Rating Curve

CITYFADE is a level that had captivated me ever since I first watched it around a month after it released. I'll get into what exactly got me hooked in a bit, but for now just know that it was a level I absolutely loved. I voted for it in the GD Awards 2024 and this level was one of the things that got me into Against All Logic (alongside I NEVER DREAM). So, after completing Light Travel in early July this year, I knew I wanted to do CITYFADE next. I began playing it on-and-off over the course of the month and later beat it out of absolutely nowhere on July 28th with a ridiculous fluke from 65%. With an experience that seemingly sounds so great, this seems like a level I'd give a 10, but I've got some issues with the level.

Starting with the positives, the song representation in this level is absolutely phenomenal. Against All Logic's City Fade is a beautiful song, it's both otherworldly and a song groovy enough for the dance floor, but it's also an extremely intricate song. Around 2 minutes in, the percussion stops being like traditional house music and becomes much more free-form, almost like a percussion ensemble arrangement as opposed to a drum rhythm made digitally. After this section, the song also starts introducing more static-y synths, sound effects and reverb for more atmosphere, etc. There is a lot going on in the song, and being able to represent it properly in the form of a GD level is an especially tall order. With that said, MaxxoRMeN steps up to the plate and does the song complete justice. Not only is he able to thematically represent the song well throughout all of its sections, but he is able to account for the eccentric percussion passages really well and integrates them into the gameplay very naturally. The final 20% is just out of this world, there is so much going on in the background and it feels like this non-euclidean metropolis and its surrounding world are collapsing in on themselves and you're on a mad dash to try and make it out alive. The rising synths paired with the ship gameplay at the very end is so climactic and satisfying, it really puts a test on your nerve control. In regards to visuals and execution, this level is an absolute masterclass in what it tries to do and it's deserving of a Legendary rating just for that.

But at what cost does such excellence come at? The level is great to watch, and while the gameplay is mostly good too, that's not entirely the problem. The big problem is that this level lags like hell. I don't think lag is an issue I've ever brought up in a review before since for the most part it's a non-issue for me. I've got a decently strong computer, so most levels I'm able to run without frame drops on full detail and those I can't I'm still able to run well on LDM. The same cannot be said of CITYFADE. There is only one LDM setting, and it is inadequate as I still experience significant frame drops late in the level. The first half runs completely fine but the second half doesn't because that's where the level really amps up in particle & shader usage, as well as there just being much more art & animated things. I play on 144fps, and when I get to the random part (the first really laggy part for me), my FPS oscillates like a metronome between the high 130s and below 100, with LDM on might I add. With LDM off, I can even get below 20fps at some points. The final section of the level is equally egregious as well. Lag is something I almost never bring up in reviews since in most cases it's a non-issue for me, but when it actively gets in the way of being able to properly play the level, it's a problem.

Finally, I want to bring up some other problems I have with the gameplay. The random part is great conceptually, but in practice it doesn't work out as well and the way it plays is the only part of the level where I would say the execution falters. It's still technically sightreadable and there isn't too many different orb combinations, but the problem is that this part is completely impossible to practice. Besides being extremely laggy, trying to place a checkpoint before the random part results in you getting the same orbs every attempt AND trying to play CITYFADE from a start position will cause the game to crash. Essentially, you've got a laggy pure sightreading test in the middle of an XXL extreme demon. What the fuck!!!! I got so extremely lucky only getting to this part of the level twice from 0 ever, if I died during this part 5+ times or had to replay it every time I got to the second half, my enjoyment of this level would probably erode very quickly. There are some other things I don't really like, such as how the vertical part goes on for long enough to start to feel uncomfortable or how the UFO has some uncomfortable click patterns and moving objects that make inputs difficult to eyeball, but the random part stands firm as a cardinal sin MaxxoRMeN committed when building this level.

So, would I recommend this? I'm giving it a high score, but I'm not entirely sure I can recommend this, certainly not as a first extreme. I think this is one of those levels where you have to really be into it if you want to come out of this level with a positive experience, there's a good chance you might not like this level afterwards if you aren't fully invested in it. It's not a horrible XXL extreme demon, but I'd probably be more willing to recommend CICADA3302 or even Light Travel to this. And that's saying a lot, as personally I think CITYFADE might be an insane demon, easier than the other two levels.

