Rating Curve

I honestly have no idea what I've wanted to say about this level for the time it's been out but it's easily one of my favorite unrated extremes. The beginning is obviously hard to talk about since it's pretty much just there to fit the song (supposedly, it could be more coherent to other people) but it does a great job to set up the meat of the level. To fit a hard rock progression, Hemzy decided to go with a raw and cluttered artstyle, and it looks AMAZING. I'm not one for levels where the details are hard to appreciate, "screenshot levels" as I call them, but Level is just so perfectly messy and absurd that it works. It's not as if the artstyle is completely untouched - Devin and Kiriia come to mind - but combined with how the song flows from moment to moment it's probably my favorite part of any level with a rock song. The gameplay is equally rough and high-octane as the visuals, and I'd love to learn and beat it at some point. I tried a couple years ago but the click speed was too high for me at the time. I would love for more people to review this level!!!!

I saw this level a good time ago on the Hidden Gems account on Twitter so it was fun to finally play it. The decoration is obviously a lot less detailed than your average 2.2 level, even the ones I've commonly gravitated towards, but the colors and structuring are cool enough that the effects are more than complemented. Due to the name the color work seems to be the main ethos of the level, and while it wasn't my favorite part of the level it definitely helps it stand out among potentially similar stuff. Speaking of which, the gameplay was easily the highlight here. This sort of symmetrical non-dual gameplay is pretty uncommon - the only other example I remember is Calm Frenzy by Puueds - but the looseness it creates throughout cannot be understated with how well it fits the level. I only did two practice runs, but it was very fun to figure out and if I ever get around to it I expect it would be fun to beat as well. RGBwhereGisGold is a very unique experience throughout, I highly recommend playing it for yourself!

I've heard some great things about Neural Pathways around the time it released, so I wanted to go back and play a 2.1 SGameT level to compare styles. I landed on A Thank You because of the song, also probably happening to be their last 2.1 level which I thought was neat. It's a very unfiltered level, one I think much of the community would call "object spam." I don't think this is an inappropriate term in itself, although the assumption that it results in something poor quality is definitely misguided. A Thank You is a nice level, nothing too amazing for me but definitely an interesting launching point.

I've often claimed that there are very few creators whose style truly evolved to fit 2.2's new creative offerings, and SGameT is potentially the most obvious case. There's no way to talk about Neural Pathways without starting with the shaders, and how stunningly beautiful they are. I've always been a fan of bichromatic color work, which is used predominantly throughout the entire level, but the shaders elevate the effect to something akin to travelling through parallel universes, and even so none are less phenomenal in execution. Other common effects such as the color-altering gradients (I think they just invert colors under them?) and the blur shaders only add to this feeling of paradoxically natural vertigo throughout the runtime. My favorite parts are probably the ball and the wave, both featuring phenomenal color work and the most memorable secondary effects in the level. I didn't mind the simple gameplay - I actually think it's crucial to be able to fully absorb the effects for them to be effective - but the song just doesn't do it for me. Maybe it doesn't fit the visuals, maybe it doesn't really work for any sort of GD level, or maybe I don't like it in the first place. For now I'd point to the second option, but it's not a total dealbreaker. You should definitely take this as a high 8 though, Neural Pathways and especially SGameT's other stuff from the last year show how much the update took hold of some creator's styles and ascended them beyond their 2.1 potential. It's not as if the progression from A Thank You to Neural Pathways is unrecognizable, but it's certainly a very promising jump.

idk what compelled me to review this but I had to get another 10 on this level. It's really the perfect sequel to an already great level and it's up there as one of the XL levels that is most enhanced by its length. It's not overbearing, but it really sells the idea of this "final voyage" to represent Nasgubb finally stepping out of design. Honestly no notes one of the best and most fun extremes in the game

Opening thoughts: this level is essentially stolen and thus I will only be referencing it rhetorically. PNC, if you haven't seen it, is an extended copy of Chasing Sunlight by PAHC, a pretty decent level in its own right but mostly irrelevant to PNC. PAHC's newest level Over Again had a number of instances where the player was meant to visit other levels to gather vital information to clear the original level, the first of which is Chasing Sunlight, which contains a relatively clear morse code pattern in its spike layout. To create PNC, WKGames copied the level and moved the spikes around, encoding his own message in the same way. Here is the decoded message, as translated by myself:

