9 Mind-Bending Levels That Will Melt Your Brain

9. Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - Falling Ship

For all their mind-bending spectacle, most games that feature gravity reversal don’t truly reverse gravity. Instead textures and topography are swapped, creating the illusion of said reversal while still providing players with a fixed point of reference

Falling Ship is subtly different. Protagonist Kyle Katarn finds himself trapped aboard the freighter Sulon Star. It is in free fall, the ground is coming up fast, and players have mere minutes to find their ship and escape.

But instead of falling horizontally the ship is canted at an angle, putting players at the bottom of a diamond rather than the more traditional, intuitive box. That doesn’t sound too bad, but this is Star Wars, packed with Star Wars grey, and so outside of a handy floor texture to orientate yourself by, that weird angle can turn something as simple as telling floor from ceiling, or even whether you’re going up or down or not, into a panicked brain freeze.

It is one of the most disorientating levels ever created, but rather than being frustrating every failed attempt serves as the unravelling of the maze, translating to an exhilarating high when players finally get it right.