"Level 396" Cristal of introspection (And as usual, Critique needed)

Summary:

Magical Theme level. I have now changed the article.

I make another level.

custom mashup 18 May 2025 17:33

Article Link: http://backrooms-sandbox-2.wikidot.com/cristal-de-pesadilla

Article Title: Cristal of introspection

Sensitive Content: N/A

Brief Description: The main area is a cavern system with a crystal containing a level-exclusive entity, the second area is a connection, and the last is a laboratory.

Critique Focus: Any critique will be appreciated.

Last edited on 23 Jun 2025 15:19 by custom mashup Show more

Re: "Level 116" Cristal de pesadilla (And as usual, Critique needed)

InspectingCritters 31 May 2025 08:52

Apologies for the late response; the forums here are not particularly active. Regardless I am here to provide some critique. You may take the following as you will; remember, I am just a person on the internet giving their opinion.

General, sweeping critique:

• The giant list of objects, what do they add to the page exactly? This would be cool if it was a video game but it's not, it's a piece of writing, so fundamentally they feel very extraneous. You just list very similarly formatted objects and basic, surface-level info about them that just lists a bunch of gimmicky stuff. It's really boring to read because I just can't care about a bunch of objects that do stuff with little elaboration and relation to the page as a whole (yes, I know it uses gems that can be found in the cave, but that doesn't answer the question of why we should care about the objects).
• I'm just going to say this straight up: What is your goal with this page? It's a pretty long page, but the way it's written here makes it very unfocused. It's bloated with a lot of details that don't seem to really care about each other and almost looks as if every random idea that came to mind was dumped into this draft. There doesn't seem to be a core theme that I can see and every other section focuses on a "cool thing" that doesn't really show me why I should actually care about it? No story is being told, it's not trying to evoke a specific feeling in the reader, and the worldbuilding is messy, clunky to get through, and (to put it bluntly) quite uninteresting. I will reiterate: What is your focus here? What specific thing is this page about? Matthew? If so, then make everything in the page be an expansion of him and his concept or story or whatever you have in mind. As of present, he, aside from a few random mentions, is almost completely irrelevant up until the end where he lore dumps a bit but nothing of substance is really said. Are the caves a reflection of Matthew's suffering? Is he becoming one with them? Etc, etc. The point is: find a main idea and build around and on top of it, don't smoosh a bunch of vaguely related stuff together.

Some nitpicky stuff:

• This isn't necessarily something you have to care about or follow but note that we're phasing out "Level X is the (X + 1)th level of the Backrooms" because it's redundant/unnecessary and we're trying to move away from the era of "video game-y" Backrooms.
• The contents of the first paragraph seem to be ordered and formatted in a way that doesn't flow particularly well. It starts off with a single sentence about the cave, then immediately pivots to several sentences about the crystals, before returning to the cave description. I recommend starting out with the basic cave description first, before moving onto any specifics about the crystals, and then to additional stuff such as structures (like the mine shafts) and other details.
• I hope I'm not misunderstanding the details here, but I feel as if many of the ideas here are a bit.. videogamey? Especially since the opening sentence uses the word "spawn point", as well as the addition of chests, swords, and a weird amount of random objects that can be arbitrarily created.
• Don't use the word 'unalive'; this isn't Youtube, you won't get demonetized.

Re: "Level 116" Cristal de pesadilla (And as usual, Critique needed)

custom mashup 31 May 2025 19:19

Hello, InspectingCritters. I want to inform you that I made the Matthew entities a few days ago. It is still unfinished, though. But thanks for the advice.

Edit: I changed the article.

Last edited on 23 Jun 2025 11:31 by custom mashup Show more

Re: "Level 396" Cristal of introspection (And as usual, Critique needed)

SanarusGreyda 30 Jun 2025 11:56

"Hundred-thousandth of a crystal that randomly spews out of the ground"; How do they calculate the probability that a crystal will spew from the ground? Is there one crystal per hundred thousand square meters? Is there one crystal spewing from the ground every hundred thousand hours or minutes?

How do you determine that it is "10% sultrier than the main area"? Is it hotter in terms of temperature (kelvin or centigrade)? Or is it 61 centigrade, relative to the human body temperature of 30~ cantigrate? I think you get the basic idea because there are many more examples like this.

Most of what InspectingCritters mentioned above still applies. There is no story being told. There is a bit more simplification but it is still very confusing and jumps from topic to topic. There is no overall feeling given. When I read the Level I expected some action or drama but it kept getting descriptions and explanations. You wrote a level but you only 'writing level' and all I see is a 'magic cave'.

There is a lack of character, story and drama/action. The writing style is extremely boring.