 8.5
Difficulty: 58
Aug 13, 2018
Quof
The production values are insane, the variety is impressive, and as Den said, the fact each stage has a unique *mechanic*, not just a unique gimmick, is extremely impressive. However, I found that the level design was overall lacking, with many stages being more frustrating than fun. Reveal SpoilerThe Mario stage, for instance, is the first in the game but also the worst. The sliding mechanic just isn't fun and most deaths are from jumping just a little too late, which is annoying. The mechanics such as the tail are also introduced and then abandoned almost immediately, making one question why they even existed at all. On the other hand, the The End is Nigh stage was extremely fun and pushed its unique mechanic to the limit, reaching a level of quality that honestly makes me think it surpassed the original game. Overall, I would say Find the Cure is a mixed bag of quality that starts off kinda bad but ends overall good. There's more good than bad in this game for sure, but that just makes the bad stuff stick out worse. If I were rating this game purely as a fangame, I would give it a 10/10 because it is that good compared to most fangames, but rating it as an actual game, the unbalanced quality levels and the lack of fun I had in several stages leads me to knocking off a few points.
Just to look at the individual stages:
Reveal Spoiler
Mario - Basically what I said in the above paragraph, plus the Peach boss being bad as well. The first 50% of her health bar is a very easy to dodge move that just isn't very enjoyable and really kills the pacing of the boss. The big hill screen could be removed entirely and I wouldn't miss it, needing to reclimb the hills on each death is just boring, and it's made worse by the instagib traps. I would suggest that more time be spent pushing a mechanic to its limit and making levels fun to play with it. I think the tail had a lot of potential that just wasn't capitalized on. Removing the sliding mechanic (nice SMB3 reference it may be) and just focusing on the tail would have led to a better stage, I think.
Megaman X - Overall a solid if bland stage. I felt like it ended really soon and didn't really have any impressive moments where the dash was used really well. A few harder, extra screens might have gone a long way. Armadillo is too RNG heavy, I think, and I won just by getting lucky in the first phase and then beating the second phase first try. I don't know if needing to dash to the boss platform afterwards is great or mean, but it's definitely interesting.
Cuphead - This stage feels like Cuphead, which is the highest praise I can give. The feel of the original game was recreated perfectly and the bosses were very charming without being too hard. My personal opinion is that the final boss should have had a checkpoint and then the final phase be longer, just because I don't like repeating phase 1 over and over, but that's just personal taste. Overall a really good stage.
The End is Nigh - Honestly, in my opinion, the best part of the game. The mechanic is simple and pushed very far with tons of gimmicks along the way. The level design on display here is just great, and there's a TON of screens as well. Like I mentioned, I feel that this might have surpassed the original game, even. I basically have no complaints for it. Even the aesthetics are great, the visual design of the original's cartridge levels is recreated solidly. This stage is great, fun from beginning to end.
Runner 2 - Eh... I don't know. I'm not a fan of autorun games and this is no exception. It feels very uninspired and nothing really interesting or unique happens. It's just... an autorun game. Not very good. It's also possible to hold the kick button the entire time and trivialize the entire stage, since you kick constantly without ever letting your foot down. You can ignore every enemy in the stage, basically. The final section is a very nice reference with a good song, but I think the design of it was really bunged up. The teleporting screen transitions being able to kill you is just bad, plain and simple. It made me scared the whole time I was playing, waiting to be in the wrong place somehow and just die. To make matters worse I encountered a bug where if you're kicking on a certain screen transition, you die instantly no matter what. Since the first transition in the game kills you if you don't jump high enough, I spent 5-10 minutes looking for an alternate way to do the jump, but it turns out it's just an instagib if you're kicking ( https://youtu.be/vbY0LZ3Tw8M ). I guess you can call this karma for holding the kick button, but it's still not a very pleasant bug. (I don't blame the developers, it's easy to miss bugs like this. I'm just including this to partially note why I ended up not enjoying the finale). I'm not a fan of teleporting transitions at all, really, and I felt like the only thing I could do was throw bodies at the finale until eventually I memorized exactly what to do after teleporting. Not very fun. Thankfully it was easy enough that it didn't take too long, but still, overall this stage was not very fun or interesting.
