MENACE by MannyHeffley

Level by ‪@mannyheffley4085‬
Verified by ‪@whizkid0521‬

This level is what happens when a creator has complete control over what they do in the editor. Every part of the decoration and even the music is made by one single person, and it shows. The level is incredibly original in theme and gameplay style, I wouldn't even know what style to call this level. It's just doing its own thing. The use of new 2.2 effects like camera changes are used tastefully to benefit the level without ruining it. It's about top 20 in difficulty, so it's inaccessible to pretty much everyone. I would have liked to have seen this level be a little easier and more accessible, but for once the gameplay is actually made for this difficulty. Nerfing it would be difficult, so whatever.

The theming of this level is hard to understand, and is meant to be open to interpretation. I think the poem throughout the level is meant to be about how believing in or chasing something greater than ourselves distracts us from paying attention to our own value. Or some kind of atheism thing. I'm not really sure or smart enough at literature to decode it all. I still don't see how it relates to being a menace, but it's a cool name I guess.

The gameplay is also interesting. This level has done everything it can to not follow normal gameplay standards and has invented something new for every part. I find the dash orb spam part a little repetitive, but other parts like the duals and use of swing copter are so well made and flow perfectly with the decoration and music.

And as for the decoration, WOW! I can't believe this is all made by one person, in the space of about a month. This is some of the best decoration I've seen in the game and it's 3 minutes of it. I particularly like the parallax effects to compliment the block designs in some parts, for example at 13 seconds in, and in the part immediately after, the block designs literally seem to jump out of the screen. This is very good use to create a 3D atmosphere. The only thing I have a problem with is the lack of any portal or pad designs at ALL. It really cheapens the level and there has to have been some way to cover this up and make it feel like part of the level, though without distracting too much from the player. Portal colour and indication isn't really needed as anyone playing the level is going to know the click pattern when beating it anyway.

GG to whizkid (very underrated player) on verifying this, it's an insane achievement to verify a top 20.

Rating: 8/10