Rating Curve

a very strange case for me to rate, and the only time where i'll use the additional scores. it's also rare that i'll go into the hosting process of a level in a review, but i think it's important to understand the colossal gap in quality between the gameplay and the decoration. take everything i talk about in terms of the hosting process with a grain of salt btw, cause i'm just going off of tweets i have zero relation to the creation of this level. thinking space 2 actually started as a level hosted by meatius and kugel, two members in a private server called CoCy. this group holds a lot of Quirked Up gameplay creators, and they began work on the gameplay, which was made to stay true to thinking space. i think "staying true" to a level with a remake is an idea that poses a lot of risks, as to an extent it reaches a point where you have to ask "what is the point of remaking this in the first place". however, i think the team of gameplay creators in this level modernized it spectacularly, and every gameplay part also feels memorable, just like in the original thinking space. obviously, the balancing also stays the same, the most iconic part about the original thinking space. the balancing in this level is absolutely brutal, with the drop throwing you into some of the hardest gp i have ever seen in this game. it looks like shit you'd see on the ill. now all those reasons also contribute to why it may not be any fun at all, but as an observer i absolutely LOVE the gp in this level. some of my favorite parts include ufwm's wave and that God Forsaken Dual

but gameplay is only one half of the puzzle, so what happened with the visuals? well, meatius stepped back, leaving kugel and drcuber to organize the decoration process. however, drcuber seemingly had a different imagination for the level in mind. creators in the level and especially in CoCy have stated that he kinda just, went and did his own thing, making every creative decision for himself and basically taking complete leadership, even letting decoraters change ppls gameplay??? his visions begin to clash more and more with the friend group that started the level, eventually giving it to hyperlith to verify without any permission, when the original plan for the level was to have it be open verification for anyone in CoCy to go for. And It Gets Worse! because cuber fell off the face of the earth and gave it to cairox, who has a generational track record for making Ass. what happened past this point is unclear, but the level was eventually given to zoink as a result. that's the whole lore part, but as for the deco itself, it steers far and away from what thinking space did. obviously the decoraters completely ignored the Raw Factor, making a standard and quite lame "realistic" i guess style? but what i wanna touch on more is how dirty they did the colors. thinking space for me is CARRIED by the color contrast combined with the song. it creates an atmosphere that really does make me feel like i'm in my own little world in my mind. and thinking space 2 had the potential to do that! the potential with this song is INCREDIBLE because it's genuinely one of the best songs ever used in a top 1 imo. but thinking space 2 is coated in these incredibly boring greys and it feels so dry despite the amount of potential that was there.

despite one of the worst hosting processes i have ever seen to a level, however, this still ended up being one of the better top 1s we've gotten, simply off of the value of CoCy's work on the gameplay. unlike many levels i've called "mid" in the past, this level is mid because the level is quite literally half amazing and half terrible. and i find that really interesting. congrats to all of the creators on this level for creating the geometry dash equivalent of whiplash. also through the gates is the better thinking space sequel change my mi

the finale to the golden trilogy i guess that they had going on, and (presumably) the new hardest level in the game! compared to avernus, this level follows the original structure of the golden a lot closer, with the only big difference being the last wave at the end, which is an addition i really like. it goes really well with the song picked for this level, which is no doubt my favorite song waterflame has ever put out. there are also some pretty cool designs throughout the level, like in the ships and some decently fun looking gameplay, especially for this levels immense difficulty. however, unfortunately this level has flaws that are very difficult to overlook. for one, the infamous 20% endscreen. can we PLEASEEEE stop endscreens like this, they mess up percentages for players and they give off this whole "movie" aestethic that makes a lot of geometry dash levels fall flat, because they completely neglect the gameplay side of things. "well, does amethyst have good gameplay though?" not my place to judge. i mean i'm sary but even i'm not that good. HOWEVER this levels usage of hitboxes is not good! it's constantly changing from normal geometry dash spikes to these custom realistic spike hitboxes, and it's pretty unclear where you can and cannot go at points. it's like the opposite of solar flare but not in a good way. also, this level suffers with a very similar problem to avernus which is the fact that it's messy. this kinda relates to the hitboxes, as in some parts (particularly the second and last waves) it really just feels like they scattered like, gemstones and rocks and other Random Shit around the part with no rhyme or reason to make it feel "realistic". i do like the use of purple with blue tints throught the level, though at points it does feel like there needs some variation. like there are points where the predrop feels brighter than the drops and its pretty weird. overall, i think this level is in the middle of the pack in the trilogy, it has noteworthy strengths but ultimately it falls flat. far from the worst top 1 we've had though