Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
-
by Lake
-
by Lake
Creator's Comments:
Chatran [Creator]
This is the Blind Needle game for FASF2022, a collab between me and 3 brilliant minds consisting of fairly difficult, puzzly gimmick needle. Most of the difficulty will typically come in the form of putting your thinking cap on, but once you've gotten the solution everything can be made consistent.
Would recommend that if you have a unique control layout to make sure to rebind an appropriate up and down key; not necessarily required but will probably be a bit more convenient later on.
Here's a link to a playlist for the game's BGM: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU7vORx6NJ9c3aA9WxSMb9LORujDnCvJB
I have made the game open-source: https://mega.nz/file/TFplEDJa#MOz2QXdZ4mJn53c02cTX1WMuVpIyHQalEPKVWnHbu60
Enjoy!
[3] Likes
Would recommend that if you have a unique control layout to make sure to rebind an appropriate up and down key; not necessarily required but will probably be a bit more convenient later on.
Here's a link to a playlist for the game's BGM: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU7vORx6NJ9c3aA9WxSMb9LORujDnCvJB
I have made the game open-source: https://mega.nz/file/TFplEDJa#MOz2QXdZ4mJn53c02cTX1WMuVpIyHQalEPKVWnHbu60
Enjoy!
Rating: N/A
Difficulty: N/A
Aug 22, 2022
13 Reviews:
BloggerOP
Rating includes finding easter eggs which does not affect the difficulty and rating.
[0] Likes
Rating: 8.8 88
Difficulty: 73 73
Nov 17, 2024
Cthaere
As a disclaimer, this review is going to be split into 2 parts that are only very loosely related - one talking about the game itself, and another about certain aspects of the gamemaking meta that rose in my mind while playing this. Please do not conflate the two parts, and more specifically please avoid associating my thoughts about the meta part with my overall thoughts about the game, since I do not wish to review the game in light of what it COULD be as opposed to what it IS. The two perspectives are kept fully separate, even when I use this game in specific as an example as part of the gamemaking section.
Part 1: Strathgaze
Strathgaze is a gimmick needle collab between Chatran, Skull, Marc and Stonk. The game boasts a wide array of mostly common, simple gimmicks that manage to facilitate a wider range of movements than would be possible without gimmicks within the relatively minimalistic needle aesthetic the game (mostly) conforms to. The game is of moderate length and divided into several stages in a way that is overall quite confusing; Personally, I find the game to have 3 main stages being colored spike introduction, jump refresher stage, and cycle speed stage, as well as a scattering of transition screens. The game is very desaturated and the bgm is mostly "cold" feeling idm, resulting in a clean (if somewhat muted) atmosphere despite the "noise" on some of the background.
Regarding the needle itself, while there is a wide variety of movements that are generally good, there are also quite a few places in which feel as though they require polish. Jump contouring and general precision are quite inconsistent, and can result in jumps that should feel smooth feeling very awkward to pull off. These rarely feel like they add to the game either. The game tries giving you information ahead of time, to allow you to understand the consequence of shooting a colored spike or touching a trigger. While it is mostly successful in this regard, and figuring out the strats is a major part of the fun, there are a few places where this falters; Either because a trigger that should be visible is not such, or because of certain mechanic combinations working in a weird manner. These usually are fine, given that the most logical thing to do while trying to search for the solution is usually the right solution, and given that this was for a blind needle race, but it still felt quite annoying given that you need to clear a good chunk of the save to have an attempt at testing your theories. Most of these that I can recall had extremely awkward execution too, so either I figured them out wrong (which I hope but strongly doubt is the case), or the payoff for solving the puzzle is a massive disappointment. There were several saves that felt like an undue difficulty spike that added a good bit of frustration, and a few that I found downright unfun. To reiterate from the start, I do think the needle is good overall, the core movements are satisfying and on par with what you'd expect from the makers, the variety is refreshing and showcases the makers well, and there are a few great moments in this that do shine through, but as a whole I felt a bit too frustrated to have had as great a time with this game as many others seem to.
Overall, I would likely recommend this game for people who have similar skill, more patience, and lower expectations than I did when I went into it.
Part 2: Collabs
Strathgaze is a light gimmick needle collab between Chatran, Skull, Marc and Stonk. All 4 are renowned for their needle, and interestingly they are renowned for different facets of it: Chatran has always had a very unique and creative style; Skull has been producing consistently good needle for years, and has adapted very well to the smooth needle meta; Marc's games have some of the highest emotional resonance in needle; Stonk's IF series and Hydrohomies stage show a great sense for gameplay and prove that despite not being as prominent of a name, he is not to be underestimated and certainly earns his place among the others here.
