I have somewhat of a background in ARG puzzle solving, and so I went in wanting to like this. I was extremely disappointed to find out that this level exemplifies the very worst of """ARG"""s, a simulacrum of what most people THINK an ARG is. What the "puzzles" amount to in this level are following some set of instructions that are given to you by the level. I can think of one puzzle where I was actually meant to infer something, that being the inference from the spike jumps to Morse code. Everything else was just paint-by-numbers bullshit, the level told me to do something and I went and did it, picking up codes to then put back into the level so that it could give me new codes to put back again. The most egregious "puzzle" by far was the 4 part level scavenger hunt. This puzzle is not hard, but it is tedious. It requires you to scroll through all of PAHC's levels, many of which look exactly the same to me, just to find the one thing he wants me to find. That's not even mentioning the fact that it does not actually require you at any point to play the levels; I had much more success just copying the levels and opening them in the editor to find the clue. Now I imagine one of you might object that this is against the spirit of the puzzle, but keep in mind that this was literally an INSTRUCTION I was supposed to follow. OnlyTrying cheesed the first "puzzle" by doing the exact same thing. By far the worst "puzzle" was the one in Go You where you had to get 1500 currency. The fastest way I found to get currency was the button hitting, and it would take several minutes of monotonous button pressing to get through it (I cheesed it by opening in the editor and duplicating the touch trigger that gave the currency, but this took a pretty long time to do as well. It was more fun than mashing that's for sure!).

The fact that PAHC lampshades this all at the end does not mean the leadup to it was in any way enjoyable. It also just doesn't work, because the character chastises us for playing the Babelism levels while not engaging with PAHC's, but I literally didn't do what they said. I didn't play the Babelism levels either, I just opened them in the editor. Nor did I actually die on cosmic, I just opened the editor. I get the impression that the intent was to do some kind of Undertale-esque thing, where it holds a mirror up to you for the way you chose to engage, but it just doesn't work here at all because it incorrectly guessed what my engagement was like. It also isn't subverting some kind of expectation by doing this because the trials were set up in such a way that the things is chastises you for are the things that it tells you to do!

Overall this level just made me angry more than anything. It has no understanding of what makes ARG type puzzles interesting and it completely punts on the message of the level by not understanding its own construction very well. I'm tempted to give it a 1/10 but I can't bring myself to do it, I do on some level appreciate the attempt even if the execution was god awful.