"PAHC IS A POOPYHEAD WHO CALLED FOR ME TO BE COMMENT BANNED 1984 STYLE I GOT 1K VIEWS FAIR AND SQUARE COPE HARDER BRO SUBSCRIBE TO WKGAMES ON YOUTUBE YOURE A LEGEND FOR DECODING THIS"

I won't attempt to call this anything other than a petulant crashout. I was honestly disappointed at the five minutes I spent typing dots and dashes into my keyboard to not even find something edgy or entertaining. I can only imagine PAHC's reaction. WKGames' Hyperbolus Joker arc started when PAHC called for them to be comment banned in some server, presumably referencing a particular Over Again comment that I have not bothered to find myself. I don't really care what the comment was though, judging by WK's recent behavior towards myself and others I'm sure you could imagine whose word I would take over whose. Is this an abuse of power on PAHC's part? Maybe, but it doesn't light a candle to magnitude of WK's campaign to drag the (non-)situation and their (non-)level into literally every argument remotely involving them.

For me it started when a friend told me about some copy pasting WK had done on some of their recent reviews, something her and I have been pointing out and laughing amongst ourselves about for some time. The reviews were on no less than 8 of BridgetTheCroco's levels, all rated with 10s and with identical reviews. I don't have a problem with the 10s or their posthumous timing - I would personally give Joyride and Crocles 10s - but the copy paste reviews given the circumstances are genuinely disgusting and I strongly advocate for WK to take them down. Anyway, that aside, I posted about it and got a little love note in my reputation. By this point I had stopped caring but a friend who replied also received a reputation bump from WK which confirmed my suspicion that they just type their name into the Twitter search bar occasionally. He also later directly messaged me on Hyperbolus, something I didn't know was possible until an hour ago, flexing his star count of all things. I'm tempted to let it continue so I can build claims of harassment but even I'm not that petty. Link to the DM screenshot because idk how to embed images: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GnPP5NXWkAAewKx?format=jpg&name=small

What I've been asking myself this whole time is why I should even care at all. I'm not personally threatened by whatever WKGames has going on and to be honest I doubt that anyone other than possibly PAHC and Flocab are either. I'm not sure exactly what I want out of this situation, though I was shocked to learn that users can DM but not block/mute each other, which is certainly not a good sign considering people like WKGames. With that said, you should consider this my main response to this "drama." WK is a whiny toddler who, as far as I'm aware, committed no offense other than being annoying and arguably stalking my friends and I, so it's not as if I'm hoping for a nuclear response. I think a comment ban would be a decent move, but I can't be bothered to campaign for it. I will, however, continue to campaign for better content on Hyperbolus in spite of a few bad apples. I would point to Kiinoe and Seefourset as some high-quality writers on this platform, as well as myself because what the hell! I've been reviewing levels for something like a year and a half so it's nice to finally have a platform to ramble on. Godspeed WKGames✌️

reviewed this one on twitter sometimes great sometimes stinky

I'm well aware that the face of this level is well over halfway in but it's not as if the other parts anywhere near obsolete in the discussion. This level is probably the closest I've seen to the community's idealized notion of 2.0, where the vibes are especially grounded and nostalgic and the gameplay is just experimental enough to be fun to figure out. Personally I think any 2.0 level with a clear creative spirit is worthy of praise or even nostalgia, but ForeverBound's effects and song choice have remained so blatantly timeless that I still revisit it this year. The rainbow robot part is definitely the highlight, I might even consider it my favorite part in any 2.0 level, but it would be nothing without the carefree aesthetic joy nearly bleeding out of every other part around it.

my favorite lever

shoutout to girls

Have you ever seen a level that was clearly made by an amateur creator yet they've put a disproportionate amount of effort into it? That's one of my favorite categories of levels, and Cosmogony falls under it. This is purity in GD form.