That Level Again

You tap the only door in the room, sure the puzzle is solved, and watch it slide shut instead because the real switch was your device’s volume button the whole time. That’s the first lesson That Level Again teaches: the platform, the red button, and the door in front of you are frequently a decoy. Afonya, the small silent figure you guide from room to room, never explains anything, and the game never apologizes for the joke it just played on you.

Afonya’s Ninety-Six-Room Descent Through That Level Again

Every one of the 96 rooms looks nearly identical: a platform, a door, and Afonya somewhere between them. What changes is the hidden rule, and nothing warns you which rule applies until you’ve failed once. Early in the game the tricks stay close to the screen, tapping a switch or nudging a platform, so new players build a rhythm of trusting whatever is drawn in front of them.

That trust gets punished fast. By the time you reach the middle stretch, the answer stops being visible at all, pulling instead from the phone or the window frame around the play area.

Casual players expecting a normal platformer bounce off the first interface-based room. Completionists chasing all 96 treat each dead end as a riddle instead of a failure, which is closer to how the game wants to be read.

The Interface Puzzles That Define That Level Again

The defining habit of this game is reaching outside the level for the answer. One well-known room hides its solution inside the settings menu, where flipping an option meant for something else entirely is the only way the door opens. Another expects a volume change, and one more only responds to shaking the phone rather than tapping it.

• Menu-based tricks that repurpose an options screen as the actual door switch
• Device-based tricks that read shaking, tilting, or volume changes as input
• Self-aware tricks where the game comments on its own room or loading screen

These puzzles are where most players get stuck, since instinct says to keep searching Afonya’s platform for a button that was never there. Speedrunners who know the sequence clear these rooms in seconds; a first-timer can lose ten minutes staring at an empty floor.

The Settings Menu and Other Places the Door Hides

Once the level selector itself becomes clickable as part of a puzzle, the game has fully committed to its bit: nothing on screen, including menus you assumed were neutral, is safe. That choice is why the phrase “meta puzzle” comes up constantly in threads about this series.

Beginners repeat the same mistake, assuming every room follows platformer logic and repositioning Afonya long after the real answer sat in a menu they’d already glanced past. The advanced move is treating every visible interface element as a suspect before touching the platform at all.

One detail longtime players bring up specifically: the home menu’s window visibly cracks if you keep tapping it, eventually revealing a hint. It’s a small reward for the paranoid, everything-is-a-clue thinking the game trains into you.

The Split Between Players Over Cheap Tricks and Clever Design

Not everyone agrees this design ages well. A recurring complaint is that certain rooms feel like a lucky guess rather than a fair puzzle, since nothing points toward the settings menu or a volume slider until you’ve stumbled into it once. Defenders counter that repetition is the actual mechanic, and failing a room before retrying it is the joke itself.

Mobile players treating this as a pick-up-and-play title get frustrated at exactly the rooms that reward patience over speed.

By the game’s final stretch, the tricks stop being separate categories and start combining, expecting a menu check and a device shake in the same attempt, which is where the difficulty curve genuinely peaks.

1. How many levels does That Level Again have? The original game contains 96 rooms, each built around a single trick rather than a stretch of traditional platforming, with Afonya as the constant throughout.
2. What do you do when a room has no visible way to open the door? Check outside the room itself: the settings menu, the device’s volume controls, and even shaking the phone have all been the actual solution in different rooms.
3. Is That Level Again connected to its sequel? Yes, Afonya returns as the same silent protagonist in the sequel’s own set of rooms, which leans even further into fourth-wall tricks once its final stretch arrives.

That Level Again earns its reputation one broken expectation at a time, and Afonya’s blank reaction to every one of those 96 doors is part of what makes the joke land instead of just annoying you. Once the settings menu has tricked you twice, you stop trusting the room and start suspecting the whole game around it.