Rating Curve

i dunno... i care about some "directly copied assets" ...

It took me 6 years to remember the reason why I named them Fat Alien and Little Alien in the first place. I found out tonight that it is because I was referencing the FUCKING Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?!??!!

Angela was a level I created over the span of 2018 to celebrate the birthday of my Mother. It was titled after her first name if that wasn't obvious already.

This is obviously a very shitty little clone of Dark Travel, but I still think it holds some emotional weight. If I am being real for a second, this level is probably one of the most traumatizing parts of my childhood and for good reason. I think it was the first time I ever realized the reality of my mother's situation.
She was extremely mentally ill and completely out of it most the time. Her bipolar disorder that's almost schizophrenic-like wasn't really something I connected as abnormal in my young adolescent head. I remember she would talk to those voices in her head at almost argument level volume and I'd excuse it as just how all mothers are. As I grew up, I started noticing myself pick up on her mannerisms as well and that damn concerns me quite a bit. What if I can never think like I used to again? Is she still aware of things? I don't truly know.

She retired from all work entirely to be a stay-at-home Mom, even though she and my Dad are divorced by now, living separately since like 2017. Around the same time, I wouldn't see my Dad for maybe weeks so it would just be all her. I'd like to credit the way I am mentally, physically, and socially to how my Mom raised me. Both my sister and I never had much people to talk with in our family so we suffered those consequences real hard. Very mentally ill, AUTISTIC children. You could very much see some semblance of that in the work I do in my GD levels, or just other art in general.

But like I think overall this level is traumatizing and fucking hard to go through for me. I don't care if it's a shitty copy of Dark Travel or Dark Odyssey because I think it holds more merit than both of those levels combined, at least for me. I just think it is super funny that Angela by Zeptrus, verified by fucking Tuomaster, was remembered in the big ol' giant year of 2025. I feel like choosing Tuomaster as the verifier in retrospect was me trying to garner some acceptance from him and his little friend group back then, because they were insanely critical to my work at the time. It sort of worked because he gave the decoration an 8/10 in his original review.

but cool and whaetever good night everybody mwa

This could've been such a cool level, but then you read the text and it completely takes you out of it. The concept of piecing together old levels is super nice, but it kind of loses me after that moment.

I'm tired, man. I dunno. It's just a level, i guess. I mean cool, but I think levels that overuse the 2.2 features like this one are just not built to age well in the future. And like, I'm fine with that as I think we need a pretty ugly period of creating before we're able to use these tools for something cool, but MAN, this reminds me of how rough these first few years will be.