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-/100
DIFFICULTY
0/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
-/10
GAMEPLAY

You're probably familiar with "im god" by wless, a simple, beautiful level with a unique approach to structuring and song representation. It's also, notably, a level that means a lot to me personally because of the major influence it had on my tastes when it released. Well, akinawoo wasn't a fan. What he saw was a lazy, uninspired level constructed from little more than a few lines and pieces of glow. So, in his infinite brilliance, he decided to create a grey level constructed from little more than a few lines and pieces of glow, without any of the cool stuff, and name it "im god" to mock the perceived laziness of the original. Unfortunately, being a tasteless, petty freak kind of warps your perception, and this level is little more than intensely boring and frustrating--it basically serves as fodder for similarly uncritical people to claim "still better than the original" in the comments and believe claims like "this level isn't even directed at wless" while also stuffing hay into several strawmen of wless. It's basically everything that destroys my faith in considering this game to be a medium for art, because there are so many cynical and spiteful people out there that make levels that seem to despise the idea of art.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
7/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
9/10
GAMEPLAY

It's clear to see that the era of top player/creator hybrids is pretty well long gone, so seeing this level was an incredible breath of fresh air. I'm already a big fan of Zeronium's levels Crystal and Persistence for their gameplay, which is just some plainly well executed sync-based stuff but incredibly enjoyable nonetheless. This level doesn't stray too far from those in terms in gameplay besides from being much, MUCH higher CPS, basically making it more enjoyable by default for me (as clicking faster is automatically more fun, obv...), but the decoration is such an insane upgrade in terms of vibrancy and creativity. More than anything, this level is a testament to the real fun that people have with this genuinely good game, because it's easy to forget sometimes that both playing and creating are fleshed out parts of this community and the people who really deserve recognition are well versed in both. I don't know, it just makes me really happy to see this level and I had a really great time playing it.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
1/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
4/10
GAMEPLAY

dude why does the -inator work that shit would NEVER happen in the show

-/100
DIFFICULTY
7/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
-/10
GAMEPLAY

I think I'm jealous of this level for expressing more passion in 3 minutes than I have in my entire life. After a life spent searching aimlessly for normalcy, seeing someone express everything I repress and so much more hurts in a lot of ways--I don't relate to most of this level, but I relate to the internal drive to be seen and understood as I imagine everyone does. I know it's hard to move past towards any initial revulsion towards this level but I really think there's something beautifully human at the core here that demands respect from me.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
6/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
9/10
GAMEPLAY

I'm not entirely sure where the myth that the "majority" of this level is constructed from assets ripped directly from Celeste originates from, cause that's firstly: cynical in a way no one really appreciates, and secondly: unobservant in a way that makes the 0s here look pretty silly. Notably, everything in this level was built by hand with no img2gd or pixel art converter to speak of, and only a handful of the parts even directly recreate assets anyways. I oppose plagiarism even more than the next person, but blind hatred for inspiration and disregard for the creator's intentions doesn't sit right with me. I see this level, more than anything, as a very flawed love letter to Celeste, not something that defiles or plagiarizes the game. I'd like to highlight both the chapters 1, 4 and 8 parts especially for capturing the feeling of the levels with original designs.

My primary issue with the level lies in the pacing of the decoration parts. It rushes through chapters 1-6 (hanging on 5 for a slight bit longer) to reach Summit for the drop, then spends the majority of the drop in Summit before tagging on Core to the drop and treating Farewell as little more than a footnote. I think it would have been so much better to push forward both Core and Farewell, so that Summit didn't take up the entire first part of the drop and so Farewell could start where Core was placed initially to make it the climax of the level and treat it with the respect it deserves. Now, as it stands, most of my appreciation for this level comes from the experience of beating it; it utilizes the progression of Celeste to emulate the feeling you get when climbing through the game, with an extended predrop (the bane of many) preceding the airy rush of Summit. Beyond Summit, the experience of the level entirely rests on the gameplay rather than the decoration, which Is pretty unfortunate, because the dual is one of my favorite gameplay parts in any extreme demon.

If I took this level entirely at face value, I could easily consider it great, but I empathize with a lot of the frustrations expressed by other people here about game recreations in general and of course my own issues with the structure of the decoration. Plus, I have to recognize my own bias in favor of the level not only as someone who had an incredible experience beating it but also as someone who was following it as it was being built, and reluctantly reduce my score to match the feelings of my critical eye.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
10/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
10/10
GAMEPLAY

I've played through this level probably over 100 times and I can still manage to find new details. Endlessly imaginative, explorable, and filled with enough stunning designs to build 10 of your favorite levels.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
1/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
-/10
GAMEPLAY

Long have I championed against the immediate boost in praise towards longer levels that results from both the inherent increased amount of effort that it takes to build one and the natural circuitous feeling of playing such an odyssey. I understand why long levels are so revered, and I don't intend to cast a shadow on that reverence; rather, I hope to convey why I feel this level fails in all aspects beyond its conception.

