Rating Curve

I'm the creator of this level, and it's been about about 3.5 months since I released this level as of me writing this. This isn't really going to be a review, more so a retrospective writing. I'm giving myself a 9/10 (cue Obama giving himself medal image) because I'm overall really satisfied with how this level turned out even though there are a few things I would change.

I had the idea to make IWTS after I beat Eon and loved the level so much but wished there were more levels like it. At the same time, Cacola's album The Angel, The Demon, was one I was listening to extremely heavily in the later half of 2024 to get me through a really rough time and for that it's one of my favorite albums of all time. With those two things in mind, I got to work making a level using the song [...], one of my favorite songs off the album. Something I leaned on very heavily for inspiration while designing the level was something Cacola wrote in a reply to a YouTube comment where she explained the meaning of the song. I'm not gonna retype the whole thing here, but you can read the whole thing in the reply to the pinned comment on this video. This writing gave me plenty of ideas of what to do at different parts throughout the level to represent the song, and I even named the level after the name Cacola gave to the ambient section 10-14 minutes in.

Initially, building the level was not a huge priority and I felt the idea of building a level this monstrously long was an impossible goal for me, someone without a whole lot of building experience going into this. I also had a lot of doubts on if this level would get rated, if it were to be finished. However, as I kept chipping away at it and gaining more confidence in my ability to build, I began to realize that I might actually be able to finish this level. For the main portion of the song, I'm really satisfied with how I was able to represent the song and a lot of what I was able to make in the first half came out very similarly to how I was able to picture it in my head. I even had a positive feedback loop where my friends would give me great support and share their excitement for my level which in turn got me to keep working on the level. There are some minor things in the 4x speed and the ambient section I would change, but they're minor things so I'll just move on.

I'm gonna skip ahead to the midi section of the level since if there was one part I would rework the most, it would probably be this stretch of the level. I had the meaning of the song in mind again here, but this part of the level is also based on a dream I had once where I was playing the level with this part of the song. I remembered the level had these vivid colors and these blocks that looked like standard blocks from the older updates, but over time it started to all feel off and fake. The block designs started looking warped and distorted, the colors felt wrong, etc. The part of the level looked and felt very strange, but I knew I wanted to make this part as accurate in how the dream felt as possible. I also just liked the idea of this part having that "false sense of security" feeling. And unfortunately, I feel like I was unable to really replicate it to the best of my ability. This stretch of the level has received some mixed reception, with some who really like it but others who don't think it represents the song that well. The way I went about some of the block designs feels way too subtle at times, and I also spent so much time adjusting color & shader triggers to try and get the background to look the way I want, but I also feel like I wasn't able to get that fully right either.

I'm also partially unsatisfied with how I did the last 2 minutes. I was almost constantly adjusting the shader triggers and how they change over time, and this was really time consuming and I had to rework the sepia & grayscale triggers enough to look right and feel natural, but I still feel like around the middle of the section it shifts into grayscale too fast compared to before & after it. I also felt the gameplay here was a bit subpar, I already struggle with making gameplay in bordered gamemodes but at this point in the level after having already built so much of it I was getting really dry of gameplay ideas. The UFO part also used to be extremely rough, it initially was normal sized and making it mini was a last-minute decision. I would've liked if it started with some other gamemode that wasn't UFO due to the UFO being really hard to accurately control at 3x speed, but it had to be via process of elimination: swing copter would be even harder, I couldn't use the wave to start because of the sync system I was using (I'm currently writing a script for a YouTube video about this horrid bullshit), and I wanted the level to end the same way it started with the ship in the void. In the end, a lot of people still really like this part, so that's good.

One final thing I wanted to say about the last 5 minutes I couldn't really tack onto the other two paragraphs was that I feel like doing such a major stylistic switch-up in the level stunted the quality of the last 5 minutes. I had sort of gotten into a rhythm with how the first 14 minutes was more-or-less one section that constantly builds upon itself in different ways, so much so that I felt like I was doing a lot of things wrong when I tried something else that was similar but also drastically different; I was significantly less optimal with my trigger usage, as well as color channel & group usage.

In spite of all of those things, I'm overall really satisfied with how this level turned out and the 9 months I spent building it were nothing short of amazing (aside from the 1 month I spent on the sync machine...). I feel like I accomplished pretty much everything I tried to do with IWTS! I'm so endlessly blessed that this level was able to get as far as it did, and that I even got my first rate as well as the 2nd longest rated classic level in the game??? I don't even know how the hell I would explain where I am currently to 16yo me in 2023. If you really enjoyed my level, thank you so much, I'm so glad I was able to deliver such an experience. If you tried it and didn't like it, I still want to say thank you for giving my level a chance in the first place.