Celeste - Mmmmmmm. Delicious. Fantastic. Good. Basically all of my praise for TIEN remains true here, though perhaps not the bit about surpassing the original. Entertaining level design. Great aesthetics. Everything about this stage is good. Well, that is, except the controls. I think the controls stumble a little. Having played the original Celeste, I could overlook the lack of a climb feature, but the way jumping off the wall ALWAYS sends you flying horizontally as far as possible just isn't comfortable. I imagine this was a concession made to avoid vertical climbing (since the original game used stamina, which this game doesn't have) but nonetheless it's not very good. That said, I don't want to dwell on the negative because this stage really is fantastic. It honestly felt at times like I was playing an expansion pack to the original Celeste. Ironically, this posed some problems because I constantly forgot that I had a double jump. I think it might actually have been better for the developer to remove double jump to preserve the Celeste feel, but I appreciate the level design that could only be made thanks to the double jump. Either way, a great stage overall and a definite highlight. The little story with Oshiro is the cherry on top.
Metroid - Honestly, a mixed bag. I think the scope and ambition is very impressive, and I don't blame anyone for praising the stage on that alone. In my opinion, though, the execution could have been done a lot better. There's a lot of "dead time" spent walking around flat, featureless ground, especially since many of the save points require you to walk an entire room's length just to get out of it, and into a room that might have even more flat nothingness. Although the world design is nonlinear in nature, I appreciated how sometimes there would be a save right before a corridor that existed solely for an upgrade, allowing for basically a gauntlet of challenges before the upgrade (or door unlocker), but in many cases the gauntlet was just very unpleasant. What sticks out in my mind is the path to the red door unlocker, where you need the speedbooster. Everything about those rooms were just not good and I spent most of my time falling and needing to retry. Frequently while playing this stage I would groan unhappily on death, dreading replaying the stuff I had just done. I think that's really the core of this stage's problem: the overall interlocking world map is nice, but the individual screens tend to range from trivial to annoying. I imagine great care was taken to not make the platforming difficult, as that isn't the point of the stage, but the result is limp platforming that you only really think about when it's frustrating enough to kill you and make you redo several screens. I think some more focus on making the platforming actually good on it's own in this stage would have gone a long way. All that said, I don't hate this stage. The scope is indeed impressive, and the nonlinearity is as engaging as it is in any metroidvania. Two things really come out to save this stage: The health system and the map. Both are staples of metroidvanias, but both are things the developers didn't have to include but did. The map allows for you to see where you haven't been at a glance, preventing one from ever truly getting stuck. The health is great for reasons I don't even need to explain, it goes a long way in making exploration less annoying. The optional health tanks are a sweet bonus too. Having a ton of HP for the boss thanks to thorough exploration is just something I appreciate. (The boss is good too, by the way. I'm not a fan of avoidance sections mid-boss but they weren't bad here). The "are you sure" confirmation after pressing reset is really solid and saved my ass more times than I can count. Watching the vod of the original race, it seems this was not originally a thing. I'm really glad Wolfi suggested it and that the developers then introduced it. I think responding to criticism and advice like that, actively implementing suggestions and such, is basically the best possible thing for a developer to do. In this case, it definitely made the stage significantly better. But back to complaining more. I think the door unlocking system was a big mistake. The original Metroid locks doors behind weapon upgrades for a reason. I was really disappointed each time I found a door unlocker. I think slightly buffed damage + aesthetic change to the spazer bullet(s) would have been so much more enjoyable than just... unlocking doors. But anyway. Overall I think the Metroid stage is good on a broad level but kind of bad on a room-by-room level. I'm not sure if I liked or disliked this stage afterwards, but when I think back on it, I mostly remembering getting frustrated at some bits (like when I encountered the super fast floaty enemy for the first time and he instakilled me in my surprise, forcing me to redo an actually challenging section I had been relieved to complete) or just walking around bored on one of the many flat sections, which isn't a very positive thing. So I would say that the Metroid stage's scope is so broad it manages to be both good and bad at the same time.
