One of my favorites for sure :)

Well rested is a level all too known for its overwhelming dominance on neodesign as a genre, it's the peak of a style deffie has been pioneering for years and it's shown through its sheer length, consistency and intricacy. You wouldnt really think of this level as bad, it's very elegantly designed and still feels like it does everything to set you in for a smooth ride, there's a reason it's considered to be an all time classic by many. Despite this, I cant like it as much as I wanted to, I find the conceptual framework behind its creation rather shallow and I would go as far as saying that this lack of flavour is directly responsible for its cookie cutter quality descendants. Being deffie's most polished designs by long magnitude, you'd expect the extra mile of effort to be essential to a deeper, unifying vision, but in this case only so much seems to be planned ahead. There is so much style and glamour put into the visuals and yet the vast variety of environments all feel barren, I'm constantly asking myself the question what life there is to find in this massive immersive setting and it never seems to lead to a satisfying conclusion. The one thing that does seem to flourish are the small details to represent the melody, it's done very delicately and is filled with ripe ideas, it's then unfortunate that the actual songwriting is seemingly left abandoned. There’s a very clear anger expressed towards defeatist ideologies, including antinatalism and certain types of nihilism, it’s a very strong political message that just isn’t seen back anywhere in the level’s self-absorbed expressions, which feels like an indolent decision to me. And this pattern just continues further on, it’s a 7 minute long level that comes off as dry and impersonal the more I revisit it. This only becomes a bigger upset once it’s constantly talked about as the pinnacle of our community’s creative environment, what might’ve been a breath of fresh air at first is now perpetuating an uninspired view of this game’s artistic merits. “Neodesign” in its entire premise might’ve been nothing more than a myth, a made up classification solely to make the unconventional slowly fit a certain standard again. And well rested, to this day, being the epitome of this annoying status quo

WELL RESTED is one of those levels where I think demongrinders will either adore it or despise it. Unfortunately I fall in the latter category, as I had a thoroughly terrible time beating this level.

I’ll preface this by saying I have no issues with the visuals of this level with one exception: the way this level normalized hiding the leftmost 30% and rightmost 30% of the screen has been a disaster for the GD player base. This gimmick sounds great on paper and I’ll grant that it makes the drop more exciting when you finally get to see the entire screen. However, it still ruins the entire first half of the level, making everything way harder to sightread than it has any business being. I’ll never understand why you’d make a level based on sightreading like WELL RESTED and then deliberately make it annoying to sightread, that’s a recipe for disaster imo.

Aside from that gimmick, I really love how this level looks, it stands out a lot for a mid to late 2.1 level and manages to make every part recognizable despite being 8 minutes long.

The gameplay is where my problems really start to tally up.

0-1% is a short ball part with obscured vision

1-6% is a dark cube part where orbs and pads sync with the weird sound effects in the song Kero Kero Bonito - Well Rested

6-13% is a bright but slow cube part with lots of greenery and alternating mini / normal size portals

13-21% is the first 2x speed section and where the level gets hard to sightread. You alternate between ball, cube, and spider parts as the background gets dimmer. At 19% you get a break as it returns to 1x speed.

21-28% is the first memorable part of the level imo and the first part that requires practice in addition to being hard to sightread. You alternate between robot, ship, and ball parts at 2x speed. Every robot jump is timed perfectly to the song’s lyrics but the moving obstacles make it hard to sightread. The ship parts require decent ship control

28-33% is the first of several slope parts where the terrain becomes mountainous requiring some janky cube jumps. It’s a break part but I still died here a few times

33-37% is when the cube starts to speed up again - you have lots of gravity switches and fast ship / ball parts in the middle of this cube section, but more of the type of gameplay from earlier.

37-39% is a quick wave and cube part, not much to say here

39-42% is the start of what I call the “space section” - you have some unique cube gameplay here where you jump into jump pads rather than sliding into them. It’s hard to sightread so practice from 39 a lot.

42-45% has the hardest ball part of this level. It’s very unintuitive with the gravity switches so practice this ball a lot, I estimate I died here 5 times in normal :(

45-50% is the final part of the space section - it has more of the tricky cube gameplay from earlier so practice this part a ton

50-53% is a much needed break cube part and serves as the buildup for the drop. I really like the hieroglyphics for the well rested lyrics here

53-61% is the drop and the most famous part of WELL RESTED by far. You have a 3x speed cube part with rapid ship parts interspliced in the middle of this cube part. Finally you can see the whole screen as the boundary covering the left and right sides of the screen is removed. I love the star decorations around this part, they make it very memorable.

61-65% is the glitchy ball part which serves as the buildup for the second drop. Not much to say here, this is another nice break part.

65-69% is the second drop and by far the hardest part of WELL RESTED imo. The fact that it’s over 280 seconds into the level is the worst thing about this level. Most of the level is sightreadable and then it shoves you into the least sightreadable mini cube / mini spider I have ever seen. Practice from 65-100 several times before attempting this in normal, I promise you won’t regret it. It’s a shame because this part looks good but it just shouldn’t be this far into an XXL demon imo

69-73% is the beginning of the descent after the drop. This part is tricky because the terrain constantly drops and you should be ready for this sudden change in terrain. Again, this part looks good, it’s just brutal for being after the hardest part over 5 minutes in

73-77% is a bright mini cube part with more tricky terrain. The platforms constantly move up and down making this hard to read.

77-81% is where the level comes full circle as you get another cube similar to the first half of the level. Again this is tricky as your cube is descending some tricky terrain.

81-89% is the last proper hard part of the level. You get a very bright cube part with a mini cube portal around 85%. You’re still descending but the descent is easier to read here.

89-93% is a very stressful finale. As the song comes to a halt with only intermittent beeps and boops, you have very few jumps to do in this flat cube section, but they’re more precise than they look. I like that the credits appear on sync with the jumps here

93-100% is auto and gives you time to appreciate the beauty of the level’s decoration in the final minute

Every part individually is great, the issue is that when you put all of these parts together in this order it is very annoying to play in normal. The fact that the hardest part is over 5 minutes into an 8 minute level is unforgivable. I also dislike that the first 4 minutes prevent you from seeing the sides of the screen due to the boundary.

Overall, I’m not a fan of WELL RESTED, but I can appreciate what it tried to do. If you’re really good at sightreading this might be one of the best levels in the game for you, but I had too many second half deaths to enjoy this one. I’m giving this a 6/10 as I think the balancing is just too unfair to make it enjoyable