Delicious FruitLatest Reviews
Neos_
For: I wanna place some spikes
For: I wanna place some spikes
Tagged as: FASF2023
[0] Likes
Rating: N/A
Difficulty: N/A
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I Wanna Traverse The Seven Aspects
[2] Likes
For: I Wanna Traverse The Seven Aspects
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 65 65
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I Wanna Take Another Look Inside
[2] Likes
For: I Wanna Take Another Look Inside
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.6 96
Difficulty: 63 63
Dec 30, 2023
Nearigami
For: I wanna be the Crimson
For: I wanna be the Crimson
Much has been said about Crimson and its maker, Carnival. People talk about how Carnival was only 12 years old when he made this game, or how Kale's review of Crimson was at one point the most liked review on Delfruit (I believe it's now 4th after Raimon and Stonk's K3 review, and Zorgo's weird K3+ moral grandstanding, but I digress.) It's also gone on to be arguably one of the most influential fangames ever made. I personally would go as far as to put it up there with the likes of Lovetrap, GB, Black, Kamilia 2 and 3, and Crimson Needle 1 and 3, though I'm not married to that opinion.
Crimson is a game where you either get it or you don't. I can completely understand why one may not enjoy this game. It's design is somewhat archaic by today's standards. There are a lot of traps that don't really serve a purpose other than to frustrate the player in uninteresting ways. There's restarting music and almost exclusively generic guy visuals. There's even required secrets, some of which don't have any obvious tells as to their location. Hell, I would go as far as to say the bat boss is legitimately terrible with nothing really redeeming about it. For me though, it just clicks.
While I am adamant about a fair amount of traps not adding to the experience, some legitimately change how you tackle the platforming in interesting ways, forcing you to move in ways you still don't see often enough in trigger needle. The use of moving objects is a really well exectued form of cycle needle and importantly changes how you approach jumps without necessarily making them more difficult to figure out, which to me is a balance rarely struck with cycles. I also believe this game makes a good case study for why named/generic jumps aren't an inherently bad thing. Sure, we can look at a save and figure out pretty quickly how to do them, but they help facilitate a certain flow. Crimson manages to do a lot with only the basics.
Do I think this flow is 100% intentional? Absolutely not. I think Carnival only sometimes knew what he was doing. It feels like when you play a Carnival game he rolls the dice, and if it's below a certain threshold he fails a design check and the save/boss sucks. Carnival very much feels like a maker that operates off of pure instinct when designing, and whatever he thinks is fun to make at the moment gets left in, regardless of quality. It means his works have an identity to them. Whether the save is good or bad, it is always Carnival, and to me it makes the game more interesting. Even if I run into something that mildly annoys me, it feels like I get to look into the mind of this guy, and I can't be too mad about it.
cLOUDDEAD's review of Crimson talks about how cohesive the game feels, and I'm inclined to agree. There is a lot of variety in this game, but because of Carnival's instinctual design sense, it all feels unified. Despite every stage doing a lot of different things, they all still belong as a part of the same experience. Carnival is able to twist and contort his design process just enough to fit the vibe he wants for the stage. There's also a fair amount of discrepancy between save difficulties. Notably, the secrets are almost always a good 5-10 difficulty higher than the standard stages. Some may call this unbalanced, but I view it as a choice to accentuate certain parts of the stage platforming. Carnival wants to make sure you give as much attention to this bit of level design as he wants you to.
After the 8 stages, you face a bat boss. It's terrible! It's legitimately a really bad boss. I don't have anything nice to say about it other than somehow I still enjoy it. It occupies a similar space in my mind as the GR final boss, where I know that I should find it terrible, but I can't help but find it engrossing. If you collected all the secrets, after beating the bat, you go on to tackle a medley stage of past Carnival games that is undeniably the worst stretch of the game. The picture screen in particular was probably the worst bit of platforming in the game. After that you get an iconic crimson block stage that's pretty much just hard needle with an ambient track overlaying it. I like this stage more than most people do. It still keeps that flow that Carnival has estbalished throughout the game, and it feels equally as interesting as the game preceeding it.
The final boss is a work of accidental genius. It feels like when Carnival was rolling his design dice, he got a 20. Everything in this fight seems to snap into place and creates a boss that feels far more involved than the vast majority of fangame bosses, in a special way. There is a constant push and pull to it, and the tradeoffs for damage routing leave it incredibly open ended in a totally fair way (except for the fact that you always have to kill green last because what the fuck?) I ended my journey with this game was a far deeper appreciation of Carnival, enough to retroactively make me enjoy his other works more. I legitimately believe that Crimson is a mandatory experience if you intend on staying in fangames for an extended period of time, regardless of whether you love or hate it.
Now that the review itself is over, I want to talk about Kale and his thoughts on the game. Kale's review of Crimson tows the line between a real and joke review for me. Where his sincere appreciation for the game ends and his hyperbolic assertions about it begin, I can't say. Personally, I like to imagine that Kale started off talking about how much he enjoyed Crimson back in the day as a bit of a joke, but that joke morphed into a genuine love of it and its design sense, and he just kept the bit up because Kale is a silly individual. His review is ultimately an exaggerated version of his sincere beliefs, and I kind of really love his unabashed love of it. It's the kind of enjoyment I wish I could bring into everything, but I do not yet have the capacity to feel that way. I don't really care how much of it is a meme, because that's how I want to feel about fangames. They're strange and kind of badly designed by traditional standards, but there's a serendipity to them that I will always appreciate. Crimson is an excellent distillation of that for me. I never knew these games would become so valuable to me, yet here they are. I wouldn't be who I am today without them, and this strange game designed by a literal 12 year old has had a not insigificant impact on me as a result of its influence. I love that. God I love fangames.
