Rating Curve

I can't believe I slept on this level for so long, if I had bothered to play it a month ago it would have placed at #4 in my space gauntlet ranking, sitting below Echo Delta and above Space I Guess. Semantics aside, I'm not sure if my opinion is changed by being friends with the creator on Twitter, but in any case Kiss of Fortune is an incredible level on almost all fronts I've praised other contest entries on. There are exactly two things I think held this level back from being up with the best few entries though, the first of which I noticed was the song choice. It's very fun as a listen, but I think the vibe is a little too consistent to really work for any kind of progression that I would hope for in a level as long as Kiss of Fortune. To be fair, Saturno certainly makes the most of it, as Kiss of Fortune features several very distinct parts and is never any less upbeat than the song is. A more obvious criticism I have with the level is the strangely disconnected space elements. I'm all for theming that relies a little more on audience participation - Planispheres ended up as my favorite from the contest largely for that reason - but Kiss of Fortune feels so far in that direction that there's not much left to do other than interpret the space theming purely at face value. What I'm saying is that this level is space themed in the same way Cosmic Dolphin is, with the connection mostly being through very literal imagery of stars and planets rather than really selling the vibes of the cosmos the way levels like Echo Delta and Pluto did. In Kiss of Fortune's case there are also some vague alien figures that show up a few times, but they look too much like stylized humans to really sell it for me.

I bring this up because Kiss of Fortune is clearly going for something a little different, intentionally or not. The best part about having very distinct parts is that each one has their own little shtick to show off. The first part has some beautiful particle work to create a shimmering horizon line, the free fly ship part has some astonishingly polished and fluid structures, and the motion blur in the part afterward is so effortlessly stunning that I couldn't stop thinking about it for the remainder of my practice run. The visuals throughout the level show off some incredible glow and color work, never dropping the ball in quality or cohesion. The gameplay is equally fun and varied throughout the level, and surprisingly the occasional handholding flows perfectly fine making for a very generous and frictionless playing experience. It really was that easy this whole time!!! More than the surface factors, though, this level has a very strong whimsical and adventurous aura during its entirety that I couldn't quite place until I saw the ending credits, including the Kirby series as an inspiration. I don't talk about it often, but I think Kirby is easily Nintendo's best IP, with games that have built up a reputation for having entire worlds chock full with magic and adventure, all while each and every character has been a cute and colorful little short blob since little short blobs could be rendered on hardware. This is what I mean by Kiss of Fortune matching the energy of Kirby perfectly; there's a whole range of ideas that went into this level that got all the execution they deserved, and yet the coalescence of it all isn't some overbearing and cliche idea dump, nor does it offer some epic conclusion after a grand romp through the cosmos. It feels like just enough, and that makes me just as happy as any spin it could have on black holes or supernovae.

If this matters to anyone Alien Dream Emulator absolutely did NOT bring it justice lol that part sucks ass

The GD community is insane bc they will look at a level like Rage Quit or Dead Device and call it "lazy" or "boring" but then show them something like this and they'll call it "unique" and "experimental" and then rally to get it featured

carried by the randomizer and the incredible description

I mentioned in my EBLTD review that Generation23 was my favorite ElectricNJ level. This is no longer the case, especially after having beaten that level and enjoyed it a ton, but Generation23 is still phenomenal considering it's one of Electric's first rated levels. It's no secret that I'm often drawn to levels with tons of bright and saturated colors, but they can get tired if not varied a lot. Thankfully, no two parts in Generation23 look the same, all with some great rainbow designs and admirably appropriate energy for the part of the already diverse song. Kosu songs always demand that extra touch of chaos, and with Eternal especially a majority of levels are too concerned with polish to meet it. Generation23 admittedly starts better than it finishes (despite me liking the second half of the song more) but with how consistently busy the decoration is it doesn't feel long enough to fall victim to a lack of cohesion. This, of course, also ignores that the contrast between parts is a good chunk of the appeal.

