Secret Level

Secret Level is ultimately hit-or-miss, as one would expect from an anthology series, with the best episodes seizing the chance to tell exciting new stories within their worlds rather than trying to sell the audience on their games or the possibility of their own adaptations.

Many of the best game adaptations, like Arcane, take series that have no business being captivating outside their original medium and inject them with loveable characters and an entirely distinct visual identity that captivates. For the most part, Secret Level fails to do this because instead of telling its own affecting stories, it feels too closely bound to many of the series it’s adapting, some of which didn’t offer much narrative meat in the first place.

Created by Tim Miller, Secret Level features a handful of standouts that evoke considerable senses of mood. .... When it attempts substantial commentary, though, Secret Level proves to be reductive.

With a dubious selection of source material and indistinct styles of animation, Secret Level struggles to find satisfying stories for a short-form anthology.

Taken individually, few of these shorts are bad, even if some of them are ugly. (The Outer Worlds installment, despite having one of the best scripts of the lot, is also the one that puts the most focus on human faces—completely to its detriment.) Taken as a whole, though, they represent an inability to look at gaming and see much more than a grim, dark present.

Spanning seven to 17 minutes, most of these episodes feel like game trailers instead of well-defined stories. Many of the plots get compelling only in the final few minutes. Or worse, they are recycled versions of scenarios the audience has seen numerous times.

All in all, this feels like a collection of extended trailers pretending to be a TV show. But with 11 episodes still to watch, it’s hard to say whether or not a general audience will enjoy it.