Rating Curve

For a lot of people, the gauntlets can be a slog to play through due to having to play through a bunch of levels that they may not enjoy just so they can get another cube or more shards. I've personally always liked the gauntlets, but I can see where these feelings come from, especially in the Castle and Water gauntlets which consist almost entirely of XL demons. When I was playing through the Water Gauntlet when it came out, it was at a time before I learned to love longer levels the way I do now. My first time seeing Soar was in the Water Gauntlet and at first I thought, "oh my god, ANOTHER XL medium demon?" I was expecting to leave feeling frustrated with it like I did with the previous level in the gauntlet, Trek. Needless to say, it was a huge surprise when I came out of Soar absolutely LOVING it and it currently stands as one of my favorite medium demons in the game.

Soar is an amazing level on its own, but it also displays everything that makes Puueds such a great and memorable builder and why he's currently one of my favorite level builders in the game. His style is a great-looking blend between modernism with its focus on strong color combinations and some visual simplicity & a somewhat cartoony art-based style which lets him seamless add animations and give each of his level some worldbuilding without feeling overbearing. His levels are all well-polished, but it's not so much to the point where there's no edge to any of his work. This leads into my final thing, and what I love the most: he makes experimental gameplay that explores ideas and gimmicks that are both unique and really fun to play. This type of gameplay seems like something that absolutely should not work as well as it does with Puueds's style of decoration, yet it somehow does.

Of course, Soar's central gameplay concept isn't the most adventurous thing Puueds has tried, in fact I'd probably say it's one of his more tame levels gameplay-wise, but that doesn't stop it from still excelling in what it tries to do. Soar's concept is that it is meant to be a newer take on a ship-based demon level. In the multiple ship parts throughout Soar, Puueds is able to make multiple path parts, dual action, orb tech, and odd structuring. All of these parts have something going on, either gameplay-wise or visually, to make them memorable from the other parts in the level (though the final ship may be an outlier). All the while, Soar is fast-paced to match its energetic song and playing it in normal mode feels so satisfying despite not even being all that difficult or tight. Puueds is able to make the upbeat, empowering energy of this level so pronounced through his visual style and it's always a blast to rebeat.

I've only got one problem with this level, and it's relatively minor. The first half does a lot to build up its energy and ideas, and the second half is much more relaxed in comparison. There aren't as much new ideas introduced after the first drop. It's still really fun gameplay and a good test of nerve control with the atmosphere changing and the sun setting, but I wish there was just a bit more going on in this last part.

Other than that, Soar is a level I would recommend in a heartbeat to any player looking for a great entry-level medium demon. It does so much right on all fronts and I'm so glad RobTop picked this level to be in a gauntlet.

This is the first platformer I've beaten where I left feeling like it was just achieved everything it wanted to do and it's just perfect. I thought it was really cool when I first saw it albeit really confusing, but once I figured out how to go about this level and I beat it it was so satisfying and that experience was what heightened the experience for me.

When you start PCB, you're just dropped into the level without any form of introduction. You see this alien language, some text you can't read, some values you can interact with and change, and a small sense of dread from the music, beeping sounds, and this background of a vast, expansive, yet inhuman place. You have no idea what anything you're looking at is nor do you know what to do, all you know is that you need to do something. Pretty much everyone will spend their first attempt just trying every button they can yet nothing happens, they feel helpless and confused. Their time runs out, they could not escape. Time to start over.

If playing the level was the only thing the player did, this seems like everything PCB has to offer: an inexorable countdown towards an inevitable death that will always happen. To understand what's going on here, the player will need to look in the description, as there are resources to tell you what is going on and what some of the values mean. Having to use external resources to solve a GD level may be a turn-off for some people, but I really like when levels are able to incorporate external resources since this allows the creator to think outside of the metaphorical box they're locked into if they choose to only use the GD editor and nothing else. Here, I think X Future incorporated external resources to just the perfect extent. He struck a good balance between giving some useful information but not too much to the point where the path becomes immediately obvious. I've seen some comments which are like "I've read the accompanying documentation and I still have no idea what is going on!" and I think comments like those further show the brilliance in the accompanying documents. You need to really analyze everything you're looking at if you want to have any hope of breaking free of the death loop. Once you get a grip, the level essentially becomes a game of Wordle except you got sent to hell on an alien planet. It's something more digestible than the esoteric nonsense PCB looked like upon first impression, but it isn't by any means free.

