Delicious FruitLatest Reviews
wakusei
For: I wanna kill the Xwan: Chapter 1
[0] Likes
For: I wanna kill the Xwan: Chapter 1
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.0 70
Difficulty: 47 47
Apr 6, 2022
Oothwophen
For: I wanna trandtrandtrand
For: I wanna trandtrandtrand
rng = royal never give up
[1] Like
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 30 30
Apr 6, 2022
SquareDork
For: I wanna play Kiduija
For: I wanna play Kiduija
/!\ SPOILER WARNING /!\
As is usual, my reviews are super long. And delfruit doesn't like spoiler tags on long reviews. So, spoilers for the whole game ahead. Maybe excluding this first paragraph.
This game is fantastic, like all of Mattin's other games. It has quite a couple flaws, and they're flaws that I think don't really exist in Overlord or Knight in shining armor. But, despite its flaws, this game still manages to be an enjoyable experience throughout. I'd consider all of Mattin's games to be must-plays if you're new to fangames. They're all somewhat similar, but still unique enough to feel fresh.
- CONS:
I think at least Knight in shining armor had a much better HP system. The passive health regen in this game meant most platforming sections were trivial if you were just patient, and the spikes not being instakill meant you didn't explicitly NEED to know how to complete some certain sections, you could just wait until your HP regen'd back, and then just kinda fumble through it. Basically the "Oh, I have x HP in this section, I can just not care and I'm gonna win anyway" effect. There were some tricky sections, but they were explicitly tricky because you couldn't just wait for your health to regen back.
I think non-instakill spikes are fine, but only if you don't have passive HP regen. That way, you still have to learn sections if they're pretty long or require some specific tricks to get past, and choking at the end is much less of a threat. That, and the game is more accessible for noobier players (like me), which I consider a benefit.
Knight in shining armor also had much better enemy placement and AI. I particularly remember the frog-like creature that shot out globs of poison and the crow enemy as being especially infuriating. For some godforsaken reason, the frog creature's tiny, almost invisible poison particles hurt you. And they hurt a lot. And it's entirely RNG. And the big glob splits into a lot of new tiny particles, which are also determined by RNG. This enemy is actually just awful, and the game would genuinely be better if it was actually just entirely cut, and replaced with something else. Or at the very least made less annoying.
The crow is... meh. It follows you around, and it's pretty annoying to get rid of. Just not a very good enemy. Should probably have less HP, if I'm being honest.
The love key boss is also just not very interesting. My personal main gripe with it is how the indicator for the blood pillars appearing after a dash attack is VERY invisible, it being a tiny pool of blood on the ground, blending in extremely well with the *bloody red floor*. The bouncing blood balls attack is also just kind of boring to dodge, but that's just standard for "bouncing ball" attacks like that.
The lasers at the top of the big machine fight are also not very good. Sometimes they'll just screw you over (idk if i'm allowed to swear here) by having a combination like OXX, XXO, which is not technically impossible to dodge, but you have to jump *inbetween* the lasers to dodge it, which requires some precise timing. I got this more than a couple times.
The miku part in the final boss was kinda rough, her just randomly deciding to shoot a big bullet *directly into my face* sometimes, but it wasn't that bad. The avoidance was entirely free, and the needle and apple sections were also kinda free.
This one's more subjective than the other ones, but the very first boss has some missed potential, honestly. The teleports in the middle of the room could very well have been taken advantage of for a couple attacks. For example, maybe it could've had an attack where one half of the arena is taken over by a massive laser with some 5 seconds for preparation, and then the boss's head could try its best to drive you into that side of the arena. The best way to dodge this, would be to shoot the teleport thing and then you could easily go to the other side. There could've also been some more teleports around, for some more interesting ways to dodge things by teleporting.
- PROS:
Despite my bitching up there, I really really enjoy this game, and it would be a crime to rate it any lower than an 8. Most everything in this game is well-polished. A lot of platforming sections were fun, a lot of enemy placements felt coherent and took some effort to get past (well, without just brainlessly abusing the HP regen mechanic), and most of the bosses were really fun to fight.