[2] Likes
Crimson is a game where you either get it or you don't. I can completely understand why one may not enjoy this game. It's design is somewhat archaic by today's standards. There are a lot of traps that don't really serve a purpose other than to frustrate the player in uninteresting ways. There's restarting music and almost exclusively generic guy visuals. There's even required secrets, some of which don't have any obvious tells as to their location. Hell, I would go as far as to say the bat boss is legitimately terrible with nothing really redeeming about it. For me though, it just clicks.
While I am adamant about a fair amount of traps not adding to the experience, some legitimately change how you tackle the platforming in interesting ways, forcing you to move in ways you still don't see often enough in trigger needle. The use of moving objects is a really well exectued form of cycle needle and importantly changes how you approach jumps without necessarily making them more difficult to figure out, which to me is a balance rarely struck with cycles. I also believe this game makes a good case study for why named/generic jumps aren't an inherently bad thing. Sure, we can look at a save and figure out pretty quickly how to do them, but they help facilitate a certain flow. Crimson manages to do a lot with only the basics.
Do I think this flow is 100% intentional? Absolutely not. I think Carnival only sometimes knew what he was doing. It feels like when you play a Carnival game he rolls the dice, and if it's below a certain threshold he fails a design check and the save/boss sucks. Carnival very much feels like a maker that operates off of pure instinct when designing, and whatever he thinks is fun to make at the moment gets left in, regardless of quality. It means his works have an identity to them. Whether the save is good or bad, it is always Carnival, and to me it makes the game more interesting. Even if I run into something that mildly annoys me, it feels like I get to look into the mind of this guy, and I can't be too mad about it.
cLOUDDEAD's review of Crimson talks about how cohesive the game feels, and I'm inclined to agree. There is a lot of variety in this game, but because of Carnival's instinctual design sense, it all feels unified. Despite every stage doing a lot of different things, they all still belong as a part of the same experience. Carnival is able to twist and contort his design process just enough to fit the vibe he wants for the stage. There's also a fair amount of discrepancy between save difficulties. Notably, the secrets are almost always a good 5-10 difficulty higher than the standard stages. Some may call this unbalanced, but I view it as a choice to accentuate certain parts of the stage platforming. Carnival wants to make sure you give as much attention to this bit of level design as he wants you to.
After the 8 stages, you face a bat boss. It's terrible! It's legitimately a really bad boss. I don't have anything nice to say about it other than somehow I still enjoy it. It occupies a similar space in my mind as the GR final boss, where I know that I should find it terrible, but I can't help but find it engrossing. If you collected all the secrets, after beating the bat, you go on to tackle a medley stage of past Carnival games that is undeniably the worst stretch of the game. The picture screen in particular was probably the worst bit of platforming in the game. After that you get an iconic crimson block stage that's pretty much just hard needle with an ambient track overlaying it. I like this stage more than most people do. It still keeps that flow that Carnival has estbalished throughout the game, and it feels equally as interesting as the game preceeding it.
The final boss is a work of accidental genius. It feels like when Carnival was rolling his design dice, he got a 20. Everything in this fight seems to snap into place and creates a boss that feels far more involved than the vast majority of fangame bosses, in a special way. There is a constant push and pull to it, and the tradeoffs for damage routing leave it incredibly open ended in a totally fair way (except for the fact that you always have to kill green last because what the fuck?) I ended my journey with this game was a far deeper appreciation of Carnival, enough to retroactively make me enjoy his other works more. I legitimately believe that Crimson is a mandatory experience if you intend on staying in fangames for an extended period of time, regardless of whether you love or hate it.
Now that the review itself is over, I want to talk about Kale and his thoughts on the game. Kale's review of Crimson tows the line between a real and joke review for me. Where his sincere appreciation for the game ends and his hyperbolic assertions about it begin, I can't say. Personally, I like to imagine that Kale started off talking about how much he enjoyed Crimson back in the day as a bit of a joke, but that joke morphed into a genuine love of it and its design sense, and he just kept the bit up because Kale is a silly individual. His review is ultimately an exaggerated version of his sincere beliefs, and I kind of really love his unabashed love of it. It's the kind of enjoyment I wish I could bring into everything, but I do not yet have the capacity to feel that way. I don't really care how much of it is a meme, because that's how I want to feel about fangames. They're strange and kind of badly designed by traditional standards, but there's a serendipity to them that I will always appreciate. Crimson is an excellent distillation of that for me. I never knew these games would become so valuable to me, yet here they are. I wouldn't be who I am today without them, and this strange game designed by a literal 12 year old has had a not insigificant impact on me as a result of its influence. I love that. God I love fangames.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 70 70
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I Wanna Say Sasameku
For: I Wanna Say Sasameku
Tagged as: Adventure
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.6 76
Difficulty: 64 64
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I Wanna Save the Ship
For: I Wanna Save the Ship
Tagged as: Adventure
[1] Like
Rating: 8.9 89
Difficulty: 53 53
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I Wanna Power
For: I Wanna Power
Tagged as: Adventure
[1] Like
Rating: 8.3 83
Difficulty: 52 52
Dec 30, 2023
touhoe
For: I wanna know my retribution
For: I wanna know my retribution
Tagged as: Needle
[1] Like
Rating: 8.9 89
Difficulty: 77 77
Dec 30, 2023