When you play the game, it becomes very clear that each maker made their own selection of saves, scattered all throughout the stages. It is quite apparent the 2nd stage has strong Marc and Chatran influences, while the first and third fall much more in line with what you'd expect from Skull and Stonk. In this, you rarely see each maker at their best, and the game does not feel as though it becomes better than the sum of its parts. Marc's emotional resonance, Chatran's general creativity, the movement smoothness of Skull are fairly rare; Stonk's trigger needle mastery is the only thing fully on display here, but it is still clear that it is not due to Stonk deciding to do the trigger design for the project as much as it is that the other makers also make damn good trigger needle.
And with that, we can go to talk about collabs as a whole. There are quite a lot of ways to go about collabs, but two are generally considered both more standard: In the first, all makers make discrete chunks of content for the game, which are then presented together (either in form of a stage select, or in case of certain needle collabs by just putting the screens one after the other), as is almost always the case with the public megacollabs such as GBC, Back to Basic, and JTool Jamplex. In the second, the entire project is a team effort, where a typically small private circle has a unified vision and all parts are made to fit according to said vision, as in Double Turn Team, Wannafest, and RNG Dungeon. The first case tends to become more than the sum of its parts through variety, featuring many different takes on a simple core idea; The second tends to become more than the sum of its parts by having each maker playing to their strengths and having the full perspective of the team regarding aesthetic and thematic choices, general improvement suggestions, and even just simple brainstorming to come up with new ideas and content for the game. Both of these, then, are great formulas for a collab.
What happens if we swap the cases? Well, a massive public megacollab with a unified vision is frankly humanly impossible to achieve. After all, why spend 200 hours making an avoidance to a song someone else chose when you could work on the song YOU wanted to use? Why "waste" a banger set of visual on a game you do not have creative control over? Why would you lead such a project, knowing full well that you WILL be getting subpar pieces of content, that are going to be a drama nightmare to reject and a making nightmare to turn into an even barely acceptable piece of content? Well, if such a collab existed, it'd need to fully embrace the variety. It would need to be a collection of extremely high effort, polished shitposts - even the serious parts - so that everything fits by virtue of shitpostiness. An "anything goes" collab, to the point it threatens to turn back into the "discrete stages" formula.
Well, no point in vagueposting about farewell medley (yes, it may technically be private, but come on it's so big that it counts). It's the only project like this thus far, after all. The fact we only have 1 of those, and the dev hell it has been through, only speak to the monumental challenge in organizing these.
On the other hand, what happens when a small, private circle makes collabs where each person gets their own stage? The answer is that this happens quite commonly, and frankly almost always feels like a waste. The variety factor is generally not enough due to the reduced amount of people, while it generally does still hurt overall cohesiveness. It is much less easy to forgive the bad parts, given that the collab is private and the makers are usually quite experienced. You generally just wish the best parts were made into a full length game instead. While I'm not expecting every game to be a full effort project - indeed, even well respected makers have their JTool dumps, and it's perfectly ok for them to do so - it is still always saddening to see a project full of potential fail to reach it. While this game may fall into the "unified vision" category in technicality, in spirit it feels much more in line with the "discrete stages" model - I can roughly tell which people made which parts, and it does not really contain the kind of brilliancy you'd expect from seeing several strong makers combine the best of their strengths together.
Of course, there are countless ways to do a collab, and I would hesitate outright calling any of them "wrong", but I do wish to see more collabs that carefully consider the implications of their structure, and that strive to become more than the sum of their parts. As with medleys, it also feels like there's a whole lot of design space to have a unique spin on the structure and/or methodology that will cement the game as a great creative endeavor, and I wish to see these more as well.
[0] Likes
Part 1: Strathgaze
Strathgaze is a gimmick needle collab between Chatran, Skull, Marc and Stonk. The game boasts a wide array of mostly common, simple gimmicks that manage to facilitate a wider range of movements than would be possible without gimmicks within the relatively minimalistic needle aesthetic the game (mostly) conforms to. The game is of moderate length and divided into several stages in a way that is overall quite confusing; Personally, I find the game to have 3 main stages being colored spike introduction, jump refresher stage, and cycle speed stage, as well as a scattering of transition screens. The game is very desaturated and the bgm is mostly "cold" feeling idm, resulting in a clean (if somewhat muted) atmosphere despite the "noise" on some of the background.
Regarding the needle itself, while there is a wide variety of movements that are generally good, there are also quite a few places in which feel as though they require polish. Jump contouring and general precision are quite inconsistent, and can result in jumps that should feel smooth feeling very awkward to pull off. These rarely feel like they add to the game either. The game tries giving you information ahead of time, to allow you to understand the consequence of shooting a colored spike or touching a trigger. While it is mostly successful in this regard, and figuring out the strats is a major part of the fun, there are a few places where this falters; Either because a trigger that should be visible is not such, or because of certain mechanic combinations working in a weird manner. These usually are fine, given that the most logical thing to do while trying to search for the solution is usually the right solution, and given that this was for a blind needle race, but it still felt quite annoying given that you need to clear a good chunk of the save to have an attempt at testing your theories. Most of these that I can recall had extremely awkward execution too, so either I figured them out wrong (which I hope but strongly doubt is the case), or the payoff for solving the puzzle is a massive disappointment. There were several saves that felt like an undue difficulty spike that added a good bit of frustration, and a few that I found downright unfun. To reiterate from the start, I do think the needle is good overall, the core movements are satisfying and on par with what you'd expect from the makers, the variety is refreshing and showcases the makers well, and there are a few great moments in this that do shine through, but as a whole I felt a bit too frustrated to have had as great a time with this game as many others seem to.
