Delicious FruitLatest Reviews
Recursion
For: I wanna Helltake
For: I wanna Helltake
it is great fun but the rngs are really annoying
[0] Likes
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 57 57
Oct 18, 2020
choco1260 [Creator]
For: I Wanna Defeat The TeamChoco(共同開発)
For: I Wanna Defeat The TeamChoco(共同開発)
Fuck You.
[3] Likes
Rating: 0.0 0
Difficulty: N/A
Oct 18, 2020
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Catharsis
For: I wanna be the Catharsis
"1500 feet above the target, leaving no crater."
With the required sensibilities, it is very easy to distinguish an artist whenever and wherever he/she may arise, regardless of what the artist does. This game is an artistic statement and this is no exaggeration. Enough has been said about the fair implementation of gimmicks, the unpredictably original and good needle platforming screens and about how the challenge, although having a bar sufficiently high for improving the skills of an amateur, proves to be extremely entertaining and highly rewarding.
But as a visual individual, I'm here to talk about the artistic value this creation brings to the table, to a community that doesn't get this kind of proposals often. Hiddow, as any other fangame maker, is an artist. The eternal debate of what constitutes art can be discussed here and I will gladly offer my perspective without attacking yours; however, visually and thematically this game is bringing along a statement, possibly a political one.
As the apolitical person I am, I'm not here to bore you with convoluted themes unrelated to fangaming; however, this fangame begs for discussing themes outside our comfort zone. First: does the visual aspect compensate the lack of design or platforming quality? Most of us will say no, and some high production value games has smashed that truth in our faces. But what happens when the two are in balance? What happens when the maker puts the same amount of importance on both? Gems like this come out, gems that should be appreciated. Symmetry barely begins to describe the visuals because it actually experiments with design while keeping in mind that said experimentation affects the platforming, and the inventiveness applied works amazingly for gameplay.
Now, the following are the most important paragraphs for me. The game represents The Kid's journey through hope in times of war. It is mostly a cathartic and ultimately tragic experience, so expect spoilers in the rest of the review.
The journey is a trip to hell, to warfare destruction, unleashing terror. It begins with a peaceful sky landscape embellished by Ed Harrison's Beacon, from the Neotokyo OST. This soundtrack constitutes the backbone of the game and is the foundation upon which the game stands and it is important to understand that. Atmospheric, chill, and yet a foreshadowing of things to come. Once you stumble upon an allegorically "impossible" platforming segment (it is possible to do of course), The Kid perceives a menace and decides to fall down. There is an imminent terror of bad things to come. The Kid falls into what he thinks is protection, only to be chased by an abstract inner fear of his. This chase makes me remember The Babadook, where the monster is a symbolic representation of fear. The Kid faces this and gets to run away from it. This shelter proves to be an incarnation of fears, as said, and encounters a most controversial one: an atomic explosion.
To make a pause, when I streamed this section three weeks ago, I had some Letterboxd'ers with me discussing films and fangames at the same time, and this caught our attention. The obvious popular mention is Kubrick and his ending for Dr. Strangelove (1964), but no, the first thing that came to my mind while listening to Ed Harrison's Radius (key for understanding this segment) was the experimental work of landmark and extremely relevant filmmaker Bruce Conner, a man whose splendid and ahead-of-its-time work circled around media scandal, human conflict and, what concerns us in the context of Catharsis, nuclear warfare. You'll often see the covers of his work being represented by a nuclear mushroom, and one of his favorite personal works of mine, Crossroads, crept into my mind during this whole time. The song Radius is repeated many times.
Consider that the Radius version with the voice sample says exactly what I quoted in the beginning repeatedly, and it is no accident. The game is absolutely making a statement.
Once The Kid travels to this allegorical "bunker" screens, he finally decides, with difficulty, to climb up to the surface again (as in the film Take Shelter) and encounters a world engulfed in flames. What I observed was that the artwork resembled the Romantic style of the 18th Century. My best friend, who was also watching the stream just for support, commented that the background seemed liked "something painted by Goya, but with more aggressive strokes". Throughout, she kept pointing out painters as well. She's so versed. Anyway, this jump-refresher segment does have its drawbacks as the refreshers are questionably small for grabbing them, making jumps forced and precise, but the overall routes were fun and I loved the alternate paths one could take, something that would be present throughout the game.
