Rating Curve

"I mean it's alright, like... overrated as fuck in my opinion." -EatDatPastry445

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.

Not sure if this is a joke level or a level about jokes. Either way, this is probably the best NCS gauntlet level, so take that as you will.

The level does a really good job building tension and having well-varied gameplay for the most part. A couple of jumps are truly awful, but otherwise, this is a great level with lots of fresh ideas.

I worked hard to create an uneasy environment where people afraid of 13 or aware of the theming could see the number appear wherever they look as long as they look for it. The level's description "Be very afraid." even used 13 visible characters, and 13 is even the 13th word in this review.

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.

I have a feeling me and pocke think in a very similar way on how we express ourselves creatively. We've independently come up with similar ways to express similar ideas, and this level makes a good case for that hypothesis. Using geometry dash as a cathartic outlet for one, along with stylistically brazen, expressionist decisions are qualities of this level that really resonate with me because that's exactly what I do through the lens of my own experiences. We have also independently experimented with obstacles the same color as the level background to potentially represent obsticals in the mundane, or to signal that something isn't completely right. Was starstruck when I first saw this level, and hope people can take inspiration from this in their own work should it be right to do so.

Gut wrenching hollowness, messy and beautiful emotion, tough and monotonous stretches of time, moments of collection and lucidity, moments of unforgiving disassociations and chaos, nerve-wracking new beginnings, and the end of things. The more I've seen this level, the more I fall in love with what it has to tell me. An unexpected passing of someone once close to me was revealed very impromptu and late one autumn. Unlike what would happen later to my elderly dog in the following weeks, their passing was completely unexpected; a gruesome freak accident caused by a force of nature that took zero remorse. Almost like viewing this art, I felt nothing at first, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks once I saw it for what it truly was.

This level doesn't attempt to portray death as inherently good or bad, and that's something I can respect as it is different for everyone's interpretation; it's usually both good and bad simultaneously. Another facet of this level's open ended design is the its ability to be holistically interpreted to fit multiple narratives. Feelings of dying, watching something else die, and the consequences of death are impossibly all summed up into a nearly 10 minute experience. Like the real concept we have come to understand, Death itself isn't exactly pretty, but it is powerful, crude, and an experience that grapples with life itself. Memento mori.

Beautiful use of colors, design, text, visual noise, level length... this level is perfect in every way I can think of visually. I will have to judge gameplay later for myself.

The Demon of Babylon disguises himself with the cloak of the righteous.

Yeah, it was made for fun, but it's not good. Lots of designs are lazy, safe, and overdone, and the gameplay looks really stale. These happen to be qualities inverse to this level's decorative inspiration, going so far as to label it a remake rather than a spin-off. If the creators had 10/10 fun, that's fantastic. Unfortunately, that's not what this site judges; it just wasn't meant to be.