// Articles // 8th Mar 2013 — 12 years ago // By Duke Glen

IWBTG and Fan-Made Games

Before we start, I'll explain a little more about I Wanna Be The Guy. It's Basically a 2D platformer where everything is designed to kill you. You play as 'The Kid' who goes out on an 'Epic Adventure' to become 'The Guy'. Unfortunately, he dies, well, very easily. Even touching the side or bottom of a spike kills him instantly. Thankfully there a several save points you can revert to every time you die which, trust me, you will. A lot.

Recently I have been playing many frustrating games. I don't know why, but after a spending some time watching gameplay videos of the likes of I Wanna Be The Guy (IWBTG) and some of of the many 'fangames' based on it, including I Wanna Be the Boshy (IWBTB), I decided to try them out for myself. During this experiment, I found that most of the time I regretted this decision. But, some of the time I spent with these games (and I say SOME of the time) I found myself enjoying them. Why? It took me a while to figure that one out as well.

IWBTG

A little info more info on what IWBTG (and the like) is: it's a very hard game where you go through a series of stages (or levels, chapters, whatever you want to call them) of pure bastardisation. Some go hardcore. Some go a bit easy on you. Some are just right. Some are just lazy. As they are all fan-made, you'll also find that many of the bosses and music are taken from other games or taken from Newgrounds.

After a long day of meditation and playing IWBTB I found myself feeling agitated and annoyed, as well as suffering a few broken keyboard keys. But, it answered one of my life mysteries: why do I find myself playing these games over again?

Pride.

I feel proud when I clear that stage, or that boss; even if it took me two hours, I still feel proud. Then, of course, the game slaps me in the face and gives me an (almost) impossible spike maze but still, I'm proud!

IWBTG

There are bad fangames out there, but I'm not going to name any names, I'd rather let you find out for yourself, but unfortunately there are plenty on the IWBTG Forums. One I played dumped me straight into the game as soon as I loaded up, with no start menu and, one of the worst things, floating spikes. I take it as a sign of lazyness that a creator would not bother to paste in a bit of wall for the spikes to attach too...

After a while in this stage, the music changed to a theme stolen from Mega Man. Now for those who don't know, Megaman 2: Dr.Wily Stage 1 Is REALLY overused and is used in almost EVERY fan-made game I have played. But then, the first boss. Oh god. it's... SpongeBob Squarepants. He moves side to side across the arena. His only attack is shooting 4 Gary's at you and he has 50 health. Given that IWBTG games you can only have 4 bullets on screen at once this leaves you stuck for about a minute or two at a time with nothing to do except for jumping every five seconds.

IWBTG

But, that is one bad experience. Some fangames are garbage, some are really good. Because they are all fan-designed there is scope for real originality in each game. Signs of a good one can be simple things like a main menu, the ability to customizable controls. Something I HATE is overly difficult jumps; the kind that need to be almost pixel perfect or require a lot of movement to get past. Music is important as well, as it really sets the tone of the game, and my advice to fangame makers is this: Try not to use too much music taken from the same game/artist, have a bit of variety. Oh, and make sure the music is fitting for the level or scenario.

If you are interested in trying out the fangame scene, some examples of good fan-made games and who made them are: