Rating Curve

Man this level is cool, but that one spinning circle with the thunderbolt really sticks out like a sore thumb. It's an interesting idea, so maybe they'll try it again one day. I sure hope the design won't be offensive in any way!

Do you hate people spelling out art for you or creator commentary? Do you, like me to some degree, think artwork should speak for itself? Then you should ignore this review, but in short, I'll say that I didn't rate this high because it's mine, but because I'm impressed with my own work. For the people curious about what I have to say, I have a lot.

In the inherent nature of psychoactives and the human experience, due to environmental and universal entropy accumulating as consequences over time, an experience, psychoactive or not, should be different for every person who is subjected to it. Even for the same person, each experience will be different due to more exposures, spontaneous and controlled, to their environment and perhaps psychoactives. The main psychoactive compound in Datura stratamonium is scopalamine, a deleriant. The consistent story or experience I try to capture are the senses becoming off from standard, to going haywire, to becoming nonexistent, or permanently altered at the end. Based on trip reports that I've read I tried to encapsulate seeing things, being watched, feeling uncomfortable or endangered, sensory overload, and breaking down. I made the base interpretation of the psyche a blank slate, and worked my way to a then colorful, then messy view as the level progressed to visualize mental degradation under the poison.

When making this level, I was heavily inspired by works made by Jackson Pollock and Hermann Rorschach for their ability to refract and scatter the true nature of their artwork through the means of playing into the human experience, and by abusing visual noise and/or interpretations of what the positive and negative space in an image compute to. Critics and scientists found hidden messages in Pollock's action paintings post humorously, which made such work of his have a lasting impact, enough to where they would teach that me in my elementary school art classes. The namesake Rorschach test is a series of abstract ink blots used to psychoanalyze a patient in the past. Based on what the person saw, different assumptions would be made about their psyche and mental wellbeing. Aside from the messages spelled out in plaintext, I decided to hide messages in the structuring of the second half's decoration, the most obvious being "goodbye" in the robot. The rest of the level has much to say if you look hard enough.

To wrap this up, I've allowed multiple gameplay routes, hidden messages, included vaguely related phrases clustered together, for what? The teeth of the monster faces in the last spider are player colored. This was a deliberate choice to remind the player that they chose to experience this themselves. In fact, a lot of this level is an ode to the mysteries and randomness of the lived experience, and celebrating diversity of each person's ways of patern recognition and problem solving. Is it perfect? No. Could it be better? Yes. I really hope to expand on these ideas one day in my work and make something truly special to myself and perhaps others.

I'll probably clean up these thoughts later, or release a scripted creator commentary on this, idk

Really good debut with cohesive theming. A bit empty at times, but very good overall.

Good idea. Very simple, but well communicated.

Ignoring the pollution this has recieved from the community, this is an incredibly strong level that uses negative space, colors, and moving objects all incredibly well.

To address the idea of a "congregation jumpscare," yes, the level catches you by surprise after stringing you along for a minute or so. When the channel first started, the video already gave the idea away and the "subversion" was extremely simple. It was perfect as a multilayered ironic shitpost, but then people started taking it seriously and getting creative with it. All of the sudden, it loses the charm it had for being stupidly straightforward and simple. It's kinda devolved into a rick roll kind of thing and fizzled out since, but I can remember the short time it was special somehow.

Encapsulates anxiety fairly well. They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results; the creator takes this concept into their gameplay to drive tension and frustration into the player. The repetitive and persistent nature of it is not unlike a stressor, but it being the only consistent thing throughout the decay feels important to me too, as it can signify to overcome and/or accept it even when it gets bleak.

If this level didn't have legible words, I don't think it'd be nearly as good. I do like the visuals though, and the story makes the thing better, and the level overall does a good job making you feel dread and melancholy.

Super crazy extreme demon. Has a unique chaotic energy to it.

Cool concept. I really like it when the blocks and gameplay seem to undergo minor changes in phase 1 and steadily creep in and become more noticeable. Cool concept.

Oz's best. Gameplay is really cool to watch at parts, and fun in runs. It was also cool to see him experiment with his style.