Alright, we know what's all going on here, let's take a crack at trying to get out of here. Once I started to get runs where I had figured out some of the values, the amount of stress this level puts on you and the strong atmosphere this level is able to create are some of the best I've ever felt from a platformer level. You get to feel the anxiety a little bit even if you're just watching the level pass you by as you struggle to understand anything, but once you know what you're doing the level shifts into feeling like a fate you can avoid, you just don't know if you have enough time to. This level does so many small things that, during attempts, just causes the critical thinking part of my brain to just shut off. The most obvious things are the song shifting into a much more urgent despair and the level turns red and becomes distorted, but there's much more than that. PCB is rather minimal with its sound effects (using only 5 total), but X Future gets a lot of mileage out of these. There's this constant beeping throughout that almost sounds like a heartrate monitor. Halfway through, these alarm beeps come in and they feel like the type of sound that would play when there's a deadly leak somewhere (and judging by the particles that come in, maybe there is). There's this loud, deep alarm that comes in and it sounds like something that would play inside a facility that needs to be evacuated immediately. They're all things integrated so well they initiate your fight-or-flight response and take up the space in your brain you're supposed to be using to process the information that's on your screen. Another example would be the 5 seconds it takes to get results every time you submit a code. It's not too long, but it's just enough time for the player to start praying. As you start to run out of time near the end of the level, the weight of each of these seconds becomes heavier and heavier. This little wait you have to get results each time also comes with its own HR monitor-like sound to further add to your anxiety as you wait. My final example has to be the glitches that happen later in this level. There are glitchy shaders, however there are moments where a letter or number will glitch out and show the wrong value for a split second. When watching the level, this seems like something trivial but when you're sitting there fighting against your own brain to think straight, seeing the wrong number in the wrong place for just a split second sets off all the siren bells in your head makes you think you did something wrong for that split second. There's all of these things PCB does to try to get you to just stop thinking, give up, and die. However, once you know everything you need to do, the level starts to feel like a fight against your own brain and to keep concentrated and keep thinking clearly despite everything trying to get you to stop, and you have some hope. It's because of all these things that make solving the code and getting out so satisfying. You were able to control your nerves and you feel like you were able to escape an impossible fate.

I think that's everything, this level is just perfect in its execution. I've historically been terrible with puzzles, yet I absolutely loved this. If you think you're up for the challenge this level offers, please give this level a shot. Escaping has never felt so rewarding.

The best level I'll ever make, hands down.

This was my first skywalker14 level, and I stumbled upon this in a rated list over a year ago not really sure what to expect (if anything at all) only to come out of the experience completely shocked at what I had just played. This level is my favorite non-demon level in the game, and in my top 5 favorite levels of all time. I highly recommend experiencing this for yourself first before reading this review.

The way the level starts is really interesting and it is immediately what comes to my mind when I think of what Storm does right. Most levels start right before the drop or at some point in the pre-drop. However, it is very uncommon to start a level in the middle of the drop or, as is the case with Storm, right at the end of the drop. When you start the level, you are immediately hit with these loud and intense horns, strings, and drums accompanied by flashes of white with every beat and then it stops. There is a fade to black, and when we can see again, everything around is calm and quiet. This bait-and-switch that skywalker is able to pull off so well just by choosing to start the level at an odd point in the song is something I've never seen done before and it still lingers in my head constantly.

Besides that moment at the beginning, the rest of the first part is just as amazing. You're hit with that intense opening only to be thrown into a quiet, barren yet serene landscape. There is a still river, dead flowers and grass, trees without their leaves, and crumbling buildings in the distance. Later in the part, the river spills out into a great lake or ocean, with monolithic busts and statues looming on the horizon and a ship sinking. All the while, the color palette is very muted and the song is lingering on these low, droning strings. This part, like most of the level, is devoid of human life. Some divine calamity has brought an apocalypse upon Earth. We don't entirely know what happened (nor do we ever find out) but this part alone already makes me feel sorrowful and it sets the tone really well for the rest of the level.