I really enjoyed playing this simplistic XXXL level! Despite its visual simplicity, Scenery is very atmospheric and really gives off the feel of a freezy wonderland and its beautiful night sky. There are a lot of things I liked about this level, including the pacing, progression, simple gameplay, the usage of area triggers centered around the player, as well as how Scenery syncs with and matches its song. I particularly love how Scenery progresses slowly and each part lasts long enough for the level for you to really soak in all the little details.

I also like the last 25% of the level, but not without some complains. To start positively, I think it's a great way to represent the climax of the song as well as a good reprisal of a lot of the elements we had seen much earlier. However, some of the new additions, especially the art designs inside their own little boxes, are stylistically quite different from what we had seen in the level previously. The gameplay also becomes much more intricate here, with much more orbs and gamemode changes than we had seen previously. This combined with the fact that this is also the fastest part of the level makes this a bit of a chokepoint. I still think it's a great way to end the level, but it could've been executed a bit better considering you're over 6 minutes into the level at this point.

All in all, if you're looking for an easy XXXL level with great atmosphere, I strongly recommend this level! I was able to beat it without practice mode, but doing a practice run first won't hurt.

So it's been nearly 2 weeks since I've beaten this level and I've taken some time to marinate on my thoughts. I've heard near-universal praise for this level and while I see where it's coming from a lot of the time and for the most part I do agree with what's being said, I don't think this level is perfect.

I will start with what I liked about the level. I think this level is a great example of why dongchi is so well-liked as a builder, and its what I call "basking in simplicity." dongchi had been making levels for years before he made Light Travel, but in 2017 he started to take a different turn. Most builders were starting to shift away from the more simplistic yet sometimes chaotic level design pioneered by the Korean side of the GD community, yet dongchi chose not to adapt with them. He continued making levels in this style regardless of whether not they would get rated since he wanted to build the levels he wanted to play. In turn, he ended up making a unique style for himself and Light Travel is 9 minutes of everything that makes his style so great.

Looking at dongchi from this angle, it seems like a curveball for him to make a "travel" level. Whenever I hear something is a "travel" level, I approach it with a lot of apprehension since it's a level trend I hold in contempt due to most "travel" levels being uninspired, copying ideas from "travel" levels that came before it, built to be long for the sake of being long, and just not being fun or worthwhile experiences. In spite of these things, Light Travel is very atypical for a "travel" level because it's dongchi just doing his own thing but for longer than usual. Light Travel doesn't try to make a bunch of scenic locations who's designs would likely age like milk, it doesn't try to be exceedingly cinematic or climactic, it's just a solid 9 minutes of great gameplay and simple, timeless visuals to pair it. Light Travel is the 2nd longest rated "travel" level behind Hypnotic Travel (or 3rd if you count dusty travel), yet Hypnotic Travel feels like an unbearable slog while Light Travel does not despite only being 30 seconds shorter. Why? Two main reasons: Light Travel chooses the route of a simpler visual style that won't age as fast which sets it apart from other "travel" levels, while there is not a single thing Hypnotic Travel does to make itself appear unique outside of being the longest of its kind, which it unfortunately succeeded in for years. The second thing is that Light Travel is just fun with its gameplay while Hypnotic Travel isn't. The question of if Light Travel was built for the sake of being a really long level almost never came to me while I was playing it because I instead got to put my mind towards how charming the level was visually and how much I was enjoying the gameplay. The same can't be said for most other "travel" levels, especially not Hypnotic Travel.

One final thing I want to bring up about what I really like about this level is its song choice. "Travel" levels rarely have much thought put into their song choices, and it's glaringly obvious some songs are chosen because they're long enough to make a level of the length they want to. Two artists that come to mind the most are steampianist and 1f1n1ty/Onefin, two talented musicians who both have decent catalogues of songs that are longer than average, but nothing of outrageous proportions like that of Cacola or Phyrnna. I'm not trying to suggest trance music hasn't been used in a "travel" level before - Dem Travel and Dank Travle have also used trance music and released before Light Travel. However, Light Travel represents its song better than either of the two previous levels have, and I would even go as far to say Light Travel has some of the best song representation seen in any "travel" level (which is admittedly a kinda low bar but whatever). Salvation by CrimzonWolf777 is nothing short of a gem of the style of 2000s-early 2010s Newgrounds trance music. It's a simple song, yet its got a great energy and ethereal texture and is a track you can easily get lost in the groove in for 9 minutes. Intentionally or not, Light Travel reflects all of the great aspects of Salvation in its own unique way. The level itself is able to match its ethereal texture and simple production, but it's also something very reminiscent of the older level building styles the general creating meta has shifted away from. Light Travel's style lends itself so well to this kind of trance music that Newgrounds has progressed away from over the years, and vice versa.