Anyway, back to the story (or what is my personal interpretation of it, really), The Kid now faces reality. The fear is now palpable. The world is in a war aftermath. Walking through these screens, The Kid tries to get back to his usual world again. He wants to come back to a reality of peace and beauty. We will encounter the most beautifully designed screens in this portion, the ones with black needle and ground, and light gray background. However, he mentally struggles with this as disturbing imagery will assault him in instances (one particular image that won't leave my mind is the section where he seems to be in a display of security cameras displaying prisoners; I don't know the origin or context of this image, but it is surely unsettling and scary).
Notice the artistic progression the game will show now: shades of gray, like if we were coming closer to the nuclear mushroom we once contemplated from the outside. Here, the art we saw before in symmetry starts to lose two things: said symmetry and the contrast between black and white. Everything starts to mix itself in gray tones.
The last portion is painted with strokes of gray, and nothing but black lines that represent everything that looked normal before. It is like either walking through war ruins, or the smoke of the explosion itself (I second the second motion). Radius hits us back as the main theme. The hardest screen will be here, which is the second to last. This is tragic because The Kid is still stuck in a version of the world that is too ugly to see. But he keeps going.
The ending is open to interpretation, as it states that there is no Catharsis. This probably means that the protagonist didn't experience it as he was dead all along; The Kid probably died during the nuclear mushroom screen and everything afterwards was a journey to the afterlife, as a spirit roaming around ruins. Or it was everything just imagined. This can be backed up with the game being very vivid during the initial portions, abstract in the middle and visually lifeless (in a good way) towards the ending, and more monochromatic.
Reading too much into it? Who said that was a sin? Art is art and it depends on us to make a meaning out of it. There are no rules.
People often ask/troll me concerning my low ratings; I am rating fangames as art in general, since I consider fangames as real games and videogames in general as art, so I should make no differentiation (shoutout to Racic who perfectly understood this statement of mine in a mature way after NotEvenAmatueR, also respectfully, said he just added two stars to every review I wrote). I do it because I know the bar can always be raised more, and this minimalistic sample is a proof that it can be done, with no boss rushes, high production value, explosions, memes or traps... just straightforward platforming, a distinguishable visual style and a message behind. You have a guaranteed winner in this way.
For people that care for art in general, please watch everything you can from Bruce Conner.
[12] Likes
With the required sensibilities, it is very easy to distinguish an artist whenever and wherever he/she may arise, regardless of what the artist does. This game is an artistic statement and this is no exaggeration. Enough has been said about the fair implementation of gimmicks, the unpredictably original and good needle platforming screens and about how the challenge, although having a bar sufficiently high for improving the skills of an amateur, proves to be extremely entertaining and highly rewarding.
But as a visual individual, I'm here to talk about the artistic value this creation brings to the table, to a community that doesn't get this kind of proposals often. Hiddow, as any other fangame maker, is an artist. The eternal debate of what constitutes art can be discussed here and I will gladly offer my perspective without attacking yours; however, visually and thematically this game is bringing along a statement, possibly a political one.
As the apolitical person I am, I'm not here to bore you with convoluted themes unrelated to fangaming; however, this fangame begs for discussing themes outside our comfort zone. First: does the visual aspect compensate the lack of design or platforming quality? Most of us will say no, and some high production value games has smashed that truth in our faces. But what happens when the two are in balance? What happens when the maker puts the same amount of importance on both? Gems like this come out, gems that should be appreciated. Symmetry barely begins to describe the visuals because it actually experiments with design while keeping in mind that said experimentation affects the platforming, and the inventiveness applied works amazingly for gameplay.
Now, the following are the most important paragraphs for me. The game represents The Kid's journey through hope in times of war. It is mostly a cathartic and ultimately tragic experience, so expect spoilers in the rest of the review.