Overall, I would likely recommend this game for people who have similar skill, more patience, and lower expectations than I did when I went into it.
Part 2: Collabs
Strathgaze is a light gimmick needle collab between Chatran, Skull, Marc and Stonk. All 4 are renowned for their needle, and interestingly they are renowned for different facets of it: Chatran has always had a very unique and creative style; Skull has been producing consistently good needle for years, and has adapted very well to the smooth needle meta; Marc's games have some of the highest emotional resonance in needle; Stonk's IF series and Hydrohomies stage show a great sense for gameplay and prove that despite not being as prominent of a name, he is not to be underestimated and certainly earns his place among the others here.
When you play the game, it becomes very clear that each maker made their own selection of saves, scattered all throughout the stages. It is quite apparent the 2nd stage has strong Marc and Chatran influences, while the first and third fall much more in line with what you'd expect from Skull and Stonk. In this, you rarely see each maker at their best, and the game does not feel as though it becomes better than the sum of its parts. Marc's emotional resonance, Chatran's general creativity, the movement smoothness of Skull are fairly rare; Stonk's trigger needle mastery is the only thing fully on display here, but it is still clear that it is not due to Stonk deciding to do the trigger design for the project as much as it is that the other makers also make damn good trigger needle.
And with that, we can go to talk about collabs as a whole. There are quite a lot of ways to go about collabs, but two are generally considered both more standard: In the first, all makers make discrete chunks of content for the game, which are then presented together (either in form of a stage select, or in case of certain needle collabs by just putting the screens one after the other), as is almost always the case with the public megacollabs such as GBC, Back to Basic, and JTool Jamplex. In the second, the entire project is a team effort, where a typically small private circle has a unified vision and all parts are made to fit according to said vision, as in Double Turn Team, Wannafest, and RNG Dungeon. The first case tends to become more than the sum of its parts through variety, featuring many different takes on a simple core idea; The second tends to become more than the sum of its parts by having each maker playing to their strengths and having the full perspective of the team regarding aesthetic and thematic choices, general improvement suggestions, and even just simple brainstorming to come up with new ideas and content for the game. Both of these, then, are great formulas for a collab.
What happens if we swap the cases? Well, a massive public megacollab with a unified vision is frankly humanly impossible to achieve. After all, why spend 200 hours making an avoidance to a song someone else chose when you could work on the song YOU wanted to use? Why "waste" a banger set of visual on a game you do not have creative control over? Why would you lead such a project, knowing full well that you WILL be getting subpar pieces of content, that are going to be a drama nightmare to reject and a making nightmare to turn into an even barely acceptable piece of content? Well, if such a collab existed, it'd need to fully embrace the variety. It would need to be a collection of extremely high effort, polished shitposts - even the serious parts - so that everything fits by virtue of shitpostiness. An "anything goes" collab, to the point it threatens to turn back into the "discrete stages" formula.
Well, no point in vagueposting about farewell medley (yes, it may technically be private, but come on it's so big that it counts). It's the only project like this thus far, after all. The fact we only have 1 of those, and the dev hell it has been through, only speak to the monumental challenge in organizing these.
On the other hand, what happens when a small, private circle makes collabs where each person gets their own stage? The answer is that this happens quite commonly, and frankly almost always feels like a waste. The variety factor is generally not enough due to the reduced amount of people, while it generally does still hurt overall cohesiveness. It is much less easy to forgive the bad parts, given that the collab is private and the makers are usually quite experienced. You generally just wish the best parts were made into a full length game instead. While I'm not expecting every game to be a full effort project - indeed, even well respected makers have their JTool dumps, and it's perfectly ok for them to do so - it is still always saddening to see a project full of potential fail to reach it. While this game may fall into the "unified vision" category in technicality, in spirit it feels much more in line with the "discrete stages" model - I can roughly tell which people made which parts, and it does not really contain the kind of brilliancy you'd expect from seeing several strong makers combine the best of their strengths together.
Of course, there are countless ways to do a collab, and I would hesitate outright calling any of them "wrong", but I do wish to see more collabs that carefully consider the implications of their structure, and that strive to become more than the sum of their parts. As with medleys, it also feels like there's a whole lot of design space to have a unique spin on the structure and/or methodology that will cement the game as a great creative endeavor, and I wish to see these more as well.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: N/A
Apr 28, 2024