Note: this post contains spoilers for the Strawberry Jam Beginner Lobby and (non-plot) spoilers for the base game.

I decided to write down my thoughts on each level as I work my way through Strawberry Jam! For reference, I am a solidly intermediate player, having completed all of the base game except for 7C, 8C, the moon berry, and the golden strawberries. These are in the order that they appear on the wiki, not in the order that I completed them. I also took the time to grab every strawberry in the lobby, so that is part of my ratings!

Tl;dr

Personal Highlights: were Seeing is Believing, Potential for Anything, Treehive, Soap, Strawberry Orchard, Dropzle, and Coresaken City.

Personal Lowlight: A Gift From the Stars

Total lobby deaths: 2910

Green

Forest Path: Fun map; I liked the gimmick of traveling through walls with a special dash crystal. I was dreading strawberry hunting here, but it actually wasn’t too bad.

Azure Caverns: This one went by really fast. I liked the atmosphere and the block boosts, but this one wasn't as memorable as some of the others in the lobby.

Loopy Lagoon: This was my first Strawberry Jam level. I really liked the music, and the bounces were fun to play around with. Like Azure Caverns, this one went by quickly

Collapsing Skyline: When I saw the “⅙” strawberry I freaked out a bit, but actually I found all 6, and the other two strawberries as well, on my first play-through. This level was kind of dark! I liked the blood rain at the end; very Doom / The Shining / Carrie.

Seeing is Believing: This is up there for my favorite level of the lobby. I loved the idea behind it! I beat it with Badeline guiding me, but I am going to replay it with my wife guiding me instead.

Yellow

If my 'driveway' almost did you in…: This one kind of felt like I Wanna Be The Guy (laudatory), but much tamer. I’m interested to see if there are more maps like this later; I feel like this could have been really amazing with the difficulty tuned up a bit.

Cassette Cliffs: I don’t normally love cassette gameplay, but I really liked this level. Once I settled into listening to and moving with the music, I had a really good time. The strawberries were really entertaining to hunt down here, too.

Over the City: Lol the nests were such a troll. I generally don’t like restricted dash levels, which brought down my enjoyment here a bit, but the puzzle solving was fun. I definitely felt like this was a bit easier than it should have been for me because I can semi-consistently perform neutral jumps, which really comes in handy for conserving stamina here. There have to be some pretty crazy skips here that are possible by storing a ton of jumps.

Troposphere: Gotta love dream blocks! I enjoyed this level, and if anything, I thought it was a bit too lenient in giving me checkpoints when I died halfway through a room. (Like any self-respecting Celeste player, I am apparently a masochist.) I was worried when I saw the feathers, since they are usually the bane of my playing, but they were pretty much fine here.

Potential for Anything: Oh my god I loved this map! The gravity switching was a lot of fun without being too frustrating; I could absolutely see it being in a level in the base game. The level has a great sense of humor, too. Afterwards I saw that frozenflygon worked on this level, so I shouldn't be surprised that I liked it. I always love watching her speedruns at GDQ / Frame Fatales. Also, apparently this level was based on VVVVVV, so maybe I need to check that game out, too.

Midnight Spire: This was a great level, and the strawberries were pretty fun to hunt. This is sort of the definitive Yellow Beginner level for me, in that the difficulty was tuned exactly to what I would expect for that.

paint: What a level! The plot was nice, I liked all of the secret rooms and messages, and the strawberry hunting was great, too.

Rose Garden: The gimmick was fun here, and the level didn’t overstay its welcome.

Treehive: The music and atmosphere were great and the level was just generally really fun. I loved bouncing around and routing around the moving platforms. This was definitely a highlight of the lobby for me!

The Squeeze: I enjoyed the challenge here! This was definitely the hardest yellow map for me.

Red

Soap: Oh my god, this should have been a Cracked Beginner map. I enjoyed the challenge, but sheesh, I felt like this was pretty challenging even as a solidly intermediate player. The first strawberry in particular was rough and required a lot of consistency. And I missed the last strawberry on my first play-through, so I had to beat the whole thing again! But then I actually went and beat it again very easily, and it was really cool seeing how much I had improved. I went from like 350+ deaths on my first playthrough to probably around a dozen. So, actually I love this level and have zero complaints! And it getting so much easier on my second playthrough made me feel better about potentially going back and re-beating the last screen of Farewell to get that dang moon berry.

Switchtube Vista: This level was such a maze! I don’t know how I found all of the strawberries on my first playthough; I’m sure I didn’t see every room. Also, this is probably pretty well-known, but I found a nice skip at the beginning while strawberry hunting, where you can make a tricky jump onto an edge by some spikes and avoid going in the first warp door entirely.

A Gift From the Stars: I like the idea of a puzzle level, but man, I just didn’t enjoy solving this one. The UFO theme was neat and I liked the time pausing mechanic, but overall it just felt too unforgiving when I made a mistake. Also, as I mentioned, the “limited dashes” thing just isn’t my jam.

Strawberry Orchard: I loved the music and the plot and the hidden TRANS RIGHTS room. The gameplay and vibes added up to make this a lobby highlight for me. One of the strawberries was really devious and I had to look it up. Other than that, the level was actually pretty easy I thought, and maybe it could have been Yellow.

Dropzle: I’d seen a lot of people complain about this level here, and I gotta say – I actually loved it! I felt like the puzzles were fair, and required the right amount of thought. Most of them weren’t too long once you figured them out, so even if I missed the last dash or whatever, it didn’t feel like a big deal.

Coresaken City: The “trick” of this level got me perfectly; I played through it as intended, read the note at the end, and then went back and re-played the whole level to go strawberry hunting. Both versions of the level were really enjoyable and a good level of challenging, I thought. This was another highlight of the lobby for me.

Heartside

Blueberry Bay: A little bit of everything! I thought the difficulty was just right here to feel like it capped off the beginner lobby. I’m excited to continue on to intermediate!