Delicious FruitLatest Reviews
Kilgour22
For: Nebulous Thoughts
For: Nebulous Thoughts
I didn't start this game with the intention of finishing it. Instead, my goal was simply to improve as player on something harder than anything I'd done before.
Yet here I am, having cleared this game, ready to review it.
What happened?
Well, this happened: https://imgur.com/a/677btNt
Now, you might be wondering why I kept track of all of this. Like I said, I came in with the expectation of improving, and I wanted a way to visualize my progress. And this ended up being effective; every save felt like a battle, to the point where I began my journey by clearing only one or two saves a day.
I'm going to give my thoughts on each stage.
Stage 1: An absolute masterpiece. The water gimmick is something I haven't seen before, and each save introduced a new quirk for me to master. Not only were the saves fun, but I could feel myself progressing through each save, getting increasingly consistent as I learned the subtle intricacies of each jump. This stage is gimmick needle done to literal perfection, and I have not even a whisper of a complaint, aside from one save being slightly too easy to feel much progress from completing it. A well deserved 10/10.
Stage 2: Probably the weakest stage overall. It's both short, being only three saves, and feels a little disjointed. The song choice kind of sucks, and like Bob, I muted it. The moving spikes gimmick is fine, and the cycles work out nicely, but I would have appreciated fewer pauses between the cycles, albeit with reduced difficulty of the individual jumps. This, I feel, would have enhanced the flow. Finally, the second gimmick—shoot refreshers—only appeared in one screen, which is a missed opportunity. I would have preferred if this gimmick were not used at all compared to such little usage, as things would have felt more cohesive for me. 5/10.
Stage 3: This stage felt very similar in quality and difficulty to stage 1 (which is a good thing!). Autojump blocks are hard to use properly, but Marc managed to integrate them successfully with platform jumps to create a fairly seamless experience. Like stage 1, one save stood out as too easy compared to the others, but the difference in difficulty was exacerbated here. 9.5/10.
Stage 4: Here we have the jump refresher stage mixed with low gravity. This platforming is incredibly fun and flowy; one stage later on has maybe more fun platforming, but make no mistake, everything here is super enjoyable to play. The low gravity makes tight jump refresher segments mash-fests no longer, which is greatly appreciated and adds to the aesthetic, alongside the symmetrical design. However, the creativity of the platforming here definitely takes a step back. It's not hard to figure out how to do each jump, even if it's not always clear where your destination is. 8/10.
Stage 5: A pure needle stage is an interesting choice. The game also gets a lot easier in this stage—probably 60–65 difficulty—which made things feel more fun, though it created a different tone to the game. The saves were still satisfying to complete, but the sense of progression I'd had from the previous stages wasn't present, replaced instead by some pretty fun pure needle. I'm a big fan of the visuals, even if they make the platforming slightly harder than it ought to be, because things stay easy enough that anyone who has reached this point in the game won't get walled here. 7.5/10.
Stage 6: Hard water needle. I absolutely love the visuals of this stage; they feel so clean to look at, and my view of the kid has such clarity that I felt like I could perform at my absolute best. As it turns out, performing at my best was necessary for this stage as it features some of the toughest platforming in the game, particularly the second-last save. This save introduces an element that becomes a more pronounced problem in some of the later stages; I'll discuss it then in more detail. But yeah, the visuals are some of the best I've seen, and I really liked the little gimmick at the end of the stage. It felt like a similar concept to stage 2's single-screen gimmick, but done a hundred times better. 8/10.
Stage 7: This is the most fun and flowy stage to play, beating out even stage 4. The triple jump blocks masquerading as platforms are incredibly fun to play around with; I enjoyed the healthy mixture of small and large jumps, as well as the freedom to pause at my discretion or forge onwards. Some of these saves are also the easiest in the game, clocking in at maybe 55–60 difficulty, but that in no way detracts from the experience here. I do wish the saves were slightly longer at this difficulty, as I feel this would have added a bit more tension, but as is it serves as a nice break after the challenge that is stage 6. 9/10.
Stage 8: This stage brings back the dark (i.e., obscuring) visuals of stage 2, except this time with water as the gimmick. The platforming also gets more precise, with manoeuvres that are tighter than ever before. However, since the saves are reasonable length, the only one that poses a significant challenge is the final one—a three-screen save with one particularly tight jump in each screen. Those jumps are, in order: a squished diagonal; an awkward two-block corner; and a full vspeed drop gate. The other jumps in each screen are easier, but still have some teeth to them. This stage is where the problem I mentioned in stage 6 blossoms fully, that being the inclusion of jumps that players have already done thousands of times, so they can't really improve much at them from the time they start the save to when they beat the save. As such, that crucial sense of progression doesn't materialize, and the player is instead just hoping for what is essentially a dice roll. The dark visuals don't help with this, but instead exacerbate the issue by making it harder to be more precise with the kid since his feet aren't visible. 6/10, though if the other saves were like the final one, it'd be 4/10.