The journey is a trip to hell, to warfare destruction, unleashing terror. It begins with a peaceful sky landscape embellished by Ed Harrison's Beacon, from the Neotokyo OST. This soundtrack constitutes the backbone of the game and is the foundation upon which the game stands and it is important to understand that. Atmospheric, chill, and yet a foreshadowing of things to come. Once you stumble upon an allegorically "impossible" platforming segment (it is possible to do of course), The Kid perceives a menace and decides to fall down. There is an imminent terror of bad things to come. The Kid falls into what he thinks is protection, only to be chased by an abstract inner fear of his. This chase makes me remember The Babadook, where the monster is a symbolic representation of fear. The Kid faces this and gets to run away from it. This shelter proves to be an incarnation of fears, as said, and encounters a most controversial one: an atomic explosion.
To make a pause, when I streamed this section three weeks ago, I had some Letterboxd'ers with me discussing films and fangames at the same time, and this caught our attention. The obvious popular mention is Kubrick and his ending for Dr. Strangelove (1964), but no, the first thing that came to my mind while listening to Ed Harrison's Radius (key for understanding this segment) was the experimental work of landmark and extremely relevant filmmaker Bruce Conner, a man whose splendid and ahead-of-its-time work circled around media scandal, human conflict and, what concerns us in the context of Catharsis, nuclear warfare. You'll often see the covers of his work being represented by a nuclear mushroom, and one of his favorite personal works of mine, Crossroads, crept into my mind during this whole time. The song Radius is repeated many times.
Consider that the Radius version with the voice sample says exactly what I quoted in the beginning repeatedly, and it is no accident. The game is absolutely making a statement.
Once The Kid travels to this allegorical "bunker" screens, he finally decides, with difficulty, to climb up to the surface again (as in the film Take Shelter) and encounters a world engulfed in flames. What I observed was that the artwork resembled the Romantic style of the 18th Century. My best friend, who was also watching the stream just for support, commented that the background seemed liked "something painted by Goya, but with more aggressive strokes". Throughout, she kept pointing out painters as well. She's so versed. Anyway, this jump-refresher segment does have its drawbacks as the refreshers are questionably small for grabbing them, making jumps forced and precise, but the overall routes were fun and I loved the alternate paths one could take, something that would be present throughout the game.
Anyway, back to the story (or what is my personal interpretation of it, really), The Kid now faces reality. The fear is now palpable. The world is in a war aftermath. Walking through these screens, The Kid tries to get back to his usual world again. He wants to come back to a reality of peace and beauty. We will encounter the most beautifully designed screens in this portion, the ones with black needle and ground, and light gray background. However, he mentally struggles with this as disturbing imagery will assault him in instances (one particular image that won't leave my mind is the section where he seems to be in a display of security cameras displaying prisoners; I don't know the origin or context of this image, but it is surely unsettling and scary).
Notice the artistic progression the game will show now: shades of gray, like if we were coming closer to the nuclear mushroom we once contemplated from the outside. Here, the art we saw before in symmetry starts to lose two things: said symmetry and the contrast between black and white. Everything starts to mix itself in gray tones.
The last portion is painted with strokes of gray, and nothing but black lines that represent everything that looked normal before. It is like either walking through war ruins, or the smoke of the explosion itself (I second the second motion). Radius hits us back as the main theme. The hardest screen will be here, which is the second to last. This is tragic because The Kid is still stuck in a version of the world that is too ugly to see. But he keeps going.
The ending is open to interpretation, as it states that there is no Catharsis. This probably means that the protagonist didn't experience it as he was dead all along; The Kid probably died during the nuclear mushroom screen and everything afterwards was a journey to the afterlife, as a spirit roaming around ruins. Or it was everything just imagined. This can be backed up with the game being very vivid during the initial portions, abstract in the middle and visually lifeless (in a good way) towards the ending, and more monochromatic.
Reading too much into it? Who said that was a sin? Art is art and it depends on us to make a meaning out of it. There are no rules.
