imagine you're me, having newly crested high school and are beginning your first semester at a new university. all of your friends have moved to a more prestigious campus up north, and youve had adequate time alone to articulate your psyche. you've changed a lot over the past year, your tastes and aesthetics, outgrowing your insular online circles, and this transitional period apprehensively awaits your next move. change doesn't wait for the inflexible, and your apprehension keeps you in your unbelonging place, not strong or confident enough to make a move, and time passes, pulling you alone into the unknown.

interlude employs the same demeanour in its immaculate subtlety, mirroring silently yet intensely these feelings of isolation and uncertainty in its wittingly modest presentation. its coldness allows us to share such ease with its presence that, deeply and intimately, speaks to you at your most vulnerable. most importantly, its a reflection of the human experience that holds solace to you in its darkness. it's a deeply personal exploration that shares its solitude with the viewer with no intentions of dominance or coercion, yet it permeates and revels in the foreignness of the self, given you let it surround you with its dreamy waterscapes - it's truly rewarding to anybody that has the pleasure to discover it.

interlude is also a testament to the concept of transcendence of time, a very seldom explored notion of levels that opposes the stimulatory nature of the game (split path also notably coming to mind, though i think interlude is notable for marrying the concept with the 'classic' level feel). natural immersion often chooses to integrate an environment with the medium it's given, but wik uses this as a supplementary addition to the level to great effect, letting you be an observer in a little ship deep into the unknowns of the psyche. It's a pity that the level is constrained by the song in this regard (that being that it ends too soon), because wik is able to create a magic experience that i feel so at peace with, one that shares your fragility and unbelonging, one that empathizes with your societal aberrance, and has so much permanence as a self-sufficient work that it will surely continue to thrive years from now. its good

also i dont know where to put this but wik is just cool as fuck so that improves the score greatly. projected persona of the creator or something. shoutout