YaBoiMarcAntony's Profile
Send a PMJoined on: Apr 26, 2020
Bio:
I used to be here four years ago but I left. I was Guitarsage2k/Parallax5.
These fangames mean a lot to me (attempt at order)
1. I Wanna Kill the Kermit 3
2. I Wanna Walk Out in the Morning Dew
3. I Wanna Be the Volatile Presence: Stagnant Edition
4. Crimson Needle 3
5. I Wanna Kill the Kermit 2
6. I Wanna Figure
7. Phonotransmitter
8. VoVoVo
9. I Wanna Reach the Moon
10. untitled needle game
11. I Wanna Burnmind
12. Domu
13. I Want To Meet Miki
14. I Wanna Go Across the Rainbow
15. Alphazetica
16. I Wanna Stop the Simulation
17. I Wanna Hydrate
18. I Wanna Be the Ocean Princess
19. I Wanna Vibe with the Gods
20. I Wanna Be the Vandal
21. I Wanna Pray to the Platform God
22. I Want
23. I Wanna Pointillism
24. I Wanna Be Far From Home
25. I Wanna Be the RO
I've submitted:
275 Ratings!
236 Reviews!
5 Screenshots!
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275 Games
236 Reviews
For: I wanna fall into the snow
For: I wanna be the microheaven
For: I wanna come from the north
Also, the penultimate save fucking sucks.
For: XIFT
All that is to say, I simply didn't like what XIFT tried to do because I felt like it did not improve the gameplay for me. For a long time, I was totally focused on gameplay and took anything else as a nice bonus. It was those nice bonuses which made me fall in love with a game, but I would never like a game if the gameplay wasn't up to what I deemed as par and no game could have gameplay really improved by those things I deemed "nice bonuses." Nowadays, I think that's a bit of a reductive view, though I still maintain the importance of quality gameplay. It's just, I also recognize how much gameplay can be affected by a game's purpose and meaning. XIFT is a game which deals in anxiety, something Derf has outright said himself. I've always understood that the purpose of invisible saves was to therefore create a sense of anxiety within the player, though I never actually made the connection between the design of the screens themselves and that purpose of anxiety.
Perhaps I shouldn't say I understood the purpose of what Derf did because more accurately I acknowledged that he had a purpose and I understand what he has said about that purpose and what it is - but I never actually internalized the feelings he was trying to impart. While playing XIFT for the second time, I very much honed in on that sense of anxiety built not only by the invisible saves but that in tandem with the unconventional gameplay. Derf's sense of needle design and what feels good to do is at a level that most other needle players could never hope to reach because he knows exactly what feels nice to do and therefore knows exactly what to make in order to convey a sense of unease with his gameplay in XIFT. There is something delightful in clearing what I deem to be a terribly awkward jump and then realizing there's no guarantee I won't have to do it again if I screw up. The entire game is built on that sense of unease from moment to moment, you can never really know when you're feet are touching the ground as the reality of your situation is always up in the air until you've failed.
Once I came to understand that, I started to wonder if the game wouldn't be improved with increased difficulty so as to further develop that anxious feeling, but truthfully I think that misses the point, or at least it does for me. I don't really think this game is just about anxiety but instead the acceptance of it as a reality that you have to deal with and learning to come to terms with it. Because of that, I think the game relies on the fact that it's not too hard so that the player can not feel hopeless when playing. Whether it's anxiety about failure or anxiety about the unknown, the game almost has this sense of comfort in which it says "hey, you're probably gonna fail and that's okay. You can just try again anyways and maybe you'll get further and learn something about your place in this world!" The blood effect, as small a thing as it is, helps impart that sense of accepting failure because any given death leaves a mark, but it's a mark that nonetheless fades away after some time. It leaves an impact, but not a lasting one. This attention to detail and meaning is what really sells the game for me not just because it's meaningful in the first place but because it helps elevate the gameplay to something more than it would be if taken on its own as I did before.