Another thing this first part does well to set the stage for the rest of Storm is introduce the player to the type of gameplay they will see throughout the rest of the level. Storm takes the unusual approach for XXL levels where the gameplay is more spread out over its runtime as opposed to being all condensed into 1-2 minutes. This approach doesn't work with every XXL level, but it is absolutely perfect for Storm. This, combined with how the only gamemode is the cube and the level being in slow speed for most of the level allows the player to truly take in the atmosphere of this level and look for all of the nuance in this level's complex, layered backgrounds.

Next, we climb up into the mountains to find it equally in ruin. Buildings and cars in disrepair, wrecked trains and tracks, stone hands pulling out of the ground, and a statue depicting a divine soldier's final moments. However, there's one peculiar thing among all of these: a diamond road sign that reads "THE END IS NEAR." Not only that, but it is a metal sign that is burning in the middle of a blizzard. It may seem like an odd occurrence, but it's great foreshadowing (a sign, if you will) of what's to come.

After the mountain, we find ourselves somewhere beautiful. The song is starting to pick up, the colors are becoming more vibrant, and we are starting to move faster. The grass and trees are alive and the flowers are blooming. Perhaps there is some tranquility to be had during the apocalypse. The Sun is even out! The Sun is very bright and fierce, unusually so. We climb up a hill marked by another diamond road sign that is also on fire...

...to see everything else on the horizon is on fire as well. The Sun has burned an entire village to the ground and its villagers plead for mercy from the gods. In the distance, some humans are being taken into the sky, ascending into the heavens? Then, it happens to us too.

We find ourselves on top of the mountains again, high enough to see the Sun again and its unbearable brightness. At the peaks of the world, in the coldest of all places, the flowers, outposts, and an entire forest are still susceptible to the fury of the Sun. The gods made in stone look upon us and the world with shame and contempt. In stark contrast with the bleak stillness we saw at the beginning, the level is now blindingly bright and colorful as the song reaches it's screechy height. It's so hard for me to pick a favorite part of the level, but if I had to chose, it would probably be this one.

Back to the level's "story," we descend from the mountains back to civilization to find everything we once knew and loved to be gone. A great Storm of fire has completely consumed the horizon, and the world is an inferno. The ground and air are lethally ashen. We have one final diamond sign to tell us "THE END IS HERE" as we lose our ability to see in a blazing flash of red and orange and the level ends...

OK, so I got very carried away writing this. It's not much of a review of the quality of the level (of which I have zero problems with), but it's more of a description of what I saw and felt as I played Storm. If anything, the conclusion you can draw from my ramblings is just how phenomenal of a job Storm does at conveying these beautiful yet harrowing visions of the apocalypse. I'm not a fan of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, nor do I think I will ever truly be one, but I must say that this one 6-minute level is able to speak so much more about the beauty the creator of the level finds in the band and their music than any words can (maybe this is ironic to come from an over 1100 word long level review lol). It's truly, truly heartbreaking how this level got completely swept under the rug, with only a feature rating and 23K+ downloads as of me writing this. Please show this level some more love if you can, Storm is truly deserving of it.

"I've been writing about levels in some form for the past 9 years, and to this day Blue Marine has been the only one that has truly stumped me. [...] Over the past 29 months, I've come back to this level. During that time, every 3 weeks or so, I would routinely think deeply about Blue Marine and try to put on paper what it different. But every time, I would only come out of the attempt more confused than before.

Only recently, though, I've realized why I was playing this losing game to begin with, and why I will never win. Most levels have at least a few patterns or ideas as to why you like or dislike them, but when dealing with something that has no such thing, it doesn't know what that is! Then I realized through all these comments, no one else has described what they think about the level either. There's no point in attempting to engage in a mental stranglehold into something that defies intellectualizing. What we see in front of us today is a type of impassible barrier that we're not often confronted with:

It's happy."

-- Numptaloid, excerpt from "Geometry Dash's Most Unlikely Masterpiece" at 17:52

I decided to not write my own review of this level and instead plagiarize Numptaloid's words for a few reasons:
1. It's the best possible way to describe this level.

