Rating Curve

Orientalist white boy

I feel like I would've liked this even more a couple years back but I'm somewhat past that hyperfixation so right now it's just "good". Main complaint is honestly that some effects are too good and I find myself losing track of the gameplay (in a bad way).

Also this inevitably has to compete with coke county in my head and that thing did this song better

Very strong conceptual foundation getting you to experiment around with the gameplay, can't praise that enough, and in fact I think it's been praised too much given that a lot of the execution is lacking. Color puzzle will have you stuck in there for 10 minutes wondering what the fuck the solution is until you finally give up and watch a showcase which not only teaches you that you should've been paying attention to the colors in the ball but also that the order isn't random which is a major missed opportunity. And speaking of missed opportunities, #9 feels like such a waste of potential I couldn't help but feel disappointed when I figured out it's so simple. You have all these orbs flying around and for what?

The worst offender in the execution though is after you've solved all the puzzles. I really would've preferred... Literally anything else over "regular level with a different song", thanks. Some suggestions include

• The rest of the original song

• A little bit of the original song (ideal)

• Nothing

Very illegal!

Eh, fuck it. Might as well write a proper review for this one too instead of just saying "Very illegal!" Honestly half of this is just an explanation for my personal connection

I could talk about the wider history behind this level, the removed parts (which aren't the ending, at least), some specific changes that make this "The Better Kenos" in my eyes, etc. And don't get me wrong, these are all fascinating and good parts of the level. But really, I don't think any of that matters when the ending and my personal connection to it are so much bigger reasons as to why I love this.

First, the ending itself. You're teleported up to a slow, empty, unstructured area, as the music suddenly changes into sounds that I like to think are pained cries. I like to imagine that you're slowly inching your way along a small, unstable bridge where any wrong step could send you straight into the depths of hell below. Then when you make it through to the drop, you're met with...

A wave so ridiculously brutal that it's honestly funny. There's a lot to talk about here in this 4 second part. Was there going to be even more after this? The following ball portal certainly implies that was the case. Why would you make something so stupidly hard like this? Why're the ground spikes misplaced? Why this specifically for a hard ending? This is the only 4x part of the level in this version, mind you. Oh and lets not forget that (afaik) there were 0 recordings of this part before me, so it certainly came as a shock when I discovered it (making it even funnier).

After I discovered it, I thought "y'know what would be funny? if this was on waving with npesta". I told Croanix about it and he said no. Then he said no again. And again. Third time was not the charm, but at that point this thing already brainwashed me. Even considered changing my twitter @. Kept coming back and staring at it. It's such a stupid part and I love it.

I don't remember the reason I made this my priv's banner beyond "it's funny", but either way, through that, it more or less became a symbol of that part of myself. Every time I open up my priv I see it. Staring at me. It understands me

Ok. Longer, proper review this time instead of one sentence. Still not gonna talk about the GP and visual sync bc they're not what I actually want to talk about with this level, but just know they're the only reasons this isn't a 1/10. Now, with that out of the way...

This level doesn't understand the concept of "show, don't tell". This is already one of the worst things you can do to a level and it makes me cringe every time I see one fail at this basic task (and before you accuse me of doing anything in my own levels, the point was to be intentionally blunt). Hopefully it doesn't require much explanation to see why the GIANT GLOWING TEXT TELLING YOU WHAT EMOTIONS THE CREATOR FEELS kinda kills the mood.

But wait! There's more!

This level ALSO struggles with the concept of "tell". What is the message here? I'm getting mixed signals.

Is it "people dying is sad"? Frankly I don't know why you would ever feel the need to tell me that, and furthermore this level makes it seem incredibly simple. This feels like it was created by an alien who was trying to understand human concepts of grief only based off a funeral.

Is it "never kill yourself"? The ending says "The minute you think of giving up, think of the reason you held on for so long"... WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SAY THIS IN (presumably) A LEVEL ABOUT THE REASON YOU HELD ON DISAPPEARING? If that's indeed the case, I really have no choice but to conclude that the message of this level is "kill yourself"

Age is just a number

I can't get enough of this bullshit. 10 year olds making impossible(?) superbuffs of their favorite levels will come up with gameplay you can't even imagine. Like fuck yeah bro, Moon of Death. Wave mode, ball/cube dual, Memory cube flying through the spike, UFO sawblades, LIMBO 1st wave but mini, it's Moon of Death dawg it's lit

How? It's monochrome.

