Delicious FruitElCochran90's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Aug 25, 2018
Bio:
About time I updated this bio.
Name: Edgar Cochran
Country: Mexico
Currently living in: Mexico City
-God's servant and one of his blessed sons (John 1:12; John 3:16).
-Lover of the entire animal and plant creation.
-Film lover and reviewer for Letterboxd.com (https://letterboxd.com/elcochran90).
-Adjunct professor and personal tutor of Statistical Inference, Business Forecasting, Marketing Research and Portfolio Theory.
Fangaming experience began in August 2018, so only modest achievements here. However, I'll describe some relevant FAQs here made to me during my stay here since 2018:
Q: Are videogames art?
A: Yes
Q: Are fangames videogames?
A: Yes
Q: Why are your reviews long and unconventional?
A: I am a film reviewer; in a way, I sort of unconsciously dragged my style of film reviewing to the world of fangames. I often involve personal experiences in my writing. Expect that structure; I'm not planning to change it.
Q: How are you rating games? Do you compare fangames as normal games that your ratings are lower than all other people ratings or are you just a critical person?
A: My ratings are not lower than people's ratings all of the time regarding fangames, but they are most of the time. However, this is not my intention. I am rating them as normal games, as in, I don't have a different spectrum for rating "normal", "official" games than fangames. They are in the same scale, because they are all videogames. I don't like to think myself as a critical person; ratings are just subjective numbers. However, I have realized that I rate games more harshly than I rate films/short films, which I do more often.
Q: What are your favorite fangames?
A: I have not played enough fangames to make a comprehensive and representative list, but this can be answered by going to my Favorites list. Anything getting 6.7 or higher will be considered immediately as a favorite.
I've submitted:
378 Ratings!
378 Reviews!
790 Screenshots!
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378 Games
378 Reviews
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the 50 SGGK Riser
For: I wanna be the 50 SGGK Riser
Can't wait for the sequel!
Tagged as: Needle
[2] Likes
Rating: 0.3 3
Difficulty: 45 45
Nov 1, 2020
ElCochran90
For: I wanna Happy Mid-autumn Festival
For: I wanna Happy Mid-autumn Festival
Rating based on Normal mode. Difficulty rating based on Normal mode.
A nice seasonal story. The easy mode is pretty much pointless unless this is the very first time you ever play an avoidance fangame, but the HP can result in people not focusing on actual gameplay. The Normal version, however, compensates these flaws and offers a beautiful story where the balance between extremely easy and slow attacks is interrupted abruptly by precise attacks, such as the rain or three glowing spheres right in the middle which will definitely get you, or the outward spinning curved purple orbs which are difficult to read. Song is great to accompany a seemingly moving story and the replay value is there.
A decent addition for the beginner-friendly collection.
A nice seasonal story. The easy mode is pretty much pointless unless this is the very first time you ever play an avoidance fangame, but the HP can result in people not focusing on actual gameplay. The Normal version, however, compensates these flaws and offers a beautiful story where the balance between extremely easy and slow attacks is interrupted abruptly by precise attacks, such as the rain or three glowing spheres right in the middle which will definitely get you, or the outward spinning curved purple orbs which are difficult to read. Song is great to accompany a seemingly moving story and the replay value is there.
A decent addition for the beginner-friendly collection.
Tagged as: Avoidance
Beginner_Friendly
[0] Likes
Rating: 5.5 55
Difficulty: 35 35
Oct 31, 2020
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the Neurosis
For: I wanna be the Neurosis
dopamine's trademark is all over this and I think the statement stems more clearly from Hiddow's Catharsis in the sense that this is a hellish trip in which The Kid embarks on a surreal, psychological trip back to sanity. Every chapter offers an atmospheric experience and the name of the chapters correlate fairly enough with the visuals and theme. Soundtrack is a winner. dopamine does know how to create horror from atmosphere; however, there is a punishment/trap room notorious for its imagery and score that might offend some viewers. I found it extremely eerie and caught me off guard.
Difficulty curve is ok-ish throughout, beginning very lightly in the beginning and having the most strange decisions in the Nosferatu area (I appreciate all the film references in here, tho!). Experience is short, but I guess quality matters more than quantity.
The last room is notorious for how it ramps up the difficulty randomly. I see it was nerfed and would love to see the previous version. If you know how to jump-cancel, the first corner is notoriously easy. Perhaps it was luck, but I third-tried this final room and I had one dumb death to be honest. So I clearly did not experience the previous version of the final room everyone condemned in the past.
