Rating Curve

i feel like most seasonal levels have a semi half-hearted attempt at capturing the actual season and it mostly just devolves into the only merit being putting stuff related to the season in the level. this is not one of those levels. it felt like noobas wanted to do something like that but there are so many unique ideas introduced here, while feeling very amateur in delivery yet technically proficient though with a disjoint that's hard to separate from Severe winter's nucleus, like an NES bootleg of some sorts. especially love the small cutscene-esque part from 44-52 its so cute

If this was ever given a proper release it would've been recognised as one of the greatest of its era

(10.0)

I love needle slop :]

It's a pity that it never got rated for some reason

Theming is second nature for Zylenox, but the execution and the finer details on this elevate this to a whole new level compared to Zylenox's other factory styled levels

This song is so bad it's good

The gameplay in this level is a radical break from a style wholly based around loose convention, and I don't think I'd've preferred it to be any other way. Beautiful Now breaks unspoken conventions of gameplay creation in a way faithful to 2.0 trends, coupled with ValentInsanity's fairly unique decoration creating a nearly nonsensical but naively beautiful whole

The uncovering of efext's actions put me off from GJNWSRN from a while due to the likelihood of this being an reflection of efext's feelings around the period of time that he did all that. I've cooled off for a while now, though

GJNWSRN is pretty vague, possibly regarding something around the ballpark of untainted love, and it does so without aiming to be intricate. The level feels somewhat unpolished as a result despite nothing being too out of place, so you get this heightened sense of unfamiliarity shrouded within tranquility and almost solemnity that the rest of the elements of the level provide. Oh boy what a trip this level is. I'd rather not speculate on the meaning of this level but despite efext writing this off as "theatrical nonsense" I think it's still beautiful in ways far outside his intention

The beginning of 64x's generational run