Earlier this week, I beat this level as my 5th extreme demon and my first of which to not be XXL or longer. I've had my eyes on this level ever since I first got to know skywalker14's art-based style through his other levels. I had loved its visual style and its approach to gameplay, but it seemed out of reach until recently I grinded it out for hours each day. Despite the amount of pressure I put on myself to finish this level in just a few days, as well as how difficult the level is, I love this level just as much after beating it.

The first thing I would like to bring up in regards to how the level exceeds is the level's name and how this level sorta plays with the player's expectations. I NEVER DREAM shares the name of the NONG it uses, I Never Dream by Against All Logic, but there's a difference: I NEVER DREAM is written in all capital letters in the level's name, which is something level creators sometimes do to their titles to make them feel more impactful. So when I saw the level was called I NEVER DREAM and it was extreme demon difficulty, I assumed the experience might be something dreary or somber. The beginning somewhat holds this up since the level starts much darker and with a more muted color palette, but at 14% the level reveals its true colors. It's very bright, beautiful, colorful, happy, and a little heavenly. This contrast from how the level appears on the outside and how it appears in the heart of the level is really enticing. The level rises higher and higher, picking up in speed as well, only to start revealing near the end the euphoric image this level originally painted was a facade. The colorful flowers become hallucinogenic rainbow plants with eyes, the background goes from a sky blue to a blur of flashing and speeding colors, all the while you're going faster than any other point in the level and the song becomes more intensely-layered with its vocal chops and edits. There's one more reprise of the blissful scene we first saw earlier in the level, then the level ends. With this all laid out, I NEVER DREAM kills three birds with one stone: the level's theme and initial presentation sets up a diversion of the player's expectations, the level also has a very strong progression despite only being 1 minute and 40 seconds long, and the final thing is that this level just looks very pretty and has great song representation.

Meanwhile, the gameplay is a special treat in its own way. I NEVER DREAM gets its difficulty from being composed entirely of unusual cube and ship timings. The level has its own gimmicks with structuring and utilizes them well to make unique gameplay without sacrificing enjoyability. Some examples that come to mind are how jump pads are used on top of flowers with corresponding colors and a trick using orbs and blue pads to make timings where you have to click after changing gravity or you can't pass the section. There could've been more uses of these mechanics had the level went on longer to expand on them more, but I NEVER DREAM still utilizes them enough for them to be a memorable aspect of the level. For the most part, the gameplay is very well-constructed, although the first 13% is easily the hardest part and it has a couple stupid jumps, it eventually gets consistent. I've only one got one main complaint: the spike/saw hitboxes can feel a bit unfair at times. While the circular rainbow flowers feel like they have fair hitboxes, it feels like the hitboxes on the smaller, 2D rainbow flowers are too large in some places in the level. The flower itself does not appear circularly, so it seems like you die despite barely touching it. Something similar goes for the leaves like those used in the beginning of the level. They sway and move around, so it's hard to properly gauge their static hitboxes just by looking at them, causing some deaths to them to feel unfair.

Despite that one issue I have with the gameplay, I NEVER DREAM is a level I would recommend in a heartbeat to anyone looking for a great easier-end extreme, proficient with extremes or not. A level of such extreme difficulty while wearing such an upbeat theme already stands out against the sea of other extremes, but I NEVER DREAM stands among the highest even in that field. And on its way, it also demonstrates everything skywalker14 is able to pull off masterfully as a builder in just a minute and forty seconds.

DISCLAIMER: I have not beaten this level yet. It's currently out of my skill range, though I've done multiple practice runs before writing this review.

When I hear that a level is a love letter to 1.9 or a celebration of 1.9, some things start to come to mind. I usually think of these types of levels as being very upbeat, colorful, fast-paced, sometimes flashy and punchy. They can end up feeling like a soaring euphoria as opposed to a completely honest representation of the time period. I'm not saying any of these levels are bad, I really like them, I'm just pointing this out because this is what comes in my head when I hear that a level is meant to celebrate 1.9.

With that said, Stressed Out is the complete opposite of this. The appreciation for 1.9 is still there, in fact it's more upfront than ever. Almost every section is a remake of a part of a 1.9 level. There are a lot of iconic ones, there's Rainbow Dust, Theory of SkriLLex, Cataclysm, Nine Circles, Bloodbath, the list is so long... but none of it feels right. They're all bent, distorted versions of all these levels it's trying to replicate. They're all stripped of their bright colors and all painted in red and grayscale. The level isn't even all that fast-paced either, it's a lot more self-contained. The level whole has this lingering anxiety and uneasiness, almost like it's... Stressed Out? (I'm so deeply sorry for this pun)