Recommended for those looking more than just gameplay in fangames.
[1] Like
Difficulty curve is ok-ish throughout, beginning very lightly in the beginning and having the most strange decisions in the Nosferatu area (I appreciate all the film references in here, tho!). Experience is short, but I guess quality matters more than quantity.
The last room is notorious for how it ramps up the difficulty randomly. I see it was nerfed and would love to see the previous version. If you know how to jump-cancel, the first corner is notoriously easy. Perhaps it was luck, but I third-tried this final room and I had one dumb death to be honest. So I clearly did not experience the previous version of the final room everyone condemned in the past.
Recommended for those looking more than just gameplay in fangames.
Rating: 6.4 64
Difficulty: 60 60
Oct 19, 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
ElCochran90
For: I wanna be the RUKIMIN!7(SEVEN!)
For: I wanna be the RUKIMIN!7(SEVEN!)
Rating includes 100% completion (all items, Ex Suzuko and extra ending). Difficulty rating is for Medium mode. Consider a 60 for Hard mode, which includes some additional screens and challenges.
Ahead of its time. Instant favorite.
Rukimin!7 is a stampede of sensational creativity and the variety demands a comprehensive description, but that entails spoiling the experience, so this review has only the intent of making an overview of said awesomeness. Game consists of mainly 5 stages (arguably four if one counts the main hub):
Stage 1: A trap game! Oh no. Woe for me. But wait... The experience is immensely random and funny. Many traps are really unpredictable and knock your socks off. The first screen does this at least once with an otherworldly feeling that this is not your typical trap game. Game looks exceptionally gorgeous and each screen becomes as legendary as the next one. There is a section down below when you locate the first cannon that propels you away, and that trap is definitely a tribute to James Rolfe's parody of Super Pitfall: hilarious overkill. That just blew my mind. It gets me every time and if you put attention to every single detail, it's all there. The clouds, I won't deny, are super annoying, but they're funny during the first times and afterwards you realize it's only two screens (one more during a chase of Stage 4, but whatever). The boss is exceptionally hilarious in its mockery of bad Japanese-to-English translations.
Stage 2 ramps up the creativity bar with a Lego stage. Amazing visuals too. There is a grudge with this stage though: clicking on blocks to activate certain mechanisms. There is just no way. Combining the mouse with the keyboard/controller is a big "no". Let me focus on one thing. The Hard difficulty in particular poses a challenge since there is an extra long side-scrolling screen that requires you to either think super fast AND move super precise, or simply do a trial-and-error exercise that culminates in a muscle memory exercise. Apart from that, the stage is a great idea and the boss is ok fun.
Stage 3: A mountain climb. It is particularly fun in Hard difficulty since the game finds a way to make a "chase", And when you do achieve to climb to the top, amazing surprises await for you, with the first one being the best: a SuperStarRideAttack vertical shooter. Expect to have an "S" rank in this challenge only playing the Hard Mode in order to achieve something that will be discussed later, but the point system, movement, attack, shift slow-mo strats and enemies are delightfully well made and fun to play! I have never seen this in another fangame, but most importantly, I seriously doubt it would work this well. Boss is probably referenced in the Gradius stage of K3 and the song is a badass banger. Climactic ending too!
And that is only the first part. The second one is like travelling into a hand-drawn child book and a kid's dream. It's only two screens long unfortunately (plus the extra stage to the right of the first screen to get a secret item), and Suzuko, the first avoidance boss, certainly increases the difficulty exponentially during the playthrough, especially on Hard mode, which increases the length of every Touhou-like attack. In Medium mode she is also hard, and in both modes she is arguably the hardest boss in the whole game (I'd agree with this remark on Hard mode hands down). I required a Rank-2 to beat her in Hard mode, which took forever, and all because of the final attack. Spawns are unreasonable.
After this fight you do get a heart attack but it's all a brilliantly pulled-off prank, and the good jokes continue.
Stage 4 shows more interest in the visual design and has a section of straightforward needle platforming (with a fun chase that features the aforementioned, annoying bouncy clouds), it has one of the most ridiculous bosses ever (in the good way) and, if you do not count this as a separate stage, the final castle area which, if played in the Hard mode, requires you to do two additional things, the latter being exceptional: going through fire cannonballs instead of only dodging the giant gray cannons, and using a cannon to go through a gate at full speed. The latter is ridiculous! Lots of trial and error are required to make it possible. In the Medium mode it's still hard, but it removes the upper spike so it is no longer a gate.
