’Cause everyone loves wind gimmicks.

Those who have been paying attention to these posts since their earliest entries ( surely nobody ) would recall that I had been working on a level with this gimmick, forest theme, & palette since near the start, but couldn’t be arsed to finish due to other levels shoving it aside. ’Cept for the longest time, ’twas called “Windy Woods”, which was too unbearably cliché for me ( & “Gusty Glade” was already used by Rare ). Sick o’ so many Rareware alliteration names & puns, I stuck with an age-ol’ Shakespeare quote, showing no regard for the fact that this level has no hawthorns, & that such a name would better fit a bramble sky level than a forest level.

Thanks to using such a long name, I finally forced myself to stop being a slob & update the o’erworld inventory & level select screens to accommodate larger level names, which was done through giving the level names in both an extra row. As o’ now, this looks weird to me; hopefully I’ll get used to it ’ventually.

This was also a level, ’long with “The Minus Touch”, that I’d always planned to be 1 o’ the most challenging levels in the game ( though not nearly as challenging as “The Minus Touch” ). This can be seen in the 20-minute video, wherein, for once, I didn’t edit out the deaths @ all, so viewers can see all o’ my many failures ( since I already did the many-deaths cut for “The Minus Touch” ).

Trying to make a difficult level can be difficult itself since it can be hard to tell whether difficulty is legit or cheap. In particular, I worry ’bout the birds & the bouncing spike balls being beginner’s traps, since it’s hard to see them before they strike. But then, ¿isn’t challenging players to have quick reflexes perfectly legitimate? There’s also a spike ball near the start that you can’t see till it’s already falling ( ironically, just after a fake spike ball that doesn’t fall @ all ) — unintentionally, since it doesn’t fit in the camera from so high up. I left it in since it’s extremely unlikely a player will get hit by it since there’s no reason to just stand under it & ’cause I thought ’twas funny to have a spike ball fall after where you’d expect it to fall. The graphics may also be crowded, making it hard to make things out. The limited palette doesn’t help.

In the end, I chock this level up to be a Rareware level ’long the etchings o’ “Lightning Lookout” or, perhaps closer, “Gusty Glade”. Hell, a’least I made sure my wind mechanic stays perfectly consistent throughout the whole level.

Since the level is hard ’nough to beat ( by my low standards a’least ), I didn’t put much stress on the gem & time scores. I filled the level with gems, making its 20,000 ₧ requirement easy to meet if you wait round grabbing most o’ it in all the big caches. As the video shows, you can beat the time score by 6 seconds, which surprised me. I didn’t put much effort into trying to beat the time score when I 1st set it &, as the video shows, I was able to spontaneously figure out a way to easily slip past the bouncing spike fruit. I’ll still keep the time score, though, since it’d be refreshing to have a time score that isn’t as stringent as possible. They’re made for ordinary players, not professional speedrunners.

I’ll note that playing any other level after playing this level too much feels weird, since I’ve found I adjusted to the wind & found Autumn’s newfound lack o’ resistance o’erbearing & would way o’ershoot jumps.