Stage 9: Mixed emotions on this one. There's an overwhelming sense of confusion with four types of gravity at play, which I like and appreciate on a thematic level, but at the same time, I really disliked the platforming. The first three saves are fine, gradually increasing in difficulty, but the penultimate save felt designed to kill the player if one were to attempt a semblance of flow. For example, holding left to hit the next flipper would have to be followed by releasing left thanks to the spike/flipper placement. It would have been a lot more satisfying to rely less on awkward, confusing movement and instead replace that with a natural continuation. The final save felt out of place as well, though again it made sense thematically, so I'm torn. 7/10.
Stage 10: This stage contains some of the hardest platforming in the game, slightly exceeding stage 6. Despite that, I really liked what was on offer, even though it used stage 6's gimmick (water). Every time I arrived at a new screen, things looked so overwhelmingly impossible that I was rather filled with a sense of despair; but, as I started making progress and gaining consistency on the earlier, harder parts of each save, the despair was replaced by a bit of unadulterated joy, and immense relief when I beat the save. 9/10 because the plane jump at the start of the last save really sucks.
Stage 11: The final stage, with no gimmicks to be found. The stage really exists in two parts: everything before the final save, and the final save itself. The first part is fairly easy, with 65–70 difficulty platforming, again made worse by an obscuring black background. The second part, however, is a clear step above the rest of the game, and it's not even close. The final save is four screens of tough needle, with the second screen being the hardest, and constitutes just over a minute of platforming if you're playing quickly. I can absolutely see a player struggling to get to this point, only to get absolutely walled by the finale, and to that poor soul my heart goes out. I got pretty lucky—I only died to screen 4 three times—but the final save still took me nearly an hour to beat, almost double what the hardest saves took me in the rest of the game (about 5 or 6 saves took around half an hour each). There are at least two jumps I would nerf to help bridge the difficulty gap, but on the whole, if you reach this point, you're so invested that you'll have to soldier through it regardless. Still, I wouldn't say I enjoyed the final save, despite feeling a sense of catharsis upon completion. 6.5/10.
The mathematically inclined among you might notice that on average, my stage rating works out to 7.8/10, yet I gave the game a 9! What gives? The reality is that the game is more than the sum of its parts, and this nonlinearity affords me the opportunity to weigh things unequally. So, warts and all, Nebulous Thoughts clocks in at a 9/10 for telling a cohesive narrative imbibed with emotion, all of which comes out at the very end of the game in one of the most touching moments I've seen in any game because of how real and raw it is. This game, despite its flaws, offers a special experience for those willing and able to see it through to completion. It's not easy, but it's absolutely worth your time and effort if there is even the most remote chance of success—or even if you, like me, merely started on a quest to improve.
[2] Likes
Yet here I am, having cleared this game, ready to review it.
What happened?
Well, this happened: https://imgur.com/a/677btNt
Now, you might be wondering why I kept track of all of this. Like I said, I came in with the expectation of improving, and I wanted a way to visualize my progress. And this ended up being effective; every save felt like a battle, to the point where I began my journey by clearing only one or two saves a day.
I'm going to give my thoughts on each stage.
Stage 1: An absolute masterpiece. The water gimmick is something I haven't seen before, and each save introduced a new quirk for me to master. Not only were the saves fun, but I could feel myself progressing through each save, getting increasingly consistent as I learned the subtle intricacies of each jump. This stage is gimmick needle done to literal perfection, and I have not even a whisper of a complaint, aside from one save being slightly too easy to feel much progress from completing it. A well deserved 10/10.
Stage 2: Probably the weakest stage overall. It's both short, being only three saves, and feels a little disjointed. The song choice kind of sucks, and like Bob, I muted it. The moving spikes gimmick is fine, and the cycles work out nicely, but I would have appreciated fewer pauses between the cycles, albeit with reduced difficulty of the individual jumps. This, I feel, would have enhanced the flow. Finally, the second gimmick—shoot refreshers—only appeared in one screen, which is a missed opportunity. I would have preferred if this gimmick were not used at all compared to such little usage, as things would have felt more cohesive for me. 5/10.