Looking at Stressed Out as just a 1.9 tribute would be a shallow reading of the level. Stressed Out is also a tribute to twenty one pilots, their fourth studio album Blurryface (of which this level uses the album cover's color scheme), as well as their most popular song of which this level uses and is named after. Stressed Out (the song) is about missing the past and wishing to experience their childhood again because of how great it seemed looking back. Stressed Out (the level) represents this really well with its usage of designs from existing 1.9 levels since these levels are a major point of nostalgia for a lot of people, me included. The quieter parts of the chorus, the only times where the level isn't trying to mimic the designs of another level, add to this feeling in the song since they feel like a whole bunch of miscellaneous doodles on a chalkboard a kid would make. The second piece of this two-way tribute has to be when this level released. Stressed Out (the level) released on April 28th, 2025. This is exactly 10 years after the release of its song on April 28th, 2015. That exact date also lands squarely in the time period of update 1.9. The execution of this tribute level, both in the level's quality itself and how many layers there are to this tribute, is absolutely genius and why this level will always stick out so strongly to me as a great 1.9 tribute.

I can't give a strong analysis of the gameplay because it's out of my skill range, but I'll touch up on it since I do have some thoughts. For the most part it seems good, and I had fun with the level during my practice runs, but the style of gameplay was really all-over-the-place, which was sorta to be expected because the design is as well, but so was the balancing. There are a bunch of parts, especially ship corridors, that felt way too easy for an extreme demon, but there were also some wack asymmetrical duals you would suddenly get thrusted into. I got a few of them down in some spots around the level and once I did that they were really satisfying to do, but I bet I would probably get a little sick of dying in these spots a lot around the level since they're easily the hardest parts. Outside of that, I really like this level and what it does! I hope I will be able to beat it someday as I love update 1.9 and it's very clear mephhh does too.

(THIS REVIEW CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS! Please experience this level on your own first before reading this review!)

...What the hell did I just play. This level is a complete mess visually with almost no polishing at all, the story borders on complete nonsense where events and places seemingly just happen at random, the level spends all 7 minutes committing fully into a joke that was dead on arrival, and it's just constant chaos the entire time...

...Which is why I'm scoring this level so highly. This is a truly unique experience I've never had before when playing GD, even after over 11 years of playing. I don't care about Ohio memes being dead at this point, this level goes all in on them to such an extent that it's one of the most creative and entertaining takes on the Ohio memes I've ever seen. cw2003 GB is known for this type of madness and batshit insane storytelling, but I feel Only In Ohio Dawg is him at his very best. Despite having a story that mostly exists outside the realm of logic, the plot is continually engaging and funny with some really good moments mixed in. For the first 5 minutes, the story restrains itself a good amount before the plot twist and the title drop once the guitar solo comes in. By the way, can I mention just how great of a choice Free Bird (or a cover of Free Bird) is as a soundtrack for this level? I don't think one of the greatest guitar solos ever recorded could've been used for anything less than a shocking betrayal that throws the player right into a bossfight against a Lovecraftian horror. The intensity of the level once the guitar solo kicks in shifts up to 11 and it makes me quite nervous playing despite this level being rather easy for an XXL+ demon. With all these factors in mind, the crude art and design choices in this level fit perfectly and any higher level of polish or quality in the visuals of this level would significantly diminish the experience.

The only reason I'm not giving this level a 10 is because of the gameplay. While it plays decently well for most of the level, there are some chokepoints and blind jumps/transitions that bring down the experience some. To give an example, I died in Downtown Cleveland (the final part before the guitar solo) around 10 times total but only died after it 3 times. The Cleveland City Limits have a couple blind jumps and one of my bossfight deaths was when teleporting into a ship transition and not being able to react in time. Outside of these issues I have with the level, I would strongly recommend this to anyone looking for another XXL+ demon to play or a level with a strong story. It's not too difficult either, I would place this at around a similar difficulty as Lonely travel.

So this is a level that I never knew about until around a month and a half ago where this level was the center of some discourse on this site and its Discord server. I decided to give it a shot, and this level absolutely blew me away. It's unlike anything I've ever seen in this game before and I don't think I'll see anything similar to this level again for a long time. (Also, I'm the verifier now LOL)

I love how, not even a second in, made in timeland immediately throws the player a curveball. The level first appears as a 1.0-styled level with some text regarding NONG and also a message of good luck, kinda similar to something like Larga Espera, a level of similar length. As you do the first jump, the level switches out on you. With a crack of thunder, the level all around you disappears into black and the real level starts. The gameplay for the next two minutes consists of simple one-spike jumps in the mini cube gamemode that happen at a consistent 60BPM lining up with the beat of the song. This repetitive, simple gameplay may be a turn-off for a lot of players, and it did get boring to sit through every attempt, but it's not what I like about the part. Instead, it's the background of the level. There are these pillars of odd shapes that extend higher than the player can see, the constellations and stars seeming projected onto the sky, the bright, dream-like colors on almost every part of the level - it's a really beautiful overture to the rest of the level. The main thing here that makes this part of the level (and also the rest of the level but this is a good example) stick out to me so much is the sense of scale. The massive size of the objects in the background that the player slowly passes makes the space in the level feel absolutely colossal and the player feels tiny by comparison.

