Rating Curve

Pretty generic. Starts off pretty strong (imaginary bonus points for including the outline of my icon in the background), but kinda falls off after the lyrics start. I guess the later parts just don't feel as clean.

Disregarding the really stupid experience I had with the gameplay, this level was fine. It wasn't unfun, but the deco wasn't particularly exciting, with hardly anything interesting happening until the last part. Up until then, it just felt like yet another hell-themed level.

Mostly good, but it does exhibit a couple of serious flaws. The gameplay is fun for the most part, but the volleyball part is particularly wonky — it took forever to learn, I died to the first click twice, and plenty of other people seem to have had similar or worse experiences. As for the deco, the individual parts look great — except the first couple parts of the second drop, which look a little messy — but they don't really tell much of a coherent story, which kinda bothered me. Sure, the Pokémon part is cute and all, but having Pokémon in that specific part of the level and nowhere else doesn't really seem to serve any artistic purpose. And then that part is followed immediately by what appears to be a volcanic eruption that also passes by without being elaborated on in the slightest. It's not a bad level, mind you — it's just not quite good enough to be a truly great level.

Fun level. The gameplay feels Split72-esque, and the last part reminds me of Lit Fuse by KrmaL, but other than that, I don't really have a whole lot to say about it.

It's fine, but it's honestly not my bottle of water. The gameplay is good, and the visual style, while not my favorite, is executed quite well.

The visuals are very nice, but the progression feels a little lacking. In particular, the ending doesn't really feel climactic. I didn't notice how far I was on my winning attempt until I got to the robot and remembered that that was the last part. Maybe if the gameplay at the end was a little faster-paced, it would feel a little more climactic.

Feels kinda messy. The drop is fun, but the predrop gameplay could use improvement. The deco in the first part looks cool, but a lot of the rest of it seems to have the messy feeling of many early 2.1 levels.

This was an early 2.2 level that I found through Reddit. I thought it was pretty cool at the time, and I still think it's pretty cool for its time. Definitely shows its age, but I think it made good use of the new features. The climax is obviously the randomized bossfight at the end; randomized bossfights have been done before, but I think this was the first big level to do it with the new random triggers. I also like the song choice; it gives the level personality that it might not otherwise have due to the generic early 2.2 pixel style.

First off, I love the progression in this level. The fact that the last boss takes up half of the level makes the whole thing feel like a big journey.

That being said, though, the last boss also feels like somewhat of a difficulty spike compared to the first half of the level. During the first part of the bossfight, the sheer density of effects, from the big explosions in the background to the sword swinging around in the foreground, makes it hard to tell what's going on, which makes the ship gameplay quite a bit harder. The fact that some of the platforms are harder to see in the top route doesn't help. This is then followed by a bullet hell section, which feels really climactic, but it's also really confusing. I was, ultimately, able to find a reasonably consistent path, but it was not at all clear what the best way to get through it was. At the end of the day, I honestly don't really dislike that part all that much, but it took long enough to learn that it frustrated me for a while.

Also, this is more minor, but the gameplay seems to be basically the same between the two paths. Other Discord Gauntlet submissions have had identical gameplay between the two versions before, but since the two paths physically diverge from a common starting point, you'd expect the gameplay to be more different.

The theming for this one could've been better. It takes a while for any sort of theme to develop on the main route, and while the alternate route is a nice journey through the game's history, there isn't really any connection between the two routes at all. You just hit a block and get sent to a completely different path. I probably would've given this a higher overall rating if the theming was a little more cohesive.