Delicious Fruit
Download Game Screenshots
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by voraciousreader
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by voraciousreader
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by Lake
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by Lake
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by voraciousreader
Creator's Comments:
voraciousreader [Creator]
A short adventure with plenty of needle, cycles, RNG and a couple other surprises. Enjoy!
Version 1.3 changelog: Compiled on the latest renex engine version, various visual improvements, one major room remade, several cycles were resynced or nerfed, boss is slightly buffed. Same link as before; this should be the definitive version.
"After getting lost in deep space, Alien Kid finds a strange rocketship. Looking for a new home, they find the solution to an old mystery..."
[0] Likes
Version 1.3 changelog: Compiled on the latest renex engine version, various visual improvements, one major room remade, several cycles were resynced or nerfed, boss is slightly buffed. Same link as before; this should be the definitive version.
"After getting lost in deep space, Alien Kid finds a strange rocketship. Looking for a new home, they find the solution to an old mystery..."
Rating: 8.4 84
Difficulty: 62 62
Jul 19, 2022
6 Reviews:
kurath
A fun, short-medium length needle-focused game with a bit of adventure feel through its story.
This feels like a nice progression of what I've seen in voraciousreader's previous games. Mixing the distinct cycle based platforming style which keeps up here with a little bit extra across the board. The production expands beyond the heavy focus on maker assets to introduce a little more, the platforming tries up some new designs, it adds a boss and some additional flair along the way.
The platforming is still very much the core of the game and it plays well throughout the vast majority of it. The RNG cycles seem to be an experiment here that had mixed results, some of the saves it made initial movements more dynamic which was great, but there were other times where it just resulted in slowing down the gameplay. It was rarely a concern though.
The story and general progression added a bit more depth to the game that was quite unexpected but welcome, and the boss was a fun little addition with a unique arena, something I always prefer.
Overall its solid and fun if you like cycle based platforming with some minor gimmicks, holds a solid core gameplay and seeks to refine and add extra bits over previous works.
[1] Like
This feels like a nice progression of what I've seen in voraciousreader's previous games. Mixing the distinct cycle based platforming style which keeps up here with a little bit extra across the board. The production expands beyond the heavy focus on maker assets to introduce a little more, the platforming tries up some new designs, it adds a boss and some additional flair along the way.
The platforming is still very much the core of the game and it plays well throughout the vast majority of it. The RNG cycles seem to be an experiment here that had mixed results, some of the saves it made initial movements more dynamic which was great, but there were other times where it just resulted in slowing down the gameplay. It was rarely a concern though.
The story and general progression added a bit more depth to the game that was quite unexpected but welcome, and the boss was a fun little addition with a unique arena, something I always prefer.
Overall its solid and fun if you like cycle based platforming with some minor gimmicks, holds a solid core gameplay and seeks to refine and add extra bits over previous works.
Rating: 8.3 83
Difficulty: 60 60
Jul 19, 2022
Cthaere
I will divide this review into 2 parts. The first is going to be a more player oriented review, dissecting the game into its individual parts (yes this means spoilers for everything) and being a bit more in line with a traditional review, while the second part is going to be about things that generally bothered me when I was thinking about the game as a whole.
3 stages of adventure-y needle, each with their own theme.
The first of these is a space-themed stage with gravity flippers and a focus on symmetrical screen design. Said focus is clearly prioritized over gameplay quality in several sections, in a way that feels detrimental to the stage as a whole; Aside from that, it is your usual voraciousreader needle except without cycles.
The second is split into 3 sub hubs, being pushblocks, block cycles, and laser/buttons. Pushblocks has minor puzzley elements, however they both boil down into 2 tools you have at your disposal and are already forced to figure out from the very start; From then on, these become obvious and unsatisfying to solve. Thankfully, gameplay is introduced early enough on that this is not a problem, but not after putting an end of save trap in a pure puzzle save that is no fun to replay. Block cycles has a few really bad cycles, but is otherwise not notable as a stage. Laser/buttons has timed sections and more interesting cycles and is the best of the 3. The stage ends on a screen combining all gimmicks with a new one, which was hectic, fun to execute, and a good finale to the stage.
