I wanna Retaliate

Creator: dagger

Average Rating
4.4 / 10
Average Difficulty
60.2 / 100
[Download Not Available]

Tags:

Needle (3) one_screen (1) 1Frame (1) Hades-like (2)

Screenshots

  • by GaspacoZanis
  • by GaspacoZanis

7 Reviews:

GaspacoZanis
For long time this was the most mysterious game of Dagger, that was mentioned on his blog along with title screen and this description: "番外編。
 復讐の意を込めて作った針ゲ。完全非公開。" (http://web.archive.org/web/20140511041309/https://ch.nicovideo.jp/dagger0127/blomaga/ar373850)

The .exe date of this game is 2013/January/11, and several people did play this game on Niconico back then. There are some theories that this game was made as a reward game for those who have beaten 'I wanna be the Hades', although I am not necessarily sure if it is the case.

The release date of 'I wanna be the Hades' is in itself weird, because while .exe for some reasons says 2012/February/06, the actual release date is 2013/02/06, both judging by this: http://web.archive.org/web/20200729100037/https://sites.google.com/view/escapism/games/archive?authuser=0 and by earliest Niconico live streams that were around this date. Dagger's first games were not made in February 2012, so I wonder how .exe date got wrong.

However, I am pretty sure that 'I wanna Retaliate' existed before 'I wanna be the Hades'. In fact, 18th game on the blog is mentioned 'I wanna be the Ultramarine' with the release date of 2012/12/17 and 19th game is 'I wanna be the Hades' 2013/12/06. So 'I wanna Retaliate' is 18.5th game (although it is not even mentioned in the 2020 website) with this chronology. And my personal guess is that 'I wanna Retaliate' was a prototype for what came to be in 'I wanna be the Hades'.

It is also interesting that everyone who played this game, played it literally when the game come out, so I could assume that Dagger gave out this game privately to few people back in January of 2013. Or at the very least if this game was, in fact, a reward game, then for some reason no one had streamed it after January of 2013. Which if so - odd.

What about the game itself? Does it really feel like a prototype?

I have beaten this game originally in 2022, and now I have re-beaten this game in 2025, although with my keyboard performing 1F jumps significantly worse, I did use JCS for the 5th save's 2nd jump. And, for the 4th save I did in fact jump cancel to make my life easier with the jump. I have also played 'I wanna be the Hades' up until the last save of the 1st screen.

My impression is that 'I wanna Retaliate' makes its difficulty mainly from using 1F jumps and occasionally few tricky jumps.

Save 1 requires you to take left wall align to walk off the first jump. If you can do it, then the save is surprisingly not bad.

Save 2 uses probably the hardest non-1F jump. The very first jump is really awkward. But after that you have choke jumps, that are not easy, but are definitely much easier in comparison with the first jump.

Save 3 is all about doing that weird ledge jump. Look up my video clear for the align that I am taking. Also using diagonal jump as a choke jump, was not as bad.

Save 4 is where I used cancel jump. This is literally like the jump from 'I wanna be the Hades', except you have a plane afterwards. So, I guess this save is harder in comparison. Without cancels this is hell. With them, it is fine. Although it is awkward doing that plane jump.

Save 5 is horrible. I completely forgot about it. You need to get onto the ledge and then do 1F first jump, and then everything else is not hard, but extremely chokable. I have beaten this save in 2022, but now in 2022 I died like 3 times on the last jump. So I got fed up and I used JCS to have consistent 1F, that I cannot do now. As expected, this save's difficulty is literally in 1F jump. Everything else is bearable.

Save 6 has annoying save placement, where you need to go very long time until the first jump. You need to walk off and do 1F with the 2nd jump. And then you need to do another weird jump, but which is not that hard. Did not feel as annoyed, besides that bad save placement.

Save 7 is just ceiling double diamond. Just take the align above the save.

Save 8 kind of reminds of the Save 1, but you need to do small jump (not sure if it is 1F or 2F, have not tested, but it is a small one). And then just a choke jump, which is not as bad as it seems.

After that you fall down, and you see a trap that does not kill you. And that is it.

Overall, this 1st screen did remind me a lot of 'I wanna be the Hades', although I kind of felt like without 1F jumps, this game is not as bad as it seems like. Without jumps it becomes about doing Save 2, and plane jump I guess.

Aesthetics are kind of weird. Random title screen that becomes your background ; red spikes and brick gray blocks. Would not call it cool or anything. Nothing special. Although the song does fit to this kind of thing, not gonna lie.

As for the gameplay, I can see that Dagger was most likely experimenting with what he can do, and gave out to hear more about how people felt about 'I wanna Retaliate', and made fleshed out version of the game in 'I wanna be the Hades'. This is probably why we see some reoccurring jumps like Save 4 or Save 7 (I mean, Hades literally has save with ceiling double diamond).

Also probably he did not want to update the game after he gave it out, so he decided to start from the scratch.

At the very least this is how it looks like to me, and I would like to know from where this whole 'Retaliate was for Hades winners' come from. Because in the end this game feels like a predecessor of 'I wanna be the Hades' or 'I wanna be the Hades' 0.5.

Anyway, I have heard that this map was remade in 'I wanna Maker'. If you do not wanna search for this game, then just play it there if you wanna.

But I do not think it is worth it. Without 1F jumps it is an extremely generic needle game without any personality (maybe very few jumps can feel fun but that might be a stretch), and that barely reminds of Dagger's style. If you really like this kind of gameplay, then just play 'I wanna be the Hades', I guess? It at least does not feel like a prototype game.

I originally wanted to give 4.1, but honestly some of 1F jumps are extremely unfun like on Save 5, so I might be even generous with my current rating.

Would not recommend.

P.S. I have no clues how to rate 1F jumps, so I might be overrating this game difficulty wise.

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Tagged as: Needle 1Frame
[2] Likes
Rating: 3.5 35       Difficulty: 65 65
Apr 25, 2025
BloggerOP
So apparently, this game was given to Hades victors (It's not yet confirmed that it really was a reward game). Nothing much to say, it's just another hades-like game, nothing too special.

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[1] Like
Rating: 3.2 32       Difficulty: 62 62
Oct 3, 2022
xva
i was expecting more screens

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Tagged as: Needle Hades-like
[0] Likes
Rating: 4.3 43       Difficulty: 52 52
Mar 24, 2024
Cythraul
[0] Likes
Rating: 5.3 53       Difficulty: 58 58
Jun 1, 2025
fatherpucci1
[0] Likes
Rating: 7.0 70       Difficulty: 60 60
Jan 30, 2023