[ti]Insane[/ti]Rush by Thechaosdudes (me) [VIDEO]

Decent level overall. The gameplay is the standout part in my opinion. The sync is a bit inconsistent, with some parts matching each click with the beat of the song while other parts match the pace of the song and use speed changes and portals to sync beats instead (which is a bit underwhelming compared to click sync). There are a couple parts that I take issue with. The end duals seems very derivative of Motion by TamaN. They sync reasonably well but it almost looks like you copied that level’s gameplay, or at least took very heavy inspiration from it. Another issue is at 31%, which commits the cardinal sin of having an offscreen jump that the player has no time to react to. In that ball part, you go through the portal and have to immediately leave the platform that’s offscreen. Gameplay like this is incredibly frustrating to play and it’s generally best to keep what the player has to do viewable on the screen, the one exception to this being something like a memory demon, which aren’t fun to play to begin with anyways. Last thing I can think of are the parts where the screen goes black and there’s no real gameplay there, namely before the drop, before the robot section preceding the ending duals, and at the end of the level. Levels like Fusion II by Manix show how the more empty parts of songs before the drop can still have well synced gameplay so that you’re not stuck throwing in a boring and out of place empty auto part.

Block design is where this level really struggles. Stylistically speaking, the block design seems to vary a lot with what creators’ style it may be trying to match with. There are parts that look like they’re trying to be Hinds style and then there are parts with a bunch of blocks strewn together that reminded me a lot of Woogi and Ozpectro designs. Regardless of what style the block designs tried to emulate, there are a couple of common problems througout; namely the colours and simplicity of the block design. The colours chosen just aren’t very visually appealing. It has the early 2.0 syndrome of having the background and block design be basically the same colour. Moreover, the only other colours that are visible in the level (for the most part) are black, white, and rainbow blocks. There’s no real colourplay which makes the block design look very static and uninteresting. Colours opposite to each other on the colour wheel have the highest amount of contrast and look good together and colours next to each other on the colour wheel also look good together. You can also look up colour combination samples online to improve your colour schemes. The block design is also very simple, to the point of just being basic blocks but into the shells with a hitbox. This can be done well, such as Woogi and Ozpectro’s levels, but they have a lot of contrast within their designs and use blocks that work well together. If that’s a style you want to try and emulate then I’d suggest looking at their levels to see what blocks go well together. Otherwise, more complex and layered block designs is a must for a level to be feature worthy. One last note, don’t just stick rainbows on blocks. They look horrible, even when they match the tone of the level. And they most certainly didn’t even match the tone of your level since they were just thrown into sections that used mostly just one colour.

As for what I’d rate it, I’m bad at deciding level difficulty but 8-9* sounds about right since there doesn’t look like there’s any real timings outside of orbs in ship sections.