SquareDork's Profile

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Joined on: Feb 23, 2022

Bio:

Hideo game

my discord is squarechan or Square#7050 if you wanna ask me anything

i only review games that i enjoyed and felt i had something to say on

fav makers and why (not in order):
- Kurath: for making most of my biggest inspiration, The Farewell Medley, aswell as Ocean Princess, big reason i love platform needle as much as i do
- Wolfiexe: for making some of the best needle i've ever played (vandal (only got through 1-10), all of his contributions to The Farewell Medley (except farewell tower))
- anxKha: for making the first fangame i played, and still the one i call my favorite of all time (heavenly host)
- UbersawMedic: for having a great style and awesome design knowledge
- EchoMask: for making the best platform needle ever (traverse the precipice stage 1 (yes, the first 3 screens))
- Gustav: for making the Best Guy series, and Justice Guy, both of which have some of my favorite fangame bosses of all time
- lilly: for making the best trap needle
- Tralexium: for making some of the best bosses i've ever played, and his incredible art design skills

honorable mentions to RedBatNick and cLOUDDEAD/ava for making the only >80 difficulty games that are a great inspiration to my design philosophy and i have great respect for despite not being nearly skilled enough to experience (UNG/K3+)

honorable mention to G4lvatron and JonathanGD (specifically for Dark Travel) for introducing me to visual spectacle back when i still played geometry dash, and inspiring me to get better at making visuals

and a questionably honorable mention to Nearigami for making me wanna do this list by updating their own profile lmao

I've submitted:
13 Ratings!
13 Reviews!
1 Screenshot!

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13 Reviews

SquareDork
For: I Wanna Be The Non-Conforming Needle
Tester here. I beat the practice diff but I couldn't beat normal mode, so no difficulty rating. Practice diff I'd say is around 30-40 diff, however.

What sets this game apart from most needle games is that it's pretty lenient with your inputs (the game was designed so that no input window is smaller than 5 frames), mainly because of the red blocks, which essentially serve as buffer frames. Because of this, normal mode gets away with the fact that it's TWO full minutes long, with lots of maneuvers that would be very annoying and chokeable without the red blocks.

Gimmicks like the differently-colored blocks this game has to offer both help to spice things up and to make needle that isn't as precise, but still looks like needle. In short, this game sets out to make needle that feels more like playing Celeste, what with all the 'buffers' and leniency, with the normal mode being akin to a golden.

I think this game has two main takeaways: that you don't need precision to make something challenging, and that needle saves can be far longer while also not being unreasonable. Sidenote: you can define 'reasonable' as 'humanly possible', but I think that's stupid. 'Reasonable' should take into account the average player, at the very least.

I talked with Sully throughout the creation of this game (which is how I know normal mode's length too), so I may be biased in my assessment, but I think this kind of needle is a step in the right direction. Regular needle has gotten far too precise these days, and I think the community ought to realize that things like frame perfects just aren't fun, and you can make something much more fun by just letting the player play more like a human, and less like a machine.

In conclusion: this is the W needle to L needle.

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[4] Likes
Rating: 8.5 85       Difficulty: N/A
Jan 8, 2024
SquareDork
For: Fleeting Frozen Heart
needle is far too hard for me and not my thing but i just wanna post this review in appreciation of the music choice, very based (somehow it was the exact song i was thinking of when i downloaded the game lol)

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Tagged as: Needle FTFA-like
[1] Like
Rating: N/A       Difficulty: N/A
Aug 30, 2023
SquareDork
For: I Wanna Be The CBT
A jab at happil clones with needle that uses triggers for nerfs, instead of buffs. Very fun experience overall, the needle had me chuckling along with the overall presentation, but the boss was hilarious, I couldn't stop laughing, it was just so incredible.

Only two things I have to complain about are that the save balancing is kinda wack, with me first-trying multiple saves in a row, and then spending 100 deaths on the next (which I will admit is a bit of a fluke, but some saves are still far easier than others for no reason). The second thing being that the saves aren't Shoot+Z saves, instead being just regular shoot saves (IE. The saves don't save unless a bullet hits them, which means if you're standing on the edge of the save you can't save), which was a minor annoyance, but both of these things are kinda nitpicks, considering the overall experience is still pretty fun.

I take back what I'd said in the IWC a couple days ago, MooMoo has truly made a banger of a game. I hope this gets some more updates, because that was really fun!