2. I have nothing to add to the Blue Marine discourse that hasn't already been said.

3. If it wasn't for this one video on Blue Marine (and by proxy Numptaloid's work as a whole) I would probably not be writing reviews like I do on this site. Thank you so much man

I know this is a very cold take, but I really do feel WELL RESTED is one of the best levels ever made, and one I just could not find any flaws in.

You know how some songs have an awkward introduction? The song would do some weird out-of-place notes before dunking into the actual song, and I love when songs do this. However, it's really hard to replicate the sensation these musical moments bring into GD levels since you also need to accompany it with visuals and gameplay. WELL RESTED pulls this off exceptionally well, and with a song with a longer awkward intro too. I would say the first 25 seconds of the level is one of my favorite parts. It feels like WELL RESTED is still booting up, as the level and the song wind up into existence together. The song only has funky drums and distorted voice samples, and the part of the level has simple but funky gameplay, a loading screen-like background, and structures and colors that move and pop in beat with the song. After one blue orb, you fall a bit more than anticipated...

...you hit the ground, there's a flash of light, and you are in a new scene. It looks and feels heavenly. You're in this otherworldly garden, on this big pearly white marble structure over some gorgeous waters looking out towards a magnificent blue abyss. The flora has this great shine to it and is adorned with beautiful patterns. After the dark and somewhat muted introduction, this change of scene hit me like a truck. Neither of these two parts are my favorite primarily because of what they are individually, but because of how one leads into another AND this is the first thing WELL RESTED hits you with. The song starts with one really long synth chord with a few occasional notes in beat with player inputs. There is one sequence where the player does three inputs back-to-back. Each time, the player rises up a bit more than normal thanks to some levitating pads. WELL RESTED utilizes these all throughout the level. Not only do these airborne pads make the gameplay more varied, it also helps the player's movements visually synchronize with the song as well, and these both make the utilization of these pads feel satisfying every time.

The song and the level start to speed up. Some bass and vocals kick in, and the player is doing inputs more often. Then, the song shifts into its normal groove and 2x speed. Most parts of the level from here on out work because of similar reasons to each other, though each part still looks unique from its surrounding sections. All of the colors work great with each other. All of the structures work with simple patterns and designs that never feel lacking because of what each of these level elements are paired with. It's all a great blend of heavenly and futuristic. The floral decor this level has strikes a great balance between natural and artificial while having a sleek, modernistic look. The level spends most of its time with a really well-made gradient background (really impressive for being done in 2.1 before the advent of the gradient trigger) that is just as pleasing to look at as the vivid gradient of a clear blue sky and some rising particles that resemble stars. It's a very simple background, but it's invigorating in the same way as the actual sky it is trying to emulate. Another thing WELL RESTED does that keeps the level feeling lively and eventful, aside from its visuals, is the fact that the camera is almost always moving. With the exception of certain sections, the usage of bordered gamemodes in WELL RESTED is very short compared to that of the unbordered gamemodes. Bordered gamemodes hold the camera in place for too long for WELL RESTED. You're always going up and down and fast and slow and this way of making gameplay gives the level so much more energy than it would have otherwise.

After a space-like segment, you fall once again, but this time the level cuts to black and fades back in. The level is really slow now, the structures are dark with rainbow outlines, there is a purple twilight sky with some drifting stars. Non-English runes are printed on the sky as the lyrics of the song are read at the top of the screen. This part already gives goosebumps because it's a moment for you to brace yourself for what comes next. All the level elements fall away, some art displays on screen, and then it happens.

Okay, before I talk about that one part of the level, I need to address the elephant in the room first. There are these black borders on both sides of the screen for everything up until this point. It's one of those things where upon booting up the level, the player notices them, thinks it's an odd choice, and then immediately adapts as they focus on trying to play the level. It does make the level up until this point seem a bit more cinematic having it at 4:3, but it's what the level decides to do with these borders that make their usage truly special.

