runouw.com

Quite the interesting stand-alone battle. Varied attacks, fitting sound effects, fluid movements and a solid challenge. That being said, it isn't perfect.
First, the introduction sequence takes too long. While it is nice the first time, it gets wearisome after that, especially due to being so easily killed.
Second, there are too many instances of instant death, many of which unexpected. The eyes that contain the weak spots, in particular, can force you underneath them as the slide to one side or the other, which results in instant death. I assume they're supposed to push you into the lava. The falling lava pillars could probably just damage as well.
Third, there aren't any decent opportunities for actually attacking without resorting to kamakazi tactics (aka taking damage on purpose in order to deal a sizable amount of damage). Having more than a split second to deal damage would be nice; the eyes' HP could be increased to compensate.

4/5

This level is awesome! It's hard,all the fitting sound effects,and the mysterious intro.

5/5

As Volkove stated, the boss, while masterfully designed, is difficult to attack heavily without forced damage (i.e., when the lava wall shifts to one side and a wall of bolts are produced; when the eye comes down, you can inflict a significant amount of damage without a risk of being pushed into the lava - but you have no choice but to be hit by the bolt wall).

My main complaint, however, is that the opening cutscene takes far too long considering the amount of retries the level necessitates. I would have recommended placing a respawn point after the cutscene, so the player does not have to repeat it after every death.

I managed to complete the level via taking advantage of the fact that, if you time it right, you can jump and grab onto the edge of the platform when the eyes push you off. When the two eyes came down at once, I employed this tactic to hit one of the eyes 2-3 times, allowing it to push me off and saving myself just in time. When the eyes slide across horizontally however, they seem to move faster then then when they come down to the middle, and it is much harder to avoid being pushed into the lava. As a result, I would hit them once and then jump over them before they reached the lava wall.

The only other opportunity to attack is when the lava wall shifts to one side, along with the wall of bolts. To avoid damage, I always latched onto the edge of the platform, avoiding the bolts but also losing the chance to attack.

The falling lava blocks are easy enough to avoid, and by standing in the center and jumping at the right time, the "bullet hell" attack is easy to avoid as well.

Basically, it was more of an endurance battle than anything. Since I was only hitting the eyes once or twice everytime they came down, it took me a fair amount of time to defeat them.

The level was certainly challenging, and I died quite a few times before mastering my strategy. Of course, this isn't a bad thing, but the level would seem much more skill based and less repetitive if the instant death walls were removed, and replaced with 2 or even 4 hp damage. I would also agree with Volkove's suggestion of taking instant death away from the falling lava blocks, though they are easy to avoid.

Overall, I see this as more of a exhibition level of scripting as applied to bosses, and it is very impressive in that regard. Despite the difficultly and very steep learning curve, the level can be beaten - even without taking any damage - once you figure out how. My suggestions are not so much concerned with removing difficulty as they are concerned with decreasing the slope of the learning curve, because at this point the level essentially requires forced death in order to beat the boss.