Delicious Fruit
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by GaspacoZanis
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by GaspacoZanis
10 Reviews:
phgQED
A hyper-traditional butterfly needle game which heavily explores the tropes of the genre without contributing much new of its own. For those of you new to butterfly needle likes (as I am/was), here are some of the tenets. Check as many as possible if you can.
- Screen layout is as follows: 1 single jump screen, 2 full size screens but with heavy usage of empty space, 3 single jump screens, clear
- 'inverted shurikens' (where the points of each spike touch the base of the next)
- shiny space-themed background
- default-ish tileset with a lean towards blue
- player must fall into each level from the top left
- 8px stacked platform chain that boosts you instantly, usually through some fruit
- intense vine usage, especially vines on kill blocks
- a line or more of kill blocks integrated into the level/jumps
- heavy fruit usage
- jumps lean towards invert flavors for single jumps and more traditional usage for larger screens
- jumps tend to push the limits of technical possibility and/or require specific align usage/knowledge
- jumps tend to squeeze the maximum out of all possible elements (eg. if you see a vine you will almost certainly have to save your jump, if you see a platform you will almost certainly have to leave with your double jump intact, etc.)
The more of these your game has, the closer it is to being a 'needle butterfly like', whatever that ultimately means.
There are certain elements which are harder to pin down, like aesthetic choices and the exactitude of jumps which is difficult to describe. One of those is the 'maximum out of all possible elements', which ties into jump intuition: there is a way of looking at a jump in a butterfly game in which you will almost instantly realize what the creator intends you to do, and exactly how painful it intends to be. These can be simple things like the proximity of a platform to a spike in a boost segment, or how tight the vine usage has to be in terms of directional inputs. In any case, there is a level of communication inherent to this genre—which, conversely, is almost entirely abandoned for the single jump screens, in a way that feels mostly rewarding. Usually because of the nature of these single jumps you'll be expected to cancel somewhere, but there might be more intricate movements or patterns of movement required, and the sensation of breaking up a hard grind screen or save with a single focused grind is really refreshing, and one of my favorite things about the genre and its tropes.
As for this game in particular, there is not much being done here that you won't see in the list, and even most of the more interesting jumps are based on the inverted shurikens interacting. In particular, some of the jump utilization and orchestration feels 'rote'... there's a segment where you're meant to scale a series of vines while holding your double jump, and the jump at the very top which requires your double jump is just a 3/4 diamond. Nothing fancy, no angles or learning or precision going on besides your normal 3f and stutter or 2f hold right or whatever it is you normally do for that type of jump. So the player can, yes, read instantly that they are required to save their double jump until the top of the climb, but they're not then doing anything interesting with it once they get there: it feels like just filling out the boxes to a math equation, and while potentially satisfying conceptually, was not that rewarding to execute.
The music is a Touhou song from (I think?) Imperishable Night, which does a decent job of evoking feelings of spacey mysticism. This game seems like a sort of decent introduction to butterfly concepts for someone who's never encountered the genre, but most of those concepts are executed so straightforwardly, it seems like the game might only be fascinating from the perspective of digesting its tropes and then moving on.
Overall not sure if I had fun or would recommend, but it definitely is a very butterfly-ish butterfly game.
Time: ~13min
Deaths: 1079
- Screen layout is as follows: 1 single jump screen, 2 full size screens but with heavy usage of empty space, 3 single jump screens, clear
- 'inverted shurikens' (where the points of each spike touch the base of the next)
- shiny space-themed background
- default-ish tileset with a lean towards blue
- player must fall into each level from the top left
- 8px stacked platform chain that boosts you instantly, usually through some fruit
- intense vine usage, especially vines on kill blocks
- a line or more of kill blocks integrated into the level/jumps
- heavy fruit usage
- jumps lean towards invert flavors for single jumps and more traditional usage for larger screens
- jumps tend to push the limits of technical possibility and/or require specific align usage/knowledge
- jumps tend to squeeze the maximum out of all possible elements (eg. if you see a vine you will almost certainly have to save your jump, if you see a platform you will almost certainly have to leave with your double jump intact, etc.)
The more of these your game has, the closer it is to being a 'needle butterfly like', whatever that ultimately means.
There are certain elements which are harder to pin down, like aesthetic choices and the exactitude of jumps which is difficult to describe. One of those is the 'maximum out of all possible elements', which ties into jump intuition: there is a way of looking at a jump in a butterfly game in which you will almost instantly realize what the creator intends you to do, and exactly how painful it intends to be. These can be simple things like the proximity of a platform to a spike in a boost segment, or how tight the vine usage has to be in terms of directional inputs. In any case, there is a level of communication inherent to this genre—which, conversely, is almost entirely abandoned for the single jump screens, in a way that feels mostly rewarding. Usually because of the nature of these single jumps you'll be expected to cancel somewhere, but there might be more intricate movements or patterns of movement required, and the sensation of breaking up a hard grind screen or save with a single focused grind is really refreshing, and one of my favorite things about the genre and its tropes.
As for this game in particular, there is not much being done here that you won't see in the list, and even most of the more interesting jumps are based on the inverted shurikens interacting. In particular, some of the jump utilization and orchestration feels 'rote'... there's a segment where you're meant to scale a series of vines while holding your double jump, and the jump at the very top which requires your double jump is just a 3/4 diamond. Nothing fancy, no angles or learning or precision going on besides your normal 3f and stutter or 2f hold right or whatever it is you normally do for that type of jump. So the player can, yes, read instantly that they are required to save their double jump until the top of the climb, but they're not then doing anything interesting with it once they get there: it feels like just filling out the boxes to a math equation, and while potentially satisfying conceptually, was not that rewarding to execute.
The music is a Touhou song from (I think?) Imperishable Night, which does a decent job of evoking feelings of spacey mysticism. This game seems like a sort of decent introduction to butterfly concepts for someone who's never encountered the genre, but most of those concepts are executed so straightforwardly, it seems like the game might only be fascinating from the perspective of digesting its tropes and then moving on.
Overall not sure if I had fun or would recommend, but it definitely is a very butterfly-ish butterfly game.
Time: ~13min
Deaths: 1079
Tagged as: Needle
NeedleButterfly-like
[0] Likes
Rating: 5.0 50
Difficulty: 55 55
Jul 17, 2022