After this loud, vast, and imposing overture, the level gets darker and picks up the pace a bit more. It's at this point the level starts to get all crazy with shader usage. This is the next thing I really like about this level: how the intense shader usage works with the gargantuan atmospheres this level builds. The best example is at 19% - the extremely saturated colors combined with the color/hue inversions, the chromatic glitching, the screen splitting, and the acid-techno beat Timeland starts to go into... man, this level feels like being on a dangerous alien planet while high on acid. There's so many huge structures that seem completely foreign but at the same time every element in the level seems fitting exactly where it is yet it all feels like a dream but you're feeling so dazed and fucked up you gotta keep running... this is why I'm doubtful I'll ever experience a level like made in timeland again. There's just so much that goes into the design of this level that makes it completely unique and impactful that I don't think anyone will be able to replicate. I'd love be proven wrong, but there is just so much this level is doing that any attempt to replicate the magic of this level will very likely fall flat when the level misses one or multiple of the elements I've described.

Another part of the level I really like is how the level slows down around halfway through. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the dual and the robot that come before this part for the same reasons I outlined in the previous paragraph, but this switch-up in particular sticks out to me. There are these houses made of desert stone and platforms of grass seemingly held up by sticks. It's in an odd space between something earthly and something that isn't, it has enough of the characteristics like a desert village yet enough things are off with it, like the sense of scale and the colors, that it still seems decently alien. The song is also going through this childlike, homely passage that further makes the part feel strange. After a really cool transition to black, next up are the "canyons" as I call them, which continue the same feelings as the last part of being between familiar and foreign. Yeah, the lips are pretty cool, but the part that piques my interest more is the second half with the ship part. This part feels a lot more claustrophobic than previous parts in the level, yet this massive sense of scale is still here and just as potent. The background in this part of the level is absolutely amazing, there's so many layers to it and it feels like a bit of a recap of everything we have seen before. Even though it is a rather slow part, it still feels anxious, urgent, and psychedelic just like most of the parts before it. It seems like everything is closing in on the player up until a fade to white. After this, we get a reprise of the beginning of the level. It's got a lot of the similar feels and designs as the first part of the level, yet there's this added calm and comfort because the level is soaked in a golden fog and the song has some near-angelic vocalizing. It's a great calm before the final part.

Oh man, this final part is something else. This ending is a huge tone shift, a big burst of intensity, and formerly the part of the level that brought made in timeland from being hard demon difficulty to an extreme demon that could've been top 300 worthy. In a lot of ways, it's comparable to the last 10% of Eon, another extremely long level that has a massive difficulty spike and tone shift at its ending. made in timeland is able to pull off a similar effect in less than a third of the length of Eon, yet the amount of difficulty this final part of the level adds to the whole makes Eon look like a kid's meal by comparison. I've got mixed feelings about this ending, but I'll start with what I like first. As an ending, it's really powerful with how fast you are going, how intense the shader usage gets near the end, but the best addition is the timer until the level ends. It's a nod to the level's song's music video, which revolves around a 15-minute timer until the song ends. However, made in timeland only uses this timer for the very end, and this makes it feel a lot more meaningful. While you'll always go at the same speed through the level since it's a classic GD level, the timer makes it feel like you're running out of time to beat the level, adding to the amount of the stress this part induces. What I don't like about this part is its gameplay, both pre-nerf and post-nerf. Before it was nerfed, this part was obscenely difficult and would take me hundreds of attempts in practice runs all the while the shader usage makes the gameplay in this part almost impossible to see and it seems like you're just blindly jumping for a minute straight. I've spoken with robtobfreak about this level some, and he told me this level wasn't really meant to be played by humans. While this player-unfriendliness can be seen in some parts before this (like the ship with the floating cubes), the ending is where this is the most glaring. There was a "noclip" mode for this part that the player could activate previously, but the level would still be impossible due to spikes that still kill the player. To fix this, robtobfreak scrapped the noclip mode altogether as well as the coins at the end the player could get from doing it legit (no one was ever getting these anyways) and just made the part automatic. Instead of physically going through the part, though, the auto would just make the player float through everything in the ending of the level and while it makes the level possible and potentially able to get rated, it kills a lot of the tension this level had before it and now it seems like just a cool short film the player sees after they get through the rest of the level before this.

