As I said before, the devlogs will now have a spoiler warning for the gameplay, as levels 4 & 5 are relly different from what was shown in the demo.
Level 4 was completed quickly since it didn't require much 3D modeling. The reason for this is because most of the feel takes place in almost complete darkness. If previous levels where creepy but cool, this one is just plain creepy.
To make the "this area is cursed" feeling even stronger, I switched the artstyle for a mix: the backgrounds and enemies where done by applying my usual collage artstyle to the already existing pre-rendered sprites. The results where fairly interesting and this weird hybrid style is something I would like to explore further in the future, but the remaining levels will return to 100% pre-rendered assets for the sake of consistency.
This level's weirdness also extends to the gameplay. While the earlier levels followed the demo's format of slowly introducing mechanics, this one jumps between the new mechanics, and even has some empty rooms in the middle. The idea was to make it feel as if the game design itself has abandoned you. However, I tried to avoid crossing the line between scary and frustrating by making the new mechanics fairly easy to understand and having the section in which they first appear be easy to complete.
The next devlog will take some time, as level 5 is planned to be the biggest one.