Rating Curve

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.

Mainly like this for its gameplay. Super satisfying level for its difficulty as long as you’re decent with ship. The ship isn’t even that bad though since it’s right at the beginning!!

Decoration is fine; not my favorite or least favorite renn level. Tastefully uses invisible blocks which is neat but still is somewhat similar to quite a few other levels Renn made at the time. All the pulsing objects help add energy to keep this level somehow quite lively despite its lack of movements.

CraZy III has stuck with me for a long while, which is strange considering how before it dropped I wasn’t too hyped for it.

I feel like the quality I like about this level most is its transitions. I can tell DavJT had fun trying to figure out ways to connect each part while still keeping the circus theme. The balloon transition still is one of my favorite transitions in the game actually, and it somewhat inspired some transitions in my own levels. Personally I value levels that inspire me since with so many levels getting released every day I just can’t remember a lot of them regardless of their quality. I suppose this is an example of bias, but I’ve grown to not care about that as much.

Admittedly the parts in this level could be more connected but the randomness matches the weird stylistic changes in the previous two levels. I personally don’t have many thoughts on CraZy III being part of a series since CraZy and CraZy II are not really as memorable for me as this level is.

Still: love the art, the transitions, and the way the predrop works with the song.

The elephant in the room is the fact that the level only has one part of the drop, and honestly I’m conflicted. Overall, it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense since the entire level does a really nice job at building up tension. The part we do have looks fine I suppose, I like the little animations like the boxing glove and the blocks exploding but it would be cooler with more stuff present.

Discussion about the final drop is also where the gameplay comes in for me though, since I personally loved the nerves I got at the quiet slow part before the drop and adding more level may have made the level less stressful. I also don’t think I would’ve enjoyed an xender game style bossfight at the end either, since in the previews I don’t really think it looked as fun as the rest of the level. I suppose I wouldn’t know since that’s just based on how it visually looks, but I just generally don’t like open space dodge simulators as much as I like the boss that we got in the final level. The bossfight in the current level doesn’t really feel jarring, and it fits in quite nicely with the flow of the part.

It was probably because of the nerves, but I really enjoyed the gameplay of this; not really much in specific I can say. I know a lot of people find this boring to play but I just didn’t struggle that much with it. It’s a rare scenario where timing gameplay felt satisfying for me, and honestly I’d say this is the most enjoyable of the trilogy.

While it may be slightly unfinished, CraZy III has still greatly helped to evolve my standards for transitions and theming today, so I like it.