Road to Apotheosis 5/18: Superluminary

The superdash variant is a pathway to many techs some consider to be... unnatural.

So, now that I made it to yellow GMs, here is a thing: out of all the subdifficulties of SJ GM lobby, the yellow is easily the most cursed. And among those, none is more cursed than Superluminary - which is funny, because this map has no custom entities or any such things, it just uses the superdash variant, which has been around for years now - but then it abuses it to hell and back. Then again, the only superdash map I've played before was Northern Lights from SC Advanced - and that map was just a simple maze to navigate with superdash and it didn't use any tech, and certainly didn't use any superdash-specific tech - so it was still very much a novelty for me.

That being said, this map actually surprised me positively. Once you figure out the little details about controlling the superdash, it becomes very cool to use, and even just entering dream blocks at an arbitrary angle was so funny. Then comes the superdash-specific tech, and not only it was amazing, it was even better to figure out what game mechanics allow these tech to function with superdash - it absolutely blew my mind when I realized that yes, the mechanics of superdash actually allow to perform ultras ON RISING TERRAIN! My favourite, however, is the shoryuken, because it's a vertical speed tech. Celeste has a lot of mechanics to build up horizontal speed, but there are very few ways (and basically all of them modded, too) to get a lot of vertical speed. That felt very novel and ingenue.

There is only one problem with this map - once the upwards ultras (or "uptras") appear, the map hits an insane difficulty spike, and I just wasn't prepared for that. In particular, the last room took me over two hours, and I'm so angry at myself because I felt like it shouldn't have taken that long. I failed the ending so many times, I don't even want to know how many times it really was. In the end, it turned out my biggest problem was the dash before the crescent dash at the end - instead of plain right-to-downright, it's better to perform a wobble, as in right-to-downright-to-right. Without that, you just don't have space to perform crescent dash correctly.

Well, in the end, I still vibed with this map much more than I thought I would. The music grew on me, especially the remix, and the idea that it's the representation of thoughts moving through brain is very cool - plus I really liked the poem at the end. The map turned out to be really fun (maybe except that last part of last room), but it also really scared me - if this is what it puts me through at yellow, then can I really take on what's after this? Well, in any case, there is only one way to find out.

Note: the variant mark at the end is there because in the practice section before the first uptras, I slowed down the game to nail down the move. Yes, slowing down the game to practice is still more viable practice method for me than using save states.

Видео Road to Apotheosis 5/18: Superluminary канала Mattan