Rating Curve

It's extremely hard for me to explain why I love this level to death, so just trust that I do.

Many people find the usage of text in this level corny and unnecessary, but I really disagree! My rule of thumb usually is: if you need to use text in your level to describe your intentions, you shouldn't use it. In space i guess I think it just complements the level in a great way! It's obviously not perfect and I think some lines could've sounded less implicit but I generally did like the way it's used. I particularly love the "is it ____ shaped?" part.

I really don't have a lot to say that the level itself doesn't really portray. It's a great take on the space theme for the contest and includes many mathematical and physics references about how the universe works. I'd probably love this even more if I was a physics student haha.

Great level, not a big favorite of line for the contest but I'd still rather this places high over some of the atrocities of this contest that are the last minute entries.

One thing I've noticed about the bigger Space Gauntlet Contest submissions is that they're all failing to successfully convey what they're trying to represent. I already mentioned in Final Orbit that the flashback concept was extremely flawed and it felt too artificial for me to even feel a single drop of emotion from it. Given the way the start and ending are tied together in this level I'm fully certain that this has a deeper meaning that I do not see unfortunately.

I've followed kira since... their very beginnings I think? I remember playing Temple Ruins right as it got rated and liking it a ton. I think it displayed some creative ideas with a very simple and direct execution. And I can't lie, kira's evolution felt very natural, but I can't help it but feel some nostalgia to some of their older and less ambitious works. WANNACRY grew on me, but it just felt like a major showcase of all the tropes and ideas kira had already been showing since Weirdcore. And Alien Dream Emulator is just more of the same.

Sometimes I wonder if the "big creator" syndrome is a real thing: when small unknown creators suddenly become big and start making masterful visuals do they just forget that visuals and gameplay aren't the only thing a level needs to be good? Clearly the wider community disagrees; I really don't expect casual players to be able to artistically dissect and analyze level compositions. But it's great that this level reviewing site is full of people who can actually do that.

Now, to the level. First off: I don't really get the Space theme from anywhere in the level, other than the level having the word "alien" in its name, or the meteor part at the drop (which I actually do like a lot), or the final act of the level where you drop down from space (although I can't tell when I got up there in the first place). Despite not really being able to tie itself well to that theme, I did enjoy the first half quite a bit. The swing part, for instance, had a really pretty and glowy color palette that I am a fan of.

One major flaw of this level is the sound work. The SFX sound horrible and out of place wherever they're used, and the way the song suddenly cuts off at the end to give way to a very chill piece of music as you're descending to Earth at terminal velocity is so comically offputting.

I disagree with flash and agree with PAHC about the "Emulator" part, which seems to be where the name is taken from. The emulating other people's styles for a level like this just... fails, in concept. To me it feels like kira got too confident about placing in the NCS contest and they're BEGGING for the judges to include the level as a finale for the gauntlet since it "wraps up" all the other non-last minute entries that could potentially place in this contest as well. Genuinely scummy to me, but I'm glad the people that were emulated did appreciate the part, from what I've seen.

Genuinely so tired of bli's constant trope of making a level in 4 different styles and repeating them at random intervals as if it's meant to represent some sort of "flashback". He did it in Change of Scene, as well as in the final part in Rage Quit which I found to be one of the worst endings in any big level I've ever seen. And here he's back at it.

After reading the description I guess it's meant to depict the astronaut's final memories before he dies after the spaceship crash. And I can definitely see that that's what it's going for, as shown in the photographs in the intro. However I find the execution to be inheretly flawed. The pictures genuinely look like they're taken from a ChatGPT after asking it to make "cool epic incredible fucking visuals". Wouldn't your last memories before death be devoted to your loved ones? Or at least memories with some people in them? If the memories depicted weren't just so blank and maybe included some degree of humanity I'd get it and I'd appreciate this level a lot more. But as I said they genuinely look like they're made by AI.

I think the sudden changes in style in the first half of the drop are actually pretty cool and the shaders go well with them. Would ve really cool if the second part did something different. It literally repeats this trope again and just repeats the same scenarios with faster changes to make it look complex but it's just trying to hide that beyond the "astronaut's memories" concept, they just ran out of ideas.

Now, I haven't talked about one main part about this level: the absurdly long intro that quite literally takes up over half of the level. Yeah. A minute and a half of an animation that, sure, looks impressive, but is genuinely the only thing tying this level to the space theme of the contest it was made for, because like I said the memories concept doesn't work for me. As much as you want to it's not possible to contextually separate it from the Space Gauntlet Contest, because that's the only reason it exists in the first place, and it fails at that. I really don't understand why you would want to make an intro that long. I came here to play a level, not to watch some animation that could've bern shortened to one 6th of its length. The fact that it obviously is skipped automatically after the first attempt is the conflicting factor to me. Why would you want half of your classic very detailed and well crafted level to never show up again after you get past it? It's just inheretly flawed and there's nothing you can do to fix this other than just... shorten it.

I will admit that the gameplay is surprisingly readable and fair for a level of this caliber, so that bumps up my score slightly. But other than that, this does nothing for me. It's just another level that displays bli's undeniable technical talent in the editor, but also showcases his inability to make something artistically good.