Multiple, by 
This is a review for just one of the levels in the pack, namely Ancient Abyss. I have nothing to say about any of the other levels at this time and because they’re not uploaded separately, there’s no better place to leave an individual level review.
Every once in a while I bring up how much I love Ancient Abyss, generally followed by weird looks from the audience and no acknowledgement. Hardly anybody remembers this level. It’s a weird experimental stage in Snooze’s level design career that could’ve only possibly made sense in 2008 and we’ve all since moved past it. Well, I haven’t. I remain forever impressed by what this level accomplishes.
The initial impression you get when you first see Ancient Abyss is that it’s a regular, simple CTF layout. A bit claustrophobic, with little room for premeditated combat maneuvers, and full of places to safely camp. Even at this point it’s easy to notice that the visuals are wild. There’s a clear disregard for the concept of tiling. The intended use of tiles is treated more as a suggestion than anything. Tiles are flipped and layered together to create complex abstract patterns. Does it look good? You could argue for either side. The sharp edges, or so-called tilebugs, might bother you, and it takes some imagination to see this as more than a mess. But I think it takes both courage and genius to attempt something like this on such a scale, and to me the result is impressive, interesting, and pleasing to look at, at least for the most part.
But that is not what’s really distinguishing about the level. What is, is the massive over-100-tile drops on either side of the level. Every time you take one of these, you spend about 5 seconds in freefall with nothing to do but look at the scenery quickly passing by. If you find these, fall down one of them, and you’re highly unimpressed, it’s hard to explain what’s so special about them, but let me try.
What you have to understand first is that making a multiplayer level doesn’t always have to be about making a level that facilitates competitive gameplay. Nobody will tell you this, but there’s no rule that a level must strive to actually play well. It can, and that’s great, but that’s only one direction of design. Deep down, all levels are art, and while most aim to be pop—easy to understand and wide in appeal—there’s plenty of room for exploration of other genres.
From a gameplay perspective, these 5-second drops seem like a terrible idea. Nobody reasonable would put them in a multiplayer level. No other level contains something like this. And that’s what makes them so great. Falling down one of these for the first time is a jarring, confusing experience, only amplified by the unusual changing scenery as you fall. You could never see it coming. It feels like finding a hole in the level geometry and dropping out of bounds, halfway expecting that your journey will end abruptly in the bottommost row of the level with no floor to stand on. The terrain looks even weirder and more foreign and it feels like you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, exploring the unknown. When has another CTF level ever offered you that experience?
Of course, the problem with this perception is that it is entirely personal. To you, these drops might be 100 tiles of wasted space with a regular old piece of layout at the bottom. I can’t possibly convince you that it’s more than that, just as I have no way to convince you that a piece of abstract art is worthwhile or a song that sounds like noise to you is a masterpiece, actually. All I can say is that the experience exploring this level mattered enough to make me write this review—years after seeing it for the first time! It felt fresh and different, and it stuck with me.
So is Ancient Abyss a good CTF level? Well, no. At least I don’t think so—I never managed to convince anyone to play it with me and I had little desire to do so myself. Even aside from what amounts to 5-second cutscenes you have to watch every time on the way to collect power-ups, it has 3 full carrots and 2 small ones, which has got to be way too many regardless of the player count, not to mention how easy to camp they all seem. It’s cramped, hard to navigate, and probably just not very fun to play.
But also, yes. It’s unique and catches you completely off guard, and offers an experience unlike any other CTF level, so long as your mind is open to something else than playing another regular game of CTF, and willing to see it as art and not another toy. It’s not a good idea executed poorly, it’s quite the opposite: this is an idea that never had a chance to work, executed incredibly well. I think that perhaps not everything has to be "good" in order to be good.