People often ask/troll me concerning my low ratings; I am rating fangames as art in general, since I consider fangames as real games and videogames in general as art, so I should make no differentiation (shoutout to Racic who perfectly understood this statement of mine in a mature way after NotEvenAmatueR, also respectfully, said he just added two stars to every review I wrote). I do it because I know the bar can always be raised more, and this minimalistic sample is a proof that it can be done, with no boss rushes, high production value, explosions, memes or traps... just straightforward platforming, a distinguishable visual style and a message behind. You have a guaranteed winner in this way.
For people that care for art in general, please watch everything you can from Bruce Conner.
Rating: 8.0 80
Difficulty: 75 75
Oct 18, 2020
moogy
For: I Wanna Defeat The TeamChoco(共同開発)
For: I Wanna Defeat The TeamChoco(共同開発)
Rating does not include extra.
A bunch of screens of extremely uninteresting needle. Almost every jump involves a diagonal, corner, or both. Later on the design branches out to include stuff like inverts, super Fs, and TAS ledges, it's all very exciting. There's really no reason to bother playing this unless you feel like sitting down and doing generic jumps for 30 minutes for whatever reason.
Also, the game filesize is nearly 300mb, due to several of the music files being incredibly long (one of them is over an hour in length). I can't even begin to fathom why.
A bunch of screens of extremely uninteresting needle. Almost every jump involves a diagonal, corner, or both. Later on the design branches out to include stuff like inverts, super Fs, and TAS ledges, it's all very exciting. There's really no reason to bother playing this unless you feel like sitting down and doing generic jumps for 30 minutes for whatever reason.
Also, the game filesize is nearly 300mb, due to several of the music files being incredibly long (one of them is over an hour in length). I can't even begin to fathom why.
Tagged as: Needle
[2] Likes
Rating: 3.0 30
Difficulty: 51 51
Oct 18, 2020
YaBoiMarcAntony
For: I Wanna Save My Boy
For: I Wanna Save My Boy
I could spend a very long time gushing about how good this game is, so I'll go ahead and do it in a paragraph here:
I Wanna Save My Boy is a brilliant needle-gimmick-venture game from Arzztt, yet another in a long line of masterpieces. Every screen is a stroke of genius, every save is just a little taste of ambrosia, every single jump is a mere hint of the whole cocaine-covered cake. There's so much content jammed into this one game that your first playthrough could only be finished in one sitting if you're a madman with nothing to do; yet, it never feels tired for one second thanks to the insane amount of gimmicks put into play throughout each stage. Each gimmick is fed to you slowly, introduced one at a time until you'll be playing with several gimmicks in just one save by the end. This is, in my eyes, the completion of an evolution starting all the way back with Chill Needle.
Arzztt started from pure corridor needle, albeit quite good corridor needle. Nonetheless, it was a mere taste of what was to come. A Minimal Adventure releases and Arzztt suddenly reveals his hand, giving just a little peek at what they could do; yet, it was still a simplistic gimmick needle game. All that changed, however, with the release of Not Another VVVVVV Game. This is where Arzztt truly stepped into a class of his own. His usage of the VKid gimmick is second-to-none and by this point his needle was refined to a point that few creators ever reach. Most important of all, however, there was this little touch, this little bit of love put into his game that made it especially phenomenal. Chill Needle 2 drops soon after NAVG, admittedly a small stumble in Arzztt's evolution, but it is nonetheless the next step due to its introduction of other gimmicks. Instead of just being a vkid-trick pony, Arzztt shows that they have a handle on gimmicks in general, exhibiting a clear understanding of what feels good to play with despite not being typical within fangames.
Then, there's VoVoVo.
I gushed about VoVoVo enough in its own review, so I'll keep it short. VoVoVo is a gimmick needle game which is one of the closest things we've ever gotten to an orgasm in the form of a game. In fact, it's so splendiferous that I find it difficult to truly express that quality in appropriate words (which is my way of saying I've been here for five minutes trying to write a sentence and I can't fucking do it). There are several unique gimmicks utilized throughout and they're all used perfectly. One could call VoVoVo the natural conclusion to this evolution Arzztt has undergone.
Then, there's Save My Boy.
