the road less traveled

Hey all! Here’s a project I’ve been working on for the past month or two, made to sorta celebrate the season of Autumn. I aimed at making this around the difficulty of Mirror Temple or Reflection, or somewhere in beginner red in terms of Spring Collab difficulties. Chances are if you’ve beat all the main A-sides, you’ll probably do fine here.

Other than just base gameplay I wanted to make a map that was just, really really beautiful. Autumn’s my favorite time of year, so I wanted to do the beauty I find in it justice. Hopefully I did that well here. Gosh that was way more deep sounding than I meant for it to be

I want to give a huuuuuuge thanks to Skqw who helped me a lot out with playtesting for this map, as well as Teo who made an absolutely beautiful song that I swear made me tear up when I heard it. They really helped pull this thing together!!!!!

Side note: the name is a reference to Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”. It’s always given me autumn vibes so I figured it would work out here for obvious reasons. It shows up in the map but you'll have to find it. Also, no, the map name is not the same as the poem name! That’s only half intentional!

Anyways, thanks so much for playing, and enjoy the map! -xoli

features: +Beginner-difficulty gameplay, aimed at around 5A or 6A. Mechanics include Jungle Helper hawks and wall moss, springs, green boosters, and falling blocks +some (hopefully) very pretty visuals! +about 20-30 screens, spanning 4 checkpoints +12 red berries, a heart puzzle, and a b-side cassette +B-side and C-side spanning 20+ rooms combined, aimed to be at most the difficulty of 7b. The B-side teaches Spring Cancels, while the C-side teaches Neutral Climbing. +a golden berry, and a grabless golden berry (sorry not sorry) +A few other secrets... +beautiful music by Teo and rads

if you notice anything wrong, please let me know on discord (xolimono#5526) or on twitter (@xolimono)! I plan on updating this map with some better end art, a b-side, and possibly a c-side, so if you do anything please let me know as soon as you can. Thank you!