[ti]Normal[/ti]Identity, by TimeTimes [YouTube Video]

Level: Identity
Creator: TimeTimes (TimeTimes)
ID: 45955670
Song: Spaze - Who You Are www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/470136
Video (Provided): www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9vfIYWQrz8


Gameplay:
The gameplay in this level is just alright. Let's start with the first ship section. It's not bad, but it's not really mobile throughout the entire section. It's really just flying between those obstacles, while you loosely follow the center. I would suggest that you try to build the more classic solid structures with blocks, rather than just a ton of randomly placed circles. What this does is make it a lot more interesting, because it forces the player to make more dramatic changes in direction, making the player focus more and get more into it. As a result, the quality will improve immensely. For the cube section, you really need to add more variety to the gameplay. When building, you should have a mix of solid objects and orbs. I see here that you had one section of blocks and then after all orbs and portals. It would be better to merge them, as it is more interesting and involved than just repetitive jumps. There are a couple problems I have with the orbs. First of all, the pink orb at 34% can't be seen until you're almost right on top of it. This should be tweaked so that every single orb can be seen for at least a couple of seconds before the player reaches it. Furthermore, due to the custom textures, the dash orb at 37% looks like a green orb, and that can cause people to trip up. I would strongly advise against custom textures for gameplay elements, unless you make it extremely obvious what it is. For that dash orb, you should add an arrow on top of it so it looks similar to the regular dash orb texture. The following ship section is a lot better with gameplay. You might have not made the player move a lot more, but it does constrict them to a definite path, rather than just a ton of random floating obstacles, which boosts the quality greatly. I think you could've expanded the area a bit more, such as by removing the oscillating spikes at the end. This would allow you to add more movement of the player, as you really just limited yourself to a small area, which made the amount of movement suffer. It still is nice though. The transition to the mini ship can catch someone off guard, especially due to the custom portals. This section has more movement for sure, but it is awkward, most likely due to the transition. I would make it more obvious or eliminate nearby obstacles at the beginning to get the player focused on what is happening. The following section is good. Great work with this; there's a ton of movement and a distinct path. The upside down mini ship section after unfortunately suffers due to the transition combined with the weird design, making it difficult to see when exactly you will crash towards the beginning. However, it does do a great job with movement. Just minor tweaks at the beginning would help this a lot. The dual ball section afterwards needs more than just orbs. There's not much point to using the ball at all if you're not going to take advantage of flipping gravity. Adding more blocks and spikes will also boost variety, making it a much more fun section. The spider section immediately after needs variety as well, as right now it's just very repetitive. I would suggest just adding some orbs or even differing the gameplay of each spider, just so it is more involved, since it requires the player to constantly adjust and focus more. The UFO has a similar problem. It's just some sawblades at either end, which isn't too dynamic. Try a variety of different obstacles. The following ship is a lot better, more movement in the beginning could help. The final wave is pretty nice. It has movement, gets the player involved, and it's not really repetitive. Good job!

Overall: I feel like I repeated myself a lot with this section. The clear focus should be the movement and variation of gameplay. It was smooth for the most part, which is definitely a great aspect of it, the problem is just that it's not as interesting. Still, nice job though. 10/20