Now...
The final boss. It requires discussion, and here's where I make an extremely important mention. Items in this game are key for making it distinguishable. They are visual jokes, but also weapons, and depending on the difficulty you're playing, some can actually be used as a weapon against the bosses: play on Medium and you lose this awesome advantage. My favorite is Suzuko's bell by a large margin. Visually and conceptually, it is very fun and attractive, but it is also tricky to use because the bells can also hurt you! So use them with calculation and caution.
Rukimin in Medium becomes a smashfest, and it is actually HARDER than the Hard mode. In the Hard more, she has more attacks and faster ones too, but using Suzuko's bell against her is extremely effective due to her constant teleporting, and with the correct setup, you can get rid of her in 10 seconds. Forget about this very fun story for Medium mode.
But THEN comes Pochi, and it is the embodiment of why I love experimental decisions in any art form. You seemingly have summoned a nightmare demon, an entity from a disturbing realm to your world. The haunting music creates cognitive dissonance and the entire boss, which is an avoidance, has amazingly-looking and non-generic attacks except probably for the 360° randomness which is oh so fun to play through without the "C" item which makes everything explode into stars. Having the correct movement strats with the "S" shoes is key, plus very precise moves. Pochi is an audiovisual experience I will never forget.
HOW TO GET EXTRA:
You took your Japanese classes, right? Of course you didn't. Remember, though, that EDAMAME MEANS BULLET. Spam "E" repeatedly and you'll see that a golden pea will come out out of a thousand (haven't decrypted the game to know the real probability; maybe it's 1/512??). It takes a lot of spamming. You have to return to every single boss in the game, but there's a catch! You don't have to beat them again. You have to spam "E" like a madman while avoiding stuff. If you manage to make the boss EAT (yes) a golden pea, the boss will say "Umai", which in Japanese (in the context of food) translates as "delicious".
Go back to your room and you'll see that the statue you earned for beating the boss now shines as gold! Good luck doing this with the rest, because it is spam-fest time (awfully boring).
This is, of course, the most bizarre and cryptic thing ever, and you can take it in the most positive or negative light. Of course it is 0 intuitive; it's the kind of think you know how to do thanks to reading Nintendo Power back in the days. Someone has to inform you. Take it or leave it.
But this doesn't apply to two bosses in particular: Fake Moon and Dark Desuo. For the former, you need an "S" rank, and for this, you need necessarily +10,000,000 points. That means no saves in between. When you finish the game, the game has a fabulantastic extra hub system that allows you to switch difficulties, add a second player to the fun, teleport immediately to any boss, reset the ranks on all bosses and access the secret area. Damn is this game good. So, play the former on Hard mode. If you happen to be in Medium mode, the game is kind enough to offer you the choice to continue from where you started or start a new game anew. Amazing! Even the save system is advanced compared to more recent acclaimed fangames. The point is that after making a single run, you have to grind through the second attack and you'll notice that your lower counter begins to increase. This counter actually increases when the sprite of your star is touched by the attacks of your enemies. Raise it up to approximately 1,000+ and your hits will now garner you more points. Be sure to be over the 10,000,000 points mark as you can still get a rank below "S" which is AAAAA. lol.
For the former, just win the ending credits minigame, correctly pressing Z and X to spawn black and white circles (and don't die; you'll understand me at some point).
In this process, I had another grudge which I blame to the game's programming entirely. I fed the golden bullet to the Super Red U.F.O. and to Pochi several times, and they wouldn't be triggered gold. It was endlessly frustrating. If this happens to you, REBEAT the bosses. Then they will be triggered. Took me hours to find out. It sucks.
And there you go: head to the extra hub, activate the special area, head to SuperStarRideAttack section and fly to the moon. Welcome: you're in the extra boss.
This boss is an oddity, not legendarily difficult since it is 95% pattern and out of this 95%, 40% is position based, so feel confident to develop a position strat. Final attack, however, is very annoying due to the platforms having absolutely zero use for the damn boss. When you're going in circles counterclockwise, you stumble upon the goddamn platforms! They're just in the way because...
Still, you can beat this boss rather easily if you have enough skillz with the "S" shoes.
After that, the extra ending is one of the most gorgeous farewells I have seen in a fangame. It's delightful as a good anime's closing. It also wishes you happiness, which particularly was well-received during a very difficult personal week.
