Spooks by AlrexX aka me [with video] (rated)

ok.

Throughout the level the artstyle was not bad at all. Besides being cohesive in both color and style, it helps to convey the overall theme of the level in combination with the song choice. In terms of general composition and that sort of stuff, I don't have any complaints. It's overall nicely filled out, layered properly, and has enough detail to stand out but toned down enough to not look crude. I can tell the overall brightness of the level was supposed to convey darkness being all spoopy and stuff, but in some areas it did have an impact on visibility.

For one instance, the very beginning first spike. Apart from being a tad close to the beginning, it's accompanied by this black fade of sorts. Not in the traditional sense, but all of the layers fading in from black to their respective tones of color. However, this does pose a bit of a problem as during this fade, all of the layers are close to the same color, resulting in the visual merging and layers being indistinguishable from each other for a brief moment. While this is a very minor problem, if it could even be considered one as it only affects this one spike jump, a slightly faster fade in could help with first impressions of the level. Obviously this is a little nitpicky, but I'm a fan of microadjustment to just be that much closer to perfection.

Another thing is the darkened portals. While in a good chunk of the transitions they weren't a big deal, there were some places impacted where at least upon first sight, I had great troubles identifying what type of portal it was. Generally I'm not a fan of hue on portals, but I guess it's sort of unavoidable here, but I'd suggest at least lessening the darkening by a little bit for more problematic sections like 36%. This section is where most of the "issues" arose, and I quote that because again they aren't insanely level ruining, but adjustment would certainly help. This section has a few problems with readability of the "indistinguishable layer" type, which can be mitigated through two ways. First, let's take a look at structures with midground layers like at 39%. I believe these midground points pop out too much and could be made a bit more bright/opaque (either one or the other) to distinguish it more from the foreground, which is usually solid. On the contrary, the pipes did not seem like solid objects because they were just about the same looking as the midground. To further make the foreground pop out, I think just brightening the highlights (aka the glow) would help out. Adding highlights to the darkened portals could help them to stand out more as well, as well as maybe spikes as the black on slightly less black can be a bit hard to see. Obviously don't compromise the dark theme with too much glow, but just enough to make the essential gameplay objects pop out and be clear.

In terms of gameplay, yay. Not bad at all. All of the flying gamemodes had a pretty good range of dynamic movement, with the wave even implementing the "slidey on surface things blocks idc what they're called", which is a plus. There were secret way failsafes as well as ceiling spikes like at 31%, which is something essential, so that's another plus. To be a little nitpicky again, I'd suggest at least some arrows indicating places to jump/tap as the cube, and maybe some arrows for the flying gamemodes. This not only helps with visuals, but readability. Some of the cube jumps could be rather ambiguous as whether it's a jump or not, 80% being a one-time moment of confusion for me as the distance seems smack in the middle of "too far need to jump" and "close enough to land without jumping". Again, this is on a player-to-player basis so maybe not everyone will have that moment of brain-fart I did, but it doesn't hurt to add a couple of arrows. Unless of course it interferes with the decoration too much.

So final verdict, I think this this one goes in Feature Worthy. All of my points did not necessarily ruin the level and were again, just minor inconveniences at most. The base level is proficient enough in clean decoration and has gameplay engaging enough to where these issues pale in comparison. So moving to Feature Worthy.