The borders disappear off-screen, there is a flash of light, and the level and song reach their climaxes. The sky is full of shooting stars. The dark structures and the rainbows stand out firmly and beautifully. You aren't just in space now, you are dashing among the stars. They twinkle and shine on your command. You are a god now. You are WELL RESTED for the ascension. All the while the song is going through a divine synth passage and the pre-chorus repeats, but even louder with more energy. This is one of my favorite parts in any GD level ever. It would still be one of my favorites if it were standalone, but it is this buildup and release that is truly unlike anything I've ever felt in my 11 years of playing GD. After this level, the level comfortably works itself down from this insane soaring high with the intro reappearing in a glitchy, distorted way as you're being spoken to in this smooth, yet also glitchy and distorted spoken word passage.

The level continues to work itself down smoothly with more heavenly futuristic garden landscapes like what we saw before the climax. The borders start closing back in and the level returns to 4:3. The level eventually restabilizes on a scene very similar to what we first saw, with pearly white architecture, perfectly lush greenery, the water flowing, and the sky's blue abyss. More and more elements of the song start dropping out, and the gameplay corresponds by getting simpler and less involved. The level reaches a final elevation, inputs are very spaced out, Sarah Bonito gives us one final spoken word passage, and the credits appear accordingly with the final remaining beats of the song. Once the final beat passes, the credits fade away. This is what the end looks like: a garden with the greenest grasses and bushes, a fountain with the clearest water, architecture of the gods, and only the sounds of birds chirping and the water running. It's a very simple way to end the level consider the highs this level spends a lot of its time in, but after 7 minutes of action and some very high nerves, it's so deeply satisfying.

The one main point I have been hinting at throughout this entire review is this: The level and the song go hand-in-hand. In fact, they go hands-in-hands with both hands, that's how well WELL RESTED represents its song. No other level could use this song like how cometface did, and a level with this design, theme, and execution could never work with any other song. The gameplay (which admittedly I didn't talk a whole lot about in this review) is perfect, I have no complaints, there are no choke points or bugs, and it is always fun to play and extra satisfying since you move in tandem with the song. If you want to get more into playing XXL+ levels, WELL RESTED is a must-do. It's only medium demon as well, so you don't have to be too skilled to give it a shot.

I usually don't review auto levels or levels this short, but I want to write write about why this is my favorite auto level in the game.

CUBETAPPER is a recreation of the music video for Frums - WAVETAPPER, which features 15 minecraft-like cubes of different colors which light up and display symbols in correlation with an instrument of the song (we don't talk about the gray cube). They all come in at different times and take breaks as they need to to work with the song. It's already a really creative music video, but Epsilon finds ways to improve it in his recreation and also add his own creative value.

One problem that the WAVETAPPER music video suffers from is that it feels a bit too still and lifeless. Visually, it is as simple as it can get to a point where it holds the music video back. CUBETAPPER fixes this problem with some subtle camera shaking and lens circle usage throughout, as well as making the off-white background darker at the bridge. WAVETAPPER also has zero movement going on, all of the color changes and visuals are confined to their respective, stationary cubes. CUBETAPPER's approach of using GD cubes is implemented really well. Most of the cubes physically move then they play their respective noises. The default cube hits its own sides with its core for the percussion, the icons that resemble faces move like they are singing their vocal samples, it all feels natural. Some cubes which are not playing at the moment will go off screen and recruit more cubes, filling up the screen as the level progresses and making the song's progression easier to visualize. Other cubes that are not playing are still animated and moving as though they are actually alive. Some look around, blink, and the 1000 star cube even stretches in place. They're also all just some of the best cube recreations I've seen in a GD level, they're almost 1:1. All these factors combined make CUBETAPPER interesting to watch the whole time and never boring.

One of my favorite details, which I did not notice until watching WAVETAPPER and CUBETAPPER back-to-back, is that the glitch-like effects that appear around the cubes in CUBETAPPER at the final chorus are all recreations of the symbols that appear on their respective cubes in WAVETAPPER at the same point in the song. Not only is it is a really neat reference, it's also just a sick effect as well. I also love how the replication of the phone dialing in WAVETAPPER is recreated perfectly as well, down to what numbers are pressed at what time and what the numbers translate to in text (which displays onscreen at the final part). It's clear a lot of effort went into this and that Epsilon has a lot of respect for the original music video.

All in all, I'm glad this level got as far as it did, even to the 2024 GD Awards nomination. It just does so many things right and is a truly well-crafted recreation of something outside of GD.

