Rating Curve

something that will always confound me, at least at time of writing, is that despite how often their songs are used, almost no creators seem to understand what FREE99 are going for in their music. their style is very emotionally unsubtle and raw, very angsty, explicitly nostalgic for/inspired by the late 90s - early 00s, and often have queer themes. and what's weird is all these things mesh pretty well with the juvenile and underground aspects of gd culture! glue girl by twigxcabaret and gayskeleton was the first time i heard them in gd, and nails the angsty and trans themes, but doesn't really match the edgy shadow the hedgehog nu metal darkness, out of this world by perox8 deserves its status as an incredibly influential and one of a kind level, and nails the dark noisiness and brash underground experimentation, but doesn't really fit the nostalgic or angsty vibe, and the amount of straight up generic levels i've seen with these girls' music is truly baffling

thankfully there is at least one level that understood the assignment perfectly. (it's this level.) i dunno who zubwill is and nothing else from them really catches my attention, but this level absolutely kills the song representation. the first half has this mysterious and surreal art evoking the motion graphics or edgy anime openers (or perhaps certain AMVs), even the font choice feeling appropriate, as well as being lightly reminiscent of melancholic levels in lineage of lonely travel. and then the chorus hits, stripping back all that for incredibly loud effects, noisy and repetitive object usage, and art straight out of an emo kid's sketchbook. it's exactly the kinda deviantart myspace shit FREE99 works in and amplifies and i just don't know why there isn't more of this, given levels like requiem by lithifusion or delete file by ethan2sus exist

even though i've thought it over quite a while, i feel pretty weird giving this level a 10, even if a low one, with how many levels i have at a 9 i think are way better constructed and creative and ambitious than this. it's really not that far off from many other levels that don't do anything for me, with how its structured and many of the kinds of art and effects it uses, the gameplay mostly a means to an end, and how copy paste the chorus/drop part is (the noisy object usage is the correct choice, but even that i've seen done much better before). but at the end of the day, there's not many levels out there that can give me full body chills when they hit, and the rare few that do definitely deserve the honors, coz rly that's what it's all about

sorry i have to talk about myself to properly review this one but it's really the only way i can fully share my thoughts on it. since 2.0, way before it became a thing people specialized in, i've been making layouts, and being into it for this long gives me some rather unorthodox feelings about gameplay. at this point, in many cases, i no longer care that much about how fun gameplay is, and i definitely don't care about sightreadability and often see it as a weakness. the perfect gameplay to me is consistently introducing new ideas, even at the cost of it being a little (or a lot) jank. despite my adoration for the gd physics engine, most of the flow stuff the gameplay scene people make and have made since the style started don't really impress me anymore, which is a really weird feeling to happen to Your Style, kind of unparalleled in my ideally egalatarian tastes in gd levels

regardless, there are some layouts that make their way into my favorite levels, and what they all share in common is their minimalistic unorthodox atmosphere, and, of course, being the most utterly fucking unplayable shit i've ever seen. in order, first is Deviation (which i straight up think is one of the greatest things to have ever graced this game, both in its content and historical value), second is the criminally underrated hidden gem that is CHATCED, but neither of those are on the servers nor will be for a long time if ever, so we're talking about titanomachina (even this isn't an official copy lol)

at this point i think nacho21 is kind of a genius so for his best level to be a layout is a pretty unorthodox and surprising take. but what this level manages to achieve with only gameplay (and a little bit of "deco") is something almost no other levels manage to convey. what exactly that is is hard to put into words. i think the principle emotion is how Exhausted it feels. it's like the free association your brain plays when trying to fall asleep, no energy, no movement. but it also feels like an ancient crypt, filled with inscrutable, dangerous puzzles. or it feels like a vision of purgatory, a lifeless stagnant hell full of mundane horrors. it's like all of those at once, and more, a phenomenal display of tension and breaking expectations. and that's not to mention how unbelievably unique and creative the gameplay is. it just Does things i'd never think to try, the kinds of associations it makes and ways it tries to convey to itself feel straight up surrealist. it probably kinda has the energy of 'your favorite director's favorite movie', something obviously very weird and unconventional if you aren't as familiar with its genre, but if/when you do, it's nothing short of mindblowing