Though, there's something that bugs me about Light Travel and it's why I can't give it the extremely high praise it usually receives from other victors: the balancing. XXL+ levels have been something I've become obsessed with over the course of the past year or so, and for the most part I've been able to take most of these challenges of endurance and extreme length quite level. However, this level is different. It's the first time where I've truly felt the mental burden of playing an XXXL extreme demon. I didn't even feel this way on CICADA3302, which is by far my unluckiest experience and a level where I had over 24 deaths past 72%. In Light Travel, 19-26% is easily the hardest part as well as my personal least favorite part. Two of the level's biggest chokepoints are back-to-back here with a really difficult asymmetrical robot dual, followed by a very tricky spider part, THEN followed by a really difficult asymmetrical spider dual. These two chokepoints right next to each other were why only around 10% of my runs were able to get to the first drop at 35%. Some days, I would play the level for a while and just never get to 35% at all and I had great luck if I had a session which got to 35% two or three times. When I was just getting into the level, my enjoyment was around a 9/10 and the more attempts I poured into Light Travel, it slowly started to erode and that's why my enjoyment was more like a 7/10. Another non-negligible chokepoint comes much later in the level at 64-74%, where once again we have two pretty difficult sections back-to-back. There is a cube with orb combos where you must buffer every single orb, which took a long time to get down but eventually became consistent, and a robot that's a bit learny but mostly just a harder raw difficulty compared to the other parts. we've seen in this level. Nowhere near as bad as 19-26%, however I'm willing to bet half of my deaths past 35% were in 64-74%. Outside of these two areas, I don't have much else complaints with the gameplay, but these two sections did bring down the level a fair bit.

Despite my experience being less than I had hoped, I still highly recommend Light Travel to anyone looking for an XXXL level that puts their nerves and endurance to the test, or even if you just want a good entry-level extreme demon that's a fun experience. However, if you choose to go for Light Travel, be aware of the chokepoints in the level since they can easily bring down your experience if you aren't prepared to properly deal with them. Other than that, safe travels!

This is a level that I just randomly stumbled upon and was so impressed by it I felt I needed to write about it. I really liked what this level was able to do with just the 1.0 blocks. While bring the sun doesn't fully submit to all the restrictions of the 1.0 level editor, it still keeps itself mostly restrained and doesn't get too crazy as opposed to something like f3hcs. As a result, the designs are all simple yet effective and the gameplay is sightreadable and easy to digest. Despite this restrained approach, bring the sun still shows a lot of creativity and does something with the 1.0 blocks that I haven't really seen before.

bring the sun has this progression where you get to watch an entire day go by. You experience sunrise, sunset, and nightfall as you travel through a town, farms, forests, and space. The fact that this level is able to have all these structures that represent all these distinct all while sticking to only using 1.0 blocks and being very abstract is very impressive. Just to name a few of my favorites, I really liked how endyn used jump pads to make twinkling stars as well as for the pedals on sunflowers, the bridge over the gravity portal river, the usage of different types of the 1.0 blocks and spikes to make distinct shapes for houses, fences, animals, trees, etc. The world feels alive and interesting despite this level just being the GD-equivalent of sketching something with a pencil. The choice of a lo-fi song is also really fitting for the simpler feel this level has. The ending with being in outer space was really neat, though I'm not sure what the yellow orb field at the was supposed to represent. Overall, this was a great playing experience and one of the most unique 1.0-styled levels I've played. I highly recommend it, and it's easy enough to sightread at just 7*.

This level feels too short, yet that makes it the perfect length as well. This level feels like an all-encompassing moment of bliss that ends leaving you to think "that was it?" I love how this level starts in the void, then ascends into a high euphoria, and finally sinks back down into nothingness in just under thirty seconds. Aside from the very end, it doesn't feel like a single second is wasted here.