In particular, I really liked the neck monster fight and the final boss. The final boss, honestly, adds an entire point to my rating by itself. I love these types of "different playstyle" bosses, wherein you have to do different types of things to progress, rather than just dodge attacks. All of the particular mini-sections weren't hard at all, though, and I'd even call them free, but the miku section requires at least some luck to not get murdered. Most of the normal final boss attacks are pretty good, though not as good as the 4 mini-sections. It also isn't a big difficulty spike, as a lot of beginner-novice difficulty games' final bosses are. Most bosses took me about 3-5 tries, and this boss took me around 10 or so.
The neck monster fight is just solid, and quite a blast. Not much else to say.
- CONCLUSION:
It's hard for a fangame to really captivate me. I have pretty high standards for gameplay, and production value is almost a must for a fangame to make me want to finish it. With that said, I can pretty firmly say I love this game, and all of Mattin's other games. They all have their own flaws, along with things I disagree with, as all games do, and they're not exactly built equal, but they are consistently very good and enjoyable.
I will acknowledge though, as a guy who's been playing Super Metroid since he was literally four years old, along with a lot of Castlevania games in recent years, I do have a bit of bias for the Metroidvania genre, and some horror aspects. So that has probably skewed my perception of the game. Everyone has their preferences, and mine happened to line up with this game, so I ended up enjoying it more, but that does not detract from the fact this game is still well-polished.
[0] Likes
As is usual, my reviews are super long. And delfruit doesn't like spoiler tags on long reviews. So, spoilers for the whole game ahead. Maybe excluding this first paragraph.
This game is fantastic, like all of Mattin's other games. It has quite a couple flaws, and they're flaws that I think don't really exist in Overlord or Knight in shining armor. But, despite its flaws, this game still manages to be an enjoyable experience throughout. I'd consider all of Mattin's games to be must-plays if you're new to fangames. They're all somewhat similar, but still unique enough to feel fresh.
- CONS:
I think at least Knight in shining armor had a much better HP system. The passive health regen in this game meant most platforming sections were trivial if you were just patient, and the spikes not being instakill meant you didn't explicitly NEED to know how to complete some certain sections, you could just wait until your HP regen'd back, and then just kinda fumble through it. Basically the "Oh, I have x HP in this section, I can just not care and I'm gonna win anyway" effect. There were some tricky sections, but they were explicitly tricky because you couldn't just wait for your health to regen back.
I think non-instakill spikes are fine, but only if you don't have passive HP regen. That way, you still have to learn sections if they're pretty long or require some specific tricks to get past, and choking at the end is much less of a threat. That, and the game is more accessible for noobier players (like me), which I consider a benefit.
Knight in shining armor also had much better enemy placement and AI. I particularly remember the frog-like creature that shot out globs of poison and the crow enemy as being especially infuriating. For some godforsaken reason, the frog creature's tiny, almost invisible poison particles hurt you. And they hurt a lot. And it's entirely RNG. And the big glob splits into a lot of new tiny particles, which are also determined by RNG. This enemy is actually just awful, and the game would genuinely be better if it was actually just entirely cut, and replaced with something else. Or at the very least made less annoying.
The crow is... meh. It follows you around, and it's pretty annoying to get rid of. Just not a very good enemy. Should probably have less HP, if I'm being honest.
The love key boss is also just not very interesting. My personal main gripe with it is how the indicator for the blood pillars appearing after a dash attack is VERY invisible, it being a tiny pool of blood on the ground, blending in extremely well with the *bloody red floor*. The bouncing blood balls attack is also just kind of boring to dodge, but that's just standard for "bouncing ball" attacks like that.
The lasers at the top of the big machine fight are also not very good. Sometimes they'll just screw you over (idk if i'm allowed to swear here) by having a combination like OXX, XXO, which is not technically impossible to dodge, but you have to jump *inbetween* the lasers to dodge it, which requires some precise timing. I got this more than a couple times.
The miku part in the final boss was kinda rough, her just randomly deciding to shoot a big bullet *directly into my face* sometimes, but it wasn't that bad. The avoidance was entirely free, and the needle and apple sections were also kinda free.
