Spoilers: SAVE AS (PAHC), xo (KrmaL), S3CTOR (89o)
So, I've kinda touched on this subject in my post about "Songs" vs. "Tracks" with the example of The Perfect Girl, showing how the whole song is built to fuel one central idea and emotion. That was a bit of a tangent in that post, but it's the entire topic of this one, so if you enjoyed that lloydism, you're in for a treat.
But let's start somewhere that you would never imagine any self-respecting art critic would go: Geometry Dash. Yes, that's right, the funny game about the jumping box for 7-year-olds. Why? Because it has a level editor. And a really, really dedicated community of level creators.
If you still believe that Geometry Dash levels are unworthy of being called art, you need look no further than the countless copy-paste video essays on SAVE AS by PAHC. Basically, it shows dementia via a degrading and repetitive level, visual effects, kinda noisecore music, yadda yadda, it's been talked to death in the GD community. I won't waste your time with that here: I despise essays about obvious things (...about things that are obvious to me, I mean). Instead, I'll focus on a different, and (I think) quite underrated level: xo by KrmaL. I suggest you watch it first and get the full experience.
So, first impressions: to anyone who's played GD custom levels before, they'll immediately notice that the style of this level is distinctly... old. The blocks and decoration used is almost entirely what was present in the first version of the game and thus is often called 1.0 style or layout style (since creators use it when making the layouts of the gameplay of their levels). (For those unfamiliar with GD and its eras of custom levels, here is an example of a typical 2.1 level, which is the version that xo was released in.)
In fact, some people reacting to the verification video above commented thinking this was just the undecorated, basic layout of the level – but no, this is the finished product, and personally, I think the style is perfect. One thing that efext often comments on in his critiques of GD levels (yes, that's a thing) is how well a level fits its song. Apart from sync (e.g. putting jumps, portals, transitions, effects, etc. in sync with specific beats of the music), this includes theming and the sense of journey and progression.
Let's look at the music. It features a minimal instrumentation at the start (just a guitar), then includes some more synths at the drop and the second verse. This is reflected in the decoration: it starts out just with just plain, static 1.0 blocks, and then features rotation and movement at the second drop, and more advanced effects like the wave animation and changing block outline colors at the second refrain.
Moreover, the themes of the lyrics of the song are also creatively reflected in the level design. The gameplay, if you pay attention to it, looks very odd – you have moments like the dip down with the ship at 0:20, as opposed to going through the tunnel which looks like the obvious way forward, and then just barely touching the green cube portal from the underside instead of going straight through – and these moments reflect the non-cliché lyrics of the song, such as "she's in love with the concept" or "we're in love, we just don't know it yet" – far from the generic love song lyrics. (Of course, I'm no judge for the gameplay since my skill is far from enough to beat this "extreme demon" – the hardest difficulty recognized in the game.)
Finally, we have the subtle plastering of the "naughts and crosses" that are also the letters X and O, when "xo" is mentioned in the lyrics, during the drops, and at the ending. I couldn't quite put down what I liked so much about these two shapes, but I'd describe it as a connection between the level and the song such that the level appreciates its limitations and its existence as a level rather than a movie or other genre. Bit of a mouthful, but it's what separates this level from those which just put the lyrics in with text objects or just show exactly, literally, what the lyrics say with decoration objects. Those feel more like music videos, like the level is made to suit the song, as accompaniment. In contrast, xo feels like it's an independent piece of art with links to the song, but still remaining a level instead of just "background visuals" to represent the song. It's like the difference between heterophonic and homophonic music, for those who know some music theory. (I think the length of this paragraph shows how subtle of a difference this is – but it's important! To me, at least.)
Taking into account all my previous arguments about how the level fits the music and how it manages to be an independent level, you can see that all of the elements of this level – the music choice, the block design, the gameplay, the decoration and effects all work together to create the emotion that I cannot describe in a single sentence because describing that emotion is what the whole level is there for. This unity of purpose is what I call "Artistic Completeness".
Let's switch to a different medium for a second: music. I've already described in the aforementioned "Songs vs. Tracks" post how I used to dislike songs as opposed to instrumental music. I mention that my idea of the "purpose of music" was to create a rich experience for the listener in terms of the specific way is sounds, as opposed to being an emotional and cultural phenomenon. The reason why I disliked generic pop songs (the kind that play in the radio) was that it seemed like the instrumentation was very generic and rarely related to the subject of the song. This makes most of these songs feel exactly the same, without any specific, original emotions. Thus, the way they sound is uninteresting and they are failed opportunities in my mind. It's like giving xo decoration in the style of a typical rated GD level: it would not only remove the originality and memorability of the level, but also undermine the qualities of the song.
