This is part 3 of this review, part 2 is here:
https://froginaboxstudio.blogspot.com/2026/09/games-from-frogs-box-255-at-least-there.html
WORLD 6: FINAL WORLD
https://froginaboxstudio.blogspot.com/2026/09/games-from-frogs-box-255-at-least-there.html
WORLD 6: FINAL WORLD
Welcome to the "final" world. The gloves are off- this is one of the memeiest and weirdests set of levels in the game, and they're hard as hell, too. If you were hanging on for dear life in world 5, you may be in trouble by now.
6-1: STICK FIGURES ON CRACK!!
This level's signature enemy are the pogo stick figures, that jump when you do, so they're easily exploitable, if not necessarily easy to dodge. Jump over 'em, go under 'em, who cares. (Also, hi, Zeeky H. Bomb!)
In between stuff like that, you'll be stuffed into tiny spaces to slip around the various hazards, inches away from death.
The OTHER main hazard are these burgers, which go down frighteningly fast and have a way of sneaking up on you. They can smash through blocks, too, so make sure to use 'em to get through to some secrets. Half the time they're offscreen, waiting to smash you to bits.
But even when you CAN see them, you're still gonna have to run past a lot of them in quick succession, often while dodging stickmen and pits. They come in two sizes, too- small and large. And the small ones are often used to catch you off guard from above.
Add a brutal final bit where you have to jump on multiple water bottles in a row over a pit and rushing past a bunch of falling burgers, and you have a proper stage-setting for world 6. Memey, yet hair-pullingly difficult.
Also, this level has one of my favorite music tracks in the game- a whacky track with tons of memery and cowbell. "Monstrosity of a fish" is burned into my brain after playing this stage.
6-2: DESKTOP WARS 2
Featuring assets from the game of the same name, this carries on the trend of spiking the difficulty, right from the first enemy. These stickmen walk back and forth and toss knives in an arc, and they have a FRUSTRATING tendency to hit you as you're trying to rush past them. Plus, their erratic movement makes them hard to jump on.
Not helped at all by them very deliberately being placed in spots where it's difficult or impossible to kill them. Fun! You get an Eternal Cape for this level, but that's not going to help you when you keep getting knocked out of the air by these bastards.
Another new enemy debuts here as you're rushing across these switch blocks, these guys that float around and blow up bricks... including the ones you're standing on, while you're waiting for the path to clear. Nightmarish.
This bit with all the bees is particularly squirrely, with the laser guy firing down on your from above when you have no stable footing. And as you keep going, the bees thin out- better not waste a bounce, or you're toast.
Plus, the sausage afterwards requiring you guide the laser enemy to blow up a specific block is a bit mean. This is still a very competently designed level, but... something about it just rubs me the wrong way. It's definitely those stickmen.
6-3: GTA MYTH HUNTERS
Compared to the gauntlets of the last two stages, this one is far more open. Right from the start, you've got two keys you need to get, and two paths to decide between. The music is some of the memiest yet, full of Dr. Robotnik clips and "baby would you like some sausage". It's great.
In the top path, a new enemy- PURPLE HAZE- introduces itself, fittingly right next to Fugo. It can't be harmed by cheeseballs, and only harms you if you spend too long in its poisonous aura. So, really, it's just about figuring out how to rush past it as fast as possible instead of killing it. Fun enemy.
Meanwhile, the bottom half has a tricky segment with springs and bladed flying saucers over a pit, which you will probably get hit by one of those enemies on your way over. It's good to come to this path second, since a Sausage is here that requires both keys.
The second half of the level, though, is where it all goes to hell. That mysterious black thing starts moving, and it's the game's equivalent of the ANGRY SUN, so you know it's gonna be a mess.
Especially with parts like THIS, with tons of hazards all around, always in your way, AND you have this bastard to worry about on top of it. You can't kill it either, except with the L Knife (which isn't in this stage naturally.)
The hardest part of the stage is the last sausage, where you have to carry an explosive disk all the way through a gauntlet of falling platforms and a purple haze- but, if you get lucky, you can get rid of the Mothman with an explosion, leaving you free to take it at your leisure. And even that, there's a Fugo/Purple Haze combo waiting to snap you up at the goal if you're small.
Still, though, this level keeps the momentum rolling- but it's not really a standout in my eyes. Mostly because it's placed right before...
6-4: AROUND THE WORLD IN 80S
Oh boy. You thought Icy Tower was bad? You ain't seen nothing. This level is a constant, brutal, FAST autoscroller with death-defying stunts required at every turn. After the opening sequence of jumps over damaging cheeseblocks, it tasks you with having to get on an elevator and dodge buzzsaws to reach a sausage...
