Delicious FruitLatest Reviews
Jdx83
For: I wanna be the Gate Keeper
For: I wanna be the Gate Keeper
Tagged as: Boss
[0] Likes
Rating: 5.0 50
Difficulty: 50 50
Jan 1, 2022
CanusAntonius
For: I wanna reach the Moon
For: I wanna reach the Moon
It only took till 2022 to finally reach the moon, and what a journey it was.
A great adventure game that continues the legacy of See the Moon by bringing in some modern flair and concepts. There's a lot of content, and all of it is more than good enough to warrant this as a must-play to anyone in the community. A special aspect to show respect to comes from how Denferok adds his own taste to the game in every way possible, but still manages to pay homage to the original that this work is based on. By all intents, this feels absolutely like a grand sequel to humble beginnings, and one that many will enjoy.
That said, I do have a few issues with it that hinder my rating slightly. I think the ambitious drive for grand visuals is really nice but clashes with visibility in certain places. The factory stage really makes it hard to discern certain things at time, and the final stage's background will sometimes become a problem once the sun rolls by during the lady's boss fight. Also on that boss fight, I found the trails on the projectiles to be exceptionally annoying, it really just makes the entire screen feel cluttered and should probably be shortened some. Finally, once the moon's boss truly comes out it feels like you should have given the player autofire, otherwise, it is absolutely horrible on the hands with the amount of health it has.
Those issues aside, I really enjoyed this game, and would highly recommend it. Thanks for making the New Years enjoyable Denferok!
[1] Like
A great adventure game that continues the legacy of See the Moon by bringing in some modern flair and concepts. There's a lot of content, and all of it is more than good enough to warrant this as a must-play to anyone in the community. A special aspect to show respect to comes from how Denferok adds his own taste to the game in every way possible, but still manages to pay homage to the original that this work is based on. By all intents, this feels absolutely like a grand sequel to humble beginnings, and one that many will enjoy.
That said, I do have a few issues with it that hinder my rating slightly. I think the ambitious drive for grand visuals is really nice but clashes with visibility in certain places. The factory stage really makes it hard to discern certain things at time, and the final stage's background will sometimes become a problem once the sun rolls by during the lady's boss fight. Also on that boss fight, I found the trails on the projectiles to be exceptionally annoying, it really just makes the entire screen feel cluttered and should probably be shortened some. Finally, once the moon's boss truly comes out it feels like you should have given the player autofire, otherwise, it is absolutely horrible on the hands with the amount of health it has.
Those issues aside, I really enjoyed this game, and would highly recommend it. Thanks for making the New Years enjoyable Denferok!
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 50 50
Jan 1, 2022
yoruka
For: I Wanna Escape Heavenly Host
For: I Wanna Escape Heavenly Host
Perfect game,absolutely excellent.
[0] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: 45 45
Jan 1, 2022
Cutiefruity
For: I Wanna eat you Christmas cokies
For: I Wanna eat you Christmas cokies
lol
well sorry you only had one day to make a fangame, this was pretty funny in parts i guess
[0] Likes
well sorry you only had one day to make a fangame, this was pretty funny in parts i guess
Rating: 4.5 45
Difficulty: 30 30
Jan 1, 2022
phgQED
For: Ice Reign
For: Ice Reign
Painfully short beginner needle game with no real clear screen. The needle screens in general make good use of spaced drops and give a decent amount of leeway in terms of frames and pixels. They felt very satisfying to go through and it was a shame when the game was over so soon.
[0] Likes
Rating: 4.2 42
Difficulty: 21 21
Jan 1, 2022
phgQED
For: I wanna be the lovely ⑨
For: I wanna be the lovely ⑨
A Cirno-themed vanilla needle game with a strong and creative usage of named jumps and their nerfed variants. Starts out quite easy but spikes in difficulty drastically during one of the later saves. There's an extra mode that includes some single jump stages, and is overall really fun and challenging. I didn't have any problems with this game aside from the fact that some/many of the saves are placed aesthetically, rather than in the best position for subsequent jump retries. The music seems like it might be a remix of Tomboyish Girl In Love but I am not sure. There is a lot of content here if you play through the extra stage. It was really fun to play through and I would recommend it to intermediate needle players or anyone looking for gimmick-less needle. Especially recommended if you liked named jumps and variations on them.
