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Josh Lee

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Josh Lee, also known by his CC alias Flareon350, is a well known Chipster who is often noted for his consistent level design and strong liking of the Pokémon franchise, as his main avatar is his favorite Pokémon, Flareon,.

Josh was one of two co-leaders of the CCLP4 staff and the head of the CCLP5 staff.

Levels in official packs

CCLP1

# Name
38 Heat Conductor
44 Frozen Labyrinth
46 Sapphire Cavern
50 The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side
62 Design Swap
65 Squared in a Circle
68 Flames and Ashes
83 Ruined World
88 Chip Block Galaxy
89 Chip Grove City
96 Going Underground
115 California

CCLP4

# Name
8 The Fourth Dimension
10 Stuck in Emerald
11 Keyboard Malfunction
19 Conservation of Keys
20 It's No Skin Off My Teeth
23 Western Standards of Living
24 It's Easy Being Green
26 Shrub
28 Zephyr Heights
29 Flipper Departments
37 Tropical Hibiscus
38 Detonation Station
39 In the Walls of Gravel Castle
41 Ghetto Piranha
56 Fireworks Factory
58 Ruinous Plaza
65 Duplex
69 Ball in an Awkward Place
73 Sealed Doors in the Spacecraft
77 Brick Block Facility
83 Frozen Over
85 Nectar Meadow
92 Fire Is My Enemy
93 Bombs Are a Beautiful Thing
95 Ravaged
98 Clay Tunnel
101 Condo Management
103 Malachite
105 Living Things
112 Triple Mint Slurpee
117 Greenian Motion
119 Strandquist
123 Life Is Not a Puzzle
125 Beautiful Struggle
141 World of a Thousand Flames
145 Hacked Save File
149 Mental Marvel Monastery

CCLP5

# Name
1 Lesson Zero
5 Fragmented Lamina
8 Trick or Trap
11 Pyramid Scheme
13 Cardboard Cutout
15 Heterochromia
17 There Goes the Neighborhood
18 Press Any Button to Continue
19 Hue and Saturation
22 Capim Town
25 Drops of Jupiter
30 Ragged Mountain
31 Sealed Chamber
32 Socket Shrine
34 Spirit River
35 Fortune Ravine
36 Charmed Ridge
38 Exit Exaggeration
39 Mysterious Geoglyph
43 Verdant Cavern
44 Thunderwave Cave
46 Axis Point
48 Tank Game Reborn
52 Magma Cone
54 The Slaughterhouse Is Open for Business
58 Warehouse of Lost Hopes and Dreams
59 Clone Machine Factory
60 Fuego Ironworks
64 Condemned Facility
71 Amethyst Mine
76 Yellow Fever
82 Encrypted Malware
84 Piston It Away
87 Network Corruption
91 Airletter Shop
92 Glamorous Diamond Downs
106 Slimefield
113 Power Plant Peril
115 Titanic Monarch
120 Fray Manor Isle
123 Sandstorm Shelter
124 Dig Me Out
130 Apocalypse Wow
133 Emblazoned Altar
146 Broken Paradise
149 Shadow of the Day

CC2LP1

# Name
8 Brigand Land
26 My Antisocial Friend
30 The Electric Company
47 Lowlife
57 Poison Backyard
72 Rage Rooms
73 Foiled Again
75 Excavation Alley
79 Marine Science Museum
80 Forest Hub
88 Highlighter
92 Cosmic Dump
98 Gentlemen's Club
101 Ectoplasm
113 Casper
122 Pushing Pull Doors
130 Northlands
133 Boiled in Blood
136 Eastbound
145 Lady in the Water
151 No Swap Zone
163 Boot Warehouse
164 Deadline Extension
178 Tank of Justice
189 Liquid Defense

History

Josh discovered Chip's Challenge on a Windows 3.1 computer around mid-2000 at the age of 8. He played the original game, but didn't complete every level. Levels he skipped included the majority of the harder ones, such as Totally Unfair, Blobdance, Doublemaze, and Force Field. He eventually went back to complete these levels in time.

After playing the game, Josh created some 700+ levels on pieces of paper, since at the time that computer couldn't be used for internet access. Eventually sometime in the early 2000s, Josh found out about the existence of ChipEdit using a different computer and he began to design many different types of levels. Unfortunately, he could not test them because Chip's Challenge couldn't be played on that computer.