Unfortunately, upon playing it again I wasn't as impressed as I remember being when I first played it well over a year ago. I do normally like learny levels, but instead via the fast pacing or any sort of memory aspect a big reason why Generation23 was so hard to get through a practice run of just comes down to some weird choices. Some things could be artifacts of 2.2 physics changes, and certainly some frustration I had was the result of being on mobile when I replayed it, but I think it's relatively clear that some spots of the level are just awkward. I do plan to beat it for my 23rd insane demon though, which shouldn't be too long from now, so if I end up loving it I'll update the review. Even so, I think the way the gameplay flows (or doesn't, sometimes) is instrumental to its visual appeal, selling the chaos of the two drop parts. Still super pretty all this time later, and a fantastic level to introduce me to the creator!

One thing PAHC clearly excels at is making the core motivation of their levels ultra-transparent. Go You was clearly formed with the concept of an absurdly large achievement list, then fitted with a novel art style and hub world. Saturation Point is made to be flashy, raw, and abrasive to fit the song and layout, and the designs and effects are (relatively) irrelevant to the discussion past that. The actual decoration of PAHC levels in general never mattered to me that much - virtually all of them are very pretty and polished and create a stellar backdrop for the stuff that's actually fun to talk about, which is something creators like G4lvatron and Notlsa also do a great job of to help the most unique aspects of their levels shine. PAHC in particular is one of the best arguments for the benefit of honing your craft as a creator for this reason, and Vertigo certainly wouldn't be the level it is without great skill with colors and modern design.

With that said, Vertigo contains one of the coolest gimmicks I've seen in any extreme, being that the hitboxes of every visible object are shifted by a little over a block, randomly to the left or right. I've maintained that 2.2 has enabled some of the craziest ideas to see the light of day with how accessible features like the random and area triggers are, and Vertigo stands as a top tier gimmick level. It was really fun to play for the first time and I did something like 6 practice runs of the level before deciding I didn't want to properly learn it. I will say that the Achilles Heel of this level is absolutely the last part - having the final offset be untelegraphed apart from a hint at the beginning of the level just seems annoying and forces some kind of cheese strategy to get consistent. Other than that awesome level!!

downright beautiful, that robot part makes me feel things

might write more later

I was asked to review this so here we are I guess! I think it's undeniable that there are people in the GD community that are being actively hostile to creators, beyond just a showcase being quoted with something arguably mean. Even just on Twitter I've seen fights spring out in the replies of someone seeking some form of approval by confidently sharing a level they're proud of. More than that though, I think there's a toxic positivity problem among the people who see it upon themselves to extrapolate fighting against cyberbullying to be the Negativity Police against anyone who gives a level they like below a certain score. I'm not talking about when someone jokingly says half the levels on the demonlist are a 0/10. I wouldn't really mistrust the opinion of anyone who did as I'd believe that the difficulty may put some people off at a baseline, though I'd be surprised for sure. Anyway, all of that is against the point, I'm mostly just here to say we should be able to give 1/10 scores to levels if we don't like them. If I were going to lie about a singular number at the top of a review I'd at least overestimate if the audience might include the creator.

My main issue with Final Orbit is probably just summed up by calling it slop outright. The Space Gauntlet Contest had the very glaring issue of some very samey approaches to the theme, but what was really disappointing was how much of that homogeneity was present in the placing levels. Approaches like the ones seen in Echo Delta, Planispheres, Space I Guess, and 102 Blues were left aside for the same repetitive style of "here's a pretty background with a black hole in it." I don't mean to minimize all of the winners to this - some stuff like Out of Place and The Beyond broke the formula pretty effectively - but anything that wasn't just conceptually boring was only included if it would otherwise be triable as a war crime. It's fine for the judges to have taste, but the outcome of not diversifying the gauntlet selections enough is that all the levels for a contest get more homogeneous every time. Enter Final Orbit, a level which is so blatantly standard in concept (and arguably execution) that I feel a little gaslit every time someone tells me it's a fresh take on the style. Bli is very guilty of creating to fit the taste of the judges, as a once-charming and innovative style seen in levels like Fuel and Autopilot pretty much got swept away once his levels started to rake in the big bucks. Change of Scene was not a particularly daring level on any front excepting maybe optimization, and though it was good enough for what it was having it win over Seasonal Haven and Afterlife was far from a welcome surprise.

