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: Spherical I Wanna
I freakin' hate math. And I really liked this game.

There's not much else I have to say. Fun game to play if you've got like 20 minutes and want to learn some (badly translated) sphere facts.

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Rating: 8.0 80       Difficulty: 35 35
Apr 6, 2022
SquareDork
For: I wanna play Kiduija
/!\ SPOILER WARNING /!\

As is usual, my reviews are super long. And delfruit doesn't like spoiler tags on long reviews. So, spoilers for the whole game ahead. Maybe excluding this first paragraph.

This game is fantastic, like all of Mattin's other games. It has quite a couple flaws, and they're flaws that I think don't really exist in Overlord or Knight in shining armor. But, despite its flaws, this game still manages to be an enjoyable experience throughout. I'd consider all of Mattin's games to be must-plays if you're new to fangames. They're all somewhat similar, but still unique enough to feel fresh.






- CONS:

I think at least Knight in shining armor had a much better HP system. The passive health regen in this game meant most platforming sections were trivial if you were just patient, and the spikes not being instakill meant you didn't explicitly NEED to know how to complete some certain sections, you could just wait until your HP regen'd back, and then just kinda fumble through it. Basically the "Oh, I have x HP in this section, I can just not care and I'm gonna win anyway" effect. There were some tricky sections, but they were explicitly tricky because you couldn't just wait for your health to regen back.

I think non-instakill spikes are fine, but only if you don't have passive HP regen. That way, you still have to learn sections if they're pretty long or require some specific tricks to get past, and choking at the end is much less of a threat. That, and the game is more accessible for noobier players (like me), which I consider a benefit.

Knight in shining armor also had much better enemy placement and AI. I particularly remember the frog-like creature that shot out globs of poison and the crow enemy as being especially infuriating. For some godforsaken reason, the frog creature's tiny, almost invisible poison particles hurt you. And they hurt a lot. And it's entirely RNG. And the big glob splits into a lot of new tiny particles, which are also determined by RNG. This enemy is actually just awful, and the game would genuinely be better if it was actually just entirely cut, and replaced with something else. Or at the very least made less annoying.

The crow is... meh. It follows you around, and it's pretty annoying to get rid of. Just not a very good enemy. Should probably have less HP, if I'm being honest.

The love key boss is also just not very interesting. My personal main gripe with it is how the indicator for the blood pillars appearing after a dash attack is VERY invisible, it being a tiny pool of blood on the ground, blending in extremely well with the *bloody red floor*. The bouncing blood balls attack is also just kind of boring to dodge, but that's just standard for "bouncing ball" attacks like that.

The lasers at the top of the big machine fight are also not very good. Sometimes they'll just screw you over (idk if i'm allowed to swear here) by having a combination like OXX, XXO, which is not technically impossible to dodge, but you have to jump *inbetween* the lasers to dodge it, which requires some precise timing. I got this more than a couple times.

The miku part in the final boss was kinda rough, her just randomly deciding to shoot a big bullet *directly into my face* sometimes, but it wasn't that bad. The avoidance was entirely free, and the needle and apple sections were also kinda free.

This one's more subjective than the other ones, but the very first boss has some missed potential, honestly. The teleports in the middle of the room could very well have been taken advantage of for a couple attacks. For example, maybe it could've had an attack where one half of the arena is taken over by a massive laser with some 5 seconds for preparation, and then the boss's head could try its best to drive you into that side of the arena. The best way to dodge this, would be to shoot the teleport thing and then you could easily go to the other side. There could've also been some more teleports around, for some more interesting ways to dodge things by teleporting.

- PROS:

Despite my bitching up there, I really really enjoy this game, and it would be a crime to rate it any lower than an 8. Most everything in this game is well-polished. A lot of platforming sections were fun, a lot of enemy placements felt coherent and took some effort to get past (well, without just brainlessly abusing the HP regen mechanic), and most of the bosses were really fun to fight.

In particular, I really liked the neck monster fight and the final boss. The final boss, honestly, adds an entire point to my rating by itself. I love these types of "different playstyle" bosses, wherein you have to do different types of things to progress, rather than just dodge attacks. All of the particular mini-sections weren't hard at all, though, and I'd even call them free, but the miku section requires at least some luck to not get murdered. Most of the normal final boss attacks are pretty good, though not as good as the 4 mini-sections. It also isn't a big difficulty spike, as a lot of beginner-novice difficulty games' final bosses are. Most bosses took me about 3-5 tries, and this boss took me around 10 or so.