Then bounce across lines of enemies to dodge past a laser, while keeping your momentum up so you don't drop like a stone or fall behind.
Then, grab a cape, do very precise jumps to sneak past buzzsaws, with lava underneath you, where one hit can spell death.
Oh, and wedge yourself into the small gap of a vertical elevator to get a Disk. all in the first two minutes of the level! This isn't even HALF of the crap you have to pull off to get through this stage in one piece.
By the time you get to the giant firebars, your time is running out, and the clocks start rolling in. You're running out of time, and only the mercy of the clock items can keep you from starting over. And the stunts get even more outrageous.
Now it's an even tougher vertical autoscroller with stunts like bouncing off bees between cheese blocks,
Or walljumping up the blood while cheese blocks are sprinkled in to punish suboptimal positioning. Fun!
Later on, you get the eternal axe, with the Evil Sorcerer making a comeback as you deal with nefarious configurations of elevators, buzzsaws, and falling platforms...
Or making split-second jumps off a stickman to reach the top. Miss that jump, kill the stickman early, you're doomed.
And at the very top of the tower, a unique midboss appears- ALEX MERCER FROM PROTOTYPE OF ALL PEOPLE, who you have to smack repeatedly with your axe until he falls into a pit. He's not hard, but it's so stressful finally managing to get to the top of this godforsaken level only to have something ELSE thrown at you at the last second. And the timer is still ticking down, so you might just choke.
STILL. This is my pick for my favorite level in the game. This is the sternest test of platforming yet, and the constant stress of the timer and autoscrolling while having to perform all this madness is electrifying. It's wonderful.
This stage is the Ceda Cedovic equivalent of Pizza Tower's WAR, that's how good it is.
6-5: COUNTER-STRIKE 1.6
Finally, you get to CounterStrike after spending the entire game trying to reach it, and it does not disappoint. It's a sprawling, brutal gauntlet of a level, filled with some of the toughest obstacles in the game. It may not be as intense as 6-4, but it is CERTAINLY much longer, providing a great endurance test for the penultimate stage.
The last enemy in the game is introduced here, these Counter-strike soldiers that toss knives at you. Unless you have a projectile, they can be pretty gnarly to deal with. And there's a lot of them.
This stage has some of the nastiest enemy placements in the game, like these stickmen with a Fugo behind them, forming a damn near impenetrable barrier to get past.
Or this vertical shaft of soldiers leading to one of the Sausages. If you come in here without an extra hit or a projectile, you're screwed.
By the way, two of the collectables in this stage are before the checkpoint, so if you die on the way, you have to start from the beginning of the level. Fun!
Or THIS bit with all the enemies on the brick blocks, while the enemy from Desktop Wars 2 is breaking them from under you.
Or THIS... with the purple hazes on the conveyor belt, which are really, REALLY tough to get past without choking to death or colliding with them. Really, all i can say about this level is, well, look at it really. This is a true enemy gauntlet, and the powerups in the stage do not have the hardware to deal with them. Either you bring something in from the shop and hope you can keep it, or grit your teeth and power through.
The stage caps off with a conveyor belt run past a massive avalanche of burgers and skulls, plus one more group of foes to catch unaware players off guard. I like Around the World in 80s more, but this stage is still a great one, and an excellent leadup to the final boss.
6-6: GOANIMOSITY
Before you can challenge the final boss, Nuclear Throne fights you... and he dies in one hit, lol.
(Him and Mega Stalin are a reference to some GoAnimate videos LeatherIceCream made... and the final boss is, too. It's great.)
Thankfully, MEGA SATAN is a far more fitting foe. When I realized what was going on, my jaw dropped and I had to step away from the computer for a moment. I mean... fucking LOOK at him!
Yes, the final boss of this game is a GoAnimate joke. Hell, the music is a remix of the stock GoAnimate rock theme, by the Binding of Isaac: Antibirth's composer, and it ROCKS. This boss is no joke, though- it's a four-phase long slugfest that'll push you to your limits. It's wonderful.
The first phase is relatively simple, with him slamming his hands down to make shockwave that summons falling skulls- and knocks you FAR away from him if you're on the ground. As the fight goes on, he'll start firing eye lasers, too- just one more thing to dodge around.
The toughest part of this is dodging the lasers that he fires- you have to jump RIGHT when they cross paths, it takes a bit of careful timing. Just jump on the hands three times each, and you'll have it in the bag.
Or not, because even after that, the boss STILL summons a pile of skulls on your head before transitioning to the next phase. A NASTY trap indeed.