Something VoVoVo was careful about was how much went on at one time. There would be a couple, perhaps even a few gimmicks at once, but it was never to the point of being overwhelming. Save My Boy doesn't give a god-damned shit about being overwhelming, to be crude. Instead, Save My Boy wants to take it to the limit, see what can happen if you throw everything you can into one screen. This, if done by an inferior creator, would have been a mess. There would have been no balance, no gimmick would have felt interesting in its own right, and it would have not an ounce of cohesion. Arzztt, however, is not an inferior creator, as he's proven time and time again. As such, Save My Boy is a phenomenally well-put-together game. Despite how much is going on at any given time, I never felt like I was losing the plot or as if there was no order. I Wanna Save My Boy is like a brilliant orchestra. Despite the amount of people, despite the various instruments, despite everything suggesting that they should be able to produce nothing but a cacophonous mess, the Save My Boy orchestra manages to blend together this assortment of sounds in such a way that only a master composer could ever do. And so, they've created a spectacular symphony.
There's a story as well, and I'll never forget it. It's not a Shakespearean tale, but it doesn't try to be. It's a simple story of trying to save your boy spread out over many different twists and turns. The dialogue is funny and acts as a nice breather between stages, as do the bosses themselves despite their simplicity. I found myself laughing out loud quite a lot, if I'm honest. The final boss is both hilarious and a great subversion. Such a grandiose game would have nothing less than a grandiose boss to cap it all off, but instead we're given a joke boss (although I did die once as expected, since I'm a joke too).
There's a lot of talk of memorability, and by a lot of talk I mean Kale talks about it a lot. I agree with him, actually. There's little variety, at the end of the day, and the game plays it safe to the very end. One might think it a bit risky to play with so many different gimmicks at one time, but if you're careful, it really is no problem at all. It's a massively difficult thing to do, of course, but when you have such a handle on design as Arzztt, then it's just a matter of time. These are all things I agree with wholeheartedly, but I also believe they miss the point to begin with. Since Chill Needle, Arzztt has placed a huge importance on one thing and one thing only: fun. There's been little risk, but there's also never been a bad moment throughout any of his games. I'll admit, this makes it difficult for a game to be truly memorable and special, but somehow Arzztt often manages it anyways.
Save My Boy may not have the most varied or interesting gameplay, but it has so much heart that I can't fault it for that anyways. This is thanks also to the lovable story and cast of characters. Sure, I won't recall this game as well as I do Morning Dew or Vandal, but it holds a special place in my heart nonetheless. Save My Boy is, in essence, your homie. He's everyone's homie. Everyone likes and loves him and he makes everyone a better person by being around them. He lifts everyone up and tries his very best to put a smile on everyone's face. Maybe he doesn't create a jaw-droppingly gorgeous piece of art, maybe he doesn't have fascinatingly spicy political takes, maybe, maybe, maybe. What he does have, however, is a good heart.
[0] Likes
I Wanna Save My Boy is a brilliant needle-gimmick-venture game from Arzztt, yet another in a long line of masterpieces. Every screen is a stroke of genius, every save is just a little taste of ambrosia, every single jump is a mere hint of the whole cocaine-covered cake. There's so much content jammed into this one game that your first playthrough could only be finished in one sitting if you're a madman with nothing to do; yet, it never feels tired for one second thanks to the insane amount of gimmicks put into play throughout each stage. Each gimmick is fed to you slowly, introduced one at a time until you'll be playing with several gimmicks in just one save by the end. This is, in my eyes, the completion of an evolution starting all the way back with Chill Needle.
Arzztt started from pure corridor needle, albeit quite good corridor needle. Nonetheless, it was a mere taste of what was to come. A Minimal Adventure releases and Arzztt suddenly reveals his hand, giving just a little peek at what they could do; yet, it was still a simplistic gimmick needle game. All that changed, however, with the release of Not Another VVVVVV Game. This is where Arzztt truly stepped into a class of his own. His usage of the VKid gimmick is second-to-none and by this point his needle was refined to a point that few creators ever reach. Most important of all, however, there was this little touch, this little bit of love put into his game that made it especially phenomenal. Chill Needle 2 drops soon after NAVG, admittedly a small stumble in Arzztt's evolution, but it is nonetheless the next step due to its introduction of other gimmicks. Instead of just being a vkid-trick pony, Arzztt shows that they have a handle on gimmicks in general, exhibiting a clear understanding of what feels good to play with despite not being typical within fangames.
