Extremely inconsistent in style and complexity which just kinda hampers the entire visual experience for me. You're just drifting along a bunch of pretty landscapes in this level which is a bit of lost potential. Train part and the ruins part are undeniably absolutely sick though those and the cutscenes are visibly kind of meant to be the focal point of Astralith and I don't think I'm really a fan of that...? I like levels with more even visual quality

This level made me feel so many emotions all at once when I first experienced it. It's hard to describe my relationship with Astralith, because I have two conflicting ideals punching each other in the face. I'll say beforehand that I absolutely love Astralith, and that what I'll explain below is just what I've seen with its' general reception and what I think of it.

As an artist, I feel like this level is a genuine tribute to art. Every part depicts different places of a fantasy world, objects and assets put together to translate the imagination of each creator - or rather, each artist - into a concrete and visible projection of it. This is what art is all about, and the ability to translate such a view in Astralith is insane to me. I love it.

As a gd creator who played this game for years, though, I think art pieces just don't work for this game. Don't get me wrong, these levels have all the rights to be made and published in GD, but my problem stems from the community's reach. GD is not the right place to foster art-related engagement, because most of the community boils artistic levels down to an "impressionism" competition. The more something impresses the public, the more it will gain traction; which doesn't guarantee the level will have impeccable quality.

Astralith is an INCREDIBLY good piece of art and you can dive deeper into it to understand why that might be the case; but when confronted with the wrong audience, you're kind of influenced to take it at face value. This can be seen more than ever in a ton of recent art levels, with new or even more experienced creators directly referencing - or even straight up stealing - the same styles and creative process behind Astralith, trying to be the next big thing without understanding why Astralith is so popular in the first place. It's a superficial, terrible selective way to tell what elements people like the most, and it's been done SO many times throughout the history of this game that I just dislike those "products" by default.

yapping over. not much of a review really, just a point of view on the creator side of the community failing to understand what makes other levels so talked and appreciated.

The deco is beautiful. It must have taken a long time to make it. The base gameplay is pretty fun, but the deco style can make it a little hard to read at times. Apart from that, my only other complaint is that it's kinda laggy in some places even with LDM, but that's partly due to my computer not having the best possible performance. Still, I kinda wish there was a ULDM.