Button Masher is Viprin’s first megacollab released in over 2 and a half years, and it’s a pretty surprising one. For over half a decade. Viprin’s projects have been hyped up design style collabs that consistently push the limits in execution with simple themes, such as “sky” and “rainbow”. With Button Masher, however, this way of level creation was flipped on its head. As the last level of the NCS x Geometry Dash event, Button Masher was teased only a month before getting released, and isn’t your typical design level you’d expect from Viprin.

The level starts off outside of an arcade machine that you enter after a few seconds. Before you enter, you can see vibrant posters of all the NCS event levels on the wall, as this level isn’t just the final level of the event, but a collaboration between all the creators of those levels as well. After entering the arcade machine, the next 50 seconds are fairly basic pixel block parts. I say basic, but it’s still a well executed version of the style. It doesn’t do much to be very original though, which honestly brings it down a bit for me. This is the case until 0:46, where you start beating up a monster to the song, with a few “glitches” forming and the screen occasionally breaking out into the real world, reminding the player that you’re in an arcade machine. The drop is where the level seriously picks up, as the level becomes more menacing and more glitches start to occur. Eventually, the glitches overtake the arcade machine, and you break out of the screen and into the arcade. 

At this point, the style of the level completely changes. You’ve broken into the real world, and the decoration is more art based and realistic to accommodate that. This segment is easily my favorite in the level, as it packs so many small details in such a short timespan. I love how you see all the arcade machines in the background, before crashing through a claw machine, going past a bowling alley on an air hockey table, and flying your way past the prize corner before jumping into another arcade machine. You don’t last very long in this new arcade machine before you start jumping between multiple different ones, with each one referencing different games and levels. Finally, you reach the last machine, and the level ends with a brilliant sequence of a fake “Game Over!” death followed by a wonderfully animated endscreen.

While there’s a lot more I could talk about, Button Masher is a great level. I do think that the first half is pretty weak, as it lacks originality, looking more like random RobTop styled levels than something actually themed. It even feels a bit weak design wise at times, with some large empty spots and somewhat off putting colors, but the later parts are all fantastic. I think this was a really fun way to end the NCS event, as everything ends up coming together for an exciting grand finale!