He later heard about Chip's Challenge Level Pack 2; however, like with the original game and the lack of being able to download it, he could not play it at the time. He instead watched many of the AVI solutions available for its levels, which served as inspirations for his first level designs.

Level Sets

Josh has created a vast variety of CC1 level sets, ranging in all areas of difficulty. His most notable sets are:

  • JoshL1 - designed around 2009
  • JoshL2 - designed between 2011-2012
  • JoshL3 - designed between 2012-2013
  • JoshL4 - designed in 2013
  • JoshL5 - designed between 2014-2015
  • JoshL6 - designed between 2015-2016
  • JoshL7 - designed in 2017
  • Walls of CCLP3 - designed in 2018
  • Trading Places (collaborated with Jeffrey Bardon) - designed from 2019-2021
  • Walls of CC1 (collaboration with VT and J.B. Lewis) - in progress since early 2022


He has also created three "best of" sets titled Josh's Chip's Challenge Level Pack (JCCLP), which features his best levels across his sets based off the era they were made. A rejects set going along with it titled JCCLPRejects also exists which showcases levels that were either rejected from a working set at any given point or made in a non-serious manner.

  • JCCLP1 - uses levels from JoshL1, JoshL2, and JoshL3
  • JCCLP2 - uses levels from JoshL4, JoshL5, and an older version of JoshL6
  • JCCLP3 - uses levels from a newer version of JoshL6, JoshL7, Walls of CCLP3, and Trading Places

In addition, Josh has also compiled a best of best of set, titled JoshL0, that consists of 200 levels with levels across the three JCCLP sets.

Currently, he has at least two new level sets in slow progress; Walls of CC1 (collaborated with J.B. Lewis and VT) and JoshL8.


For CC2, he has created three level sets under a different name to remain distinct from his JoshL sets:

  • Flareon1
  • Flareon2
  • FlareonRejects


He also created a few "meme" level sets, including:

  • CC1 Blobs Edition with replacing every monster in the original game with a blob
  • Micro Chips and Micro CCLP2, shrinking down the size of the original levels from each set to be as small and faithful as possible
  • A Few Key Themed Levels, which consists of levels specifically focused on or around keys that he has created

Design style and Evolution

With having designed so many levels across many different level sets, Josh's design style went through several different iterations in hopes to establish a style of his own. Below is some history behind each of his main CC1 sets, how they started and how his overall design style improved and changed over the years.

JoshL/JoshL1

Josh's early levels, what would become JoshL.dat, primarily consisted of ripoffs or sequels to existing levels in CC1 or otherwise, long tedius block pushing levels that lacked in quality. The use of invalid tiles were also heavily used, thanks to the presence of this throughout CCLP2. These two sets were his prime source of inspiration as they were the only two packs of levels he knew of at the time. This level set contained 202 levels and was submitted for CCLP3 consideration, however, no levels got in thanks to majority of them not being compatible with the Lynx ruleset and Josh not being familiar with it.

Over the course of his design career, this pack of levels would later be revised into JoshL1, removing all levels containing invalid tiles and fixing other issues to make it Lynx compatible, reducing the level count to 120. This revised version includes levels that got into Chip's Challenge Level Pack 1, such as Ruined World, Heat Conductor, and Design Swap, however, it is still very much a product of its time and only the beginning stepping stone of Josh's design style.

JoshL2

Following CCLP3's release, along with a year long break away from all things Chip's Challenge, Josh began work on JoshL2, the sequel to his first set. The overall objective was simply to build a set that was compatible with Lynx, which helped Josh study the key differences between it and the MS ruleset he was used to. This set contains 150 levels and would see some improvements of design quality compared to the first, such as a prominent showcase of Josh's knack of designing variety levels, part in thanks to playing CCLP3 and the vast array of concepts shown in that set.

However, there still remained a few renaments of his prior set's sufferings with some heavy block pushing levels or small, short, and easy levels for the sake of quantity. Despite that, it still holds quite a good amount of original concepts. This set hosts the home to levels such as Frozen Labyrinth and Sapphire Cavern (under a different title), which also made their way into CCLP1.

This was also the first of many sets of Josh's to have gotten Let's Played, this one in particular done by Trevor Hedges. Watching this let's play allowed Josh to see this set played in the player's perspective, something that would be a key factor in how his design style evolved in later sets.