The second phase is just as tough, though it requires less waiting. The hands will drop bouncing Binding of Isaac heads that you have to bounce off of to bonk them... but that's REALLY hard given how high up the heads are. You basically have to be jumping on them while they're already jumping to stand a chance.
Not to mention, as the phase goes on, Mega Satan will summon buzzsaws to roll across the arena... that NEVER GO AWAY. And just occasionally splash damaging blood all around the arena. Basically, free space is at a premium here- but the hands take less hits, so it's a good trade-off.
The third phase is relatively simple, in that it only requires one hit- but getting that hit is difficult. Blocks are coming down from the ceiling, and you need to lure them into stacking in such a way that you can leap and dive on top of his head.
And if you take too long, he'll blast away those blocks with a huge laser.
But when you do, you strip him down to the BONE. Badass.
The last phase is a proper SMB1-style castle level, with autoscrolling and CONSTANT barrages of blue fireballs heading your way. It's frantic, it's fast-paced, it's everything a chase sequence should be.
Especially when GIANT LASERS start being fired down the hallway at you!
There's no checkpoints throughout this segment until you get to the boss, so buckle up. The fireballs and lasers are choreographed, the same every time. So once you die to one part, you probably won't fall for it again.
Once you finally reach the end, all you need to do is jump on one of Mega Satan's aimed waterbottle bullets, then it's game over. He's not gonna make that easy, though, with firing blue skulls at you constantly, along with the firebars everywhere...
But once you get him, it's over! You win!
What else can I say about this boss? It's long, brutal, incredibly strict... but it's so much fun, and a perfect climax to the mega-shitpost that is Ceda Cedovic. Not one bit of it feels unfair, and it's paced perfectly for such a long fight.
But. There's one more world, and it requires getting all the sausages to unlock. But once you do...
Prepare for absolute HELL.
WORLD 7: MEME CORE WORLD
WELCOME TO HELL. This world verges on kaizo, and it is ludicrously difficult, but entirely fair, for the most part.
There are no new gimmicks or enemies here- just the existing ones cranked up to insane difficulty levels. If you don't have infinite lives enabled... just turn them on, otherwise you're going to hate yourself. These levels are BRUTAL.
7-1: BITCHIN'
I died so many times in this level, the phrase "you're bringing some kind of butt gun into work, i'm just trying to do a good joj" is burned into my brain. Anyway, this level STARTS with perfect dives through buzzsaws, so that should tell you how this is gonna go.
You get an Eternal Cape in this stage, but it's past a vertical dodging game of buzzsaws and Purple Haze smoke. Very precise, and very difficult.
Which you will immediately have to use for some deadly acrobatics- like flying through a maze of cheese blocks to outrun the time limit of a switch, trying desperately to grab a key along the way. At least you get a Sugar Cube for this.
Get used to losing your powerup to force your way through small gaps, and then having to make pixel perfect jumps out of said gaps- that will be a COMMON fixture of World 7. Fun!
Then, bouncing off waterbottles, and bees, while dodging buzzsaws, over a pit...
And finally, dodging past a three-way laser with perfect timing, before you're finally allowed to exit. Isn't this fun? The rest of the world is even better. BUCKLE UP.
7-2: SPARTAMAN
Hell yeah, it's a Mega Man themed level. Thank god there's no disappearing blocks, though! If those were here, I think I'd have a conniption. The song is a Sparta remix, as expected, and it's an absolute banger.
Anyway, the OPENING ROOM has Yeets tossing explosive blocks at you, so you're not even given the courtesy of starting the level before dying. Woo!
The signature gimmick of this level is the spinning razor blades from Golimar's boss fight, except they're a standard hazard now. Coming in both moving AND stationary varieties, their deadly rotations make for quite an enormous pain in the ass.
Just look at THIS part, where you have to dodge over the top of one, while it's MOVING...
Or these two next to each other in a cramped space. The last segment of the stage is particularly brutal about checkpoints, and there are no powerups within. So you'd better get good at dodging!
This level is pretty short, and may lack the variety of its predecessor, but it gets a lot of use out of its gimmick. Plus, that sparta song is a banger.
(Also, Hi Tom Cruise.)
7-3: MOPPA WARS
The gimmick of this stage is that there's no powerups anywhere in it. At least you get to wedge through small gaps, dodging buzzsaws, while not being able to take hits, while trying to outrun the time limit of a switch! Fun!
All while Willy Wonka berates you over the music. "ITS ALL THERE, BLACK AND WHITE, CLEAR AS CRYSTAL!" will be burned into your head after playing this level. Also, shoutouts to the powerup block which contains nothing and is literally there to distract you from getting through, usually resulting in a forced death.
