Yeah, I saw some of ThirdWall's moderation for UB3 and it looks super cursed. Gbreeze is the kaizo mad scientist we don't deserve.
drkrdnk actually patched fast retry into Dram World and has been playing that, I bet you he'd give you the patch file if you asked him.
You know, I actually thought about asking him for it, but then I saw that one jump in the rope level with something like 10 kaizo blocks around it, and I'm not sure if I want to put up with that. But the rest of Dram honestly doesn't look that bad.
Kaizo 1 any% with fast retry is also a consideration, but I feel like it might be too raw for me to really enjoy.
Anyway, I played another couple of race levels today. Stuntman Mario by IcyFruit (#12), and Shellter Skelter by Juzcook (#13, the start of season 2). Stuntman Mario was a cute level with a bunch of sections, each inspired by a big Hollywood movie. Each section had the appropriate theme song to soundtrack it, though some of the ports were pretty quaint. In any case, each section is only a few minutes long, so you don't have to hear them endlessly. I got a 14:51 on this, which (at the time) would've put me in 4th place - notably bopping both spudd and LouisDoucet. There's no way I could beat either of them in a race now, but it's nice to know I'm at least as good as a couple of the best were several years ago.
Shellter Skelter was a blast, and it was a treat to play something "new" from Juz. If you like Invictus, you owe it to yourself to play this one too. The first half of the level has you escorting a shell through various fast-paced setups, and the second half is kind of a "greatest hits" of Invictus mechanics. Snake blocks? Check. Fast pipes? Check. Thwomp obstacle course? Check. And then there's a Boo boss that's kinda like a variation on the Absolute Power boss, minus the motor skills. This was super fun, and I finished in 48:45. That would've put me 15 seconds behind Valdio in 6th place. I'll take that!
Once you beat Shellter Skelter, it unlocks a shell level that Juz made early on for Invictus, but ultimately scrapped. It's really tough, but still pretty clever, and some of the setups ended up reappearing in the green switch palace. There's one part that I'm pretty sure ended up being reworked into a section of the title level, too. I can see why he scrapped it, but I'm glad it found a home here just for posterity's sake. We don't often get to see how hacks evolve over the course of their creation! (I should mention that I didn't play all of this level because I wanted to go have lunch, but I might come back to it later.)