This set's general positive feedback eventually led to Josh joining the CC community as he was previously unfamiliar with one existing.

JoshL3

With the generally positive feedback on JoshL2 and with joining the level design community, Josh began the next numbered set right away. This set's prime focus was intended to experiment with a number of different ideas thanks to a plethora of level sets belonging to other designers being easily available. Sadly, this shaped into a bad direction as the set opted into several false starts such as trying pgchip's ice block patch for ice block levels, designing levels that felt too similar to the previous sets, and other design styles not blending well with Josh. This eventually unraveled into a set of levels that Josh is not fond of and considers this to be a step down in his design career as he tried too many different things at once. Although, a few of its levels like Squared in a Circle, Flames and Ashes, and California made their way into CCLP1 and another one, Duplex, later got into Chip's Challenge Level Pack 4. This pack contains 100 levels in total.

JoshL4

After a brief design break, Josh started work on JoshL4 with the ultimate focus of having levels that were considered difficult. This is where he showed a real consistency in level design. A lot of his designs were improved substantially as his inspirations were becoming more set in place, mainly from Tyler Sontag's TS0. This was made more apparent by keeping this set's total at 80 levels, double of what TS0 contained. Due to the nature of this set, it falls under some of the nasty traps, in similar nature to CCLP3's difficult levels. This was the first of Josh's sets to be ordered by difficulty instead of by design date as well.

Like JoshL2, this set was also let's played, this time by fellow avid designer, J.B. Lewis, who gave constructive feedback on these levels and would help shape Josh's design career further with his next project, which was striving for more friendly levels. Some notable levels from this set were selected for inclusion into CCLP4, including Sealed Doors in the Spacecraft, Frozen Over, and Fireworks Factory.

JoshL5

This set followed suit not too long after JoshL4, giving priority to easier and more fun to play levels opposed to lengthy, difficult ones. Unlike the previous set, this one is still ordered by design date, with random difficulty spikes scattered throughout the set. His consistent design style improved even further, especially with its many different styles of gameplay, along with a heavy emphasis on medium difficulty variety levels, something Josh would come to really enjoy building the most. This set was also let's played by J.B. and would later do so with the rest of his future sets listed below. This set houses many levels that were included into CCLP4 such as Beautiful Struggle, In the Walls of Gravel Castle, and Bombs Are a Beautiful Thing.

JoshL6

Initially, JoshL5 was intended to be last of his CC1 designs for a long while as it was assumed ideas were starting to become scarce. CC2 was also released around this time and designers were quick to put out new content for the game, including Josh himself. But after some frustration with CC2's built in level editor and a lack of an alternative, along with playing several other CC1 sets such as Ultimate Chip 4 and Ultimate Chip 5 both by Jeffrey Bardon and ZK3 and ZK3-A by Zane Kuecks, he felt inspired enough to try to pursue the project.

This set's focus shifted more to aesthetics and how levels look from editor view, although keeping the fun factor intact with its content, which largely emphasized unusual tile combinations such as monsters atop of certain elements that still allowed for Lynx compatibly, along with many mazes and unseen concepts up to this point. Walls of levels were prominent here as well, especially upon the final update. It was initially released at 40 levels and later updated to a total count of 90, before submissions for CCLP4 closed. Many levels from this were selected for official set inclusion, such as Fire Is My Enemy, Nectar Meadow, Flipper Departments, and World of a Thousand Flames.

This was the intended final level count for the set, however, due to circumstances surrounding the next intended design project falling through, Josh updated it one last time with 59 new levels, half of which were designed for said failed project, totaling it to 149.

Josh has left the 90 level version available for download to this day, for those that prefer it.

JoshL7

A CCZone create competition was held February 2017, using the walls of CCLP1 to make a new level within them. Josh participated with three entries and in doing so, another string of inspiration soon followed into what would shape into JoshL7. The main focus this time being a combination of everything previously learned from the past several sets, difficulty, aesthetics, gameplay styles, ultimately balancing them all out into 70 levels. Some level genres that Josh isn't too keen on designing also appeared here, such as monster dodging and manipulation. In addition, some levels previously seen in prior JoshL sets were repurposed in this one, such as Trick or Trap using one of Josh's first sokobans and mixing it with recessed walls for a new experience. This level, along with many others like Drops of Jupiter, Warehouse of Lost Hopes and Dreams, and Fuego Ironworks, made its way into Chip's Challenge Level Pack 5.

