Insane 1 - Loose Links Hard level to start off the rank due to the puzzle and also a tight time limit. It was pretty hard to see where the best place to put the miners were, especially in the top right. One of the workers will need to mine into steel to turn around, and the one who mined at the very top needs to be assigned a walker to turn around, as if they go all the way back to the starting area time will run out way before they get a chance to exit. You need to be very efficient at all costs in executing the solution. All this being said, this was quite a nice puzzle/challenge!
Insane 2 - Space Capsule I thought this was going to take a while, but this one wasn't too bad, though it might be because I backrouted it :P I found a lose two solution, though I'm thinking a lose 1 solution is possible.
Insane 3 - A Waste Of A Level Somewhat hard, but another really great level. The starting area does a really good job in making the player think that the miner is used, but that turns out to be very wrong, as you won't have enough skills to complete the level. In particular, you barely have enough to build up and out after the OWW, but then you don't have a builder to get over the ever slightly too high wall before the exit. Instead, the miner is used on the terrain just before the exit so that you can get out with just one builder, and two builders to make a splatform for the crowd to land on after releasing the blocker with a basher. The red herring in the starting area is quite nice. Nice job with this level, namida! :)
Insane 4 - Toxic Tales This one wasn't as bad as I thought. Nothing too special here other than getting two workers ahead and timing the release of the climber so that the second one turns around in an in-progress basher tunnel to mine down to the crowd.
Insane 5 - Star Watch The 4th and final iteration of the once-per-rank-level, similar to the Salvation levels of LPI, with less skills and less time every time. This time, you are reduced to a mere 20 seconds. Even then, it's not a very hard level at all and is a super quick one. It's easy to get past the one-way forcefield, what's hard is getting everyone to the left of the stack before someone slips by it. Here, I had to max out the RR and stack at the right time. I have to speculate that it's possible to finish with more than a second remaining had I maybe scooted the stack over a bit more.
Insane 6 - The Mystery Machine Another favorite. I like how the climbers are released in separate sections after bashing away the rest of the terrain with someone else in the digger pit besides the digger himself. However, the thing I kept getting caught off guard on is even after I thought I had the level solved, the climbers themselves would go out to the left and get into danger. Instead, the key realization is that the one in the middle can stay put for a while before digging down the right edge of the wall and then mining once low enough. So really, it's adjusting the timing of the release of the climbers so that the solution falls into place and the climbers don't have a chance to go out the left. Very nice puzzle and level!
Insane 7 - Dopefish Lives! The VGASPEC level of the rank, I know the Dopefish from a Commander Keen game when I was little. The underwater was a level that I couldn't beat as a kid, as the Dopefish always ate me. Anyway, I like how this is a constructive skills only level, with 5 of each. Even then, I found this level hard, although not as hard as some of the other VGASPEC levels in the other packs of the series. The route is pretty obvious, but the releasing a worker from the starting area proved to be difficult. Still a nice level, and I especially love the various poses of the Dopefish you put in the level, as well as the music that plays on the underwater level of the game.
Insane 8 - Platform Panic Harder than I thought it would be. In the end, my solution is very different from both yours and Icho's. Instead, I used a stacker at the end where the crowd comes so that no one is able to walk out to the left and fall into the abyss, as well as used a cloner on the stacker to turn everyone back to the left and into the exit. I also used the walker to cancel out the left-facing stacker. I like the concept here of using a stacker to help the crowd to get to the exit, but it still took a while to get the timing and skill placements correct.
Insane 9 - Lollypalooza This one was also harder than I thought it would be, although my solution is somewhat of a mess. I lose some to splatting at the drop just before the exit, and I used some RR fiddling so that everyone is ahead of the floater and the last two are sufficiently close to the floater. I bombed in such a way so that the floater gets by before he falls through the hole, and the non floater falls before the wall to bomb and then the floater comes back to the left after hitting the wall to his right via the platformer bridge. Then I platformed and built to the hanging pillar so the crowd can land down safely, and the bomber placement was precise so that they can still go out to the left via checkerboard but there is still a hole so they can slip out to the right. Fortunately, I lost just the right amount to splatting so that it was still a solve. I checked the intended solution and it's far more impressive than mine.
Insane 10 - Comradical! Nice two-lemmings level, with the goal being that the buttons must be pushed to unlock the exit before the upper lemming goes past all the splitters and into the masher trap. Once again, my solution is very different. I built to get up to the top button from the left side, mined after hitting it, mined again to get down safely, and then bashed into the steel to turn around and hit the final button to his left at the bottom. I had a feeling that the intention was to go out to the right at the bottom and then climb up the right side to get the top button, but I wasn't able to have the skills to do so.
Insane 11 - Tower of Confection The hardest level for me in the entire pack, and for good reason. Also the only level that needed more than two videos to get solved and hence I had to go into off-camera time to get it solved. A lot of the time I kept failing by a single pixel or the timing kept being ever so slightly off. After checking the intended solution, I felt a bit better since it had about the same amount of pixel precision as the solution I found and hence the level's supposed to be very hard. I would even go as far to say that this was the hardest level of the Insane rank. In the end, I swapped the platformer and builders at the very bottom and didn't use a builder as a delay. I also used some basher mechanics to delay the top lemming as much as possible, i.e, not right up against the pillar and instead the curves to bash for a while but not so he keeps going and hits the steel and turns around. My entire solution was pretty much all pixel precise.