The brief high this level reaches is phenomenal. The first part is a hazy, somewhat confused-feeling part, and it feels kinda similar to having to adjust to light after being in the dark for so long. The part after this is blinding, yet sharper and more saturated. The rainbow-like gradient effect that moves through the blocks looks really good and they have a nice texture that helps them standout against an eye-piercing sky. I would say this part is a little too bright for my liking, but that may be an intentional choice. Anyways, ascending starts winding a little bit before the last few notes, but the way the level ends in the void so suddenly yet also right on time is such a satisfying ending paired with the last few jumps and orbs.

The gameplay is also really fun and satisfying to do, but I still have some minor complaints with it. First off, the level is very frontloaded with its difficulty. While the first 30% or so is well above hard demon difficulty and is where most of ascending gets its difficulty, the level is basically free once you get to about 60%, you just have to not be stupid. In fact, I fluked this level from 26% when I beat it! The orb arrangements in this level are really learny and difficult to sightread and the majority of timings and click patterns are harder than they look. While they did become very satisfying to do in normal mode once I got them down, they were a bit infuriating to learn. Other than that, I really liked playing this level! It would be pretty easy to knock out if you've got at least insane demon skill level, though I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for entry-level hard demons despite that being the difficulty I would consider this level to be.

This level isn't too much nor is it trying to be, but I still really like it for what it is. journey leans very heavily on glow for its minimalist designs and the entire level is shrouded in darkness, making the level feel very atmospheric. It is some great song representation, but more in the form of an audio visualizer as opposed to the more common approach for levels to try to be like a music video. This is helped by the journey's heavy usage of color banding for gradients, which also makes the level feel somewhat compressed like an old, low-quality music upload from 2000s-early 2010s YouTube.

journey is also a level set entirely in a slow speed mini cube for its entire 7 minute runtime. When paired with the dark, minimalist design choices, it really helps the atmosphere of a level and makes it feel like you are wandering through a cold, vast, empty space. It feels a bit like False Horizon, albeit much more benign. Sometimes, the darkness can make it difficult to tell whether or not you need to jump at certain parts, but overall it is not too much of a problem. journey is a level that is definitely not for everyone with its somewhat repetitive gameplay, rather basic designs, and unusual song choice, but I was still able to really enjoy the level and take in its strong atmosphere. I would recommend giving this level a shot even though it isn't rated, my personal difficulty would be high-end Easy Demon or low-end Medium Demon.

When I play XXL+ levels, something I always look for and appreciate is if a level has a strong progression. For me, a level that feels like it goes nowhere and doesn't progress at all is one of the worst possible things an XXL+ level can do, and I feel like I wasted my time.

So when PAHC recommended me From Dust (his own level) last week and I saw the first part and realized the entire level was focusing around the level, I got excited to try it. A few days later, I beat the level after an unlucky 98% death. I didn't mind this death actually, as I got a chance to replay the level and look at the finer details again. New elements of the level are added at a sort of exponential rate, where it starts out really slowly but then gets overwhelming with how much is going on by the last minute. The way new elements are added is also really smooth, it is easy to overlook something new that is fading in until it is already fully visible. These two things also go hand-in-hand with its song, which I would normally consider difficult to use because it is all build-up and no release. Despite this, PAHC found a way to make great use of the song.

The most common criticism of From Dust is the gameplay, and while I don't entirely agree with its criticisms, I do see where some of them come from. The gameplay consists of the same sequence of ship gameplay that goes through iterations along the visual/song progression. I felt that the gameplay strikes a good balance between requiring a certain amount of focus while also not demanding too much, allowing me to take in the design of the level as well and try to look for newly added elements. I don't like how some of my deaths (including my 98% one) were caused by jerky movements of some blocks, which could launch me up/down into other blocks and kill me. The ending, where the level just cuts off with the song, caught me off guard pretty well the first time, but it never really hit the same after that. I feel like the level could've had a stronger ending, but at the same time it's hard to properly wrap up a level that uses a song that's only build-up and no release.