Stage 3: This stage felt very similar in quality and difficulty to stage 1 (which is a good thing!). Autojump blocks are hard to use properly, but Marc managed to integrate them successfully with platform jumps to create a fairly seamless experience. Like stage 1, one save stood out as too easy compared to the others, but the difference in difficulty was exacerbated here. 9.5/10.
Stage 4: Here we have the jump refresher stage mixed with low gravity. This platforming is incredibly fun and flowy; one stage later on has maybe more fun platforming, but make no mistake, everything here is super enjoyable to play. The low gravity makes tight jump refresher segments mash-fests no longer, which is greatly appreciated and adds to the aesthetic, alongside the symmetrical design. However, the creativity of the platforming here definitely takes a step back. It's not hard to figure out how to do each jump, even if it's not always clear where your destination is. 8/10.
Stage 5: A pure needle stage is an interesting choice. The game also gets a lot easier in this stage—probably 60–65 difficulty—which made things feel more fun, though it created a different tone to the game. The saves were still satisfying to complete, but the sense of progression I'd had from the previous stages wasn't present, replaced instead by some pretty fun pure needle. I'm a big fan of the visuals, even if they make the platforming slightly harder than it ought to be, because things stay easy enough that anyone who has reached this point in the game won't get walled here. 7.5/10.
Stage 6: Hard water needle. I absolutely love the visuals of this stage; they feel so clean to look at, and my view of the kid has such clarity that I felt like I could perform at my absolute best. As it turns out, performing at my best was necessary for this stage as it features some of the toughest platforming in the game, particularly the second-last save. This save introduces an element that becomes a more pronounced problem in some of the later stages; I'll discuss it then in more detail. But yeah, the visuals are some of the best I've seen, and I really liked the little gimmick at the end of the stage. It felt like a similar concept to stage 2's single-screen gimmick, but done a hundred times better. 8/10.
Stage 7: This is the most fun and flowy stage to play, beating out even stage 4. The triple jump blocks masquerading as platforms are incredibly fun to play around with; I enjoyed the healthy mixture of small and large jumps, as well as the freedom to pause at my discretion or forge onwards. Some of these saves are also the easiest in the game, clocking in at maybe 55–60 difficulty, but that in no way detracts from the experience here. I do wish the saves were slightly longer at this difficulty, as I feel this would have added a bit more tension, but as is it serves as a nice break after the challenge that is stage 6. 9/10.
Stage 8: This stage brings back the dark (i.e., obscuring) visuals of stage 2, except this time with water as the gimmick. The platforming also gets more precise, with manoeuvres that are tighter than ever before. However, since the saves are reasonable length, the only one that poses a significant challenge is the final one—a three-screen save with one particularly tight jump in each screen. Those jumps are, in order: a squished diagonal; an awkward two-block corner; and a full vspeed drop gate. The other jumps in each screen are easier, but still have some teeth to them. This stage is where the problem I mentioned in stage 6 blossoms fully, that being the inclusion of jumps that players have already done thousands of times, so they can't really improve much at them from the time they start the save to when they beat the save. As such, that crucial sense of progression doesn't materialize, and the player is instead just hoping for what is essentially a dice roll. The dark visuals don't help with this, but instead exacerbate the issue by making it harder to be more precise with the kid since his feet aren't visible. 6/10, though if the other saves were like the final one, it'd be 4/10.
Stage 9: Mixed emotions on this one. There's an overwhelming sense of confusion with four types of gravity at play, which I like and appreciate on a thematic level, but at the same time, I really disliked the platforming. The first three saves are fine, gradually increasing in difficulty, but the penultimate save felt designed to kill the player if one were to attempt a semblance of flow. For example, holding left to hit the next flipper would have to be followed by releasing left thanks to the spike/flipper placement. It would have been a lot more satisfying to rely less on awkward, confusing movement and instead replace that with a natural continuation. The final save felt out of place as well, though again it made sense thematically, so I'm torn. 7/10.
Stage 10: This stage contains some of the hardest platforming in the game, slightly exceeding stage 6. Despite that, I really liked what was on offer, even though it used stage 6's gimmick (water). Every time I arrived at a new screen, things looked so overwhelmingly impossible that I was rather filled with a sense of despair; but, as I started making progress and gaining consistency on the earlier, harder parts of each save, the despair was replaced by a bit of unadulterated joy, and immense relief when I beat the save. 9/10 because the plane jump at the start of the last save really sucks.