This will be a mini-review. This level currently sits at a heartbreaking 100 downloads, and I want to write about this level to spread some word about it.

Lasaga has been a creator that has been on my radar for a few years now. He was a very prolific and talented creator on the 1.9 GDPS and Burning Blue is his send-off level. I had always enjoyed playing his levels and how they were designed, as well as how he incorporated vaporwave and synthwave aesthetics into his creations. So when I found out he had made a 7 minute long 1.9 level with a synthwave song and design, I was pumped.

Burning Blue really does not disappoint! It is predominantly blue and orange with other neon colors mixed in at times, which combined with the song, gives the level a calming, sunset beach feel that is constant throughout even as the level tries out all sorts of block designs and air decorations. The level does not feel 7 minutes long, as I just get lost in the level's atmosphere while playing. It mostly sits below demon difficulty throughout and doesn't demand very intense concentration to enjoy. There are some parts where focusing is recommended, like the gray part at 68% where it can be difficult to see what the orbs are the quick asymmetrical dual bursts at 77%. The level is paced really well, changing speeds just enough to feel steady and match with the song without becoming stale. Burning Blue spends almost all of its time moving between half speed, normal speed, and 2x speed, so when the first and only 3x speed part at 89-94% with the highest point in the song then returning back to half speed for the rest of the level as the song wraps up, it makes for a truly satisfying and memorable ending.

Despite currently not being rated, I would still recommend giving this level a shot! For the most part, the level is well-balanced and sightreadable. I would personally place its difficulty at being an entry-level easy demon. It's just a really pleasant experience all around and it's a real shame this level didn't get the attention it deserved.

(Disclaimer: I have not beaten Idols yet, so take everything I say about that level in here with a grain of salt. I have, however, beaten Project Reunion as my 500th demon. This is also my 2nd favorite level of all time.)

I'll start by saying Project Reunion feels like a much more authentic love letter to 1.9 than Idols was. I felt Idols was way too flashy of an experience and went too far in on having good effects and cinematic moments that it felt as authentic to 1.9 as Esencia was to 1.0. Project Reunion fixes this problem by having the level made entirely with what was only available in the 1.9 update. Idols also constantly directly references some of the most famous levels of the 1.9 update, and in that regard it feels a lot more like its song where its a flashy, mashup-remix of the past instead of a true love letter to the past. Project Reunion has 100 parts, and none of them are as up-front and direct with their references like Idols is. Sure, while some parts may appear as too-well made and intricate for anyone in 2015 to make themselves, there are a lot of parts that have the perfect amount of intricacy as seen in levels actually from 2015, and it feels more like creating your own music that is a love letter to music from a bygone era as opposed to just taking what was already made and repackaging it in a nice way.

I also felt the song choices separating the two letters marks this distinction well, too - Idols is a mashup of many EDM songs that came before it while Overtime is an original EDM song from the same time period. This could be my early-mid 2010s Roblox nostalgia taking control, but I feel Overtime was genuinely the perfect song Project Reunion could have chosen. It's not just that the song is amazing - it has an amazing progression throughout that makes Project Reunion a more standout level for me than Idols was. Idols (the song) does have moments which are faster or slower compared to other parts of the song, but it never feels like those moments are given the weight they should to be impactful as they are in Overtime/Project Reunion. Project Reunion has a short first drop pretty quickly before pulling back for a bit and entering into a second longer drop of similar intensity, nothing too special. But the song and the level just go a true bridge/break time segment at the halfway point as they both slow down tremendously. After a beautiful sunset art piece, the song and the level build back up in intensity slowly, then all at once, and then you're hit with the Proximity logo and the big text "Keep Going!" as you're sent into the final, most euphoric part of both the song and the drop. It's such a great soaring high that still reminds of the past while feeling like its own unique, special moment and Idols doesn't have anything that hit me as hard as this.

The way Project Reunion ends is also more satisfying than Idols. Idols (the song) winds down incrementally as it ends, and the song tries to replicate that but doesn't feel as satisfying as it tries to do a credits roll while still awkwardly interjecting with gameplay. On the other hand, Project Reunion ends with a long end screen. Normally, I am not someone who likes long end screens in levels, but in cases like Project Reunion, where there is a long fadeout in the song, the long end screen can be very satisfying (commatose is a good example of this too).

