If you've talked with me a good amount or have read my Hypnotic Travel review, you would know I HATE travel levels with a burning passion. I've beaten 18 travel levels, and most of them are uninspired, creatively bankrupt levels made for the sake of being long and latching onto a trend, and as a result I get nothing positive out of my experience with them. It's the case of everyone wanting to be like someone else with a complete lack of an understanding of what made Lonely travel such a smash hit.

With that said, Lonely travel is one of, if not the best level in this awful trend. The winning ingredient to the formula that nearly every travel level completely missed was a strong progression. In fact, almost every great XXL+ level, travel or not, has a strong progression as part of its formula. This is why Lonely travel has the right to call itself a "travel" level, and almost every other "travel" level feels like a misnomer by comparison. Back to Lonely travel, the first half is completely black-and-white. This lack of color, combined with the slow pacing and sad song give the first half of this level a very melancholy feel. You're traveling somewhere to be happy again. At 60%, we see our first color with a singular beam of sunlight from the surface illuminating a flower on a rock at the bottom of a cave. It's a great, it feels like we are getting somewhere. In the next section, more beams of light are able to pierce into the dark, gloomy dungeon. Then, we are blinded and put in a new place: the sky is blue, the grass is green, and the air is fresh. The world has color again. Everything will be okay. We go through a forest and desert before the level abruptly ends at the 6 minute mark because FunnyGame hit the object limit. While the level ends here due to a limitation, I don't think there was a better place to end the level. Where would story go after the main progression is already done? Besides, the level is already around double the length of the previous longest level.

Outside of this progression being a highlight for me, there are plenty of other great moments to be found throughout this level. Namely, transitions are really well used to make high-impact moments. Two of my favorites of these are the transition from grayscale to full color I mentioned earlier, but another equally amazing moment is at 52% when the song goes silent for a moment, the screen is white, then the song goes into its chorus as the player is revealed to be in the clouds as the sun is setting. It's hard to properly communicate how satisfying of a part this is through text, it still gives me goosebumps. Two other things I really like about the level include the stuttery old film effect at 23%, as well as how well-made all of the parallax backgrounds are throughout the level. Lonely travel is a bit of a minimalistic level as it spreads its 30k objects over 6 minutes, yet it never really feels empty and FunnyGame is always able to demonstrate how talented and ahead of the curve he was in every part.

However, my main deal breaker with this level, and why I can't love this level as much I would like to, is its gameplay. I just did not have fun playing this level. If it was not for a few choke points, Lonely travel would be an easy demon. The part at 31% with the countdown and the fast yet stiff movement is by far the hardest part and where about a third to a half of my deaths were. It's so tricky to time these, and sometimes the block will fall out from beneath the player and they will need to hit an orb, so there is also some memory involved. Some other choke points I'm not fond of include the UFO right after being hard to see and not having a comfortable click pattern AND randomly deciding to go backwards in the middle of the part, the cloud part halfway through having unclear hitboxes at times, the trees in the foreground of the forest part at 85% sometimes making inputs blind, and most parts with the vignette becoming frustrating because of the limited vision. It's a good idea that fits well in Lonely travel, but it's execution comes at the detriment of the player's time to react and it would be better if it was slightly transparent instead of fully opaque. When 80% of my deaths were at the hands of a few select choke points in the level, this results in the rest of the level (and playing the first 30% constantly) to become quite boring.

Despite my criticisms of the level from a gameplay standpoint, I still overall like this level. While I hate how it spawned the horrible trend of travel levels, I'm glad that Lonely travel was the level to start the push for XXL+ levels in general. Countless amazing levels that I love today would not have existed if Lonely travel was never made. There's also the chance for you to have more fun with the level than I did, so if you want to get more into XXL+ levels, I recommend trying this level.