If you still want to be even more well-treated by this amazing adventurous dissonant comedy, head to your room for the last time and you'll see the most pleasant "You're the Great Guy" decoration you will ever have in a fangame... probably.
Exceptional, well-balanced between platforming and bosses like Influka and Gustav would demand, amazing hub systems, great production value, great items and an awesome final boss merely begins to describe this genuinely ace experience. It does have flaws, which I already mentioned, but getting past them is easy when there is so much to take in.
[2] Likes
Ahead of its time. Instant favorite.
Rukimin!7 is a stampede of sensational creativity and the variety demands a comprehensive description, but that entails spoiling the experience, so this review has only the intent of making an overview of said awesomeness. Game consists of mainly 5 stages (arguably four if one counts the main hub):
Stage 1: A trap game! Oh no. Woe for me. But wait... The experience is immensely random and funny. Many traps are really unpredictable and knock your socks off. The first screen does this at least once with an otherworldly feeling that this is not your typical trap game. Game looks exceptionally gorgeous and each screen becomes as legendary as the next one. There is a section down below when you locate the first cannon that propels you away, and that trap is definitely a tribute to James Rolfe's parody of Super Pitfall: hilarious overkill. That just blew my mind. It gets me every time and if you put attention to every single detail, it's all there. The clouds, I won't deny, are super annoying, but they're funny during the first times and afterwards you realize it's only two screens (one more during a chase of Stage 4, but whatever). The boss is exceptionally hilarious in its mockery of bad Japanese-to-English translations.
Stage 2 ramps up the creativity bar with a Lego stage. Amazing visuals too. There is a grudge with this stage though: clicking on blocks to activate certain mechanisms. There is just no way. Combining the mouse with the keyboard/controller is a big "no". Let me focus on one thing. The Hard difficulty in particular poses a challenge since there is an extra long side-scrolling screen that requires you to either think super fast AND move super precise, or simply do a trial-and-error exercise that culminates in a muscle memory exercise. Apart from that, the stage is a great idea and the boss is ok fun.
Stage 3: A mountain climb. It is particularly fun in Hard difficulty since the game finds a way to make a "chase", And when you do achieve to climb to the top, amazing surprises await for you, with the first one being the best: a SuperStarRideAttack vertical shooter. Expect to have an "S" rank in this challenge only playing the Hard Mode in order to achieve something that will be discussed later, but the point system, movement, attack, shift slow-mo strats and enemies are delightfully well made and fun to play! I have never seen this in another fangame, but most importantly, I seriously doubt it would work this well. Boss is probably referenced in the Gradius stage of K3 and the song is a badass banger. Climactic ending too!
And that is only the first part. The second one is like travelling into a hand-drawn child book and a kid's dream. It's only two screens long unfortunately (plus the extra stage to the right of the first screen to get a secret item), and Suzuko, the first avoidance boss, certainly increases the difficulty exponentially during the playthrough, especially on Hard mode, which increases the length of every Touhou-like attack. In Medium mode she is also hard, and in both modes she is arguably the hardest boss in the whole game (I'd agree with this remark on Hard mode hands down). I required a Rank-2 to beat her in Hard mode, which took forever, and all because of the final attack. Spawns are unreasonable.
After this fight you do get a heart attack but it's all a brilliantly pulled-off prank, and the good jokes continue.
Stage 4 shows more interest in the visual design and has a section of straightforward needle platforming (with a fun chase that features the aforementioned, annoying bouncy clouds), it has one of the most ridiculous bosses ever (in the good way) and, if you do not count this as a separate stage, the final castle area which, if played in the Hard mode, requires you to do two additional things, the latter being exceptional: going through fire cannonballs instead of only dodging the giant gray cannons, and using a cannon to go through a gate at full speed. The latter is ridiculous! Lots of trial and error are required to make it possible. In the Medium mode it's still hard, but it removes the upper spike so it is no longer a gate.
Now...
The final boss. It requires discussion, and here's where I make an extremely important mention. Items in this game are key for making it distinguishable. They are visual jokes, but also weapons, and depending on the difficulty you're playing, some can actually be used as a weapon against the bosses: play on Medium and you lose this awesome advantage. My favorite is Suzuko's bell by a large margin. Visually and conceptually, it is very fun and attractive, but it is also tricky to use because the bells can also hurt you! So use them with calculation and caution.