Before I end this review, I want to talk about some more of the gameplay seen in the rest of the level that I'm not entirely satisfied with. As you could probably tell just by watching a video of this level, made in timeland is severely unbalanced. There's the stretches of the level I've outlined previously where you're just doing basic jumps to the beat of the song, and there's also long stretches of automatic parts in the level, but there's also some actually difficult parts randomly tossed in. My least favorite is easily the fast-paced ship at 37%. While there is a lot of open space for the player to fly around and no ground/ceiling spikes, the main hazards in this part are these cubes that float around that are really hard to predict the movement of. There are multiple instances where it seems like you could be able to get through a gap between two cubes, but as it turns out you're crushed instead. It's deceptively learny, and a lot of my deaths were at this part because I made the mistake of trying to go into a gap I didn't know would close in on me. The part goes on for a while and I couldn't remember every single cube movement, so I kinda had to trust my instincts during this ship and sometimes they would fail on me. Another less severe chokepoint would be the desert village part I talked about earlier. Especially during the UFO part, the hitboxes of the structures are a bit ambiguous and I had a lot of unexpected deaths at this part. I was able to get it down eventually, though. Outside of these two parts, the level felt too easy by comparison and I started to get bored as I was trying to beat this level.

Despite everything, would I recommend this level? Yes, but not to everyone. This is the type of XXL+ level where you need to really be into this level and how it goes if you want to come out of this level having enjoyed it. If you try beating it for the sake of beating it or because it's really long, you'll probably hate this. Other than that, please go show this level some more love as it's an underrated gem! I'd say it's a hard demon a little below Larga Espera in difficulty, nothing a skilled player with a decent amount of endurance would struggle with.

I don't remember who told me this first, but "devin's levels always feel like walking into a sketchbook" is a comparison I've always thought of when approaching devin levels. When I repeat this saying, I usually mean it in a less-than-good way. devin's levels are unparalleled creativity and artisticness few creators have, but it's to an extent where I end up not liking a lot of his levels because they're doing so much that they end up unfocused and incohesive. While there are times where devin is able to use this to his advantage, like in his self-titled level being a great representation of everything that makes devin so special, this also causes most of his levels to fall somewhat flat to me, namely world war and man man.

While devin's other levels can be like the metaphorical sketchbooks I just described, alika feels like walking into a sketchbook in the most literal sense. It looks and feels like one more than any other level of his. The even weirder thing is, despite this quality being the most obvious here, this is somehow also one of his most cohesive and focused projects he has released. He was able to play to what makes his style so recognizable amazingly and in an organized manner while also in a presentation none of his other levels really have.

It's easy to see the Zylenox inspiration felt throughout devin's levelography, but this inspiration is usually taken from Zylenox's Triple Six and onwards levels that are much more art-focused. In alika, however, devin is mainly looking towards Zylenox's pre-Triple Six works, back when Zylenox was mainly known for his factory style like in Annihilation Nation, as well as general influences from vintage core creators with a near-complete reliance on standard blocks the complete absence of a custom background and resorting to that one 1.9 background (this doesn't cause the level doesn't feel empty, though, because of this level's dense structuring). Despite this, the elements of devin's art-based style are still very present in this level, as alika is filled to the brim with animated factory machinery. They're crude and unpolished, but they're well-made and feel alive, just like how devin does it. It's a robotic factory of doohickeys that serve no proper purpose (if only there was a corporation that specialized in this stuff!), yet it all feels lively and sensical. All of these factors combine into a product which has its inspirations worn on its sleeves, while still maintaining that unique devin feel in the best way possible. I love it.

(Take this final part of the review regarding the gameplay with a grain of salt, while I have beaten this level, I fluked it from 58% somehow.)
If it wasn't for the visuals, the gameplay was also usually a dealbreaker for me with devin's levels. For one reason or another, I have not found a lot of his other levels very fun. alika is an exception. The structures are clearly defined and I never felt my deaths were unfair, the mechanics are simple, easy to get down, and see some good mileage in this level, and the coin placements were simple but satisfying to collect. I also really liked how this level was paced. Despite metea11's Troubles being an accelerando song, alika does a great job breaking things up with slower moments while still matching the energy of the song with the way the machinery moves. The level never feels boring or uncomfortable to play. There are some chokepoints I am not fond of, like the first wave, and some parts with dead ends you can mistakenly enter and not be able to anticipate due to how much is going on, but other than that I had a blast trying to beat this level and I would highly recommend it if you have insane demon skill level and are able to put up with longer levels.

I've spent 2025 going through skywalker's levelography and he has quickly become one of my favorite level creators. He builds with whatever songs he really cares a lot about and he puts a lot of care into having great song representation while still ensuring his levels play well. All of his levels feel unique and I can always point out many things I like with any given level of his.