Then, there's VoVoVo.
I gushed about VoVoVo enough in its own review, so I'll keep it short. VoVoVo is a gimmick needle game which is one of the closest things we've ever gotten to an orgasm in the form of a game. In fact, it's so splendiferous that I find it difficult to truly express that quality in appropriate words (which is my way of saying I've been here for five minutes trying to write a sentence and I can't fucking do it). There are several unique gimmicks utilized throughout and they're all used perfectly. One could call VoVoVo the natural conclusion to this evolution Arzztt has undergone.
Then, there's Save My Boy.
Something VoVoVo was careful about was how much went on at one time. There would be a couple, perhaps even a few gimmicks at once, but it was never to the point of being overwhelming. Save My Boy doesn't give a god-damned shit about being overwhelming, to be crude. Instead, Save My Boy wants to take it to the limit, see what can happen if you throw everything you can into one screen. This, if done by an inferior creator, would have been a mess. There would have been no balance, no gimmick would have felt interesting in its own right, and it would have not an ounce of cohesion. Arzztt, however, is not an inferior creator, as he's proven time and time again. As such, Save My Boy is a phenomenally well-put-together game. Despite how much is going on at any given time, I never felt like I was losing the plot or as if there was no order. I Wanna Save My Boy is like a brilliant orchestra. Despite the amount of people, despite the various instruments, despite everything suggesting that they should be able to produce nothing but a cacophonous mess, the Save My Boy orchestra manages to blend together this assortment of sounds in such a way that only a master composer could ever do. And so, they've created a spectacular symphony.
There's a story as well, and I'll never forget it. It's not a Shakespearean tale, but it doesn't try to be. It's a simple story of trying to save your boy spread out over many different twists and turns. The dialogue is funny and acts as a nice breather between stages, as do the bosses themselves despite their simplicity. I found myself laughing out loud quite a lot, if I'm honest. The final boss is both hilarious and a great subversion. Such a grandiose game would have nothing less than a grandiose boss to cap it all off, but instead we're given a joke boss (although I did die once as expected, since I'm a joke too).
There's a lot of talk of memorability, and by a lot of talk I mean Kale talks about it a lot. I agree with him, actually. There's little variety, at the end of the day, and the game plays it safe to the very end. One might think it a bit risky to play with so many different gimmicks at one time, but if you're careful, it really is no problem at all. It's a massively difficult thing to do, of course, but when you have such a handle on design as Arzztt, then it's just a matter of time. These are all things I agree with wholeheartedly, but I also believe they miss the point to begin with. Since Chill Needle, Arzztt has placed a huge importance on one thing and one thing only: fun. There's been little risk, but there's also never been a bad moment throughout any of his games. I'll admit, this makes it difficult for a game to be truly memorable and special, but somehow Arzztt often manages it anyways.
Save My Boy may not have the most varied or interesting gameplay, but it has so much heart that I can't fault it for that anyways. This is thanks also to the lovable story and cast of characters. Sure, I won't recall this game as well as I do Morning Dew or Vandal, but it holds a special place in my heart nonetheless. Save My Boy is, in essence, your homie. He's everyone's homie. Everyone likes and loves him and he makes everyone a better person by being around them. He lifts everyone up and tries his very best to put a smile on everyone's face. Maybe he doesn't create a jaw-droppingly gorgeous piece of art, maybe he doesn't have fascinatingly spicy political takes, maybe, maybe, maybe. What he does have, however, is a good heart.
Rating: 9.0 90
Difficulty: 70 70
Oct 18, 2020
Yorinji
For: I Wanna Defeat the Discord Makers: FM Side
[0] Likes
For: I Wanna Defeat the Discord Makers: FM Side
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.5 75
Difficulty: 60 60
Oct 17, 2020