The third has a massive visual & thematic overhaul, and introduces new killer objects and has a much, much heavier focus on cycles. While some of these still are not well tuned and require waiting at start of save, these also contain much more fun & developed ideas than the previous cycle stage (although still not immune to "filler" ones either) and even throws some RNG into the mix sometimes.
The third stage ends with the final boss, which is a pretty big mixed bag, between "kinda annoying and can give awkward/uncomfortable situations" (green/trans pride flag/(to a lesser extent) orange), "it's decent I guess but barely noticeable unless it gets too close to you" (orange/purple) and "actually really fun to dodge" (yellow/black(final)).
As for production, it is the usual spritework, in a style which I find a bit off-putting; Something about these feels a bit artificial to me, if it makes sense, however I won't hold it against the game. If anything, the save sprite could have used reskinning based on stage. I cannot say I remember the music choices, for better or for worse, however that may have to do with the conditions I was playing under.
Initially, I did not mention the story. While it does exist, I cannot say it is incredibly well developed unless I missed some hidden lore, but it's a cute little addition and I know others may appreciate the touch a lot more.
All in all this is a good needle game with a decent amount cycle elements that starts a bit rough but gets better as it goes along. I cannot say I would feel like I was missing out on too much were I not to play it, but it is fun, big enough to pass a good hour or two, and well made, so if you're looking for a chill winding down experience you should still play it.
Now that the dry part is over, we can get to the part I want to talk about more.
To cut to the chase, there are quite a few things I simply... do not understand about this game. This is something that I share with SOTN, and I fear that I may have judged that game harshly due to this ignorance. I am going to list what I consider to be the root cause of these.
First, while I do see quite a few themes that repeat themselves in gameplay, I fail to see how they connect together to form a consistent & coherent design philosophy that would also make sense from the average player's/my own perspective. For example, the first stage has a screen that is split into top path and bottom path, which is visited twice; once for each path. However, these paths themselves contain needle that is only marginally better than straight up corridor needle. The mistimed cycles also come into play here, alongside the final save of the orange pinwheel screen where you are forced to spam low jumps in water for 10 seconds and a decent chunk of the overall jumps in stage 1 that just felt awkward to execute. It's stuff that I can't see much justification for beyond "this is kinda cool", and while I do 100% think playability can be justifiably sacrificed for another cause, I did not feel like it was the case here.
The second is identity. This game doesn't tread much new ground (especially with SOTN being there to compare to), and while it is definitely good at what it does, it is not outstanding either. However, it also doesn't really give off any specific or personalized feeling; I do not look at this and say "Only Voraciousreader could have made it" or look at a screen and say "Wow this must have come from Eppur" the way I look at games like Chatran needle, at Synthasmagoria adventures, at Eruna avoidances. This is not to say that production is the main factor in these; Hiddow has his own unique touch despite using only very basic visuals, and Carnival's bosses are legendary regardless of being MS Paint doodles. For this game, I can only really say that some of the cycle patterns as well as general easing function cycle abuse (in a good way) are things I can say stand out in the design. In this, it's hard for me to think of this in any term beyond a pretty generic "enjoyable cycle needle(venture) game".
It is important to recognize that I do not ask these questions from a place of disrespect: I definitely assume answers exist for them, if only partially, and I believe there is insight to be gained here both for me in getting these answers and any prospective makers in starting to think in similar terms. Still, due to this, I will refrain from rating the game. I would likely have given it an aggregate score somewhere in the range 7.2-7.6 though as things stand, but do not give this number much weight.
[0] Likes
3 stages of adventure-y needle, each with their own theme.
The first of these is a space-themed stage with gravity flippers and a focus on symmetrical screen design. Said focus is clearly prioritized over gameplay quality in several sections, in a way that feels detrimental to the stage as a whole; Aside from that, it is your usual voraciousreader needle except without cycles.