With all of these things in mind, THE LIMIT is a top 3 of his in my opinion. It's an XXL level that uses most of DARKSIDE's "The Limit." This is a song I would normally consider unsuitable for a GD level because while it does have some coherent structures and passages, there are also plenty of free-form, chaotic moments that would be difficult to properly capture in the same level while ensuring the product still plays well and is decently paced. Despite this, THE LIMIT plays the hand it is dealt with its song and hits a home run.

THE LIMIT goes through many different landscapes that are in skywalker's traditional art style, but they still feel like they belong exclusively to THE LIMIT because of how there's always something off with them. It matches their parts of the song - normal, but slightly off. Sometimes the colors pulse the wrong hues, sometimes a location just feels too empty or doesn't make much logical sense, and sometimes you can see some of the white void.

This empty, white space is a integral part to giving this level its identity. This emptiness contrasts very sharply with more muted colors of the "normal" parts of the level and is used strategically. You start in this medieval corridor, rise some, and see some empty white space at the top and to your right. It looks kinda weird, but then you enter the void, assets load/unload in sync with the percussion, and you get a title drop. Great way to start the level. The medieval town scene after that glitches out some near the end, but then the level gets into its "normal." THE LIMIT rests on this "normal" for long enough that you dismiss what you saw at the beginning.

At 52%, the cave you are in glitches out completely and you fall to the ground of the level. There's blood dripping from above pooling onto the ground. Gray hands are reaching up out of the ground. Disgusting blood cell things start manifesting in the sky. It isn't quite devin territory, but it's still one of the most grisly parts in any skywalker level and it is an unnerving sight after getting used to the first half of the level. After this strange moment, THE LIMIT sends you back in the sky and tries to return you to a "normal," but you can't overlook what you just saw.

The snowy church field is THE LIMIT's last attempt and being able to seem normal. The structuring and some of the background is right, but the scene is too empty and you can clearly see the pitch black ground. Gameplay stops after 82%. One of the custom background layers just cuts off. The level keeps getting darker. Was the level supposed to end here? What happened? Then, you're abruptly thrown into the real ending. It's the same grisly scene you saw earlier, but expanded into a full section of the level. The blocks are white on a white background, you can only see them because they're smeared in dripping blood. The section is very bright and hard to see, and it keeps getting brighter until the level ends. It's a great ending, I haven't seen anything like it, but I'm not a fan of how it plays. I haven't talked about the gameplay yet because for the most part I have zero complaints. It plays well, it's sightreadable, enough said there. This final section of the level is normal speed, normal-size cube, and these 1x1 blocks are the only structures. Because of how hard it is see with how bright it is, as well as the amount of blind jumps and jumps that you need to time properly, this part of the level is a major choke point, even after it got nerfed. Other than this section near the end, I have no other problems and it is a great way to end the level.

THE LIMIT is one of skywalker's longer levels, but if you have at least medium demon skill and are able to put up with the choke point ending, I would recommend giving this level a shot. It's a fun and unique experience all-around.

I love this level.

Before 2.0, most auto levels focused on moving the player around in interesting ways. After 2.0, most auto levels became more like mini movies instead where the player never moves and the creator focuses on cool trigger usage instead. So, it's very exciting to see a traditional type of auto level created and released in 2021, and spinchland absolutely delivers.

spinchland is set entirely in the cube gamemode, there are no spikes, and pads and portals see very little usage in this level. The way the player is moving around in the level that keeps it fresh and exciting throughout is with slopes. The level is overall a calm experience, but there are moments where the player will go very fast into a ramp and experience a lot of air time. It never feels out of place with the level as you're constantly changing speeds, but it's never done in a way that feels unnatural whenever there's a speed switch. It all works to match the calm but slightly energetic feel of the song. The one thing I don't really like is how off-putting it is to see pads/portal pulses when a player hits them since they stand out uncomfortably against this level's style.

The visuals are amazing and also represent the song very well. Sunlit Thunderscapes by OcularNebula is a chill, upbeat, and simplistic song, so spinchland honors all of these things with its gameplay I laid out earlier accompanied with these white-on-black modernistic designs of different places, locations, and concepts. All the designs look good, they're well-made, and they're happy. The level is able to capture changes in the song really well too, one of my favorite parts being when the level switches to white-on-black after the first drop then switches back to black-on-white some time later.

With all these things, spinchland has a great atmosphere throughout its runtime and I really recommend checking it out if you haven't already. Enough said.

(Disclaimer: I have not beaten this level, nor do I have plans to. Every End is a level that is way too far out of my skill range. While I will be talking about the gameplay of Every End, take everything I say about it with a grain of salt as I have only done two practice runs. I would omit having an overall ranking and just rank visuals, but I can't so I set them both to be equal.)

