Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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I would like to thank immensely The Purgatory and Phantom7Ks for working on this project I had since way before Firework came to existence by the way.

Black Wave originally by shadowdash24 is a level I encountered about 7 or so years ago while browing through random unrated levels and it surprised me there was nothing related to this. Of course it was a very middle of the road Nine Circles with a few iffy gameplay that makes you know immediately it was hacked. But still it had some fun bits and with a bit of reworking I knew I could maybe make something out of it.

I initially thought of a core-like level, but with the passing of time, the project fading to obscurity, I had the opportunity to be contacted by Phantom7Ks who was interested about some old layouts I did which disappeared from the surface of the earth. Or it felt like it.

Black Wave wasn't my best rework at all but I thought, it's not so long, it's something they could maybe enjoy doing and make it look astonishing, let's rework it again.

The layout was then released in December 2023: youtube.com/watch?v=9NWCjtBwTk8

Him and his team began working on the level which I renamed to Vague Noire, the French for Black Wave to give a fresh air to the project. That being said, I cannot fathom how hyped I was looking at the first previews!

One more thing to consider is that while the layout was hardly top 150, this, with the deco, probably pumps it to top 100, maybe mainlist if you can't see a thing for the entirety of the wave. It's genuinely that much harder, I went from having the wave in 3 runs to enable to pass the decorated segment at all. It's almost a Deadlocked to Invisible Deadlocked situation. It's an exaggeration but it's to highlight the sheer necessity of having a crazy muscle memory in the level.

Recorded by ‪@Oculations‬