An example of a song where all its elements work perfectly in tandem with one another, and where the elements not only all highlight a central idea, but all add unique wrinkles to the emotional experience, is Gone by Funny Death. (There they are again...) The album title, cover art, and some of the song titles clearly dictate that the theme of this album is breakup, but what I find very interesting is that each song/track has a unique "flavor" of this theme of finding and losing love.
In particular, the track Gone interests me, because of how the music adds to the effect that the lyrics create. As an experiment, read some of the lyrics below (translated from French):
Why are we together if you only see a shadow of someone who's gone?
Oh, all those times at night when I ask myself if you still see me.
[...]
The grief for a childish love is gone.
The illusion of any passion is gone.
Think about how you would imagine this song to sound just based on these lyrics. A mellow piano piece, perhaps? A slow-paced, quiet guitar song? I have a feeling that "upbeat electronic dance" is not the first thing that comes to mind.
The extremely cathartic and upbeat melodies and instrumentation help to redefine the emotions that this song creates – especially at the drop at 1:38. It makes the lyrics "The grief for a childish love is gone / The illusion of any passion is gone" take on a different meaning: instead of the narrator being depressed that this love is gone, it seems to me that he feels freed and is satisfied that he got to the truth of what this relationship was truly like.
However, even this isn't the full picture; the structure of the song adds even more complexity to this song which is unconventional in its conventionality. First we get the complaint "Why are we together if you only see a shadow of someone who's gone", then a nostalgic "The days that we lived hand in hand, the nights danced until the next day", followed by the cathartic "The grief for a childish love is gone" – all of this follows the ideas I explained in the previous paragraph. However, afterwards, we get a constant repetition of the following four lines until the end, with occasional bits of the "nostalgic" lines fading in:
Why are we together?
Why did you hug me?
Why did we get together?
Why are we outdated [or maybe past our expiration date]?
This presents an even fuller, truer picture of the narrator's feelings: beneath this apparent freedom and catharsis, he knows the truth: that he's sad this breakup happened, and angry that it didn't work out although it should have.
And we can keep going. If a creator delves deep enough into the medium they're using, they can find new ways to bend the conventions to reach a certain effect. Take video games, for example. Making a game intentionally boring and unfun sounds just like a bad idea, doesn't it? Like shooting yourself in the foot.
Well, apparently I really like foot pain, because I did it.
When I made S3CTOR, it was based on a Famicase by articution – the one pictured above – and as is rightfully tradition when recreating these fictional game cartridges, I first contacted this author to ask whether they allow me to use their work, and what was their inspiration and any ideas they had for the game. And I'm glad I did.
Now, I don't want to say that I have any idea of what depression is, but this was my interpretation of it from what I heard (not my personal experience). At first, a short intro of what the gameplay is like: rewriting the contents of poor-quality images of restaurant receipts, over and over again. Then, a quite pointless, random, non-artistic, no-deeper-meaning conversation with Echo (who is a digital copy of your mind, so you're literally just talking to yourself). When Echo leaves, there's really no point in playing further. You ask yourself, "Does the dev really expect me to continue writing these receipts for no reason?" Yes, yes he does. And that's how I imagine depression feels like, except you can't just close the game window and move on to something more fun.
So, what is the whole point of this "artistic completeness"? I think it's a way to focus on the purpose of your work in a more abstract way. Instead of thinking of art like propaganda – "this book needs to show that sharing is good and egoism is bad" – we should look at its purpose in more emotional terms. Why? Because it's far more interesting, for one, and also because that happens to bring us closer to God, who is the most indescribable, most personal Thing in the universe.
My faith has taught me just how important Intuition, Emotion and Faith are as Ways of Knowing; they probably give more true knowledge than Reason and Language. The way I imagine it is that if we consider each Way of Knowing as a dimension (in the meaning of "we live in 3-dimensional space"), we have an extremely complex, 8-dimensional hyperspace of human experiences. So let's explore all of it instead of just sticking to the space of Reason, Language and Sense Perception. There's so much more out there, folks.
No matter whether you call Him God or "that weird fuzzy feeling you get when reading a good book", His influence is real. So please, artists, don't be afraid to go a little crazy making your next work. Do something weird, something that makes no sense, as long as it brings you closer to that strange thing, that indescribable spark, that point in 8-dimensional space that nobody has ever reached before.
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