Design:
This level is alright with design, but there are many improvements to be made, especially with detail. Looking at the first ship section, it could definitely use a great amount of detail. Vertical columns for the background won't cut it. Try adding more design to the background, and not just orthogonal designs, but designs which have a lot of parts to them. It doesn't necessarily have to be really precise designs, but something to look at. It could also work with what you seem to be going for with the colors. For whatever designs you create, you could make different parts of it be the opposite of what the column under it is. If you did that, you wouldn't have to change your vision for this section, but still add detail. As for the green orbs in this section, you should add more design to them as well. I like how you were going for the 3D effect, but it just isn't enough. Also, the colors don't really match with the background. I would try at least having similar colors so the section looks nice, rather than all the elements isolated. You should have good flow. The following cube section has a lot of the same issues. Add designs to your obstacles especially. I see you attempted with the background, but the strips of blue don't go all the way, so you can see the ends. This brings the quality down greatly. For this I would recommend changing the background entirely. This is because even if you were to fix it, it still wouldn't look that good. For modernistic levels such as these, it can look good if you build the changes in color into the background, and maybe have some moving parts. This would make it look a lot more dynamic. The next ship section pretty much has the same issues. I like how you added the 3D effect to the blocks though, although more detail is still necessary. Furthermore, the layering for the strips are a bit weird. Some go on top of the blocks and some go under. As a result, it looks very unusual and scrapped together. Plus, I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but the white strip in the middle of one of them doesn't look good, you should probably fix that. The following mini ship section is a lot better than the others as it has something new. I like how it's a moving background, very dynamic. Despite this, it doesn't seem like it really fits as good as it should. I feel if all of the circles in each column were tangent to each other it would look a lot better. I'm not sure how the borders would look if you did that, so I would definitely try experimenting with that. Also, like the other sections, this requires block design. I would argue that this is the section that requires it the most, as the obstacles cover a large portion of the screen, however this does have advantages to other parts with the backgrounds. The following normal ship section is probably my favorite. It has something going for it with the block design. It's not too much, but it actually has some detail and the colors work perfectly. I would suggest for future levels to try to work all of your block design up to this level at least. However, this definitely has a long way to go, as there are large portions with no changes until you get to the edges of the blocks. (https://i.imgur.com/vxtcdIG.png) This image should make it more clear. As you can see, a lot of different aspects are in the blue portion, but there is a lot of empty space in the red portion. A lot of things can be added to this. It doesn't have to be similar to the rest, in fact, it shouldn't. Try experimenting with the red portion to improve it. Although, you should probably match the rest of the block design first before moving further. The background for this section is nice. It's a lot better than the initial ones you had, but you definitely have to add some sort of movement or greater detail to it. I would recommend more movement for this one, personally. I like the design for the following mini ship section. It's clear you tried getting creative. It does something with the mass of blocks that take up the screen, so you don't have the same issue as one of the previous sections did. However, I don't really think the blue blocks should be in the player's path. First of all, it poses an issue with the gameplay, which I have already mentioned, plus, it looks a bit too messy. I would personally go for a different design in the black, but keep the broken blue portion intact. The dual ball part right after needs some changes. The background is alright, but it could definitely use some movement or variation, and making the colors more distinct could help, but that may be a matter of personal preference. There aren't really many structures in this section, but the structures at the sides along with the sawblades could be a bit more than just black. A really simple way to add some variation is to have layers of color, although if you want to really boost quality adding patterns to it would help, same as pretty much all of these sections. The spider section is not bad. I really like how you had the background move. These are the types of things you need to have to make the level more interesting. Block design definitely needs to be improved as always, but despite this this section looks alright without it. I like how the outlines of the curves go through the ground. You should definitely try experimenting with some designs, however. The next UFO section definitely has the most interesting background of the level. Not only do you have movement, but you have varied movement. You also have a different design than the rest, not just vertical/horizontal lines. However, the big problem with this background it feels really separated. It's like it was just thrown together without much regard for how it fits into the big picture. I think if you were to make everything tangent to each other and have it extend throughout the whole background, it would bring the entire section together. Also, the background doesn't start at the beginning of the section. It starts moving when you get a bit into it. You should tweak this so it follows the player the whole time. The following section has pretty much the same issues as the others. A big expanse without block design. The layering of the background is an issue to. The blocks go behind the obstacles but not the shadows/3D attached to them. The colors are pretty similar as well. It feels very monochrome. Adding shading can help this as well. The final wave needs a background, and block design could be improved, but I like how this is different from the rest. It's pretty interesting, but could use more.