This is currently the last entry in the JoshL series lineup and is Josh's personal favorite.

Walls of CCLP3

On the tail end of JoshL7, Josh pursued a new project directly inspired by Jeffrey's Walls of CCLP4, though a project like this nagged in the back of his mind since JoshL6's production as it was attempted with CCLP1, but was scrapped for personal reasons but largely due to not having ideas for every template of that set and overall, not feeling ready for the task.

Josh would instead utilize CCLP3 as a starting point, knowing its tricky wall layouts would bring new challenges into his design style. Taking everything he learned from prior sets, including other walls of levels designed, and even using concepts not seen done well before. There was a particular focus on mixing blobs with other monsters and building original sokobans that use CC elements as opposed to strictly adapting them from outside sources. Some of these sokobans were notable for being built within a two-tile wide space. Socket Shrine was the first designed level of this project, using the sockets from Toggle Bust, which later got into CCLP5, along with other such levels as Exit Exaggeration and Apocalypse Wow, using Entrance Examination and Spiral respectively.

Trading Places

With the prominent walls of levels throughout level design continuing strong, Jeffrey and Josh teased the idea of building a set together that consisted of using wall templates of each other's latest level sets, Ultimate Chip 6 and JoshL7, along with several from their other respective sets to total it out evenly at 150 levels. This project ended up taking over three years, with each designer building 75 levels apiece and combining into one of the greatest level set collaborations to date. Several levels from Josh's half made it into CCLP5 as well, such as Fragmented Lamina, Yellow Fever, and Broken Paradise.

Walls of CC1

Shortly after Trading Places release, there was talk between Josh and VT on collaborating to build a levelset together, and the idea to build a CC1 version of Walls of CC1 was tossed out there since one existed under CC2's rules via Joshua Bone. After making around 10 levels, J.B. Lewis joined in as part of the project after showcasing a level that happened to use the layout of Chipmine without having known the project was a thing. Further discussion was had regarding dividing levels evenly so each of the three designers had the same amount of work; 48 a piece, along with 3 collabs between each duo and 2 designed by all three. This distribution of levels was later rediscussed and both Josh and J.B. arranged to build 60 levels each, while VT only makes 24 due to lack of time. As of 21 September 2024, this set currently has 133 of its 149 levels designed.

Future Plans

With Walls of CC1 close to the home stretch, Josh has shown interest in going back to CC2 level design by going back to adding to his in progress Flareon2 levelset as he would like to retire from CC1 level design after making countless levels and explored most of what it has to offer.

There are also some possible plans of revisiting certain levels within JoshL2-5, in hopes to modernize them to match Josh's design style today.

In addition, there are some unreleased levels for what is tentatively titled JoshL8 that Josh would like to continue and release properly at some point, however, it is currently uncertain if this will continue as original ideas for CC1 levels have come more scarce than ever.

Flareon level

A mosaic level of Josh's favorite Pokémon, Flareon, in Tile World graphics

This particular level was created at the end of the JoshL3 era, and thus has become a signature level to Josh, as it is his favorite Pokémon. Flareon is the only level to be recurring throughout Josh's level sets. It is usually the last level of every JoshL set, however, there are a few exceptions; JoshL, JCCLP2, JCCLP3, Walls of CCLP3, and Trading Places are the only sets to not have this level, as it doesn't fit into the context of either Walls of CCLP3 or Trading Places and JoshL, and the latter two JCCLPs are meant to focus on the levels themselves. In its original form, it was primarily a mosaic level, featuring little to no meaningful gameplay.

This level was later reformatted in JoshL4, having more gameplay involved, including using the blue wall section to form a maze and key collecting. It was again remastered for JoshL6, removing a few busts that were present and adding more chips compared to the JoshL4 version, however, there are still extra items.

For JoshL7, this level was once again updated to remove all extra content, and the blue wall mazes were also changed to be made less trivial compared to previous versions. Its time limit was also increased to 350 to match with Josh's CC username.

All four versions of this level can be found here:

Let's Plays

On August 28th, 2011, Josh started his first CC let's play, being CCLP2 due to its unpopularity and for the sole fact he had never played the set, but watched many of the AVI solutions for a great number the levels. His final score for CCLP2 after completion was 5,941,970, though he has since improved greatly on this score. After finally finishing the set, Josh expanded his Let's Play style by putting more effort into the editing process of his videos, as well creating Let's Plays for a larger number of custom level sets and also acquiring a registered version of HyperCam 3.