I say beyond its conception because I really do find the idea of an unconventionally long level interesting as a player--I really enjoy playing extreme demons around the 4+ minute range, so seeing someone actualize the logical extreme of playability excited me greatly. However, if you know anything about the editor, you know it is absolutely not built to support something of this scale. The vanilla x-length of the editor can only support about 20 minutes at the slowest speed, requiring exploits or mods to pass this barrier, upon which you encounter the second issue of floating point errors and sync drift that renders building even more finicky and tedious than it already can be.

But I don't feel that the faults of this level really lie in the limitations of the engine, because it would be totally unfair to the creator to judge it based on such. Really, the merit (or lack thereof) of this level lies in the absolutely careless manner it was built. The decoration strikes an uncanny balancing point barely above the extremely minimal; it feels like it is fighting against the constraints of its length rather than embracing them. In the face of the perfect opportunity to create intrigue through color and shape, Renn turns away and chooses shaders and gradients. I'm trying my best here to be civil, but the insistence to entirely neglect two of the most critical artistic elements is absolutely repulsive to me. Because this level isn't interesting in color or shape, and because shaders aren't actually interesting decoration, this level must make up for this total vapid image through its gameplay, right?

In reality, the gameplay is somehow more detestable than the decoration, and I don't really mean in terms of playability here. In fact, this level plays perfectly fine, and nothing beyond exactly because the gameplay never aspires to do more than fill time and space. The vast majority of this level is entirely filler--open sections of ship and basic cube jumps become Renn's crutch for lack of ideas and effort--and when it isn't filler, it's some half-hearted attempt at music sync that, due to being mindlessly pasted across the level, drifts constantly from the tempo of the song and makes me question why Renn would even attempt sync based gameplay at all. I am continuously baffled that throughout the entire 55 minutes of this level not a single interesting gameplay or structuring idea is presented at all.

And yet, people seem to be thrilled, or at least mildly benevolent towards its existence. Even if coerced into emotion by the length or song, the content of the level is so bland and unenthralling that even a blank screen might be preferable, or at least much less frustrating.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
1/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
0/10
GAMEPLAY

A solid contender for the worst concept for a level--the game Osu, which is already insanely flawed when it comes to user-made maps since rhythm gamers don't really understand rhythm, but recreated inside of Geometry Dash, a game that notably cannot maintain music sync due to bugs with song triggers, sync drift due to lag, and a basically nonexistent calibration system that guarantees every user has a different offset. In my eyes, this makes for a horrible game recreated horribly.

This only adds to the frustration that a lot of people experience towards "tech demo" levels that are made basically just for the sake of proving they can be made. No one wants to play DOOM on a calculator, so why would Robtop incentivize people to play this artless exercise in trigger work? This level is nothing but a drop in the watering can that feeds my disdain for equating impressive things with good things.

-/100
DIFFICULTY
5/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
-/10
GAMEPLAY

what if I rated it... on HyperBolus??

-/100
DIFFICULTY
8/10
OVERALL
-/10
VISUALS
-/10
GAMEPLAY

On nostalgia

I think it's safe to say that people have a complicated relationship with the past; we look back on memories fondly but revolt at media that exploits the feeling.

Next Yesterday is a level rooted entirely in nostalgia not for a better era of creating, but for a uniquely beautiful one. The level is mostly a montage of original parts made in the image of other creators, and while some of these parts have changed over the years through several major updates to the level, the love for these creators has not dissipated in the slightest.

Really, all of the emotion in this level comes from nostalgia, which a critical eye might be wary of. What makes it work for me is the execution; ilrell is an outstanding creator, technically speaking likely one of the best out there, and has such depth of knowledge in the field that every idea lands. It's not perfect, but for the concept I don't know if it could have been done much better (though I'm not a fan of a lot of the superslowed parts that were always a nuisance in 2.0). The wash of green over the whole level accentuates the nostalgic qualities for me--it reminds you that this isn't really a 2.0 megacollab, it's an idealized memory of one. When have you ever actually seen a cohesive 2.0 collab haha

I think nostalgia is too often decried as an artistic tool. Evoking the ethereal nature of a memory is no easy task, at least effectively. ilrell would go on to make more levels like this, but none of them ever quite matched the magic of the original to me.

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sorry about this gang