How to become your own playtester

Step 1: Make a level.
Step 2: Don't play your level for 10 years.
Step 3: Play your level when you have forgotten almost everything about it. See all the flaws. (Holy shit did I put some confusing areas in there. But... the good bits also still really do it for me, so overall it was a positive experience. You know you did something right, 10+ years ago, when you can give yourself a real sense of wonder.)

Can't really recommend this method, as it does take 10 years!

Hi. I'm sorry I dropped out of everything for ten years, especially @person who offered to do the music for my level and whose name I currently can't remember because it's been *that* long. :-( I can't promise the dropping out thing won't happen again, because... life. But for now, I'm kinda back, I think? Got a lot to relearn, may have questions soon (warps/shifts/WHAT/HOW). Would also really like recommendations for post-2013 or so environmental levels and scenic challenge levels up to "normal" difficulty because I *still* suck at platforming, but I should probably make a dedicated thread for that.

Mainly I just wanted to say: it's awesome to see there's still people here and levels being made and released! I got a lot of catching up to do, and I'm *delighted*!

I'm replying to you all over the place, but I wanted to recommend a few pretty levels.

Vegetal Gibber - Forgotten Realms
Vegetal Gibber - Exploring the Golden Land
Purple Ink - Advena
TigerNDV - Above the Clouds (kinda hard)
Talps - I Chased the Moon
Lucinda - Shalev (I'm recommending my own level yes)

You'll need KS+ which is truly inevitable in this day and age

Thanks for returning! I played Falling Water a few months ago and wanted so badly to see it continue on.

I wanted to give you a list of recent enviromental levels but looking into my KS level folder I realized that most of them are actually pretty old. So there are some (relatively) recent levels I think that are really pretty:

Alcazar and Blue bird of happines - Vegetal gibber
Devil's triangle - Tiger NDV (this one is actually very hard but also very nice and unique so you should at least give it a try)
Petals II - Talps (same case as the above, so hard but so pretty)
Petrichor - StraightFlame
Azure serenity - shreeps (if you avoid the bosses it's mostly quite easy)
Nature walk - nick (at least the first 3 parts)
Lewis Wolke levels (i'm not sure if they're all post 2013 and I'm too lazy to look it up)
Throught the swamp - Egomassive
Emma fell down a well - Bulbapuck (in case you missed this one from 2013).

I'm in a similar situation with one my level that I started 10 years ago, let it be for a few years, then worked on it for a while about a year ago and then let it be again.

Thanks for the recs, @both of you!!

It's so great to see that this place isn't gone. I can't dedicate quite as much time to knytting as I would like at the moment, and mostly try to put that time into Falling Water, so my exploration of everything here will probably be slow, but it's great to have so much to look forward to.

It's especially awesome to see that I'm not the only person who'll return to an old project! Maybe there's hope for some of those very old threads in the previews forum yet - who knows!

Lucinda - Shalev (I'm recommending my own level yes)

No shame in recognising you've made a Good Thing!

Thanks for returning! I played Falling Water a few months ago and wanted so badly to see it continue on.

Hahaha, you and me both, you and me both.

Downloaded all your recs, which is the first step towards playing them. Excited!

As I said already on Discord, it's great to see you back. I held out hope for Falling Water for years, but was sure it was a lost cause by now. This is the most pleasant surprise of the decade!

Hi. I'm sorry I dropped out of everything for ten years, especially @person who offered to do the music for my level and whose name I currently can't remember because it's been *that* long.

That was Fubaka and I. If you still want to use the track I wrote back then, I could make a proper recording of it now. I can't promise much more than that at this time, though.

Fubaka is still around, so it's possible he would be interested in contributing. He's also put out a lot of music under Creative Commons licenses that's worth checking out: Fubaka on Bandcamp The Cup Bearer on Bandcamp Bonus album on Archive.org

I held out hope for Falling Water for years, but was sure it was a lost cause by now.

So did I!

That was Fubaka and I. If you still want to use the track I wrote back then, I could make a proper recording of it now. I can't promise much more than that at this time, though.

Aaaaahhhhh thank you, and again, god, I'm so sorry. I did see your posts in the thread, when I reread it last week, but wasn't sure if you or Fubaka were also the person(s) with whom I had already progressed to exchanging e-mails(?) about this or if that was someone else entirely or what. It's been too damn long. I hate that I flaked out like that. I just get overwhelmed by Everything(TM), sometimes, and then I just turn into a black hole of non-communication. :-/ Also had a number of minor life crises over the years.

Fubaka is still around, so it's possible he would be interested in contributing. He's also put out a lot of music under Creative Commons licenses that's worth checking out: Fubaka on Bandcamp The Cup Bearer on Bandcamp Bonus album on Archive.org

I have a lot of music to check out, it seems! I got quite a few recs! Will do that... sometime. Soon(ish). Concentrating on the actual building (and shift/warp coding and stuff) for now, just to ride that wave for as long as I can. I'd like to get the lower part of the world "done" ASAP, there's only around 50 screens missing for that, I think, and I'm currently managing around 10 per week (this may change when my vacation is over, mind).

I have to say, I'm actually somewhat keen to try doing the music myself, though? Though that may be too much of a challenge, really - I do own some instruments - guitar & keyboard - nowadays, but I still don't really know how to play either of them, and have even less of an idea how to record anything, nor edit it for use in a level. Anyway, that's still a ways off, I figure. First, finish building.