Custom sets he has successfully let's played include BHLS1 and BigOto Returns. He attempted to let's play Rock-Beta, TS0, and CCLP3, however, it all ended midway due to the computer being used dying out on him because of a fault in the battery. While the one of TS0 was just underway, the let's plays of Rock-Beta and CCLP3 were nearly completed, being at level 38/50 of Rock-Beta and at level 130 of CCLP3. Since then, Josh has gone through CCLP3 once again, this time in the Lynx ruleset. He has hidden his older run through the set permanently.

He later came back and began let's plays on another custom set titled lookatthis.dat, which would later be renamed to 60 Minutes, as well as CCLP1 in Lynx. Ultimately, Josh lost interest in playing lookatthis.dat due to its incredibly difficult levels toward the end of that set. His CCLP1 LP abruptly ended 137 levels in due to recording errors, as well as a loss of interest in let's playing in general.

Despite this, Josh came back to finish his CCLP1 Lynx LP over a year later and successfully completed it, making him the second to LP CCLP1 in the Lynx ruleset, but the first one to have an LP that featured commentary. His final score was 5,945,920 [1] and he does not plan on improving it.

Shortly after completing the CCLP1 Lynx let's play, Josh started LPing Ultimate Chip 5 by Jeffrey Bardon. This LP went on a steady pace and finished at 36 episodes total. Alongside this let's play was Chip's Challenge 2 custom set TSAlpha by Tyler Sontag. This was the first custom CC2 set to be let's played by any one person; however, due to this set being under construction for an extended period of time, it was not a complete LP at the time. Josh would not finish the LP until 2019, when the set was fully released at 40 levels; instead of permanently hiding his old run like he did with his CCLP3 MS videos, however, he deleted the old LP permanently in place of the new one.

After Ultimate Chip 5, Josh went on to LP a set known as Not_CCLP4, an April Fool's joke created by the CCLP4 staff claiming to be CCLP4. This set contains some of the most frustrating, obnoxious levels created by the members of the CCLP4 staff over the course of their perspective level designing careers, thereby making the set intentionally bad. Despite this, it was still LP'ed and was close to fully completed, with 146 out of the 149 levels solved. The 3 unsolved ones consisted of levels that would have taken too long to solve and were not LP friendly at all.

Over the course of the next year, he played through ZK-Adventure, a 350-level set created by Zane Kuecks specifically for Josh to LP that combines Zane's levels from his ZK sets. He also played through Walls of CCLP4 by Jeffrey Bardon and Walls of CCLP1 by J.B Lewis. There was an attempt to let's play CC2LP1 but was abruptly ended and has shown no sign of continuing or restarting.

Scores

While Josh doesn't particularly optimize, he does hold a few records to his name. He was the first to score the official MS bold times for Generic Ice Level [2] and Rhombus,[3] as well as confirming the bold time on Blockade.[4] He has also set and confirmed several bolds in CCLP4.

Despite not being much of an optimizer, he has put some amount of effort into CCLP1 and CCLP2 in the MS ruleset.

Set Score Place
CC1 5,925,160 93rd
CCLP1 6,000,110 13th
CCLP2 6,045,000 16th
CCLP3 6,053,080 13th
CCLP4 6,075,890 8th
CCLP5 6,101,250 3rd

Trivia

  • Josh's name is technically an alias as his last name is not Lee; his real last name is Hixson.
  • He usually names his levels after specific locations in other video games of his liking, or they are generated off a website.
  • Most of Josh's inspiration in level design is from the music he listens to, which is normally OSTs from video games, such as ones from various Pokémon titles.
  • Without any level repeats or remakes across several of his sets, he has designed a total of 1,319 unique levels for Chip's Challenge 1.

External links

CC1 sets

CC2 sets

JCCLP series

Let's Plays of Josh's sets

References

  1. ↑ The final episode of Josh's CCLP1 Lynx LP
  2. ↑ The scoreboard for Generic Ice Level in the MS ruleset
  3. ↑ The scoreboard for Rhombus in the MS ruleset
  4. ↑ The scoreboard for Blockade in the MS ruleset
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