One final thing I kept putting off writing about is the gameplay. I've been comparing Project Reunion and Idols a lot throughout this review, and I kinda shot myself in the foot since while I have watched Idols a whole lot, I haven't actually played the level myself to really have a definite opinion on how it plays. I can say, however, that I really enjoyed the gameplay in Project Reunion. For having 100 parts, I didn't feel there was any particularly gnarly chokepoints, and the level was well-balanced throughout. The duals are a bit inconsistent and learny, but they're short and other than those two parts I have no complaints. There are no transitions which suck a whole lot either, which seems like a miracle for a megacollab with this many parts.

I don't know how to wrap up this review, so maybe I'll just link here: https://genius.com/Cash-cash-overtime-lyrics

This is my favorite level ever, and it's not even close.

Before Eon, I thought I understood what I liked in GD well - I wasn't a fan of longer levels. My longest was Biru and while it was great, it was an exception. I did not enjoy most travel levels and I especially did not like True Values of Life. I found out about Eon because of Renn's showcase on YouTube in March and I thought "I'm probably going to hate this but I'll still see what it has to offer."

I immediately fell in love with the level, Just from watching it, I knew this would be an absolute gem. My main gripes with TVOL were that there was no progression, it was poorly optimized, and all the parts had way too much detail and still ended up ugly. Eon was the opposite of all of these things - one of the strongest progressions out of any GD level, and super simplistic yet charming and effective designs. I knew immediately I wanted to beat this as my first extreme demon.

I kinda struggled with it some, doing some practice runs but not really getting a whole lot of substantial progress. One day in April, however, I got 18% in the morning, which had me pretty excited, and then I fluked all the way to 60% later that night, which had me really hyped. Then progress came to a halt for a few more months. Occasionally I would play the level, get 60% again or some other death moderately far into the level, but not really any momentum playing the level. Throughout this time, however, I was intensely practicing the last 10% as I knew that was by far the most difficult part of the level and I wanted to make sure I had it to a tee.

In September, I knew I finally wanted to finish the level off. I did some more normal mode runs and quickly got 74%. I was now laser focused on getting this level done. The next day, not long after getting home from school, on September 6th, 2024, I fluked the level from fucking 74% and beat Eon as my first extreme demon. That was one hell of an afternoon. By far the most nervous I had ever gotten playing GD in my over 10 years of playing, and I'll talk more about how I felt at the last 10% later.

Even if Eon was not 55 minutes long, I would still enjoy it just because of its intense simplicity. Aside from the shader backgrounds, the level never gets too intricate with block designs, gameplay, or structuring, it just sticks to focusing on the gameplay the entire time and representing the song. Some people say Eon does not have great song representation, but I disagree. For how little is going on in the level design-wise, it's still has a lot of elements that go hand-in-hand with something that is going on with the song. Whether it be the background changing color to a synth or blocks pulsing to drums, there is always things going on with the song that don't get intrusive with the gameplay. Eon is very dynamic with its speeds and pacing and there are a lot of fast moments and slow moments that go with the song. Some of the more vibrant and lively sections are borderless and fast-paced, while the ambient, slower segments are darker and bordered. TVOL is what I would consider a complete failure of song representation just because of how little the song and the level go together, and it feels more like TVOL uses Snowy Roads just because it's long enough. Eon doesn't feel like that. Every part of the level acknowledges The Angel in some way, even if it is just with simple gestures.

There is still a lot of creativity to be found in Eon within its various backgrounds. It's a great example of an early 2.2 level, as it feels like Renn was using all of the different soundscapes The Angel has to offer to try out all of the cool new shader options that released in 2.2. Something that appears a lot throughout Eon but I find cool every time is how super intense chromatic glitch shaders are used to make static. It's these great, dynamic backgrounds that work really well with the more droney parts of the song while being super easy to set up. Eon also has moments where the split screen shader is used in more quiet parts to make the parts feel open, large, and atmospheric. If I had to pick one specific background to be my favorite, it would be the one at 97-98% for how it reuses almost every element seen so far to create something super intense for The Angel's climactic finale. This review is already going to be very long, and I only have 24 hours in my day so I'm not going to dissect each and every one but I encourage looking around in the editor, you will find a lot of cool stuff.

