Rating Curve

i spent like 50k attempts on this level and it wasnt even good

the effect alone took djoxy - arguably the singular most skilled creator in the entire game put together - 6 full months in 2.1's editor. just to put it in perspective: even in 2.2 with no touch no one was remaking it. i would love for everyone who thinks they can remake this level to go ahead and do so. maybe you could, but you didnt. i doubt you can, though

p fun nd grew on me a decent amount after sinking a bit of time into learning it. generally a v clean level

re: rephrased to sound less mean spirited because i cant delete my account so i might as well extrapolate on this a bit more. also put in simpler terms

• theres good postmodern art and theres bad postmodern art. there are ways to cut the lines across but a good way to tell which side youre on is how if you feel that your art was too ambiguous - so much so that you feel the need to shove the supposed 'meaning' down everyones throat so that they would able to appreciate it as a kind of extradiagetic context - it probably wasnt good and failed at its main goal.

• the main point here is that i never enjoyed SAVE AS as a work of art where the artist feels the need to tell the audience What To Think. it doesnt... really have good implications for your work. PAHC some years later followed this up with Cosmic which i felt was the immediately better execution. its self contained and sufficiently subtle, akin to some of the more effective narrative-exploration walking simulators out there. next to that SAVE AS invariably feels a bit hamfisted

• there is also a point to be made about the implications of adapting such a heavy topic to a heavily gamified context as well. if its an experience only to be watched, fine. but as an interative experience, its awful. its hard enough to be a medium demon, which means youll have to learn it, and replay it over, and over, and over, and over again. it doesnt take a genius to figure out how that could sour the experience in the end. in the same regard, it fails in the same way many interactive art has failed before: the levels of interaction required consistently contradicts with the ideal experience. in the same way this is where alot of modern gaming failed when trying to tackle topics of similar caliber. the most recent example being silent hill 2 2024's hilarious chase sequences that tries to put you into the center of Angela's trauma and ended up just downplaying it for the player. the original game, in comparison, knew to treat it with grace and actually understood things.

insanely unique when it came out and still really fresh today. death moon didnt have a ton of unique ideas except Long And Flashy and its incredible at being exactly that but cataclysm is that level. impeccable atmosphere and the rare level where both the redeco and original looks great. one of the best extreme demons made

maybe didnt age well because 'it got copied alot' or whatever but no one ever says that about film and music lol. the progenitor is always the superior one i think you guys just need to stop treating this stuff as disposable

used to hve th take of 'cataclysm was the superior early hell level and this was just highly rated because it was really hyped on rollout and wasnt copied repeatedly' but i cnt deny it its still rlly fuckin good evn if it (again) aged worse nd had less interestng ideas thn cataclysm

the gameplay sucks so much nj please. the level looks incredinle but it hurted my hands nj please

random simple gameplay over unrelated backgrounds. its alot less impressive when you realize how much of this can just be replicated with a texture pack or something.

a pretty compelling experiment about the importance of good looking art in the atmosphere of a level, in that the conclusion is tjt it barely matters.

Nacho21 was simply the greatest to ever do it. Everything this man touched became gold and it saddens me there is only one other review as of me typing this.

Its very simple but it works, and definitely would've been worse if there were more details. Not doing any more details than it has to, allowed the level to be much more easily digestible, thus much more absorbing. Less is often more if atmosphere is your game. Immaculate pacing as well. Everything flows together perfectly, its so much more than just the sum of its parts. In my opinion the greatest atmospheric piece by the greatest creator.