Stage 11: The final stage, with no gimmicks to be found. The stage really exists in two parts: everything before the final save, and the final save itself. The first part is fairly easy, with 65–70 difficulty platforming, again made worse by an obscuring black background. The second part, however, is a clear step above the rest of the game, and it's not even close. The final save is four screens of tough needle, with the second screen being the hardest, and constitutes just over a minute of platforming if you're playing quickly. I can absolutely see a player struggling to get to this point, only to get absolutely walled by the finale, and to that poor soul my heart goes out. I got pretty lucky—I only died to screen 4 three times—but the final save still took me nearly an hour to beat, almost double what the hardest saves took me in the rest of the game (about 5 or 6 saves took around half an hour each). There are at least two jumps I would nerf to help bridge the difficulty gap, but on the whole, if you reach this point, you're so invested that you'll have to soldier through it regardless. Still, I wouldn't say I enjoyed the final save, despite feeling a sense of catharsis upon completion. 6.5/10.
The mathematically inclined among you might notice that on average, my stage rating works out to 7.8/10, yet I gave the game a 9! What gives? The reality is that the game is more than the sum of its parts, and this nonlinearity affords me the opportunity to weigh things unequally. So, warts and all, Nebulous Thoughts clocks in at a 9/10 for telling a cohesive narrative imbibed with emotion, all of which comes out at the very end of the game in one of the most touching moments I've seen in any game because of how real and raw it is. This game, despite its flaws, offers a special experience for those willing and able to see it through to completion. It's not easy, but it's absolutely worth your time and effort if there is even the most remote chance of success—or even if you, like me, merely started on a quest to improve.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 82 82
May 20, 2022
Nemicron
For: I wanna be the Conscience
For: I wanna be the Conscience
pretty adventure game.
but trap is annoying...
[0] Likes
but trap is annoying...
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 60 60
May 20, 2022
SquareDork
For: Chungo's Gauntlet
For: Chungo's Gauntlet
/!\ SPOILER WARNING /!\
Grug know Delfruit no like spoiler on big review. Grug think review has spoiler for final boss and end.
Like everyone else's said thus far, not much what you'd expect from this site, but still quite excellent.
This is really one of those rare fangames where I recognized pretty much every song source, there were very few picks I either didn't immediately recognize, or didn't recognize.
I think one of few things I dislike about this game is the non-rebindable controls, the unchangeable volume settings, and of course the non-variable jump height. Those first two, I think are kind of inexcusable, but the third one's fine. I personally dislike it, but I never felt like any section of the game would've been massively improved with variable jump height, only kinda minorly throughout the game.
Another thing I kinda disliked was the final boss. Maybe that's just because this game is a wee bit below my preferred difficulty, but it felt a little anti-climactic. Perhaps some more HP or one more phase wouldn't hurt. That's not to say it was bad, just that I felt it ended a little too quickly.
I do appreciate the inclusion of a warp room at the end, even though I probably won't replay the game. It's very nice.
[0] Likes
Grug know Delfruit no like spoiler on big review. Grug think review has spoiler for final boss and end.
Like everyone else's said thus far, not much what you'd expect from this site, but still quite excellent.
This is really one of those rare fangames where I recognized pretty much every song source, there were very few picks I either didn't immediately recognize, or didn't recognize.
I think one of few things I dislike about this game is the non-rebindable controls, the unchangeable volume settings, and of course the non-variable jump height. Those first two, I think are kind of inexcusable, but the third one's fine. I personally dislike it, but I never felt like any section of the game would've been massively improved with variable jump height, only kinda minorly throughout the game.
Another thing I kinda disliked was the final boss. Maybe that's just because this game is a wee bit below my preferred difficulty, but it felt a little anti-climactic. Perhaps some more HP or one more phase wouldn't hurt. That's not to say it was bad, just that I felt it ended a little too quickly.
I do appreciate the inclusion of a warp room at the end, even though I probably won't replay the game. It's very nice.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 30 30
May 20, 2022
BloggerOP
For: I wanna be the A
For: I wanna be the A
Personally I didn't like the gameplay that much. I hated the part where four stars circle or something, very awkward pattern in the later part... was not my taste.
[1] Like
Rating: 6.2 62
Difficulty: 60 60
May 20, 2022
phgQED
For: Jtool
For: Jtool
This is literally my favorite fangame of all time. I have never experienced such a sense of freedom and creation as booting up jtool and moving around like an idiot between some spikes. It is impossible for me to describe how much I love this program, how much time I have spent using/playing it, how it is almost entirely responsible for my entry into the fangame community and having anything to do with needle at all and being able to make a game and...
I like it.
I like it.
Tagged as: Tool
[0] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100
Difficulty: N/A
May 20, 2022
KingSlendy
For: I wanna fly the Far away
For: I wanna fly the Far away
Tagged as: Needle
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.0 70
Difficulty: 88 88
May 20, 2022