Overall: I feel like I was very repetitive, but of course it's cause there are major issues. Detail is absolutely necessary. I believe I explained what you really need in one of the sections. Backgrounds can definitely be more dynamic. Detail may not be necessary in some parts, but it's a good thing to work on once you work on the movement. 7.5/20


Sync:
Sync in this level as its ups and downs. The first section doesn't do too well in gameplay sync. I think that the major issue with this is both the style of gameplay and the song. You want the ship's movements to go along with the song, even if it's hard to be precise. A definite path can really help with it or at least build it with sync in mind, as that will boost the quality greatly. You did a good job with design sync, though. I like how the background's colors changed to the beat. More could've been done, but you were pretty limited due to the design. The following section does great with gameplay sync, however. You made the player hit the blocks and orbs to the beat, and there was very little variation. There's one problem at 28% however with the beats not lining up totally towards the end. I think just tweaking it a bit would fix this issue though. Design sync is very limited for this part. There aren't any flashes, movement, or any changes with the design at all. This means you lose out on a ton of potential sync. This is a big reason why you have to have variation, a long with it just making the level look more interesting. The next section is very similar in terms of design, so the same problems with sync occur. The gameplay in this ship part does do a pretty good job with sync. The movements of the ship go along with the song noticeably, which is great, as this is often a difficult thing to do. It is a bit more loose, but it's to the point where it's negligible. I thought that the swaying of the spikes at the sides could've been put to the beat. They do match up a few times since it's at a constant interval, but it of course stops matching up as soon as the rhythm changes. The following mini ship didn't do as well. Towards the beginning it matched loosely, but the entire section didn't feel like it was really synced up too well. Design sync was neglected in this section as well. I think changes with the background, like the suggestions I made earlier, would make it much more easier to sync in creative ways, such as having different rows and columns moving at different times. The next section didn't have any design sync, which of course is because it isn't dynamic. However, it did have slight gameplay sync, but I felt it was sort of in between the quality of the previous two sections. A lot of tweaks can be made. The mini ship after was a lot better with gameplay sync, it sort of curved to the ups and lows, although design sync wasn't there again. From here on the design sync is clearly neglected. Make sure to at least have flashes. Try to have movements that go along with the flow of the music, as many times it's the only thing stopping the section from being brought up to a decent quality, because the player needs to feel like it was made for the music, not that you just put music on some random level. Moving onto the gameplay sync for 67%, it is alright. All of the orbs sync up but the first couple are slightly off. The spider section doesn't really have good sync. All of the gravity switches are at constant intervals, which not only hinders sync, but creates very boring gameplay, as I previously mentioned. It does line up towards the middle, but it doesn't stay that way for long. The UFO has the same problem. There's minimal sync, if any at all. The ship has alright sync. You go up towards the end and back down which matches the changes in the song, which is nice. The last wave has little noticeable sync. It seems like your best gameplay sync comes from the sections with a definite path. Parts like the UFO don't really have any. Try creating stricter gameplay (while still keeping it easy) to sort of help along your sync and gameplay.

Overall: Towards then end the sync falls apart. Make sure you always have flashes. Make backgrounds more dynamic so you have something to sync to. For gameplay, I would just recommend stricter, more definite paths for the "open" gamemodes (Ship, UFO, Wave) so you can sort of make the player move along with the music, even if it's not exact. Those are the hardest sections to sync well while keeping the quality of gameplay, so I would highly recommend focusing on those for future levels. 3.5/10


Originality:
This won't affect your score, but I felt I should address this. Modernistic/Simplistic levels like these are rather common. There's nothing wrong with creating levels in this style, but try to bring new things to the table, because that'll greatly improve the public response.


Conclusion: 42% Decent
The same issues are really present in each section, so I apologize if it sounded really repetitive. Try to focus on all the stuff I repeated throughout and your next level will sure to be better. This honestly isn't a bad level, but modernistic levels do require more effort and focus because if you mess a small thing up, the quality will decrease greatly. Detail and movement are the two things you should focus on in general, because while broad, they pretty much cover every single issue with this level. Good luck with your future levels! I'm interested to see what you can do next!

Moving to Decent.