not a masterpiece because of or in spite of its influences, but a secret third thing. really does something interesting with how stripped back it often is. took a good part of the year to truly reveal to me how good it is, but solidly in the low 10 spot for me

who thought it was a good idea to make something this good out of a fucking nick24 level lol

my favorite 1.9 level is death moon, because everyone's favorite 1.9 level is death moon, but what's #2 is this... thing. i mentioned in my lost souls review that that was my favorite level at the time, but i had actually known this level from back then too, i just forgot about it until about mid 2.1 until i uncovered it again, along the way it having left a pretty big imprint on me, something i thought, vaguely, about a lot but didn't remember the name of

zariku's not exactly the creator (actually two creators) you'd expect to release a masterpiece if you only knew their other stuff. dragon force and zirokabi are pretty well known, but beyond that you get into some of the most bizarre and uncompromising levels of the time, like swiftness having a part that's basically rng (and more notably a part that was impossible for most of 2.1!) and half their other levels are equally bizarre, many no longer on the servers often after being updated (there's another rated level by them, disappear of echo08, whose current version is literally just this level again). definitely one of the most interesting creators then but them releasing a level of this calibre feels unprecedented to me, but it's almost like they knew it with how it lists the names of most of their other levels before the drop, a move hilariously self-aggrandizing but i can't help but feel it deserves it with how much this level means to me

now i don't wanna make it seem like this is a technical masterpiece, because it's not. it's still a zariku level at the end of the day, the gameplay is really awkward and unfriendly (pretty fun once you learn it actually), and you really can tell that one of them is a much more impressive creator than the other, the one with all the art and effect chops that are a large part of what makes this level (and others, like dragon force) work. its a masterpiece in its emotional quality, a juvenile, earnest, chaotic, and spontaneous intensity in every regard, from the song to its pacing to the wild swings in quality to even the gameplay. the kinds of feelings this provokes in me are just unheard of for the time, almost reminding me more of twigxcabaret than xaro, funnygame, or woogi. it's a level i can see most people not having the enthusiasm i have for it given its flawed nature, but it's one of those where the flaws are integral to the feeling and it'd be incomplete without them for me. definitely one that at least deserves much more attention, a true hidden gem

some time in 2.0 i think this is the first level i ever decided 'this is my favorite level in the game.' it's not anymore, but still very very high, definitely my favorite 1.9 level behind death moon and killer hunting. it's still not been effectively reproduced (yes, hi beast slayer, i like you too but not this much), the rainbow effect and design and genuinely psychedelic passages, hiding machines, mental anguish, and death/purgatory. i dunno what the fuck it means but goddamn is it menacing

also genuinely really fun too, a rare accomplishment for serponge given that's always been his weakest skillset by some margin. though millepatte regularly outshines him here, which is quite something to say of my favorite creator

probably the first new level that came out that gave me a feeling of not being able to believe how good it was, definitely the first i remember giving me that feeling. honestly this level still somehow feels like it's from an impossible future to me, even though i can see the funnygame influence and the occasional use of cliche (if you've played a lot of 1.9 levels you can def see it.) any fault there is more than made up for by the vibe, and despite really just being a bunch of parts glued together, the pacing is still immaculate

millepatte for the time's probably the best creator we never got, not even a small library like ozpectro people would remember and emulate, it's really just this, lost souls (equally good possibly better depending on my mood), maybe transcendence, and a bunch of megacollab parts with a tendency to steal the show. it's unfortunate but it makes sense given how quality everything they touched tended to be

whether this is funnygame or geogame i don't really care, though i do expect this and mountain king are the probably both him, it's an astounding effect level either way. even if theyre not all too complicated they really have that classic 'how did you even make it look like that', the dual wave especially. the last true masterpiece on the account, for now