What I particularly love is how Derf brings these facts down to earth with the last stage. You could dismiss all of this by suggesting that these feelings of anxiety and such only exist within the alien world you visit after the meteor lands, but the last stage tells us, or at least hints at, that whether or not that meteor introduced these emotions to us, they're with us for life now and even if the epilogue is clear, there's no way of knowing that those alien worlds won't come back again.
In all, XIFT is one of those games that you either understand and you don't. I've always thought I understood it and I just didn't like it, but I'm not sure if that can really happen. Acknowledgement and understanding are two completely different things, that much is clear. It's just impossible for me to tell if the difference isn't just whether I like whatever it is I'm talking about or not. XIFT, at the very least, has inadvertently helped me towards understanding these semi-irrelevant things and in the process, I came to understand the game itself and love it for that understanding.
For: I Wanna Pray to the Platform God
Platform God does indeed put a large focus on atmosphere, but that focus is almost incidental to the gameplay itself. It feels as if this really is the work of some old architects of yore, like I merely stumbled onto this area and not like the game and what I did within it was preordained. In that way, this is one of the most organic fangames I've ever played; on the other hand, the platforming itself felt deliciously alien, just like you'd suspect it feels to happen upon a foreign world with unusual mechanisms and unique methods of traversal. This world was not designed for you, but it just so happens that a skilled player can nonetheless travel through anyways. While I will freely admit the learning curve may push some off as it did for me, there is great satisfaction in pushing through the growing pains and into a place where you start to really familiarize yourself with the world of the Platform God.
This is Pray to the Platform God's greatest asset, that sense of familiarity you gain from playing the game. Synthas quite intelligently implemented several different endings (well, three endings and one joke ending) to further incentivize increased exploration by the player; that urge to explore was palpable for me nearly from the start. In fact, I can pinpoint the exact moment when I knew I was gonna replay: I was playing through the screen where jumping on the platforms going to the left will make it go down and jumping onto the platforms going right make them go up and I spotted a little hole without a spike after I already beat the section and I immediately felt curiosity burn, but I didn't want to re-do the save after already beating it so I just left it for later. For the entirety of my playthrough, I was yearning to go see where that hole led and once I beat the game for the first time, I immediately started a new playthrough to get my answer!
That hole, as those of you Platform God Enthusiasts should know, leads to Ending B, and that I was able to find something like that on my own with no real guidance was truly an inspiring moment for me. That's when I knew this game really was something special because it totally sold the fact that this really is another world that you've just been dropped into. No one's helping you but yourself, so you better hope your own self is dependable!
I completed every ending (including the joke ending) and I wish the game were three times as long. I want to replay it again and again even now, and luckily Synthas knew people would really become attached to what he made, so he even included some bonus content in the form of bragging rights! I don't think I'll ever really bother with it, but it's nice all the same.
So far as I can tell, I Wanna Pray the Platform God became an immediate classic, and I can personally vouch for its classic status. This is one of those games that could really make a player re-evaluate what they're looking for out of a game. I won't say it did so for me, but that's only because this is just the sort of game I've been looking for.
9 Games
Game | Difficulty | Average Rating | # of Ratings |
---|---|---|---|
A Sky Blue Denouement | 89.8 | 8.2 | 5 |
April is the Cruelest Month | 85.0 | 8.8 | 16 |
I Wanna Flying Disc | 91.5 | 9.3 | 4 |
Frankie Teardrop | 2.2 | 6.0 | 10 |
I Don't Wanna Dwell | 69.2 | 7.3 | 14 |
Nebulous Thoughts | 80.3 | 9.1 | 30 |
Strewn Detritus | 69.0 | 7.3 | 14 |
The Sunken Cathedral | 70.0 | 8.2 | 25 |
I Wanna be the Ziggomatic Drukqs | 70.5 | 7.3 | 9 |
48 Favorite Games
256 Cleared Games