The neck monster fight is just solid, and quite a blast. Not much else to say.

- CONCLUSION:

It's hard for a fangame to really captivate me. I have pretty high standards for gameplay, and production value is almost a must for a fangame to make me want to finish it. With that said, I can pretty firmly say I love this game, and all of Mattin's other games. They all have their own flaws, along with things I disagree with, as all games do, and they're not exactly built equal, but they are consistently very good and enjoyable.

I will acknowledge though, as a guy who's been playing Super Metroid since he was literally four years old, along with a lot of Castlevania games in recent years, I do have a bit of bias for the Metroidvania genre, and some horror aspects. So that has probably skewed my perception of the game. Everyone has their preferences, and mine happened to line up with this game, so I ended up enjoying it more, but that does not detract from the fact this game is still well-polished.

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Rating: 8.7 87       Difficulty: 35 35
Apr 6, 2022
SquareDork
For: I Wanna Escape Heavenly Host
/!\ SPOILER WARNING /!\

Delfruit doesn't like spoiler tags on long reviews for some reason. So, spoiler warning for the entire game. I delve into basically anything that I want to talk about.





This game is absolutely a must-play, even if you're far better than its skill range (I'd also argue if you're below its skill range, it's a good introduction to fangames). I would only not recommend this game if you are absolutely unfamiliar with platformers, as only then it won't really be a fun time.

All of the jumps in this game feel good to execute, and the levels have a very nice flow to them, on their own. There's only one jump I'd argue feels a little weirdly precise to execute, but it's not a problem once you get the hang of it.

EDIT: Having played this game a lot more, I figured out the real strat for this jump I'm referring to. It's actually painfully easy if you just conserve your double jump before going into the water.

Playing this game feels like a highlight reel of a lot of different types of fangame gameplay, with a big focus on needle. I feel like this game is less a traditional adventure game, and more like a megaman-troidvania, wherein you have a "stage select" location, and you need certain upgrades to pass certain "stages", and the stages have no interconnectivity besides what upgrades you need to get from other stages to pass through them. I do think it executes this style of game pretty well, however.

I would love to see an update of this game to add a hard mode with less saves and harder jumps (or even just optional content in general), as repeat playthroughs can get a little repetitive knowing more or less everything the game has to offer, although I am aware this would likely mean a redesign of most levels, so I'm not exactly gonna hold my breath on this one.

Being relatively a novice to IWBTG fangames (I'd only played 10 or so fangames before this, and not really cleared any before), the final boss kicked my ass quite a bit on my first playthrough. It is a little bit of a difficulty spike, but some grinding got me past it, and grinding it never really felt boring. Piano, by comparison, is really easy. Even in my first playthrough, I had a mild feeling of "wait, that's it?". I'm not exactly sure if this whole thing is really all too bad, but it does skew the difficulty curve a little for new players. This game is still really good, even when taking this as a flaw.

The classroom with short sections and teleports is honestly quite disorienting, and adding an indication to where you teleported to would be good (like a trail). I do appreciate, however, that when teleporting, you can always hold the direction you were going toward, and you won't die. This room gets way easier when you get better at it and memorize the layout, though.

The placement of saves can be a little weird, with the difficulty between certain saves fluctuating quite a bit, with some saves being vanishingly easy to get to (like the one in the middle of the 1-A room), but with others being relatively hard (like in the teleport room). I think adding a few more saves in the teleport room could go a long way to making it a lot less punishing, as I'd never died in the last few teleports on my first couple playthroughs, but someone who did would have to repeat a large chunk of that level. I think this is really the only spot I'd say has to be worked on a little more.

One other complaint I do have, is that you can't beat Piano anymore if you already inputted the password (most likely having known it from a previous playthrough). Which is sad, I really like Piano. I wish he'd (wait, what pronoun do I even use for a piano?) be able to be beaten, even if you'd entered the password already.

Other than these relatively minor things, I think this game achieves what it set out to do very well. I really really really really like it.






-= POST-5TH CLEAR EDIT - APRIL 9TH, 2022 =-

As that might suggest, well, I cleared this game five separate times by now. This part of the review is gonna be a lot more subjective, and pretty emotional. You can skip the rest of the review if you'd like. I'm barely ever talking about the game in this section, and I'm mostly talking about my experiences.