Of all of the megacollab hosts in Geometry Dash, MindCap is my favorite. Lately, the projects he has organized and released are all unique in some way and it seems like he organizes these level projects to give something of substance to the GD community and overall just make it a better place. Every End is no exception, and I would even say that it best exemplifies this aspect of MindCap's works the best. It's his most unique project yet, and one of the most unique top 10 demons we have had in a long time.

MindCap's goal with Every End is to have a top 10 extreme demon that is very accessible. You do not have to be proficient in the current top 10's meta of inhuman wave skill, spam control, and fixed hitboxes. Every End achieves its goal in a very simple way: throughout its entire runtime, Every End's gameplay consists of only the cube gamemode and 1.0 blocks and spikes. This brutal simplism kept up for 7 minutes straight creates an end product where you are able to do parts of the level in segments, but stringing it all together into one legitimate 0-100% run is a true test of endurance, nerve control, and understanding of the cube's physics and the game's hitboxes. Every End even does one more thing better: it alters its hitboxes to be even more fair and lenient. Almost every hitbox is normal in Every End, but on certain jumps that require you be on the very edge of platforms or other times when you get really close to spikes, the hitboxes are adjusted to make the jump not nearly as outrageously difficult as it would be otherwise. I was able to find moments like these everywhere in the level when doing practice runs with "show hitboxes on death" enabled in MHv8.

I also love the visual style of this level a lot. Every part is similar - they all use the same palette of objects, they're just constantly rearranged in unique ways, and the result is a lot of clever block designs and structuring that comes from these limitations. This level does something else to stay fresh throughout. The default background with the squares opens up to reveal layers behind it in the distance that have what would next in the level scrolling left and right through the layers until you've finally reached them. Something about it makes the level feel much more powerful, aside from just being atmospheric.

When playing and watching Every End, I was always thinking about The Impossible Game. Every End felt less like a level from the earliest 1.0 days of Geometry Dash, but rather a love letter to The Impossible Game. I played through TIG a few months ago. I didn't really like it. The physics was super inconsistent and clunky, my game crashed when trying to go for the 500 attempts achievement, and the TIG editor is so archaic and limiting you could've told me it was meant to be user-unfriendly and I would believe you. Yet despite these drawbacks, I was still very charmed by TIG. It was very simple with just blocks and spikes. The game is soundtracked with 2000's trance-techno EDM freshly sourced from Newgrounds. It had some unreasonably difficult levels with timings and blind jumps, yet it still welcomed the player with open arms to attempt the game's challenges. Every End acknowledges these similarities, the ground spikes in the final part of the level have been flipped upside down to appear as just a line of black glow, like the ground spikes in The Impossible Game. It's at this point the song and the level shift tone from its trance-techno sound into a solemn, organ-like synth passage as the level goes dark and the level's background closes up and seals itself. It almost feels like a memorial to something. The End of something. Every End of something. If we all still played The Impossible Game, what would the final level look like? The hardest level ever humanly conquered? It would perhaps look something like this. It's this something that truly elevates the level far beyond just being a 1.0-inspired or TIG-inspired marathon extreme demon. This is the level, these are the blocks, and these are the spikes at the human skill ceiling of The Impossible Game. In Every reality where we still played The Impossible Game, this is what the End would look like.

Or I'm just looking into this way too much. One or the other. These are my two cents anyways. Thank you to Omar Mind Cap for hosting this level.

For almost 5 years, I was wrong about this level.

When Future Funk released in 2018, I was 11 years old at the time. I loved the level immediately and knew I wanted to beat it someday. However, if you asked me why I liked it so much then, I probably would've struggled to explain.

Fast forward to some point in early 2020, I am 13 years old and I have approximately 2-4 hard demons under my belt, and I decide to finally go for it. Initially I was loving it, but then my feelings immediately went sour. I struggled with the level heavily, the most frustrating choke points for me included the Clutterfunk mini cube part from 25-29%, the first High Life part from 40-51%, the infamous asymmetrical from 62-70%, and the final stretch from 90-100%. I considered any attempt that reached the first High Life part a good run, and the dual in particular was the bane of my existence. Eventually, on June 28, 2020, I conquered Future Funk after 2 99% fails, and it was my new hardest as well as when I hit 5000 stars. It was a big moment for me, not just as an accomplishment for me as a player, but it also planted the seeds for the cynical outlook I have now regarding contemporary hits in GD. Future Funk was when I learned that just because a level looks amazing, it doesn't mean it plays well. In fact, sometimes the level can play quite poorly because more priority is put on the visuals over the gameplay. Future Funk was one of the most beautiful levels in the game, but at what cost? I never got to really see its beauty too much when grinding it because the level would lag on my laptop and I had to use LDM. This mindset I have now with a much stronger emphasis on gameplay and less focus on having the level that caters to the most people as possible has helped me understand my own tastes a lot more, but I had always regarded Future Funk as a 3/10 level ever since I beat it.

