Rating Curve

Platnuu mixing the coldness of some neat tech designs with a herky-jerky, personified layout and some splashes of gore made for an awesomely intimidating, visceral experience, and those eye effects near the end are just amazing. One of the best 2.1+ list demons.

So sleek, so modern, so candy-coated like it was cooked up in an advertising studio that it transcends being overwhelming and tacky and leaps into existence as an awesome half-parody effect level with an equally stimulating dual-based layout. I do wish it were a lot easier, though; Dole Damos doesn't really nail that charmingly contradictory friendly exterior/brutally difficult interior thing that other extremes like Kowareta figured out, and I imagine these visuals might get pretty nauseating after hours of attempts.

Remember those surreal early years of AI images? When they hadn't yet nailed the sometimes-convincing caricatures of real life they produce today and would have everything melting into each other, impossible structures jutting out from walls and floors? from her eyes flow feels a bit like that. This level breaks rules that I thought of as so intrinsic to level creation I hadn't even consciously established them to myself. Pulsing glow objects that "should" be layered next to gameplay structures instead become the structures themselves. Thorns float in the middle of structures as though they're block designs. Arrows follow player Y, making them useless for navigation, not that you'd ever trust them anyway given the absurd amount of fakes in this layout. Blinding visual sequences aren't centered and often happen half-onscreen. And obviously I can't forget the four minutes of noisy, cold, ambience that immediately follows the playable layout and provides some time to reflect on the surreal experience. It's all eerily inhuman, and combined with the crushing soundtrack it gives off an aura of creation on a cosmic scale - like watching the formation of some super-level beyond human comprehension. Unfortunately, the layout doesn't (can't?) live up to this feeling input-wise. A human player would have to consider this a memory extreme demon, which just feels unsatisfying compared to the brilliant, blinding setting and situation the rest of the level crafts - I don't really think this level was meant to be completed legitimately and is playable only as a formality. It's crazy, then, that I'm still giving it such a high score. The impression it makes really is that special.

The block designs are of course timelessly elegant, but the real star of the show is the free-floating structuring that just radiates pristineness and vast freedom in the night sky.

I have no qualms about the exercise of depicting quite a serious topic in an ostensibly immature medium, and I do on some level appreciate how easy this level was/is to chalk down to "GLITCH HORROR - MULPAN GD" - it radiates confidence in itself and the medium. That said, SAVE AS is a swing and a miss. The first third-ish is more than satisfactory, degradation of gameplay is plainly visible/playable and PAHC and triplebarrel are foreboding as you'd like. It's after the first few sequences that the level starts floundering and progression feels empty; SAVE AS doesn't really become any more strained or unplayable after roughly the halfway mark; there's only so much deconstruction you can do when the level is still calculated and on-rails in some way while still also requiring player input - bit of a rough catch-22 where the level might be worse off as a playable (and thus breakable) experience after a certain point. I do appreciate the discussion on GD that this level helped to continue, but I also understand PAHC's disdain for its singularity - his catalogue is a lot richer than this.

Consists of undeniably awesome visual setpieces accompanied by unsatisfying, dull gameplay and a real eye-roller of a song. You could probably get a similar feeling by watching a movie trailer accompanied by a Hans Zimmer soundtrack.

I'll preface by saying that I've always been a tad bearish on abstract, "object collection" type levels. Not cynical like GD Twitter's early opposition that unironically mimicked Nazi condemnation of "degenerate" art, but a not insignificant doubt of such levels' ability to pull off the whole "show, don't tell" routine beyond their scattered thousands of objects and the emotions such disconnect might evoke. upstairs isn't the first to supercede them, but there's something fascinating and unique in how upstairs is so unified, like a body. Even more important than the out-of-the-box firepower upstairs' lo-fi noise provides is the unknowability of its details contrasted with the opaqueness of its wider setpieces - "Hello" is the only common word in the different languages we're speaking, but I am forced to understand the energy unceremoniously thrown at me, how upstairs obliterates itself just to chart a reasonably playable route. Not every sequence manages to vault over the devolution of structure into pure self-affirmation, but even those have some beauty in them. If you like this level, you'd probably like Selected Ambient Works Volume II.

I'm almost certainly a liberal or even a reactionary in terms of Clumps Theory but even my Establishment Standards simply cannot ignore how this is the most uncompromising level (Yes, I wil be referring to it as that, even if only as a descriptor of the medium) in GD's history. Devin2003 levels eventually ended up on Viprin and Nexus's Youtube channels, gecko eventually decided the struggle was too low-stakes and unproductive to keep How To Disappear unuploaded, pocke and S3rios enthusiastically participate in Hyperbolus rating. I do think the exercise was a bit botched given that Clumps proceeded to engage with level (as in the structure, not the medium) creation afterwards, but the absurd, super-real, hilarious experience one has playing or even watching (one of the level's most subversive features) cold war again is without a doubt one of the most unforgettable ever. Some notes:

• bmbmbm by 7ak was the perfect pseudo-revolutionary level to deface

• there are some absolutely golden comedic moments in this transcript - seeing "liberalism is irrelevant...to me, at least" casually scrolling by is a comedic beat rivalling some of the best of cw2003 GB's career

• I really adore the uber-casualness of the whole ordeal juxtaposed with the real-life cold war and genuine ideological struggle creating yet another layer of the atmosphere of absurdity, even if I "should" be interpreting it more sincerely

• this should probably be the foremost example of the whole "you get what you give" idea that is so common in level criticism, so many brainless social media comments repeating the same tired 3 dollar cube game line

• that the vast majority of people who ever see this level will completely disregard its message and continue to engage with levels the same way we always have is just cold war again's parting gift: "I'm betraying the level by even thinking of it like this"

Clumps made an absurd comedy out of legitimate grievances with GD culture layered within revolutionary aesthetics. I'm sorry, I can't not think of this as genius.

Beautiful, intricate, brimming with personality despite being so blurry and imprecise. It would not be an exaggeration to describe this gameplay as genius with how mentally stimulating it is despite (or perhaps as a result of) its simplicity, and the way everything coalesces into the haunting tower interior will be breathtaking for all time.

Maybe the most spiritually TamaN a level has ever been without actually having been made by the man himself. Warm and lush neodesign-adjacent visuals and casual but deliberate gameplay make fisch a total blast to play, more than worthy of its self-celebratory atmosphere.