Eon's last 10%, man... this has to be one of the best level endings ever seen in GD. For the entire first 90% the dread of the ending is quietly looming in the back of the player's mind, and this dread really picks up at the organ segment right before. After the final organ chord, the level and the song undergo their harshest tone shifts. It's the hardest part of the level and the fastest part of the level, both in general speed and CPS. The Angel goes into a sort of final boss theme, with a super menacing bass and some DnB drums. At 96% the song and the level shift into an almost victory-like sound as you've passed the hardest part and you have one final part which is basically a nerve check. I went through about 9 different mind stages in just this last 10%. In order: "Holy shit, I'm here, let's do this." "Ok, I didn't die immediately, good." "I'm coming up on the hardest part, uh oh." "LET'S FUCKING BALL." "OH MY GOD, I PASSED THAT PART." "AM I GOING TO BEAT IT THIS ATTEMPT?" "I AM BECOMING GOD." "PLEASE DON'T DIE, PLEASE." (insert my reaction here). I don't think I am able to properly convey how it felt through text, even though I tried, I think it's just something you have to be there in the moment to describe. Point is, it's a fucking trip.

Beating Eon has changed my outlook completely for XXL levels and has turned them from being something I would avoid whenever I could to something I now actively seek out. It's not much of an increase in endurance, moreso it is a change in mindset. You need to mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of dying very far, you have to accept that attempts will be super long, you need to understand the hardest stretches of the level best and really hone in on practicing what is truly necessary. The fact that a level may be longer creates a sort of illusion that it will take far more time than a shorter level to beat, when in reality that is not the case. When a level of extreme length is compared to something that is supposedly the same difficulty but just standard length, they are suggesting beating those two levels are completions of equal achievement, and they both have similar amounts of difficulty just stretched over different amounts of time. Same ideology can be applied with how much time is spent playing these levels. A level as long as Eon will take you just as much time as any other extreme demon, from the very first attempt to the attempt you beat it. It's just how that time is spent which sets those two apart. For more traditional extremes, you will spend much more time practicing the level and getting runs that aren't from 0, while in Eon you will spend much more of your total time playing the level in runs from 0. At the end, the time spent on both levels should be roughly equal, regardless of what skill you are.

Another way Eon has changed me for the better was that it introduced me to one of, if not my favorite album of all time, Cacola - The Angel, The Demon,. When I watched Eon for the first time I also thought "Holy shit, this song is amazing, what?" and I was just completely floored by a song of such high caliber and emotion that manages to be interesting and progress in interesting ways for 55 minutes straight. I immediately fell in love with the song too, and then in June I got around to buying TATD on Bandcamp and listening to the album for the first time. TATD is one of only two times where an album has immediately reached through the sound dimension and touched my soul. It had felt like I had known the album for 9 years since I first saw Lit Fuse by Krazyman50 in 2016, and the album knew me for all that time, too. I ended up relistening to the album more and more, and I am willing to bet I have listened to TATD in full over 20 times since I first heard it. It is an album that has gotten me through so many of my worst days ever, an album I knew I could listen to at the end of the day when I can finally rest for a bit. I even got in on the first CD press for the album, bought the CD as soon as it was purchasable, while I was still in school that day, and it's my proudest CD in my collection. I couldn't be more grateful that Eon introduced me to album which helped me through so much.

I really need to wrap this review up but in case you want to go for Eon (which I will always recommend), my only piece of advice is this: practice the ever living hell out of 90-100%. Trying to get any other runs within in the level is a waste of your time since if you're paying attention the whole time, you can sufficiently learn the rest of the level in about 4 practice runs. 90-100% is the hardest part of the level and your nerves will be through the roof so you want to die there in normal mode as little as possible. I consider myself extraordinarily lucky for fluking the level, although I practiced 90-100% so damn hard I could get that individual run almost every other attempt. There is no such thing as overpracticing that part, all practice is good practice.

Safe travels.