Questionable study finds that monkey shaped levels increase avg. puzzle quality.
I don't know why but I often tweak the level outline to turn it into a monkey face. Compress(space) has one:
The jam version of my previous puzzle game, Control:Override also had one. Back then it wasn't quite blatant:
It was more of a skull shaped level. And yeah it was pretty ugly.
I redid the entire artstyle for the steam version of Control:Override. And somehow I turned it into a monkey face. That was the start:
I don't know what exactly compelled me to do it initially but now I try to put one in any game I make. If I were to make a guess, it was probably PTSD from learning blender shortcuts pre 3.0. Suzanne still haunts my dreams:
For monkey shaped levels and other things, you can play compress(space) here