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Tagged as: Medley Meme Happil Joke Boss?
[2] Likes
Rating: 8.0 80       Difficulty: 40 40
Jun 15, 2023
SquareDork
For: i wanna destroy the SUPER MECHA DEATH HATSUNE 3900
The needle is whatever. I honestly don't care for it much, and it's clearly not the point of the game. I don't think the game is worse off for having it, but I also don't think the game would be better off without it.

The boss, however, is easily one of my favorite fangame bosses. My favorite fangame boss design comes from Gustav's Best Guy series, and Justice Guy, and this boss is pretty heavily influenced by those, so you can see exactly why I love it. Before I get to the stuff I like, I'll mention the only two things I didn't like about this boss. Neither of them are things I wish would be changed, but they are still things I disliked.

This fight is the kind that can either take a year or go by in the blink of an eye. While you can definitely fight this boss without an autofire script, I would recommend using one, though not one that's very fast (The cooldown that worked best for me was 150ms). The low-ish amount of iframes can definitely make this a tedious fight without autofire, especially if you're like me and you have over 30 hours clocked into this game across multiple playthroughs. (first clear took 5 hours aswell, since I was very terrible with fangame bosses at the time)

And the only other thing I dislike is the music. While wily castle 1 is undoubtedly a fantastic song, and I love it, the intro is not nearly as good as the rest of the song, and you'll be hearing that a lot, so it'll get tedious quick. After a while, I just muted the music and played my own music over it. (I personally recommend Vs. Rotatatron & Refreshinator from the Sonic Colors OST (aka the K2 stage 1 theme), or GaMetal's remix of Heavy Lobster from Kirby Super Star Ultra, or Fight Again from the Jujutsu Kaisen OST, all of them fit the vibe of the boss quite well, and are bangers). Now, onto the things I like about the boss.

Even though there's only 4 of them, the attack patterns are immaculate. All of them get you moving in different ways to dodge them, and there's just enough space between them that they don't overlap, but one attack leading into another can still affect your decisionmaking.

For example, the ceiling rocket leek attack wants you to stay from the middle of the screen and below to dodge them, but not on the ground. Standing on the third platform on the left (bottom to top) is already risky, as the fastest rocket leeks can often snipe you before you can react, but the platform below that is generally always safe. If the next attack is a laser attack, you must climb up a platform quickly to not die.

The only "free" attack is the machine gun attack, which has both a long startup animation, and a lot of cooldown before the next attack. "Free" there is in quotes simply because of the second phase. The laser attack can often be free, since one of the more optimal places to stand in is on the furthest block of that platform I mentioned earlier, but sometimes it can be tricky to dodge, especially if you're forced below because of the rocket leeks.

By far my favorite part of the boss is the second phase. The little chaser Miku moves just often enough and just far enough to pose a real problem at any given time, and it will force you to move a lot more than you normally would. This part can be either bullshit or extremely fun and intense, depending on the attack patterns. Even when it's bullshit though, I still very rarely thought it wasn't my fault that I died, and even then there were still things I could've done to prevent that death. This phase really exacerbates the subtle interactions between the different attacks which weren't as pronounced in phase 1, and it makes the machine gun attack an actual threat.

Even though it's a relatively minor thing in comparison to everything else, I would be remiss to not mention the presentation. The way Miku moves and attacks in this boss is really funny, the sound effects and animations are on point aswell. The whole robot theme and the use of explosions and generally just things that "sound cool" are really incredible, it gives off this really fun vibe.

This game, I feel, is also a great introduction to fangame boss design, studying how it works and modifying some things to see how they affect the boss (A permanent phase two makes for a really fun challenge) have definitely helped me out, and I think fangames really need more bosses like this.

There are more things I could mention, but honestly I'm tired of typing, and I've already touched on all the important topics, so it's fine. Go play this game, it's really good.

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Tagged as: Trap Boss Miku Miku?
[2] Likes
Rating: 9.5 95       Difficulty: 45 45
May 29, 2023
SquareDork
For: Fumo just a week away
Greatest secret santa gift of all time

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[0] Likes
Rating: 10.0 100       Difficulty: 35 35
Apr 25, 2023

1 Game

GameDifficultyAverage Rating# of Ratings
DIRDKILL 50.6 8.2 12