Well ignoring the fact that some clicks which are clearly supposed to be synced aren't (and my rating sure doesn't ignore), the sync is really good. It's honestly kinda hard to go wrong with this song's non-drop parts because the lines of portals/pads/whatever are just a sensible, intuitive thing to use with those notes (see also: Fairy Knife Hell). Outside of sync the gameplay also has some high peaks (40% memory wave, 43% dual, 58% repeating segments especially, 70% dual, 95% dash orbs) even if everything else is pretty basic with at most some camera movements.

That splitscreen UFO exists. It certainly exists. I can say that

Why are there invisible buffs in the first drop. Like come on dude you can do better than this, and I know you can that because they aren't in the (well synced) 2nd drop. I usually just kinda dislike invisible buffs (because like, why not just move the structures around and make it tighter. It's more visually interesting that way) but the fact that it's all in the same level as stuff that shows how to make impossible gameplay without invisibility makes it extra painful

Bitch

Color usage goes well with the song. Much like how the lyrics are very "bombastic" but it sounds very "held back", the deco is made of rainbow highlights surrounded only by gray and black. Shame the rest of the level is rather lackluster

This level really suffers from that long-ass intro with the single jump (as if Quasar's levels somehow couldn't get even more unbalanced than they already were), but also idk this really wouldn't be the same without it. It needs to be there. It just has to. Even if it makes it worse.

Effects are great as usual though. No wait, scratch that, not as usual, no, it's actually even better than usual.

blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub

This is one of those Lit Fuse type levels that has a clear artistic vision behind it that I CANNOT praise enough, but also has a couple bafflingly bad design choices that keep it from being as good as it should've been, and it's just all the more painful seeing a potentially amazing level be held back by simple problems.

First off, I'm a sucker for repeated motifs in gameplay. This has a number of them but I think the one that really shines through is the blue orbs over the spikes during break parts. You see it so much throughout the level and almost never hit the orbs, so the couple times you do just feel that much more impactful. The other motif I want to bring attention to is the sets of 4 size portals. For some reason the pattern of skip big-hit big-skip small-hit small just feels like a really natural and satisfying way to mark your progress through the journey.

The next point of interest that shows up is the 2nd drop, and I think this is where the two biggest issues, namely the sync and the lack of energy, combine to make each other their worst. The sync for the individual "OH"s is actually really good with how the background pulses and the waves make big movements, the mirror portals and the ufo are also good, but the repeated words (I cannot hear this as anything other than "blub blub blub" wtf is he saying) are very noticeably going by faster than your clicks, and the gameplay just feels so much more lifeless than the song. Perhaps it would've been too much of a difficulty spike if it was better synced? But then why not just make all of it a wider spam for the whole part instead of consistency? Or better yet just let it be harder?

Piano part also suffers from sync issues (like straight up there are more notes here you're not syncing to, did you just not hear them) yet at the same time the sync is still beautifully done there. Somehow. Idk. Conversely, the 3rd drop is also beautifully done but suffers from feeling too slow. It's not as severe as the 2nd drop but there's still way more energy in the song that's not happening in the gameplay. For as much as I dislike The Human Limit, one thing it really doesn't struggle with is maintaining the same vibe as the song. Love the box in the buildup to it though it's simple yet fascinating I wish there was more stuff like it.

The 4th drop also doesn't have enough energy. God, the 1st one is the only one that really feels right, huh? Why and how did you screw it up 3 times in a row like this? I do like the empty feeling of a lot of the structuring in it though, it feels like it's happening in a big empty room (like the song).

The latter half of the last section is great. For the whole duration of the level you've been told to hit white and avoid hitting gray, and it never lies to you once. It still won't "lie" here either, but it WILL throw the curveball of orbs with both indicator colors around them. It's only a couple orbs, but it's really a nice detail, as is the word "humans" being highlighted and the invisible slopes taking you through the gears in sync with the reversed piano in a similar pattern to how you've been raised up by some sets of visible slopes.

Is this my longest review? I don't know. I feel like it is though. Halfway through writing I got distracted by Hollow Knight: Silksong for 4 hours