The final boss is there.
Wow, I wrote a lot more than I expected. tl;dr half the stages are kinda bad, half of them are great, and one of them is both at the same time. Thanks for reading. I tried being constructive in my criticism, I hope I didn't come off as too rude. Overall I'm glad I played this game and even the bad bits had good in them. Thank you to everyone who worked on this game.
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[
10]
Likes
Rating: 7.8
Difficulty: 50
Aug 7, 2018
Wahfuu
So, it's hard to find things about this game that haven't been said already, but i'll try to put my own take on this.
The TLDR: This is an extraordinarily well produced fangame with a variety of content thats worth it for pretty much anyone to try. I think it's individual parts are much better than the sum of its whole, and there's some huge pacing problems in the second half, but I think for the most part it succeeds at being a loveletter to videogames both old and new. If you want a spoiler-less review, I advise reading Kuraths. Personally I find it hard to really talk about this game without going into the stages themselves, so that's what i'm gonna do. It's my definition of a mixed bag.
So, spoilers ahoy.
Reveal Spoiler
Mario: Okay, can we all just admit that I Wanna mario stages are tired and just kind of trite at this point? It feels just sort of mandatory, like there's some sort of unseen force that just kind of morphs it into being when nobody is looking. This isn't all that bad, mind, and I thought the tricks with mario gimmicks stuff at the beginning was cute, but the sliding isn't really used all that well, and the tail isn't used nearly enough. So it kind of... peeters out without doing much. Not bad but, just kind of Another I Wanna Mario Level.
Boss: I really like the presentation of it, but I feel like if I had died more on it the beginning would have gotten super boring really fast. A bit fun at the end, though.
Megaman: Honestly this... doesn't feel like megaman at all, honestly. It's not a bad stage, but it's a bit bland. The dash is used in kind of bizarre ways and not really satisfying, honestly. I could have used a couple more screens I think.
Boss: I liked it. It's a little bullshitty at times though. Also, I died forgetting about the dash jump trying to get the ingredient at the end. Whoever made that decision, I hate you.
Cuphead: Honestly, one of the best stages in the game for sure. It unfortunately had to feature some of the worst parts of cuphead (the run and gun stages), but honestly it was kind of fun here! I wouldn't have even minded seeing some more parrying platforming. There's not a lot of clutter, it's terse and feels like cuphead. Good stuff.
Boss(s): The best bosses in the game in a walk, and honestly some of the best i've done in adventure games. Charming references to old videogames with kermit, tag, the devas, destination. The whole shebang. And MILES better than anything cuphead ever produced. It's a lot more fair and visible whats going on and what attack is being done. The new art is adorable aswell. Loved everything about it.
The End Is Nigh: The ACTUAL best stage in the game. Just like Cuphead, this game is just straight up better than what it's referencing. You don't really see how versatile and interesting a mechanic like ledge grabbing is without something like double jump. It adds a lot of depth to the platforming. There is a TON of screens, and I think Fastfall wasn't really used enough (and some of the poison cloud rooms are a bit too precise for my liking, it's like sussing out specific frame heights to jump at so you fall in time) but nothing too bad. Honestly felt like I could have played a full game like this.
Boss: This isn't bad but I think it kicks off a trend that Kurath mentioned: Too many platforming only bosses in a row. It's also a bit weird how water and fastfall just aren't referenced at all, and instead you just do a ledge grab full jump and that's it for the end. A bit of an anticlimax. Also the cycle in the stage 2 reference is a bit cluttered. Not bad but a bit forgetable, especially as part of a trifecta of platforming bosses.
Runner: I expected to dislike this a lot more than I did, truthfully. I'm not into autorunners, personally. I do REALLY think doublejump should have been introduced immediately and be built off it, because the other mechanics just aren't as involving as the extra keypress. The switch baiting is also kind of the bit of trial and error that i'm not a big fan of, but the iteration times are pretty fast and none of the stages are too long so it's not a huge deal. Liked it more than I thought I would.
