The reason I get a bit pissed when people say Save As is not a good-looking level is not because I think it’s good-looking. To anyone with the slightest bit of taste, Save As is, at the surface, a bland modernistic-effect hybrid level.

There is nothing special about the designs, not the effects. Every last one of them represent ideas that have been thoroughly explored in the past. But this lack of originality, rather than weighing Save As’s quality down, really has no effect on it at all.

The level’s beauty and quality instead comes from the unique story it tells. This it does exceptionally well. Every glitch effect, every piece of black glow, every shake trigger works together in tandem to craft an artistic portrayal of the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

People like Endlevel are right in that, when taken alone, a single structure, say, from Save As is nothing special at all. His fallacy is his failure to recognize in levels like these, the sun exceeds the parts.

Take Picasso’s “Guernica,” widely considered to be the best war painting of all time. When you examine Guernica piece by piece, without regard for the message it contains, it looks at best mediocre and at worst depicting a hideously unrealistic distortion of our world.

Yet the ugly, chaotic pieces of Guernica come together and work in tandem to create a deeply moving painting. Its purpose is to depict the chaos and trauma that follows war wherever it goes, and it does this exceptionally well.

One might even say the key component of Guernica IS the fact that its parts are so hideous. The ugliness of the parts comes together to create a scene of morbid chaos, which in turn works to more effectively, and (paradoxically) more beautifully portray its message.

Likewise, one could argue ordinariness is a key factor in what makes Save As so unnerving. Perhaps if the level were more well-designed, it would detract from the true terror of Alzheimer’s — it happens to the most ordinary of people. It could happen to you.

Even if you disagree and think I’m overthinking things in saying Save As’s blandness works to portray its message more effectively, I think you will agree of the foolishness in judging this level’s quality in its decoration alone. That was not PAHC’s intention (I hope).

Instead, the point of the level is that the bland, unoriginal PARTS sum to produce a whole greater than its parts. The quality of Save As lies not in the design, but the message it so masterfully portrays.

Perhaps you still dislike the level, and think the concept could have been better executed. That’s reasonable. But I hope I have been able to convince you (if anyone reads this, which they probably won’t) that basing Save As’s quality off of its design is folderol.