Speaking of Barb, I tuned into his stream last night and found him making levels in Lunar Magic...but not for GPW3. It seems like he just wants to make stuff without all the expectations that are attached to his big sequel, so he's starting on something tentatively called Super Boomer World. If he finishes it, it would be a vanilla+ hack that harkens back to stuff like Kaizo 1 and Super Dram World. He was looking around for the most clichéd ideas he could find to start his first level and (obviously) settled on a stack of Bullet Bill launchers, so yeah, you know what this is. I really hope that he has fun with the process and eventually releases something, it seems like working on GPW3 has been a pretty arduous process for him.
As for New Comfort Zone, that's a really intriguing development! I'm always in the market for intermediate hacks, and they seem to be maybe the rarest breed of kaizo. I wonder how this compares to Boogie 2.0, in terms of changes made to the game? I agree that it's cool to see creators revisit their hacks, especially if they think they missed the mark in a few places.
In other intermediate-level hack news, it seems like Sparkysie put out a
compilation video for Peachy Moat World not that long ago. Maybe that'll be of interest to you, since you played that pretty recently? I love watching compilation videos for hacks I've played, it's pretty cathartic.
As for me, I'm limping my way to the finish line in Purgatory a little bit at a time. I got 98% of the way through the snowy steep slope level last night, which honestly wasn't too bad aside from the endings of each section. I had to put the game down before completing the back half of the level, but I don't think it'll be too hard to get that up-pipe next time I play. Must be pretty close to the end now, I think I'll have 19/21 exits once I'm done with this one.