top 3 level of the year for me, and right now the best platformer of the year for me

this level somehow seems like it was MADE for me, every aspect of the level somehow fits perfectly into my tastes and biases and i think that's crazy. there's this game series i used to play as a kid on coolmathgames called abandoned and it was always my favourite online game. i had a song from abandoned 2 as my menu music for years before 2.2 came out. wretched is like the exact same genre as the abandoned games but done even better... in the geometry dash editor???

it's longer than all of the abandoned games which is insanely impressive, has harder puzzles, a more engaging story and even LOOKS better, still insane to me. i've seen people complain about the controls but tbh they're completely fine. in fact i think it's the best way you could've controlled this. the fact that this is an entire solo level by at the time a completely unknown creator is incredibly impressive. svallux managed to do so much and i give my biggest respects ever to her. this is also the most fun ive ever had in a gd minigame, and places top 3 in the most fun ive ever had in the entire game. i spent HOURS straight solving the puzzles, piecing together the lore, and making a document on how to do each puzzle. once i beat the level for the first time i was like wow this is the greatest thing ever, and then the ending animation blew me away. i guess it's nothing that special but to me, the amount of effort and passion put into the ending animation just makes me so happy, and the fact that its an entire original song used is actually insanely impressive. getting the coins and all achievements was the hardest thing ive ever had to solve by myself... and i ended up needing outside help...

there's a lot of things i want to say about this level but for some reason it's not coming to me right now, but i can definitely say this is one of the best pieces of art ive ever seen in my life lmao