Rating Curve

I feel like this level falls into the same pitfalls as a lot of early 2.0 levels. It tries really hard to be very visually appealing, and while I'd say it's very successful on that front (although I personally think it feels like a mishmash of various themes/settings, particularly in the drop), that comes at the cost of sightreadability: there's no way of knowing how to do a decent amount of the gameplay without practicing it beforehand. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to play once you know what to do (unlike some early 2.0 levels), although the abrupt transitions do still bring it down somewhat for me.

The level Storming Summit has received a lot of criticism for trying to imitate Celeste's graphics as closely as possible. I think this level takes a much better approach, imitating Celeste's visuals while retaining Geometry Dash's style. It's not trying too hard to be Celeste; it's perfectly aware that it's a GD level. Felt like maybe there could've been a bit more decorations, though; maybe a little sign here or there saying "2.3 soon" or something similar.

The gameplay's mostly fine, but I wasn't personally a huge fan of some of the parts toward the end. The last part in particular felt just really spammy, and it seems kinda inelegant that spamming is the best approach to hitting the orbs. It was also somewhat unsatisfying having to die every time I messed up because the traffic light blocks don't move back into position like in Celeste; maybe that would've been too hard to program, but it was a little annoying not being able to just try again.

Pretty chilled out level. Gameplay isn't too exciting, but it's passable except maybe that one mirror portal around halfway through that makes it a little hard to time your next input. As for the deco, it's pretty much your average 1.9 level; decent quality, but nothing that really stood out to me all that much. It's not a horrible level, but there's not really much of anything to remember.

Little bit bland. The deco feels a little random, and the gameplay doesn't quite seem to match the flow of the song in certain places.

Not particularly exciting, but it's a nice nostalgia trip. Visuals are super clean, and the gameplay evokes a lot of the same feelings as the gameplay in the official levels — rather basic, but not to the point of being unfun. And of course, the callbacks to the original Back on Track make everything feel more complete — I definitely feel like it works better as an homage rather than an entirely original level.

Not the most interesting level I've ever played. It was decently fun, although the first part felt a little bit harder than everything else. The theming was there, but I feel like it could have been executed better. It just feels kinda bland.

The song is beautiful, and the deco complements it very well. The progression is very nice, and everything looks really good.

Just one problem. The drop gameplay is horrendously unsightreadable. And I'm someone who likes learny gameplay, so if I'm complaining about it being unreadable, that's kind of an issue. The most glaring problems are a misleadingly small platform hitbox in the first spider part, effects that obscure the gameplay in the second spider part, a completely blind transition into the last wave, and a portal orb at the very end of the drop with no real indication of what you're supposed to do. (I got the wrong idea during my practice run and thought you could just hold through the transition for some reason, so I admit that's partly my fault, but they could've at least put an arrow.) Most of the gameplay is fine; it's just those few things dragging down the rest of the level. If it were more readable, I'd be giving this level a much higher rating.