You might’ve seen “This game is rather challenging and requires a lot of precise jumps and timing,” and think, “Oh, boy; this is another one of those frustrating hacks that require liberal use of states,” but you’d only be partially right. It starts off really hard in the first stage, but it eases up after that; you’ll still have the occasional difficulty spike, but most of the game’s challenge is pretty on-the-level. Even so, this is absolutely worth playing for the atmosphere alone. Every stage is a dark, nightmarish wasteland, not in the sense that it’s inherently frightening, but more in the sense of a creeping dread that you don’t really know where you are or what’s going on. Even the enemies contribute to this; most of them look like they’re drowning in a sad anguish, or at least feeling glum and dissonant, and there is no Bowser equivalent; his chamber is usually devoid of life. It’s beautiful, too; it has a neat checkerboard aesthetic, and most everything else is empty black with a brightly-colored outline, including even the water and lava. There are underwater stages with long stretches of swimming through long stretches of empty blackness, and it’s subliminal bliss. The underwater sections also replace the coral with these weird screaming ghosts. One of the most striking moments was 8-1, which is the only stage that doesn’t have a black background. It’s a dull blue color that resembles dawn, as though the dreamer is about to awaken; perhaps coincidentally, this is the only stage in which the timer ticked below 100, giving an even stronger impression that the dream is about to end. If you enjoy dreams, or just want something surreal to absorb you for awhile, I simply cannot recommend this hack enough; it is one of my absolute favorites.