I think I'm gonna add one edit per 5 clears I get on this game. That seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll space them out more once I get really consistent at this.

Having played dozens of more fangames, and cleared a couple more (I tend to quit playing games when I get stuck, and I only come back to the games that really captivate me), I can firmly say this is my favorite fangame thus far. This fangame holds kind of a special place in my heart now, and it did back when I first wrote this review too, but now I think especially so.

I think everyone has their favorite fangame, although most times this is split between a couple different categories (eg. favorite needle, favorite avoidance, etc). But for me, this is unquestionably my favorite fangame, in general. I don't generally get emotional when playing games, but today I did, and it only could've been that way because it was this game specifically that I played.

I'm not in a good place when writing this. At all, really. But the full context for that is a little too personal and esoteric, so I'm going to take some liberties in how I talk about it.

Don't take this as some sort of cry for help, or whatever exaggeration you might take away from this, because you most likely don't know me, and don't know the context for this. If you knew, you'd probably even say I'm overreacting. But I'm posting this here so that, even if you don't know me, you can get to hear this bit of my story.

I made a shortsighted decision... about yesterday, and what else to remind me of what I left behind and what I'm going forward with than playing this game?

I'd gotten to the final boss dozens of times, and cleared this game four times already. One of which being my still-standing record of a time of 19:35 with 72 deaths. This was on my third ever run, with my second one clocking in at around 28 minutes, and I believe I reset the save file on that one before beating the final boss, or if I didn't, I at least did not screenshot the clear screen, and that save file has long since been replaced by now. I currently only have the save for my first ever run, the ever-elusive 19:35, and file 2, which is the one I keep replacing whenever I replay the game. I don't think it matters to me that I count the amount of times I've gotten *to* the final boss, because that's kinda like playing a game and ending the run when you get all the upgrades. I'm still trying to get consistent at it, but I've yet to beat it without getting "good rng".

Anyway, back from that little tangent. I beat this game again today. The time and death count was unremarkable, a 25:19 with 135 deaths. I wasn't doing too good. Of course, that was because of my mental state.

But, after playing this game... I think it solidified the state of affairs I'm in right now. That the decision I made yesterday isn't something I can just go back on easily, and now that I've chosen this path, I've gotta follow it. Only time will fix my wounds, really.

I think what's for certain now is that, after enough time, I'll be fine, and so will the people I left behind. Another thing that's for certain is that, going forward, I'm gonna keep playing this game. Simply because that's something I really enjoy doing. And, maybe one day, I'll beat that 19:35, and finally let things rest.



-= POST-6TH CLEAR EDIT - APRIL 11TH, 2022 =-

So I'm already breaking my own "rule" there. But that's not what matters. Today, with my attempt, I beat the 19:35, and now I'm at an 18:12, with 68 deaths. But that's not what TRULY matters.

What matters, is that I've gone back on my shortsighted decision, after a long talk with some people. Really, it is quite amazing how I managed to inhale enough copium to justify it. I guess in a way I'd let my pride disguise as my rationale yet again. I noticed some of the flimsy logic, but figured it didn't super matter. That's yet another problem of mine, I've found.

You wanna know the trick? The trick I used to beat my time? Put effort, but not be super serious about it. See, when I'm thinking "oohh i gotta get me record man me record", I'm scrutinizing over every single mistake I make. And, sure, mistakes are gonna cost time, but it's not something I should worry about, as counter-intuitive as that sounds for speedrunning.

When I do that, all I'm doing is putting more pressure on myself. And, when I inevitably do make a mistake, that pressure bursts down on me. I thought that was really one of the better, but kind of suboptimal ways that I could motivate myself. Well, turns out it's really one of the worst.

This all stems from this mindset of mine that I should achieve goals at whatever mental cost that gets me. But there is a big difference between "delayed gratification" and "literally putting pressure upon yourself".

I don't really know if I can blame myself for the mistakes I made two-ish days ago. I mean, I even said myself that it was shortsighted. But I wouldn't have noticed some things if they weren't literally pointed out to me by the people I talked to yesterday. And I especially wouldn't have noticed that this mindset is not good at all.

I'm not removing my earlier edit, because I think this could actually be a decently good cautionary tale. Or, at the very least, you could laugh at past me for being stupid. Whatever really suits your fancy.