(This part is a bit of a rant) From Dust has also spurred some discourse surrounding how the level begins, where the level slowly eases into requiring any amount of inputs. Some consider this long, unskippable intro a waste of their time. Here is my two cents: I would also dislike this aspect of the level if the level itself was difficult, but it isn't. This took me 11 attempts total, and I learned the whole level in one practice run. It's rated 8 stars. Besides, just as a concept, really long GD levels themselves are a waste of your time, and if you are truly concerned with using your time the most optimally, From Dust isn't the level for that. From Dust is a level that focuses on build itself up gradually over time, and that's what I like about it so much.

This is a level both so far ahead of its time and completely right with its time. I am not going to delve too far into the gameplay or visuals since it is quite standard for the most part. However, it's what this level does with the individual parts that make it into something truly extraordinary, even for modern times.

"Let's go back in time!" Larga Espera is a level with a story that doesn't need narration for the most part. It is a level that progresses through the history of the game, each section of the level represents a specific update or a part of an update. 1.0-early 1.9 have no text outside of the language selection at the beginning of the level.

It's impossible to talk about why this level is excellent without talking about the "song." Aurora Theory is a 2013 studio album composed by Erik McClure during his time in college. The "song" Larga Espera uses is not any particular song off the album, but rather a teaser for the album posted to Newgrounds which contains a roughly 1-minute long excerpt of each song. There is a progression to the album, but there isn't a story. Larga Espera utilizes the "song" for its progression AND builds a story around it. From 1.0-early 1.9, the level reflects the first 10 songs' upbeat, trance-EDM sound, and as the last few songs are less upbeat, late 1.9-2.1 reflects that as well with its worry about the future of GD and the slower pace of updates.

"The 1.9 remained..." The last 30% of the song marks a tone shift as time moves slower. The rest of the level has text narration as it takes a concerned approach for the game's future and community. There are some moments where the tracks seem more upbeat, like when 2.0 first releases and when Meltdown drops, but the level with its narration is able to keep the somewhat downtrodden mood going throughout these parts.

"?" The 2.1 part is the only time a completely empty layout has ever given me goosebumps. It's easily the most sad part of the level with its gray background and ambient section from the final song of the album "Next Year" (this is a surprisingly fitting song name in the context of waiting for the next update). For being the most simple part of the level, it is the most emotional and conveys the feeling of disappointment really well. The end of the level is entirely just jumps on the ground over spikes in the robot and cube gamemodes with text that gives the player one final takeaway as they leave the level: be patient, be hopeful, be creative with what we have in the current update.

And now, to address the elephant in the room, yes, the time gap between 2.1's release and 2.2's release ended being 2,019 days longer than the time gap between 2.0's release and 2.1's release. Not only does that wait blast the long wait depicted in Larga Espera out of the water, the community was also able to hold up better and mature during that wait and seeing as how the gap between 2.2's release and 2.3's release is already shaping up to be longer than the Long Wait of Larga Espera, but there is far less people complaining about where 2.3 is currently. While this perspective does make it impossible to view Larga Espera without a tinge of irony, I think it's unfair to look at the level that way. How was Nacho supposed to know what the next 7 years would look like? Looking at the level as a perspective from its time period in 2016 is a lot more fair of a way to read it. This is also helped by the level's broken English translations (the other translations may be broken too but I don't know as English is my only language) that add a charm to the level that could only have been done then and seemed normal.

One final thing I want to bring up but don't have space to anywhere else in this review is the fact that this level is entirely at normal speed. Surprisingly, this doesn't make the level feel poorly paced at all because the story the level tells is so well-paced. Admittedly it does feel a bit weird going through the 1.7 part entirely in normal speed, but I feel like going through the level entirely in normal speed is a deliberate choice by Nacho. Time always moves at the same speed - 1 second is always 1 second long. No matter how long the wait is between two updates, we always progress through the time in-between at the same rate, no matter how long it is, no matter how fast the time flies when you're having fun and enjoying the game, no matter how slow the long wait can feel.

As I said earlier, this level was so far ahead of its time while also not misplaced in time at all. No one was making retrospective levels with this much depth and clarity in 2016, no one was authentically recreating older styles like this, and absolutely no one was building levels of this length in 2016, and it still managed to claim the throne of the longest non-minigame rated level 6 years after it released when it randomly got rated in 2022. Legendary level all-around.