Boss: A cute reference to Classic, for sure, but eugh. The teleporting being able to kill you just feels degenerate and it lasts WAY too long, and the beginning is dreary. Wasn't a big fan of this one.
Celeste: I am, unfortunately, one of the last people on the planet to play Celeste, (outside of up to 2A and 2B) so I can't quite comment on comparisons to the original much. It does feel like it was made with a lot of love for the original, though. I wasn't a huge fan of how walljumping just kind of sent you rocketing out as far as possible all the time, and I had some stumbles with dashing diagonally, but i'm not sure if that's the controls or me being dumb. None the less, I enjoyed my time here! A variety of platforming using simple but clever mechanics. I should really play this game, huh?
Boss: Probably my favorite out of the platforming boss trio, but it was getting a bit weary at this point. But nothing too bad. Same stuff above still applies.
Metroid: *Deep Breath*
Holy jesus christ. This is by far one of the worst metroid, metroidvanias, any sort of platforming combat mix I have ever played. In fangame or otherwise. It's apalling. I can't believe people tested this and thought it was okay. I can't even wrap my head around it.
Let's get one thing straight: The scale and production of this area is genuinely impressive. It's worth being praised for that, and I understand. And the interwoven-ness of the map, especially once you get the X-Ray scanner and see all the secret walls, is kind of cool. But that's all the praise I will ever give this, because everything else about this area is an absolute abomination.
For starters: Whose idea was it to just have progress unlock in the most unexciting, non meaningful way ever? By pushing a switch and just being able to shoot different colored doors? Not unlocked by bombs, missiles, or any other sort of powerup, but just by hitting a switch? What? Progression in this is so utterly unsatisying because you get absolutely no feeling of power in yourself. It's all just some sort of key or equipment shaped key, like the lava suit or speed booster.
Second: Because for some reason space jump was deemed to be too fun for this area, or any other movement ability until the very end, you get to walk kids slow ass walk speed across vast spaces of ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING except the generic, bad enemies untill you beg for universe entropy. Let's be clear: Super metroid maps are a lot more claustrophobic and shorter screen to screen. Not that metroid doesn't have rooms of nothing, but they don't last eternities like they do in this.
This area doesn't take a long time because there's a lot of stuff to do, but because the map is so unforgivably bloated and nothing is given to the player to help them move around it. AT LEAST half the dead space of this level could be removed or condensed and absolutely nothing would be lost. And the way forward would be a lot more intuitive aswell.
This area is an apocalypse. There is not a modicrum of game design in it. It single handedly lowered my score of this game from 7.5-8 to this.
Final Boss: The first one, the ribbon, is fun, if a bit forgetable. The second has some cool presentation and a very unique way of damaging it. It kind of reminds me of something Wonderful would do. I think the visuals do a bit more harm than good, since the attacks, platforms and walls are all pretty much the same black color, but that's kind of hard to fix considering the aesthetic it wants to go for. I think one more hit could be shaved off aswell, the first 3 are a bit too slow, but I understand health phase symmetry.
So, at the end of the day, this is a game that has a lot of good, and some bad, and one case of extremely long very bad. But I think everyones bound to like something, or alot of somethings in it. So, it's worth a play from everyone I think.
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[
9]
Likes
Rating: 6.5
Difficulty: 55
Mar 9, 2019
jokcho
I already cleared this game, but here is still serious complaint for some reviewers: PLEASE, USE THE FUCKING SPOILER TAG.
Thanks.
This game is incredibly fun, I personally enjoyed this one even more than two previous marathon fangames
[
7]
Likes
Rating: 9.6
Difficulty: 55
Aug 6, 2018
ChronoGear
Incredible game. It's impressive how these marathon games keep surprising me every year. I Wanna Find A Cure is another fangame that's shocking that it's free to play. I find it more enjoyable than a lot of stuff on Steam right now. Each world is unique and very well done and fun to play. There's a ton of variety in the game that will provide hours worth of content. It's games like these that keep me interested and playing fangames.
[
6]
Likes
Rating: 9.5
Difficulty: 60
Aug 7, 2018
Delicious Fruit
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