Time: 1hr41min
Deaths: 2028
[0] Likes
Time: 1hr41min
Deaths: 2028
Rating: 7.9 79
Difficulty: 44 44
Jan 1, 2022
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Destination
For: I wanna be the Destination
***HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! LAST CLEAR OF 2021, and finishing my review 2.5 hours before New Year! Based!***
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
[8] Likes
March 15, 2012, a milestone gets released, a fangame landmark that, in my opinion, hasn't been fully understood yet by absolutely everybody.
Assembling a game like this requires a lot of planning, both personal and artistic, since it is a conglomerate recap project of Carnival's games, not as a player, but as a maker. In this sense, I am creating the tag that I thought of first, ironically enough, when I cleared Prism: Visual_Medley. Also, you can write any word as a tag in this site, so I'll give myself the same permission if do not receive several objections.
The game structure is exactly the one that inspired Influka and Kamilia for I Wanna Kill the Kamilia 3: a "medley" section, a gatekeeper avoidance, an original section with another intermediate avoidance and a final boss.
I. First Section: Visual Medley
Personally, I don't recall a fangame where the original maker referenced his past games, from the most atrocious, unspeakable ones (Meet the Ruka trilogy is absolutely disgusting), to the more sophisticated ones like Crimson. Carnival's output at such a young age is extremely impressive. Granted, I am not favoring the ratings of his games based on his age at the time; I'm being as fair as I can. However, such young talent cannot go unnoticed and, whereas some consider that Heaventrap 1 & 2, Crimson and Destination had their days of glory, it all comes down to whether your taste can still appreciate some old-school fangames in today's day and age after the world of fangames have reached new quality standards, gimmick/needle/platforming creativity and production value at the time.
Anyway, you start right right at the first screen of Distrust as a main hub section, which later got buffed in Crimson for the best part of the game. From this hub, you travel to other worlds that are exactly from Carnival's past games:
-Nervous
-Distrust
-HeavenTrap 1
-Meet the Ruka
-Picture
Nekoron's LoveTrap level design and trap influences are present throughout this section, as well as in the latter section. However, every stage in this section does not copy-paste screens from the aforementioned games; it reinvents them, creating new platforming, traps and even new goals (such as in the Picture section). Throughout, mandatory secrets are required to progress to the second half of the game, which can be hardly counted as "secrets", but as collectibles: there is literally an arrow poiting towards a direction of where you should go in very specific screens in order to obtain the secret items. Unlike Crimson, they do not represent a peak in difficulty compared to the rest of the game and even the longest one is very fun to go through (Nervous) is not as infamous as the backtracking secret in Crimson.
Shoutouts to IanBoy141 for undertaking the task of creating the soundtrack playlist on YouTube, sometimes uploading the tracks themselves. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RMDBqQDtT8&list=PL5rk9Dkgn4kIrK2e6gg3pGWj4W52cHJhj. The soundtrack is terrific and suits each section properly: from the overused theme "Pop Star" from Kirby, to the absolutely banger remix of track 5 of Ridge Racer 2 which was used in Nervous as well (actually, Nervous had ace tracks). The bosses are slightly changed from their original versions, as well as the music choices, giving the fights a very different feel, such as using a song from the obscure game Last Bible II in the Nervous cherry boss (which re-appeared in HeavenTrap 1). This paragraph cannot omit the title screen's song: Ico - Heal, which is a subtle, modest masterpiece.
Traps, you say?? Well of course. Everywhere! However, the save placement is very wise and fair, and you won't get traps at the very end of a difficult save as often as you might think. Most than half of them are plainly ordinary (invisible blocks; flying spikes), but others are not, particularly in the second section of the game.
**Difficulty up to this point: 60 (considering items).
II. Gatekeeper: Ruka
Once the items have been gathered and the bosses have been beaten, you enter such a good and entertaining avoidance with one of my Top 10 vocaloids out there: 大嫌い／otetsu feat.巡音ルカ. It's even available on Spotify for many western regions, so play it loud as many times as you can! https://open.spotify.com/track/4HKz0zEM6B1URI3TWhccgm?si=61fb3f37cc8342a6.
