so, what?
there's one GD level creator who i've always found.. interesting. their name is soRakami, and they're not very well-known. their one rated level, Dragon Force, is a 2-player medium demon with questionable-at-best gameplay but sick as heck art (especially for 1.8 limitations) throughout. and i got curious to see what else they've made. i didn't know what i was getting into.
zaRIKU
zaRIKU is another old level creator, with a handful of rated levels. what's interesting is they seem to have some affiliation with soRakami, having collaborated on a handful of levels.
for example, there's SoulBeat, which has been uploaded multiple times on zaRIKU's account and once on soRakami's. the level features some very blind transitions in the drop, as well as somewhat repetitive gameplay. but there's some weird differences between soRakami's and zaRIKU's versions. soRakami's upload features a bizarre cube at the start, which is missing from all of zaRIKU's uploads. zaRIKU's versions seem to be about the same, featuring a custom background in the ball part but having most of the portals in the second half invisible. and there are a lot of portals.
i used to think that maybe soRakami's version isn't official, and is just an edited version of zaRIKU's, but given one of zaRIKU's is labelled as a "short version" despite the only thing missing being the first cube in soRakami's, it's more likely that they collaborated on this. also, the names "zaRy" and "Iku" are both featured at the end, which makes me wonder if zaRIKU is a shared account between Iku (most likely soRakami) and zaRy.
something i failed to mention, by the way, is that one of zaRIKU's versions of SoulBeat is rated 8 stars, but is titled Right Here Waiting. this is because it was originally a completely different level made multiple updates sooner, seemingly themed around a 1989 song by Richard Marx of the same name. but zaRIKU had a weird habit of updating their levels after they got rated, switching them out for entirely unrelated levels.
i should also mention that zaRIKU is the one who made the original Zirokabi that was remade into Ziroikabi and Ziroikapi (try not to mix up those names). and yes, that was also an overhauled version of another level, -zirokabi- (with dashes). the updated version is labelled in the description as "jitter doll", which, if interpreted as the real name of the level, makes Ziroikabi and Ziroikapi actually misnomers. fun!
okay, there's one more zaRIKU solo level i need to mention: Watch in Chaos. and i'm just going to compare it to soRakami's remake of it, titled Watch in Chaos Z, as i go, just because that's more convenient honestly. Watch in Chaos also has a split path at the beginning, which is going to make this a little harder, but who am i if not dedicated to the art of the yap?
the start of Watch in Chaos Z seems mostly unrelated to the source level, except for a more detailed version of the clock art found in Watch in Chaos. there's also that one stupid 2-player dual out of nowhere (a bit like Dragon Force in a way). they both have some emphasis in click sync. the drop section of Watch in Chaos Z is... entirely auto, followed by a ship that spams mirror portals like there's no tomorrow. both of these are almost unaltered from the bottom path of Watch in Chaos. it then switches to the UFO found in Watch in Chaos's top path. there's a short original ship part, before some UFO and timings like a little earlier in Watch in Chaos's bottom path. and... that's the level! oh, and here's a full 3-way comparison if you're curious.
unfinished/short levels
there's a handful more levels soRakami made with zaRIKU, but it'd be kinda redundant to go over those in detail here, so i recommend just going to Stormfly's video on zaRIKU's levels and skipping to Little Gigant, IKUGame and Another Hunting. on the other hand, some of soRakami's unfinished or short levels have been left pretty much undocumented, just sitting on the servers without any real acknowledgement. so i'm gonna go through the more interesting ones here.
Disappear of Echo (not to be confused with Disappear of Echo08) starts as one of those "hold from the start" levels. except that you have to stop holding around 80% and hit a couple of orbs afterwards. and yes, i did get trolled by this the first time.
DragonStep (uploaded as DragonStep beta2) was a planned sequel to Dragon Force. the first 26 seconds have been uploaded, featuring some memory gameplay around lots of orbs, an absurdly long straightfly section, and the start of the drop featuring a giant dragon. unfortunately there isn't much dragon art to admire in this level, and what deco does exist is nifty but nothing special.
Deemo Fantasy (uploaded as Deemo Fantasy sp) starts with a very simple slow cube with some piano art, but more interestingly there's a mini cube part with a 4-block-tall breakable block maze. the part has cool designs, cool pulsing patterns, and the gameplay is really cool! if any old soRakami level were to be finished, i'd probably want it to be this one.
oh, and bonus mention for SPECTURE (blind timings simulator), suRf solaR (2p challenge) and wave (swingcopter challenge).