Rating Curve

This is another case of an older level remake that completely misses the mark for me. Thinking Space's gameplay always fascinated me because of how creative it was - the cube memory maze was unlike anything I'd ever seen back in 2020, the moving wave is absolutely legendary for being unbelievably hard to both learn and play due to it being so inconsistent, and generally the level just pulls no punches to try and be as difficult as possible. Not only is Thinking Space II's gameplay unfaithful in the sense that it doesn't stick to the same philosophy and 2.0 object usage, any "fun" factor is completely removed as the level is now so hard as to be borderline unfair to the player. Additionally, while the decoration itself is okay and I don't have much to say about it, I don't think it fits a Thinking Space remake at all. It's much too polished for the very rough, weirdly structured gameplay the level has - the angular designs are often crammed into odd shapes to compensate, there's often either too much or too little negative space (particularly in the second half), and while the space theming does do its job, it's really just not enough to carry the level. I really wish the team behind this level chose to be more faithful to the original in terms of visuals, as I feel there's tons to be explored with that sort of janky, messy 2.0 style, even in black and white.

Silent Mind is a highly complex, technically impressive level. The description states that it's a reimagining of Five Nights at Candy's 3, a pretty famous Five Nights at Freddy's fangame by Emil Macko, and this aspect is done well. The fact that BrothersFTW made both a full-fledged pseudo-3D platformer section and a fleshed out horror section in one level is very impressive and shows the sheer potential of 2.2's editor. However, I can't look past this level directly ripping off most of Five Nights at Candy 3's gameplay elements, visual assets and even part of its storyline. If you watch this level, then watch a playthrough of the real game, you will see that almost everything is either the same or very similar. I do not think this is a good approach to remaking a game, and I would really appreciate seeing BrothersFTW put their talent with game design to use on an original project in the future.