Rating Curve

While not all that original or interesting, Ikaros still has consistent decoration quality between parts. Not really a whole much I can say about the decoration however, since I’d much rather talk about the gameplay.

Ikaros could be fun; playing each part individually is pretty awesome. The predrop is incredibly boring due to it carrying a good chunk of the level’s hard parts, but it would be tolerable if the level just wasn’t as long as it is. The drop is very consistent as long as you get past the first part of it, which isn’t bad but simply just harder than the other parts. The quality of the gameplay tanks heavily after 60% though, so I just really wish it ended after the drop. It’s littered with bugs or jumps requiring very weird precision to set up such as: the slope jump at 64% being stupidly tight and probably the hardest click in the level, the ufo at 73% sometimes just launching you into the ceiling if you don’t hug the spikes at the bottom, the jump after the blue pad at 77% just breaking if you don’t approach the previous orbs with a very weird setup that isn’t even fully consistent, and the wave at 88% being a little weirdly structured makes it extremely choke-able especially when you’re over 3 minutes into the level.

As I said, Ikaros COULD be a good level, but the inconsistencies in the current version just bring this level down a lot for me. I hope in particular something in the future happens to the 64% slope jump, since that just feels ridiculous to play. Since 0%-60% is (somewhat) fun, I won’t give it a horrible gameplay score though.

A little bit of a mess overall, but the gameplay is oddly fun!

Not sure exactly how I feel about the 2.0 fire inserted randomly but the rest of the level’s decoration is fine for its time, maybe a little uninspired and boring though.

I expected this to play quite poorly since everyone always bashes on this but it’s actually really consistent for some reason! I was able to get to the wave quite a bit and the wave itself wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. My experience overall kinda reminded me of Windy Landscape, another level I liked playing (though that level isn’t really unbalanced just consistent). Unbalanced levels are just cool too and we need to stop shaming them. Wish this had more interesting decoration but it’s somewhat excused due to when it was made.

No Time is a level I made on the fly after listening to a random newgrounds song, making a layout, and just randomly deciding to decorate it with no plan. In most cases, going into the creating process with no vision in mind is a horrible idea, but I did manage to somewhat pull it off with No Time. Gradually ideas came and went as I spent a year on it, and I got it to a state where I felt I had put enough work into it for the visual quality to be consistent. I ended up trying to attach a much larger idea to No Time solely through the description on my video, which I’ve come to dislike. I claimed this level was a “scrapbook of ideas” when in reality No Time very much panders towards scrapping ideas for the sake of standards. No Time is alright if you look at it on the surface, but when you look deeper into it you essentially realize it has no depth at all and is scrambling to pretend it has any. Some technical aspects of it are a bit impressive, such as the notebook credits at the end, but there’s still much to improve upon. At least the transitions are quite nice actually. I’m somewhat proud of this… but also not.

The gameplay is where a lot of the main issues occur, since the layout I decorated was entirely off-sync to begin with. Many people have complained about teleportal spam and the level feeling janky, though I can’t fix this since I’ve played No Time so much that I’m genuinely just too consistent at it. To me it’s extremely fun, but it seems like that isn’t the case to others. Whatever the case No Time is something that just needs to be left in the past.