Rating Curve

Afterlife's art style is cute enough, but it just comes across as a plain, not very compelling experience even with a perfectly functional layout. I don't think the split paths approach succeeds at all given how disconnected they feel despite their obvious contrast, and I wouldn't even have noticed the alternate route if I hadn't read other reviews beforehand. The half-baked narrative also isn't doing anything for me.

Place a start pos at any given point in H B F S and you'll invariably be transported to a pretty-looking part with tight gameplay, but Daft Punk's glossy aesthetics aren't nearly compelling enough to make me want to play this for 4 minutes, especially given the time I'll need to spend practicing at this difficulty.

Actually looks quite nice most of the time, but is held back significantly by obnoxious, seemingly accidentally obscured difficulty plaguing an already middling layout. Also I didn't download the song after seeing it was by Teminite; I listened to Polygondwanaland instead and that was probably for the best. And get Danzmen's cube off of my damn screen.

The awesome, alien visuals in every section go a long way to keep Project MANDELBROT fresh even when the layout slumps a bit in some parts, but I still can't help but feel like there was supposed to be a more coherent sense of progression through the level. I don't know too much about the Mandelbrot set, but I do know that it's been mapped extensively enough that there are catalogued landmarks pretty far in - I'm assuming that subsequent parts are chronological as you zoom in to the set, but while the song swells and contracts, every part feels basically the same in terms of intensity and how peculiar the patterns get; you could probably arrange them in (almost) any order you want and the experience would be basically unchanged.

Samifying appears to have been concerned that, despite his best efforts to have all of this level's designs blur together in 3x speed, some players with exceptional eyesight could still see them. To remedy this, he had every line flash white twice a second and slathered everything with a comically obnoxious amount of glow. Throw this on top of a layout that isn't particularly interesting or fun and the result is a solo level that resembles a megacollab with its massive budget and general lack of coherence. It really doesn't feel like Sami had anything resembling a vision for Sedulous beyond "make it really good", which just didn't pan out. And the ending ship, really?

GD's biggest aura merchant. Decoration's nothing special, but the fact that players back in the day couldn't tell whether this or Silent Clubstep was harder is a testament to the success of its layout's intimidation factor, and it's still pretty fun and novel these days with its notorious chokepoints. I will always love the 95% corridor in particular. Just perfect.

The inclusion of a gold-plated Clubstep monster wearing a grill makes this the funniest and best "rap/gd culture contrast" parody level in the whole game, which is a more impressive accomplishment than it was a day ago.

🎵drugs drugs🎵 AYO TURN THAT SHIT UP CHARLES

I think we're being a bit overly cynical here; naming your level GD GANGSTER RAP is admittedly a pretty good bit, and it does at least seem earnest in its tongue-in-cheek celebration of GD culture. I don't know why BoomKitty is the main mascot, though. You are not that important pal.

I really adore the semi-improvisational nature of the drop and the weight of the whole layout, it's great fun throughout. The super clean future-tech aesthetic does get a bit tiring over time, though. Just one or two more stimulating visual effects near the end would have done a lot.

In an era defined by a massive surplus of Nothing Megacollabs, Findexi somehow came to the conclusion that making a 3.5-minute slog with the worst song in the game would yield better results. Bonus point for Juhou's part, which is pretty fun and looks nice.