The second is split into 3 sub hubs, being pushblocks, block cycles, and laser/buttons. Pushblocks has minor puzzley elements, however they both boil down into 2 tools you have at your disposal and are already forced to figure out from the very start; From then on, these become obvious and unsatisfying to solve. Thankfully, gameplay is introduced early enough on that this is not a problem, but not after putting an end of save trap in a pure puzzle save that is no fun to replay. Block cycles has a few really bad cycles, but is otherwise not notable as a stage. Laser/buttons has timed sections and more interesting cycles and is the best of the 3. The stage ends on a screen combining all gimmicks with a new one, which was hectic, fun to execute, and a good finale to the stage.
The third has a massive visual & thematic overhaul, and introduces new killer objects and has a much, much heavier focus on cycles. While some of these still are not well tuned and require waiting at start of save, these also contain much more fun & developed ideas than the previous cycle stage (although still not immune to "filler" ones either) and even throws some RNG into the mix sometimes.
The third stage ends with the final boss, which is a pretty big mixed bag, between "kinda annoying and can give awkward/uncomfortable situations" (green/trans pride flag/(to a lesser extent) orange), "it's decent I guess but barely noticeable unless it gets too close to you" (orange/purple) and "actually really fun to dodge" (yellow/black(final)).
As for production, it is the usual spritework, in a style which I find a bit off-putting; Something about these feels a bit artificial to me, if it makes sense, however I won't hold it against the game. If anything, the save sprite could have used reskinning based on stage. I cannot say I remember the music choices, for better or for worse, however that may have to do with the conditions I was playing under.
Initially, I did not mention the story. While it does exist, I cannot say it is incredibly well developed unless I missed some hidden lore, but it's a cute little addition and I know others may appreciate the touch a lot more.
All in all this is a good needle game with a decent amount cycle elements that starts a bit rough but gets better as it goes along. I cannot say I would feel like I was missing out on too much were I not to play it, but it is fun, big enough to pass a good hour or two, and well made, so if you're looking for a chill winding down experience you should still play it.
Now that the dry part is over, we can get to the part I want to talk about more.
To cut to the chase, there are quite a few things I simply... do not understand about this game. This is something that I share with SOTN, and I fear that I may have judged that game harshly due to this ignorance. I am going to list what I consider to be the root cause of these.
First, while I do see quite a few themes that repeat themselves in gameplay, I fail to see how they connect together to form a consistent & coherent design philosophy that would also make sense from the average player's/my own perspective. For example, the first stage has a screen that is split into top path and bottom path, which is visited twice; once for each path. However, these paths themselves contain needle that is only marginally better than straight up corridor needle. The mistimed cycles also come into play here, alongside the final save of the orange pinwheel screen where you are forced to spam low jumps in water for 10 seconds and a decent chunk of the overall jumps in stage 1 that just felt awkward to execute. It's stuff that I can't see much justification for beyond "this is kinda cool", and while I do 100% think playability can be justifiably sacrificed for another cause, I did not feel like it was the case here.
The second is identity. This game doesn't tread much new ground (especially with SOTN being there to compare to), and while it is definitely good at what it does, it is not outstanding either. However, it also doesn't really give off any specific or personalized feeling; I do not look at this and say "Only Voraciousreader could have made it" or look at a screen and say "Wow this must have come from Eppur" the way I look at games like Chatran needle, at Synthasmagoria adventures, at Eruna avoidances. This is not to say that production is the main factor in these; Hiddow has his own unique touch despite using only very basic visuals, and Carnival's bosses are legendary regardless of being MS Paint doodles. For this game, I can only really say that some of the cycle patterns as well as general easing function cycle abuse (in a good way) are things I can say stand out in the design. In this, it's hard for me to think of this in any term beyond a pretty generic "enjoyable cycle needle(venture) game".
It is important to recognize that I do not ask these questions from a place of disrespect: I definitely assume answers exist for them, if only partially, and I believe there is insight to be gained here both for me in getting these answers and any prospective makers in starting to think in similar terms. Still, due to this, I will refrain from rating the game. I would likely have given it an aggregate score somewhere in the range 7.2-7.6 though as things stand, but do not give this number much weight.
Rating: N/A
Difficulty: 55 55
Jul 22, 2022
LitnhJacuzzi
The only rough part is the timer stuff is too much.
[0] Likes
Rating: 8.5 85
Difficulty: 65 65
Jul 20, 2022