2025 - Year of the Snake

by Kathryn

Description

New year, new snakes.

Details

Modification: PlatinumQuest

Game type: Singleplayer

Gem count: 0

Has Easter Egg: No

Platinum time: 01:15.000

Ultimate time: 00:50.000

Awesome time: 🤔

Remarks

"Remake" of my 2019 & 2020 level combined. Special thanks to Lily. A few months ago, I had an epiphany that made me reevaluate the way I see art and artistic expression as a whole. After building a certain art piece dedicated to Owen, I reexplored the past: listening to his songs, reading his blog posts. I eventually, found his MB customs, and it gave me the idea of playing Marble Blast again. I disregarded the idea at first, but it kept coming back. Eventually, I caved in, redownloaded PQ, and everything changed. All the sudden, I was dealing with countless emotions, thoughts, and feelings. My head was swimming in a concoction of joy, uneasiness, regret, nostalgia, and sonder. Things were making little sense in my head, and I had to sit down and unpack everything emotionally as I replayed the game for the first time in four years. Playing the game, after everything that happened, felt surreal. Everything felt re-contextualized. The game itself hardly changed, yet everything feels different. It feels barren. Empty. Desolate. There was something bittersweet about it, though. Marble Blast was the first video game I ever played, so it unmistakably felt like part of my identity. I remembered that sometime in 2021, I called for the deletion of all my old custom levels from Marbleland. I did this because I didn't want to be associated with the community (and for the record, I still don't), however, this came at a cost. Art has many forms and mediums, including Marble Blast levels. I felt like by deleting my old levels, I've harmed my own artistic representations of myself. It hurt to think that I've neglected and sabotaged my history, especially since Marble Blast was a big part of my life growing up. I then had the idea to remake the old levels in PQ's style. This gave me an opportunity to learn Blender, reimagine some of my older work, and express myself. I wanted to give them a theme, so I picked snakes. There's a specific reason I picked snakes, but I won't explain why. I think it's more fun if you come up with your own artistic interpretation. I was going to build more level remakes, but I got sidetracked and this project just simply isn't calling me anymore. Building and brainstorming the project was fun while it lasted though. Maybe I'll come back to it, but it's really low priority.