Fast forward again to March 14, 2025 (two weeks ago as of me writing this), I am 18 years old. I don't entirely remember what led up to me deciding to do another practice run, but I decided to replay Future Funk. This was the most odd I had ever felt replaying a level I played a lot years prior. Since 2021, I have had a much stronger gaming PC so I was able to run the level in full detail and see the level in all its beauty, and it all holds up really well exactly 7 years later. I also experienced something even stranger: I was having a lot of fun with this level. Maybe it's just that I am far more skilled player now than I was in 2020, but I really enjoyed my practice run and every part of the level felt good to play. I even somehow managed to retain my dual muscle memory (while this may have a played a part in me enjoying the level more, I am better equipped for learning asymmetrical duals now and I doubt I would have taken long to learn it if I had to do it from scratch). I decided that I will rebeat the level now just to make sure I wasn't losing my marbles during that practice run, and I'll even collect the first coin this time to assert dominance over 2020 me who didn't collect any of the coins. Yesterday, I rebeat it after a lucky fluke from 69% (but with 5 dual deaths) to confirm that I was not, in fact, losing my marbles. That's when I knew for certain I had spent the past almost 5 years being wrong about how I felt about the level.

The simplest way I can put how this level feels is this: this level is the spiritual successor to High Life. Yes, High Life is a primary inspiration for Future Funk alongside Clutterfunk, both of which are inspirations that Future Funk wears proudly on its sleeves, but that's not exactly what I mean. High Life has a very specific charm to it being a relic of its time (1.9-2.0 fusion cuisine from 2015) which makes the level's euphoria all the more powerful. Future Funk is the exact same way, but with update 2.1 in 2018. Both levels are so infectiously euphoric and powerful that viewing only them and the context of them being from their specific points in time would be looking at those eras of the game through rose-tinted glasses. Not only were 2015 and 2018 times when the GD community was very toxic, very few levels felt as powerful and happy as Future Funk and High Life, and most levels from 2018 certainly don't hold up as well as Future Funk.

While at a glance it may seem like Clutterfunk and High Life has equal amounts of influence in Future Funk alongside original parts (which are able to stand on their own two legs), the High Life inspiration is a lot more felt throughout this entire level than the Clutterfunk inspiration. Clutterfunk is a lot more of a foundation as it is automatically iconic being the 11th main level, and the main level best tailored to something like Future Funk, being the funkiest main level. When the High Life-inspired parts first start appearing at 40%, Future Funk is able to make its own creative parts off of the designs and sections of High Life in a way that is to perfectly recapture the original level's euphoria while in a completely new context and song. There are parts in the second half that are completely original, but because of how well they are made alongside the High Life-inspired parts, as well as how the completely original stuff and High Life inspiration is mixed in, they legitimately feel like revamps of parts of High Life that never existed. Future Funk would feel incomplete if it relied entirely on being a Clutterfunk remake, but it would not feel nearly as incomplete if it was entirely a High Life remake.

I don't have as much to talk about on the gameplay as I do the visuals and the elements surrounding Future Funk but I'll touch up on it briefly. It's amazing. Yes, there are choke points, like the ones I outlined earlier when talking about me playing the level in 2020, but revisiting the level has made me feel these choke points aren't as bad as I thought. The level's progression is stellar as it is more relaxed for the first half, existing mostly at normal speed or 2x speed, but as the level winds down then up into the dual, the nerves start to kick in. After the dual, the level slows down again, but you need to maintain your nerves. The level then works back up into a final high, which the song pairs with the last 10%. It settles on that high for a bit but then winds back down at 96% as every element of the song goes away leaving only the percussion as you repeat the same easy jump. Then you're hit with the 99% orbs, which has to be the most infamous 99% part in any level, and what influenced a lot more 99% choke points to come. You will die here if you can't control your nerves or if you just don't know the timings. Even if you do know how to do 99% well, it's still looming over your head the whole time you are playing the level. Everything I just mentioned works so well. Near the end there are more parts which do not take inspiration from Clutterfunk nor High Life, but they are able to properly stand on their own and be memorable because of how the level progresses and builds up. It's one of the best level endings in GD.

Despite my newly found appreciation for all aspects of this level, I would still not recommend it to players as one of their first hard demons. While it may be longer with its raw difficulty almost never being exactly at hard demon, it still has choke points which can mess up players like 13-year-old me who didn't know how to prepare for them. Otherwise, I would recommend giving this level a shot or a revisit since it's still a good challenge and just a fantastic level all-around.