This stage is all about threading the needle through increasingly small holes, like weaving past this spinning razor on one block wide platforms, right AFTER dropping through a tunnel of buzzsaws.
Or these urchins on one block platforms, REALLY close to each other, after slipping past blood-spewing bugs in tight spaces...
Or riding a platform around cheese blocks while Fugos throw pizzas, trying to force you to jump off.
OR THIS MESS WITH THE BUZZSAWS IN TINY GAPS.
It's a mess- but it's over quickly, and it plays mostly fair.
7-4: SUICIDEMOUSE.AVI
Three evil sorcerers right at the start of the level, I feel so welcome here!
This level has a fun gimmick- the screen wraps around vertically in it. As you can imagine, this gets mindbending fast, especially with Ceda's momentum carrying him down like a brick.Especially when it's combined with reverse gravity, like this part where you have to. Fly up. bounce off the the enemies to get to safe ground. while dodging the bones from up above. fun!
Or this bit, with bouncing up to the bottom of the screen from the top, while dodging buzzsaws... I promise you, if this looks confusing in a screenshot, try playing it in motion. Your neurons will MELT.
Even without the wrap around, the geometry of this level is deadly, look at all these buzzsaws, it's practically a meatgrinder.
Or how about the waterbottle cannon guys that can jump off their ledges and fall down infinitely, thus making their projectiles really difficult to dodge?
And then this last bit, where that knife guy is DELIBERATELY positioned to hit you if you're running full tilt past him, I swear. That one guy killed me more than anything else in the level.
This is a really good level, probably one of the best in world 7. The wraparound gimmick gives it a lot of personality, and I love the creepypasta reference :D
7-5: SPONGE BOB SAW
The last normal level in the entire game... and oh boy it's a whopper. It's an absolute gauntlet of brutal platforming setups that will push you to your limit. Starting off with dashing through buzzsaw gaps as usual, but now with releasing a pile of dancers on you once you get the key.
Then, a gauntlet of buzzsaws and bricks, with a LOWWWW brick-destroying guy right above you and a counterstrike soldier at the end. And a razor blocking your path!
Then, this big diagonal laser grid that requires pixel perfect timing and positioning. Oh, and it's worth noting, this level's music has Dark Castle CD-I sound effects in it. I can't BELIEVE i got that reference. Banger song.
Oh, then running past a bunch of Evil Ottos in a narrow hallway where you can't jump on them lest you hit the cheese. You can just run past them, and hope to god you don't get grazed. Same with the hammer guys immediately after.
(Also yes, that NPC is Satan Hosain from Action 52's Storm Over the Desert. Talk about obscure...)
AND THEN, immediately after dodging through a narrow hallway of buzzsaws on skeleton platforms, which is exactly as precise as it looks...
You get this james bond deathtrap of a room. Bouncing off a ton of crocodiles, while waiting for a switch to expire, all while trying not to face left because a BOO is gonna eat your face.
Do I really need to go on? This level is just one ridiculous hazard after another, demanding you put your skills to the absolute test... and i absolutely LOVE IT. It's the culmination of everything the game has to offer, in one lovely, brutal stage.
But that's not the end of the pain. The boss of the Meme Core awaits.
7-6: THE TEST LEVEL
As soon as you enter, you know something's up here. All the graphics are garbled, and the music keeps muttering something about "Mari-Obama..."
What could it mean? HM.
Trying to figure out where the heck you're supposed to go is the hardest part of this segment, but it just takes a bit of wandering. And probably falling to your death. Enter the crudely assembled tile house, and meet your destiny.
As you progress, you end up in a weird hole with Duane from that one barbie movie cryptically warning you about what's to come. It's... IT'S-
THE TRUE FINAL BOSS... MARIOBAMA
I feel like this needs some context. Because somehow, there is some. Apparently, MariObama was another game by the same dev, that was cancelled for various reasons. It was resurrected later and turned into a game about the Poor 4 and Ceda Cedovic... but MariObama was here, lurking in the background the WHOLE TIME, ready to kill you and take his spot as the main character BACK!
He uses ALL THE POWERUPS IN THE GODDAMN GAME, too.
The cape one is the easiest, since he just leaps up into the air and slams down. The axe one is similarly easy, with him just bouncing all around the room and off the walls. Not hard to dodge.
The green knives boomerang around in particularly frustrating configurations, and the black ones fly up and down like Castlevania-esque sine waves.
And the fireball attacks... he'll leap away if you get close, so you have to dive right into him to land that all important hit.
One hit for each powered-up state is required to beat him, and they can get pretty ridiculous to deal with. Especially the fireball one, if you don't know to fucking slam into him with the dive it's pretty aggravating to kill him.