This one's more subjective than the other ones, but the very first boss has some missed potential, honestly. The teleports in the middle of the room could very well have been taken advantage of for a couple attacks. For example, maybe it could've had an attack where one half of the arena is taken over by a massive laser with some 5 seconds for preparation, and then the boss's head could try its best to drive you into that side of the arena. The best way to dodge this, would be to shoot the teleport thing and then you could easily go to the other side. There could've also been some more teleports around, for some more interesting ways to dodge things by teleporting.
- PROS:
Despite my bitching up there, I really really enjoy this game, and it would be a crime to rate it any lower than an 8. Most everything in this game is well-polished. A lot of platforming sections were fun, a lot of enemy placements felt coherent and took some effort to get past (well, without just brainlessly abusing the HP regen mechanic), and most of the bosses were really fun to fight.
In particular, I really liked the neck monster fight and the final boss. The final boss, honestly, adds an entire point to my rating by itself. I love these types of "different playstyle" bosses, wherein you have to do different types of things to progress, rather than just dodge attacks. All of the particular mini-sections weren't hard at all, though, and I'd even call them free, but the miku section requires at least some luck to not get murdered. Most of the normal final boss attacks are pretty good, though not as good as the 4 mini-sections. It also isn't a big difficulty spike, as a lot of beginner-novice difficulty games' final bosses are. Most bosses took me about 3-5 tries, and this boss took me around 10 or so.
The neck monster fight is just solid, and quite a blast. Not much else to say.
- CONCLUSION:
It's hard for a fangame to really captivate me. I have pretty high standards for gameplay, and production value is almost a must for a fangame to make me want to finish it. With that said, I can pretty firmly say I love this game, and all of Mattin's other games. They all have their own flaws, along with things I disagree with, as all games do, and they're not exactly built equal, but they are consistently very good and enjoyable.
I will acknowledge though, as a guy who's been playing Super Metroid since he was literally four years old, along with a lot of Castlevania games in recent years, I do have a bit of bias for the Metroidvania genre, and some horror aspects. So that has probably skewed my perception of the game. Everyone has their preferences, and mine happened to line up with this game, so I ended up enjoying it more, but that does not detract from the fact this game is still well-polished.
Rating: 8.7 87
Difficulty: 35 35
Apr 6, 2022
CanusAntonius
For: I Wanna Sponge The Bob
For: I Wanna Sponge The Bob
Really fun needle game by Pooks that mixes in a lot of gimmicks and variations to the point that it often feels like an Adventure game (hence the somewhat misplaced tags on it). There's a lot to like here, a lot in general actually: there's a plethora of stages that are all distinctly different from eachother making it a fairly long game. Some highlights involve a neat infinite jump gimmick, an incredible line needle stage, and yet another concert from The Boys. There's even a short avoidance that requires platforming movement which is always a cool combo to me.
It does also have some unsavory moments in it, particularly these three saves in general really stood out to me as annoying: The third save in the 8bit chomper stage, having to land on the chomper and go up with a spike right above you is extremely difficult and tedious to have at the back half of the save. The second save in GB ends with an incredibly bruh water jump that is pretty Hell. Finally the first save in Noesis is pretty stranger danger too. I did think that the last stage in general was pretty mediocre compared to the rest of the game, not because I'm pulling an anti medley/reference card, but because it removes the cool gimmicks for just plain needle now.
Overall, I think it's still a great game worth playing, and would be made even better with a small update. Highly Recommended!
[0] Likes
It does also have some unsavory moments in it, particularly these three saves in general really stood out to me as annoying: The third save in the 8bit chomper stage, having to land on the chomper and go up with a spike right above you is extremely difficult and tedious to have at the back half of the save. The second save in GB ends with an incredibly bruh water jump that is pretty Hell. Finally the first save in Noesis is pretty stranger danger too. I did think that the last stage in general was pretty mediocre compared to the rest of the game, not because I'm pulling an anti medley/reference card, but because it removes the cool gimmicks for just plain needle now.
Overall, I think it's still a great game worth playing, and would be made even better with a small update. Highly Recommended!
Rating: 8.6 86
Difficulty: 68 68
Apr 6, 2022
Renko97
For: I wanna XYZ Spike
For: I wanna XYZ Spike
Normal short game with "easy" jumps
[0] Likes
Rating: 6.0 60
Difficulty: 50 50
Apr 5, 2022