Rating Curve

silly bob is a comeback level by luhcosmic, being their first level since early 2.1. For early 2.1, luhcosmic was a pretty solid design creator. They have clean designs and a good grasp on the editor and how to use it. Unfortunately, the style that luhcosmic builds in is long past its prime, and nowadays looks a bit outdated, resulting in silly bob feeling pretty underwhelming. It isn’t a bad level at all, but it’s full of tropes from the old design era such as white object lines constantly pulsing black making them an awkward shade of grey most of the time, as well as glow on everything that’s a bit too strong, a ton of super dark spaces on screen, and colors that feel generally uninteresting. There are some sprinkles of additional color in some parts, but it’s pretty monochromatic for the most part, and a lot of desaturation makes the parts feel a bit dull. It’s nice to see that luhcosmic has a good grasp on the editor after all these years, but it’s clear that they haven’t adjusted much to the changing creating climate. The 2.2 elements feel awkward and unfitting, like the super zoomed out part with a whole chunk of the screen darkened for some reason, which was another trope from that era. The ending to this level is extremely rushed as well, putting a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to end things off. Still though, silly bob isn’t a terrible level, just one that is far too outdated for me in the modern day, especially with that era of dark and desaturated glow design being my least favorite style.

JamAttack’s most recent creator contest has seen a ton of high effort entries, and The Gem Factory is no exception to that. The main rule of the contest is that it’s supposed to be in a similar style to JamAttack’s levels, and while The Gem Factory does this, it loses a bit of the JamAttack charm in the process. Generally, the designs are pretty good in this level. It’s not nearly as polished as JamAttack’s levels are, but that’s to be expected. My main issue with The Gem Factory is due to the theming and song representation. The factory theming in this level isn’t bad, but it feels pretty basic. There isn’t much more to the theme than just “factory” which is a bit of a let down considering JamAttack has made a factory based level before, but with the additional gimmick of it being full of jam. On top of this, I think that the song choice brings down The Gem Factory a ton.

For some reason, Luminous chose to use the elevator song from RobTop’s platformer level The Sewer, a consistently intense song used to portray a chaotic escape scene of sorts. It isn’t a song very fit for a classic level, as the repetitive nature and lack of changing intensities limits the creator's ability on progression a ton. I still admire that they attempted to have different segments you run through, but they don’t change up enough to stand out from each other. Overall, The Gem Factory was a level that I believe was a bit too ambitious for the creator. Luminous did a good job at creating a theme, but the lack of variety and a poor song choice brings it down quite a bit. I still think it could receive a Star Rating, but I hope Luminous learns from this advice and puts more consideration into these things in the future, as they have a lot of potential.

As an enormous Hatsune Miku fan, I was really excited when I initially saw christmas with miku in the Sent tab. Upon playing, I was a little bit disappointed to be honest. While I’m overjoyed by all the Miku art in the level, every other aspect of the level is unrelated to Miku. The Miku art is great, and I love the Snowman Miku and Miku plushie that pops out of the present especially. There’s some other Miku art as well, like the last background with art strikingly similar to the art of the artist CAST, although I wasn’t able to determine if this art was recreated or original. Either way, there isn’t really anything besides some of the backgrounds and the song related to Miku. Half of the backgrounds aren’t even Miku either.

Design wise, christmas with miku is a very standard and trope-filled modern level. While I think the start actually has some pretty nice blocks, the rest of the level is made with designs I feel like I’ve seen thousands of times. There’s a lot of tropes like the rotating squares at the beginning that bring that part down, and things like random food backgrounds in other parts for no reason. The gameplay is also very straightforward, but it doesn’t seem to sync very well and feels awkward as a result. The last part also 2feels buggy, as I died a few times without understanding why. Overall, christmas with miku doesn’t have much interest outside of the Miku art. I think that Hatarii should take a look at a level like MikuMikuMikuMiku by OddMod on how to make your decoration fit more with the theme/character used instead of only putting them in the background.