After every hit, he surrounds himself with a pizza shield preventing you from dealing damage for a bit- and by the time he drops it, he's only seconds away from switching to another phase! It's a brutal skillcheck, really forcing you to memorize all his patterns to have even a chance.
But you may wonder, only five hits? That's nothing! What else is there?
WHY, HIM RUNNING AWAY LIKE A LITTLE SISSY BABY OF COURSE!
And now, you get the ETERNAL AXE/CAPE to chase him down in the most ludicrous platforming yet. It's a crazy fast autoscroll with not a smidgen of error. If you die at any point, you're going back. Better make it count!
The cape jumps have to be perfect, otherwise you're liable to break your momentum and fall right into a pit. And the scrolling speed does not help- you barely have time to breathe, let alone catch up to him.
The parts where you have to smack a disc around to break an explosive block are the most stressful, honestly. If you miss the disk, kill the enemy by accident, or screw up in anyway, you're dead. It demands perfect execution, all the way to the end.
At the very end, you fly up, and hit the blocks Mariobama's standing on, before he can get to the switch. The game slows down dramatically to give you the reaction time to make that last hit... or rage even harder if he still hits that stupid button.
But if you do it, the taste of victory is sweet.
This is the best version of a Mario-esque button bridge sequence ever made, no contest. It's so stressful, so brutal, so precise- but when you finally hit that magic sequence of inputs and get him, it's MAGIC.
The meme disease is gone for good, and Ceda has completed all the challenges on offer.
Or has he?
There's one more challenge, actually. Though... I wasn't ready for it. Not in the least.
7-7: GET 2 IT
Nice Plutonia reference with the name, there.
Hidden in the final stage, there's one final challenge. One last test for your platforming skills.
The game even warns you that it's totally unfair, and it is NOT KIDDING ABOUT THAT.
...yeah, uh... no.
This level is a super secret stage devoted entirely to kaizo gameplay. I couldn't get more than two minutes into it before i ragequit. I mean, the first room is a reference to Super Mario Frustration, the classic SMB Romhack nonsense. It requires you to hold right to not fall into a pit as soon as you spawn, bounce off a guy, then dive through a one block wide gap with a firebar on top of it. And it goes on for like, ten more minutes after this, and there are VERY few checkpoints.
No, thank you.
I am FULLY willing to chalk this up to a skill issue. All completing this madness gets you is an extra percentage on the save file, for a total of 101%. No thank you, lol. The last stage was a climactic enough finale.
But! There is one last piece of content to dig through, for real Ceda-heads out there.
MARIOBAMA MODE
Beating world 7 unlocks MariObama as a playable character, with his own physics akin to Luigi from Lost Levels. High jump, slippery, the whole works.
There's a couple unique cutscenes at the beginning and end, but for the most part, the story is totally removed. This is strictly there to let you have some catharsis in all the brutal levels. Though you do get to unlock the cutscenes and music that were made for the MariObama version of the game, which is fun to see.
Not gonna lie, he breaks the game wide open- and let me tell you, it is VERY fun to absolutely snap these levels over my knee after all the brutality playing through it as Ceda put me through, lol.
You may be wondering what happens when you get to 7-6 with him. Well, Doopliss of all freaking people appears and impersonates you, turning into a photonegative version of the true final boss. Great joke.
I still couldn't beat 7-7, but oh well. That level is too hard for most people.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
From a pure game design standpoint, this game is fantastic. It just builds, and builds, and builds on itself, cranking up the difficulty gradually all the while, until you get to the screaming pits of platform hell for the last few levels, and they're SO MUCH FUN. This is some of the best platforming level design I've seen in a long time.
Every stage has something new and weird waiting around the corner, and it's so exciting to see what's next.
That's without getting into the wild vibes of this game- I have never seen such a concentrated, specific shitpost executed this well. All these hyperspecific references that only the creators would understand, loving recreated and crafted to the point where I COULDN'T TELL half of them were references until the end credits.
And the music elevates it even more, like listening to a Siivagunner playlist on repeat and with a lot of bath salts. Every single song in here will have you laughing your ass off or tapping your feet to the beat.
This is one of my favorite platformers ever made now, and I highly recommend everyone who likes Mario or weird shitposts to check it out. This review has been a long time coming, but I NEEDED to drag more eyes onto this game somehow.
GAME LINK:
https://leathericecream.itch.io/at-least-there-is-ceda-cedovic
SOUNDTRACK:
https://proburekproductions.bandcamp.com/album/at-least-there-is-ceda-cedovic-ost