Insane 12 - No Time To Die...IN SPACE!! There's the NTTD type level that's been seen in all the Lemmings Plus packs save for LPO, at least the ones I've played. The level definitely made me wonder how in the world do you finish on time, but fortunately the route is obvious for the most part. Also, it doesn't seem like you need to be super quick like you do with the original NTTD. The time is still tight, but it seems that the execution isn't as maddening in terms of canceling skills out ASAP. My solution could definitely be tweaked in order to spare the builder that I unfortunately had to use because there was still a pixel to build over, but I didn't bother to go back and do so :XD:
Insane 13 - Squish Squash This one wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, although my solution is a backroute :P I checked the intended solution after solving, and it definitely is a bit more complicated than the one I found. Even then, I would still say this level is challenging, as it's not completely obvious where all the skills need to go.
Insane 14 - Artificially Sweetened Another backroute, although my solution is very timing heavy in order to make it work out the way it did. I initially thought the intention was to go through the bottom, but I couldn't think about how to get it to work, especially in regards to getting two lemmings to turn back to the left, one to float down to the bottom to seal off the gap while the other one goes over the top and digs away the pillar before the exit. It's amazing the lemming who took the long way back and forth survived the fall and didn't splat.
Insane 15 - Heat Dispersal Somewhat challenging, although I quickly picked up that you need to go through the ceiling to prepare the rest of the path for the crowd. What I was mistaken in was using a walker to turn around before the exit. Instead, a walker is used to seal off the gap to the left of the entrance before anyone slips through. It was still hard to figure out how to get to the ceiling, as I kept trying to get up to it by building to the left by going out the right side at the bottom. It was hard to see that the best way was to use two builders to build out to the right and a blocker to turn him around to get to the ceiling from the right side. At the ceiling, you can either mine to stop the basher and then bomb going back to the right and other climber is following him back, or you can bomb first like I did and then have the climber come back out and mine. Or, you can also just have the basher die and have the other one turn around while it's in progress to mine and then proceed with the rest of the solution as seen in the LP.
Insane 16 - World War III Upon entering the level, I almost instantly recognized that it's a level with a nuke solution, which is interesting as I generally have trouble spotting such solutions, though to be fair they are generally hard to spot. At the same time, the level title is kind of a hint at the nuke solution. I like how you must choose only one side to go out, as if you go out both sides you won't have enough platformers for the gaps. I like how the miners are used as delays.
Insane 17 - If Only They Could Jump... There's the builderless level found near the end of the final rank in the Plus packs. Out of all the ones I've played, this one is my favorite thus far, although in general I love builderless levels a lot. I especially like this one due to the turning fallers in midair with a blocker. Though, I wonder how much I would had struggled with this level had I not seen and learned this trick from United if I played this level first. Nicely done here, the best one I've seen so far in a Plus pack.
Insane 18 - Bomb Shelter Harder than I thought it would be. I kept trying to hold back the crowd in my initial attempts, but then I found I had problems with getting enough ahead to forge the path before the rest arrive before I could properly temporarily contain them again. I also initially tried getting a non-climber to get by a climber in order to block before the tiny gap to the right which you cannot spend a constructive skill on as you don't have enough. Quite a nice level here, but it was somewhat of a pain to have to keep on rewinding and readjusting skills to get the right timing and spacing.
Insane 19 - Overclocked Lemming Somewhat hard, but a really nice disarmer/splitter puzzle! I initially tried containing the crowd with a digger/basher, but this turns out to be very wrong. Instead, a single bomber is sufficient and is used on either side on the edge where the steel is. I like how the disarmer needs to go to both sides to disarm the traps. Nice use of the stoner to get gliders to land on the platform rather than going past and back into the water. Timing the release of the climbers/swimmers was a bit hard, but luckily it's not that bad. I also had to fiddle around with the RR a bit in order for the splatters to help the disarmer go through to the other side. Nicely done here, great level.
Insane 20 - Goodbye Galaxy Am I correct that the level title is the subtitle of Commander Keen IV? Instead of tacking this one on with the previous two levels, I decided to make this level its own video. Indeed, it turned out to be a wise choice, as from the level preview itself it seemed like a level that was going to take a while. It took me a little over 40 minutes to solve and hence it would had put the previous video to about an hour and a half, meaning the video would had been a little over two hours long after my outros of my final thoughts on the pack and quick overview of the levels again.
For the level itself, it appears to be hard due to the tall and wide size. I initially thought to make everyone get up the level, but luckily I didn't seriously try for it, because that turns out to be completely impossible since you would need a lot more builders. Instead, the answer is to platform over the very wide gap at the bottom. I did think to platform all the way back to the entrances, when it's actually sufficient to stop where the yellow terrain is in the middle. This saved up some precious platformers that I could use elsewhere with the other entrances. Once again, this isn't a contender for the hardest level of the pack, but it's still challenging, as I found the skills ran out faster than I thought. However, this was quite a nice challenging level to finish off the pack.