Rating Curve

Glow design is not easy.

Sure, you can call the style generic, uninteresting, or messy, and all of those could be perfectly valid criticisms. But speaking with my personal experience messing around the style in one of my earlier attempts to get a rate (detachment) I can tell you that glow design is one of the tedious, most effortful styles ever invented

But why should any of that even matter? Because why should I care about the amount of effort expended upon a level if the end result is a muddy, discolored mess? That was my thought process when I initially saw Collapse, or at least a cynical but vocal part of it. Long have I expressed disdain towards list demons that I felt got disproportionate praise just because they were solo levels, with Verdant Landscape being a forefront example. I would always say that no one would care about that level if it was a megacollab instead of a solo.

And yet, upon revisiting Collapse, I think I get it. There's something special about inexperienced creators with a strong but clear creative vision, and I think this particularly shines through Collapse even if it doesn't always succeed at executing it. The level hones in on capturing the intensity of the song, which is something I think the part at 45% excels at. Seriously this part is so unexpectedly good compared to anything that came before it. The screen effects do such an exceptional job at conveying this chaotic, intense feeling. I also love the switch-up from mostly drabness into this explosion of vibrant rainbow colors which perfectly matches with the climax of the song. The part after it also feels generally more effective in song representation than the first half, and I think it's also because of the effects used. Those glow beams truly do go a long way

There are parts where the level feels more lacking in song representation, particularly in most of the first half as well as the last part. I think this goes back to my complaints about the style, though. Despite the effort and care that I could tell was put into the block designs of each part, the natural result of the glow design style (especially with the more muted colors that most of this level uses) is that the parts sorta just... blend together. Which is not great if you want growing intensity of the song with each subsequent part. The lack of variation in structures between the parts does not help at all either. It's almost frustrating because like, yes you can still succeed with song representation with this style given the pop-off part at 45% mentioned earlier, but it's so much easier to do it if you veer away from the standard glow-design conventions that rule this level so much, essentially doing more with less. I guess my issue is not with the very concept of a glow design style but more with how this level and how many other similar levels apply it, where the way detail is used on the designs makes it hard for anything particular in the level to stand out. I'm not particularly huge on how the last part is executed either - it's meant to represent the "collapse" of the level with the greyscale colors, but i think this would have been the perfect time for the level to introduce some variation in the structures, particularly to represent this more ruined, broken-down feel.

I wish I was skilled enough to be able to comment on the gameplay on this level, because it's clearly the main focus of it. However the atomic cannon series inspiration for the gameplay is VERY apparent and as someone who beat and loved atomic cannon as a hardest I'm willing to give an educated guess that the level is probably really fun after a (really lengthy) learning process.

Despite my gripes with Collapse's visuals, it is a level that I truly respect. Any significant creative effort from someone who is primarily a player is something to be commended, and a self-verified list demon will always be aura-ful (I truly think this is the best word to describe it). Honestly now that I'm near the end of writing this review I'm kinda realizing that part of it is me projecting how much I personally hated trying to make something in this style. at the end of the day if this style of deco is what the creator enjoys making the most then they should continue doing it. :)