I'll save my next edit to this review for my 10th or so clear, or the original purpose of it being an "update of how I'm doing and how I've changed in the past couple months or so" would be lost.

Now, of course, you may be thinking "that's cool, but why are you putting all this on a freakin' delfruit review", and my answer to that is simple: This isn't the first fangame I played, but it's the one that truly made me go "alright, I'm gonna stick with this community from now on." I think that's a good description of how it has a special place in my heart. I think technically the first fangame I played was like, boshy or kill the guy, back sometime in 2014-15 or so? I'm not sure. I certainly didn't care about fangames until my friend told me about em and how they're kinda cool, and how I should make my own. After that, I did some digging, found this game, the IWC discord, and then the rest is history.

I think, at least, it's fair to want to be a little off-topic and personal about my experiences with this game, considering what I just said. I'd also consider the thoughts that a game inspires me to have under "my experiences with a game".

I don't have a finisher for this edit.



-= POST-12TH CLEAR EDIT - DECEMBER 31ST, 2022 =-

I forgot about this review by the time I cleared the game for the 10th time, around October. So I guess I'm a little late on this.

I have seen and learned so much over these past months. I've gone through multiple small character arcs, so to speak. And I still come back to this game every now and then, give it an attempt or two. I haven't really gotten a new record, and it doesn't matter much to me anymore.

I feel like, no matter what happens, as long as I still like playing platformers, this game will remain with me. Just like Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Super Metroid, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero 1-4, Contra 3, all the games I loved as a kid, and still cherish to this day.

I have no real need or much desire to document my life here anymore, though I do not find my earlier edits to be 'cringe', and whatnot. It is functionally the same outcome whether I share this on a review site on the internet, in #serious in IWC, or to my friend groups. The most that talking about my mental state affects is the reader of this review potentially going "heh, cringe", which doesn't matter to me.

Looking back on this year, I think I can mark it as a year where I managed to be more in touch with my emotions, despite many hardships along the way in relation to that. The two earlier edits were pretty much the culmination & solution of the core issue. I take myself too seriously, and thus I scrutinize over every single thing I make, do, or say.

Though, I had to rediscover it multiple times throughout the year, because I forget these things. I forget things a lot, actually. It's my biggest issue, and not one I am able to permanently fix, really, so I just kinda have to live with the fact that I can, have, and probably will forget critical information.

The thing I've been most chasing over the past year or so has been a sense of 'genuinety', in what I make, and in what I believe. That sense is present, I feel, in games made simply for fun, or to be fun. That is, games made PRIMARILY for creator/player enjoyment. My current favorite games are, I believe, in that category, those being Distorted Travesty 3, ULTRAKILL, and this game.

I think, with the game I made for Jqck, and the game I'm making now, that I have kind of arrived at this 'genuinety'. It's about sometimes just letting go of depressing, worrysome, cynical, or anxiety-driven thoughts (which basically means the same thing, they're all from the same core issue), to interrupt them if necessary, and to do what your heart tells you. This has its time and place, you don't just do this for everything, and you don't do it for nothing. You also can't do this with excessive force, or you will only scare your emotions away, and miss the whole point of doing this. Getting a proper balance of 'logic' and 'emotion' in your mind is what this is all about, after all, and I believe getting this balance is a core part of the human experience.

This 'genuinety' is what drives people like Hosungryn to play Happil (I still remember when he said to me "play what you like about happil", that's kind of what kicked off this whole search for 'genuinety'), and people like Hakita to make Ultrakill (especially 2-S, watch the dev commentary if you're interested).

As for what I've been doing more recently, I've pretty much spent the past couple days reading manga and watching anime, finding new things to be enthralled by. Along the way I've found a couple stinkers, but it's been a mainly good journey. I remember specifically rewatching NGNL twice, since I just like it so much.

For anime, I would highly recommend No Game No Life, Summertime Rendering, The Eminence in Shadow, To Your Eternity, Bungou Stray Dogs, and Blue Lock.

For manga, I'd recommend Chainsawman, Zombie 100, and Isekai Walking (I watch anime a lot more than I read manga).

That's about all I have for you today. Happy new year, reader. I hope you're doing well, in your own journey.

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Rating: 9.6 96       Difficulty: 45 45
Feb 25, 2022

1 Game

GameDifficultyAverage Rating# of Ratings
DIRDKILL 50.6 8.2 12