Rukimin in Medium becomes a smashfest, and it is actually HARDER than the Hard mode. In the Hard more, she has more attacks and faster ones too, but using Suzuko's bell against her is extremely effective due to her constant teleporting, and with the correct setup, you can get rid of her in 10 seconds. Forget about this very fun story for Medium mode.
But THEN comes Pochi, and it is the embodiment of why I love experimental decisions in any art form. You seemingly have summoned a nightmare demon, an entity from a disturbing realm to your world. The haunting music creates cognitive dissonance and the entire boss, which is an avoidance, has amazingly-looking and non-generic attacks except probably for the 360° randomness which is oh so fun to play through without the "C" item which makes everything explode into stars. Having the correct movement strats with the "S" shoes is key, plus very precise moves. Pochi is an audiovisual experience I will never forget.
HOW TO GET EXTRA:
You took your Japanese classes, right? Of course you didn't. Remember, though, that EDAMAME MEANS BULLET. Spam "E" repeatedly and you'll see that a golden pea will come out out of a thousand (haven't decrypted the game to know the real probability; maybe it's 1/512??). It takes a lot of spamming. You have to return to every single boss in the game, but there's a catch! You don't have to beat them again. You have to spam "E" like a madman while avoiding stuff. If you manage to make the boss EAT (yes) a golden pea, the boss will say "Umai", which in Japanese (in the context of food) translates as "delicious".
Go back to your room and you'll see that the statue you earned for beating the boss now shines as gold! Good luck doing this with the rest, because it is spam-fest time (awfully boring).
This is, of course, the most bizarre and cryptic thing ever, and you can take it in the most positive or negative light. Of course it is 0 intuitive; it's the kind of think you know how to do thanks to reading Nintendo Power back in the days. Someone has to inform you. Take it or leave it.
But this doesn't apply to two bosses in particular: Fake Moon and Dark Desuo. For the former, you need an "S" rank, and for this, you need necessarily +10,000,000 points. That means no saves in between. When you finish the game, the game has a fabulantastic extra hub system that allows you to switch difficulties, add a second player to the fun, teleport immediately to any boss, reset the ranks on all bosses and access the secret area. Damn is this game good. So, play the former on Hard mode. If you happen to be in Medium mode, the game is kind enough to offer you the choice to continue from where you started or start a new game anew. Amazing! Even the save system is advanced compared to more recent acclaimed fangames. The point is that after making a single run, you have to grind through the second attack and you'll notice that your lower counter begins to increase. This counter actually increases when the sprite of your star is touched by the attacks of your enemies. Raise it up to approximately 1,000+ and your hits will now garner you more points. Be sure to be over the 10,000,000 points mark as you can still get a rank below "S" which is AAAAA. lol.
For the former, just win the ending credits minigame, correctly pressing Z and X to spawn black and white circles (and don't die; you'll understand me at some point).
In this process, I had another grudge which I blame to the game's programming entirely. I fed the golden bullet to the Super Red U.F.O. and to Pochi several times, and they wouldn't be triggered gold. It was endlessly frustrating. If this happens to you, REBEAT the bosses. Then they will be triggered. Took me hours to find out. It sucks.
And there you go: head to the extra hub, activate the special area, head to SuperStarRideAttack section and fly to the moon. Welcome: you're in the extra boss.
This boss is an oddity, not legendarily difficult since it is 95% pattern and out of this 95%, 40% is position based, so feel confident to develop a position strat. Final attack, however, is very annoying due to the platforms having absolutely zero use for the damn boss. When you're going in circles counterclockwise, you stumble upon the goddamn platforms! They're just in the way because...
Still, you can beat this boss rather easily if you have enough skillz with the "S" shoes.
After that, the extra ending is one of the most gorgeous farewells I have seen in a fangame. It's delightful as a good anime's closing. It also wishes you happiness, which particularly was well-received during a very difficult personal week.
If you still want to be even more well-treated by this amazing adventurous dissonant comedy, head to your room for the last time and you'll see the most pleasant "You're the Great Guy" decoration you will ever have in a fangame... probably.
Exceptional, well-balanced between platforming and bosses like Influka and Gustav would demand, amazing hub systems, great production value, great items and an awesome final boss merely begins to describe this genuinely ace experience. It does have flaws, which I already mentioned, but getting past them is easy when there is so much to take in.
Rating: 8.1 81
Difficulty: 50 50
Oct 12, 2020
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