The avoidance has a beautiful crimson palette and Ruka's silhouette is covered in shadows, but the cherries are not! The fight pumps you, the attacks are very readabale, there are two instagibs at THE MOST (I'd argue one), and a banger conclusion. I won't deny that building a path for the last attack takes some practice; however, it doesn't take much time and you'll be over it soon enough to just want a rematch.
**Difficulty: 55.
III. Second Section
The second section will throw the HeavenTrap 1 / Crimson vibes at you, so be prepared for true challenges. After the HeavenTrap 1 castle-like maze section (where a portion requires you to think like in Kayin's The Guy due to odd screen-wrapping), you shall find another old nemesis: Devil Kid from HeavenTrap 1. Be careful, because this divine being is on steroids now like a good Nekoron proposed with LoveTrap. It's not an avoidance fight (I have seen people saying it is, and it is absolutely not), following the same logic of LoveTrap's Big Kid, with the peculiarity of avoiding an attack chosen randomly every time you hit it. I remember this being one of my toughtest clears back in 2018, and after three years, this boss posed no significant problem; however, as you would know, once the health is low, you fill face some particular trouble when he starts firing bullets continuously a la LoveTrap and the random attacks do not stop now. The buffed part consists in tossing two attacks combined, and there are some combinations that can wall you fantastically. It is still more an exercise of patience than skill, although you Wwill feel the urge of insta-killing it fast during the last phase even if this might not be the most optimal strategy.
**Difficulty up to this point: 65.
At some point, you will encounter the infamous Crimson section from the ending of the game in a straightforward vanilla needle section, scored with the best track of Super Meat Boy (Betus Blues) instead of the ominous, monochromatic tone of the original Crimson. The game now shows its teeth in difficulty, where you reach a certain point and then backtrack through the same screens with inverted gravity, infinite jump and a dark-blue-colored section. These variations make sure that the backtracking is not monotonous or predictable at all. Suddenly, you appear in screens that are not familiar to your previous playthrough, and give you a warm welcome, after two "underwater" corners in a row (with the proper aligns at least), to the second significant wall of the game: Rin & Len
IV. Rin & Len
The silhouette of the Kagamine brothers that gave you nightmares in several Carnival fangames before is TOTALLY back, and this was to be expected. Complaints abound regarding this avoidance, but it is not as infamous as several have said: it is a big difficulty spike, but if you endured Meet the Ruka 3 (absolute AIDS), the last attack of Nervous, the buffed avoidances of Justice and Distrust, and Miku 2 of LoveTrap, you will understand most of the foundational logics of the attacks behind this avoidance. To begin with, the song is once again terrific: 【鏡音レン】 飛雷震 【オリジナル】. Attacks are fun to learn; unfortunately, it has two RNG wall attacks of gray cherries difficult to read exactly as in LoveTrap's Miku 2, which will take away many of your deaths. The pattern attacks are also difficult, but once you figure them out, including the conclusion, they are extremely fun to pull off.
As a tangent commentary, my younger brother, who has been watching my blind playthroughs of key fangames since a couple of years ago, said that the color palette of the game throughout has been good, and I wholeheartedly agree. There are some traditionally generic-looking sections in the first parts of the game, but most of them are not, so stages can be differentiated in mood and feels between each other. The color palette of this avoidance doesn't hurt as much as Justice second buffed avoidance and is nice to look at, especially when it's going to be a challenge you'll be grinding for some hours.
**Difficulty up to this point: 75
V. Bridge
I had no idea how to call this section, but it's a very special section. After you end up palming yourself in the back for passing the definitive (?) Rin & Len avoidance, which is a trademark for Carnival at this point, you stumble upon a genius surreal section of tilesets from all previous sections played, which are, at the same time, an act of reminiscing your personal journey through Carnival's game, in case you had it (which, if you did, the experience is definitely more meaningful).
