[ti]Insane[/ti]Sky Attack by TSRanimations (me) w/video

This is a one-time judge, and I am not seeking a promotion.

Gameplay: 7/10

It looks pretty fun, some parts look annoying but overall good. It also looks more like an Easy or Medium Demon than an 8* Insane.

Style and deco 6/10

Really good deco, but I think the deco got worse or "lessened" (if you can say that) the further into the level, anyway it's cool nonetheless. The style is pretty usual for a normal Demon level so it's good, not too good, but not too generic either.

Syncronisation 8/10

The sync is really good on this one. Especially the first rainbow wave part.
The music choice is pretty good too, although used some times before.

Coins 8/10

The coins look really hard and uniquely placed. They also look really fun. They're great, and something not alot of people recognize with coin routes and should be paid more attention to, it syncs along with the song ok.



Overall 29/40

A good and fun level with hard coins, a cool style and nice deco, along with good music and sync. I like it.

okay um

The gameplay is good, not too annoying, so that's a plus. The design is also somewhat decent, though some parts look better than the rest. The wave drop was probably my least favorite part of the level because of the flashy rainbow colors, along with the first dual that had a lot of glow and neon. Some parts look empty and need a lot more air deco, but maybe that's just me. The sync is also great, by the way.

Overall, it's a decent level that is worthy of getting rated, but it still needs more work done on the design and gameplay.

Alright.

So right away I can tell you easily what the worst part of the level is, and that would be the viewing restrictions. It cuts the reaction time in half and makes it so you barely have any time to see what is coming up. This only got worse with the "strip of light" variation of this where literally 70% of the screen is obscured. Bad transitions also plague the level, such as a teleport transition at 12% and more places. You have to understand that other players do not have the same knowledge of what is behind the abyss of darkness. We don't know that there's a triple spike followed by a staircase pattern of blocks or something like that...until we've died to it because we could barely see it coming. Make sure your levels are easily readable and that the player knows where they are, where they will be, and what they need to do next. Because this type of artificial difficulty inflation is what ruins Insane levels.

Decowise it seems you were going for some sort of rainbow theme, but at the same time you also tried just normal color. These two did not work together. You had some rainbow spikes with contrasted blue lining around it, etc. First of all, the blue lines or any other color significantly contrasted with the rainbows. Either go one way or the other, trying to smash two things together that simply won't work harmoniously isn't going to get you with a good end result. In addition, the rainbwos themselves seemed to pop out way too much because of how contrasted the individual rainbow colors were. Try to make your colors meld together more to create more smooth visuals. In addition, lots of the air deco and blocks you used popped out a lot and made everything feel super cluttered. Lower the opacity and let those objects take the backseat, rather than having everything the main focus. Outline your essential obstacles more and let those other objects be the filling, not the main course.

There were also some ridiculous difficulty jumps that honestly make this level feel more demon than Insane at some points. The UFO section at 37% is so much harder than the rest of the level.

42% is where it gets really fucking hectic. It's like an LSD trip. colors overwhelming every crevice, and it's an epileptic mess. You can enter the dual portal with one wave being still normal sized. The orb at 53% doesn't launch you enough if you enter low. Another bad transition at 56%. the triple pads nearing the end do not look good either, try to use double sided pads for a cleaner look.

Overall the color is in completely disarray. Pick a color scheme and go with it, and if you really want to do a rainbow color scheme make sure it blends with itself, because at the current state there is way too much contrast and it simply doesn't work together. Make sure the player can read the gameplay, these viewing restrictions and sudden transitions are not fun. Make sure everything lines up properly, there were multiple parts where entering slightly wrong would lead to death, or some buggy transitions. Consider every scenario and make sure the player does not die after correctly completing a sequence. Make sure your difficulty is consistent throughout and is true to the original intended rating. Make spike ceilings so we don't fly upwards for 20 seconds everytime we miss something. Make larger block structures rather than a bunch of tiny 1-3 block structures. I will commend certain block structures in places they weren't rough, but again the color and the clutter just set anchor and dragged the ship down with it.

Decent, even in practice mode it felt very frustrating to traverse through this level. The design was the saving aspect of this level.