Very interesting and unique 1.7 level. Has some themes about suicide, TW for that.

This level uses "exit" symbols throughout it's entirety, those being a stick figure running towards a door. I suppose this is to represent the "exit" to life that suicide brings, and this obviously gives the level a darker and somewhat offputting vibe to it. The end of the level has art of this stick figure hanging himself, and this only adds to this feeling, and assuming this is what the level is going for, I think it did a fantastic job at it considering the levels limitations. Cycles is a great song choice for this too, as it certainly grows the strange feel this level gives.

As for the gameplay, it's completely fine, serviceable for it's time. I won't be leaving a score for this, as I don't feel it is important to the overall quality of the level.

This level is strange and weird, and delivers a negative feeling to the player as they play through it, and I believe that this was the point of it. Assuming that this was the goal, this level did all it could with the resources it had. Love it

GD's creating environment pre-1.9 was a whole other world compared to how creators approach their work in the modern setting, yet there are always levels that fall between the cracks of the old era. This is one prime example of such, one of the earliest examples I can find of a GD level telling a story or conveying a message outside of the context of the game itself. The only other example I can think of is the original Hate War by saRy, an anti-war piece.

Like Hate War, Exit serves as a condemnation of war, but chooses to approach this theme more through visual iconography rather than only text. A flurry of bullets, raining hellfire, and a sharp contrast between army green and bright, burning oranges makes this an attempt to showcase the horrors that one experiences during war. We can think of each part the player goes through as a terrible memory of near-death experiences, weighing a toll on the protagonists (who are the little cartoon exit sign humans we see throughout the level), who want an escape from all the bad they were subjected to as a result of fighting in a war, through the means of suicide. GD's abstraction with its artstyle plays a role in this, "repressing" the true realities before they catch right up in the ending, as we witness the hanged man right next to the ending wall, an attempt shatter any sort of comfort one might experience while playing this level. It’s not too shocking- the depiction is very cartoonish after all- but I think it was at least a pretty smart decision to let this visual linger right at the end screen rather than just passing by it.

I think this is executed incredibly well for a pre-1.9 level. There is one problem I have with this level, being that there are some parts that don't contribute much thematically. 50%-80% don't really add much onto a lot of the symbolism that was being established in the first half of the level (unless you read those spike structures as shurikens or something), and as a result it makes the level lose a bit of focus. However, other than that, I think there's a lot of fantastic decisions being made- all the art is really well done, there are a lot of cool set pieces that create a lot of intrigue, and the text reading "EXIT" helps demonstrate a toll on the protagonists' psyche, as if the words are a command rather than an indicator for the exit. Lastly, I like how ambiguous it is with its imagery. It doesn't explicitly state what's going on, but it conveys a mood that allows viewers to pick up their own interpretation on things. It’s certainly no literary iceberg, but to see some level of omission and tact here is incredibly refreshing even in the present day, where a lot of creators just straight up explain any sort of deeper meaning someone could derive from their levels instead of being confident in the player's abilities to figure things out.

I definitely can understand if you don't get much out of this level, but I hope you go into analyzing this level with an open mind, and hey, maybe you get a much different interpretation from mine. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.