Finally, enter a Bad Apple section inspired, again, by LoveTrap, but it's a more contemplative stage this time: with a piano version of 8 Melodies from the Mother series playing in the background, and with NO restarting music (the point in old fangames in which you knew things were getting serious or you were getting to a special moment of the game), difficulty is preserved pretty much at 75 (I swear there's a spotlight screen in this section replicated in Sunspike during the final screen of Stage 4), and low jumps will now be your best friend at some instances, if not align-dependent, frame-perfect jumps that will test your needle skill. To be frank, at this level of difficulty, the level design is alone, because there are also traps, but the spotlight gimmick, imo, is absolutely unnecessary and uncalled for, making this section more frustrating than it should be, making it more of a blind trial-and-error stage than it should be.
VI.Final Boss
As far as I am concerned, this is the official name of the boss:
/. .\
~V~
(Credits to DerpyHoovesIWBTG)
Final boss is a legendary titan, a monument that raises the difficulty up to 89. Grind time has come, the bastard that took me more than 40 hours when the entire previous freaking game took me around 24, the one that made Raganoxer to freak out and write a masterpiece of a meme review, the one that has been copied an endless amount of times (being GBC the most current adaptation I can think of as of now, the one that took fatalbrain 3 years to clear (people claiming the second avoidance was harder are absolutely mental).
-Main body: Smiley-face white ball
-Weapons: Domestic Pikachu battery, Red Fire-Mah-Lazeh, your toilet's faucet and Koffing's corpse.
You must take out each arm/weapon independently for then facing the smiley bastard, better known as choke phase (which killed me two very painful times).
Mechanics:
-A spike constantly moves from right to left, endlessly respawning, which serves as the projectile for your bullets, so you must shoot the spike (very logical eh) so your bullets bounce towards the weapons.
-The game randomly chooses one of the four colors, illuminating the entire screen, indicating the attack you will face and also the weapon you will harm.
-Each weapon has a lose-all-hope-in-the-rest-of-your-miserable-existence amount of health.
-Also, each weapon has a very prolonged invincibility frame once you damage it, so it is either a smash fest or counting the seconds before you're able to hit again.
-Once you have lowered each weapon's health down to 33%, a second phase of the attack enters, normally harder than the original.
-7 out of 8 attacks have two parallel components, which are key to understand: A POSITION-BASED component and an RNG component.
-Commit and entrust your soul and life to RNGsus for fangame salvation.
Attacks and strats in order of difficulty:
-Yellow 2: Unreactable, RNG cancer. The RNG falling cherries do not exist. Six cherries still go to all directions with one heading towards you, but the problem comes when not knowing which one will bounce and which one won't. Strategy is to remain at the corners for the biggest amount of time possible since it is 85-88% probable that if you remain in the middle, the cherries that went to the walls explode into RNG cherries (not knowing which ounce will bounce on the floor and which ones won't) and wall you from both sides at the same time at a height you cannot double-jump to escape. It's freaking terrifying.
-Blue 2: Horizontally-moving RNG cherries appear from both sides while a position-based attack tosses cherries at you from up above and at a diagonal angle, so there are two different walls you should time. Both individual attacks are free by their own; combined, they are deadly since most of your tragic deaths will come from timing the correct instance in which you should go through the cherries wall and to avoid the moving walls that randomly appear. STrat is to move from left to right and if you see a horizontal cherry or more spawning at your height and thus forcing you to jump, get close to it and then run away from it ensuring you have enough space ahead; in this way, you will be able to jump over the RNG wall with no problem. Very luck-based still.
-Red 1: I have no idea if I played another game, but this attack is fucking bullshit and unreactable at many instances (I might even prefer Blue 2). Fast RNG cherries are shot randomly at all angles from the bottom half of the screen while a position-based component shoots cherries at you intermitently. I have no fucking idea what the fucking strat is for this fucking ass shit attack. More than N times you will be walled, roofed, sandwiched or caught in the air during a transition. Fuck this fucking attack. A possible strat is moving from left to right while avoiding the spike but even so this is kinda unforeseeable because being in the middle increases the probability of death significantly (low time reaction; very possible roofs).