Rage Quit is probably the first time this sort of pandering was blatantly obvious to a large portion of the community, and it honestly hurts to watch so many good ideas get trampled by the need to keep the level overmanaged and flashy to get the clout it eventually earned. Rage Quit is so often scapegoated as the "key jingling" level because it really does feel like Bli expects the viewer (who I refuse to acknowledge as a player) to get bored if something colorful and hard to replicate isn't happening in every single part. I think the TV part is flawlessly executed and builds on the subtle narrative Bli is trying to induce up to that point, and then it's just immediately followed by this style flashing bullshit that was only cool when Rainbow Dust did it. It seems like most creators have realized that it looks stupid and very rarely fits a narratively ambiguous level, so naturally to be different Bli went and did it again in Final Orbit. I wouldn't particularly say Final Orbit is narratively ambiguous - it's pretty explicitly about an astronaut reliving their memories as they die in space - but it's not really reinforced to an extent where it really counts for much. Granted the quick scene flashing is pretty much just in one part at the end, but the whole level suffers from a visual cohesion problem that makes its narrative very awkward to parse thoroughly. Everything is just very blurry and it's hard to internalize why anything happens the way it does unless you try and work backwards from the premise, which was the case for Rage Quit as well and is just not something levels should strive for. Of course, this narrative superficiality also means that the opening of the level doesn't feel like a quiet emotional moment the way it might be intended. Maybe this could be the case coming out of the full intro for some, but it'll fade pretty quickly. Remember when Spacetime Continuum was getting backlash for having a part basically solely consisting of buffering orbs and watching the cube fly around, like a quicktime event? We're way past that now, the first part of Final Orbit is basically just that but regurgitated and deliberately put at the least exciting part of the level. It just feels like busy work to get to the part that was fun to make, which is admittedly also decent to play ignoring one ufo click at the end. Not to mention that the entire second half is accompanied by so much camera shake it's hard to even see what you're doing when sightreading. This is actually one of the worst parts of the level to me, because we're back to key jingling. Bli knew that the intensity built up in the first half was nowhere near where a level with such decorative caliber and a (supposedly) strong story should be halfway through. Naturally the solution was to create fake intensity by bouncing the entire screen throughout the ENTIRE drop part. I've always said that movement is a good way to build intensity to match the song, but it doesn't count when the entire screen is just doing all the moving instead, not to mention it looks hideous most of the time. In conclusion, Final Orbit is pound-for-pound probably my least favorite gauntlet level, and I'm way past giving out sympathy points because a couple people on Twitter told me I was being unreasonable.

I don't have a ton to say about this one but it was nice to see in my requests. It's always fun to play a straightforward 3 star every once in a while, and this is certainly one of the best picks you could get for one. The gameplay is super engaging for its difficulty; I think having well-indicated duals and readable coins in a level of this difficulty is a worthwhile route no matter what the goal of the level is. It also helps players focus on the visuals, which are really pretty in Waterfells! It reminds me a bit of something you'd see from Subwoofer or Unzor before their styles developed into what you would find in their most popular levels. Very fun, nice song, pretty art, would be a great pick for a gauntlet level or something.

hype moments and aura

Not sure how to put this into words but playing this level makes me feel like I'm 7 years old again. It reminds me of a time where I was more outgoing and willing to learn about the unknown, from anything I could get my hands on. The cartographical aspect of space is something I vividly remember being really excited by, rekindled somewhat recently with the incredible data we've been getting from the JWST. Planispheres dared to be nerdier and (ironically) more grounded than most levels from the past year, much less for a gauntlet contest about literal outer space. The gauntlet just kind of felt like a Who Can Make The Best Black Hole Contest when levels started coming out for it but Planispheres has remained really close to me.