-Yellow 1: An infamous attack indeed, but it becomes absolutely free with two conditions: if you're in the left-most corner and if you understand that the VERTICAL cherries won't bounce and are RNG, and the diagonally-moving cherries are the ones that will bounce both on the walls and the floor. The attack shoots, just like Yellow 2, six cherries in an hexagon shape with one being aimed towards you: this are the ones that will bounce. Being on the left corner when the attack starts is awesome since all that is required is moving a wee-bit to the left, waiting for the next pattern spawn, and moving to the corner again. Repeat 3 times. Everything is readable with spike included. The problem is when you're caught at an uncomfortable spot because of a previous attack. If you're caught in the middle (e.g. Blue 1), ensure that the cherry hits the floor at exactly the middle of the screen (this ensures that the other two will hit the corners, which is what you want). From one spawn to the next, you have enough time to move from the middle to the left corner. It's all about the strats.
-Purple 2: Absolutely fun and much easier than fucking Red 1. It's the only attack that is 100% RNG as far as I am concerned: readable, reactable, attractively-looking from an aesthetic perspective, and even the spike won't that much of a trouble when you have to jump over it due to the intervals in which the cherries are aimed at you. My favorite attack when all things considered and balanced.
-Red 2: 450% more readable and fair than Red 1 for some stupid-ass reason. Anyway, enough cursing for Red 1. The RNG component is quite light, since big cherries explode into tinier cherries with one of them being aimed at you; however, the range of the big cherries mostly cover the middle of the screen, so there is enough space to move throughout. Go to the left corner, find a gap to go through, move carefully towards the center, find a gap that allows you to go back to the corner, and repeat. Very readable and reasonable; themiddle of the screen is the most dangerous section just like in Red 1.
-Purple 1: Self-explanatory. Just go from left to right since the circular attack is pattern and the corner cherries are aimed at your position. Start from any position (doesn't matter which), go either direction (let's say left, and I recommend this because the attack will last long enough for you to go all the way to the right and back to the left coner, which is the best starting position for many other attacks), and double jump. This will deviate the position-based pattern. Go through it and go to the opposite direction. Gaps of the circular attack are big enough for you not to worry.
-Blue 1: RNG big cherries, circular attacks which are based pattern. Nothing to say other than remaining in the middle portion and moving left to right makes it free. Also, you can apply a muscle-memory strat in which you don't focus on the position-based attack anymore and pay attention only to the big cherries to see if one's about to fall above you, giving you plenty of time to react.
There is one huge issue with the boss: transitions. One thing is to master the attacks (with the exception of the first 3, sort of), another thing is to be at the mercy of hideous transitions such as:
-Blue 1 to Red 1
-Yellow 1 to Red 1 (if you're in the corner)
-Yellow 1 to Blue 2 (Blue 2 has the huge problem of spawning the RNG horizontal cherries immediately, so you must stay away from the wall at all costs)
-Red 2 to Purple 1
-Blue 2 to Purple 1 (you are entrapped)
-Blue 2 to Yellow 1 (you can end up at any position, which is not optimal for Yellow 1)
-Blue 1 to Purple 2 (you're entrapped)
The final choke phase (it is a choke phase because the game tests the consistency of your pulse) was designed by the devil to increase your heart rate at levels above 150, and cause ulcers due to anger when you do choke. It's readable, but the problem is the spike that now moves faster and must jump more constantly, many times being moments in which you wish NOT to jump.
Legendary, self-referential, experimental, demanding a complete skillset of platforming, avoidance, trap-avoiding, memory and consistency, with unfair instances scattered throughout but not through the majority of an insane experience, this is one of the most complete fangame adventures out there not driven by plot, and quite possibly the definitive old-school experience, the next manhood test after beating The Guy, Solgryn and the Crimson Devils.
Besides my obvious complaints, I also wished one additional thing had happened:
-Credits as cheerful and celebratory as those of Crimson
Instant favorite and, up to this day, a standard for many creators.
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 89 89
Jan 1, 2022
DerpyHoovesIWBTG
For: I wanna be the 肉食系うんこ
For: I wanna be the 肉食系うんこ
Clutch simulator
Tagged as: Avoidance
[1] Like
Rating: 6.8 68
Difficulty: 70 70
Jan 1, 2022
Emmanating
For: Designer L's Dastardly Tower!
For: Designer L's Dastardly Tower!
If you go in expecting a zany Magic Tower experience, you'll hopefully have a fun time
[1] Like
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 50 50
Jan 1, 2022