This is the perfect introduction to the demon difficulty. I find myself to enjoy the balancing when it comes to the ship, as it encapsulates what a demon is so well. The particularly tight ship gameplay near the end of the level is so stressful to pull off too, and I love that. It puts everything you've learned in the game, from memory, to ship, and puts one great challenge together.

I adore almost every part of this level. The memory at the beginning of the level is a perfect start to it. Not too hard, but I recall it being very intimating at first, and this is a perfect opening to the level. This level manages to intimidate the player in such a way throughout every part, and I'm not sure if I can think of another level that does it so well (Maybe Deadlocked?). The ship at the drop is a perfect encapsulation of this- the fake spikes make this look near impossible, and although it obviously isn't as hard as it looks on first glance, it still manages to be menacing in it's own way. Stuff like this can be said for the remainder of this level, and I couldn't love it more.

I don't mind the poor balancing this level has, either. I find it quite fitting for it to be the way it is, though I have trouble putting it into words. Maybe another time.

The first time you enter this level, you're hit immediately with pure demon aura. Like you know this is fucking serious. The Clubstep monster is just such an iconic symbol, it shows how much Rob really cooked with this level. Clubstep fills the role of first official demon perfectly.

The spirit of Clubstep embodies both the archetypes of a classic trickster and the devil. It feels like Clubstep is an evil horrifying place covered in saws, spikes, and chains. Where the world is made out of monsters, immobile and unfeeling but still very much alive with their beating eyes. The level feels designed by a malicious force (devil), but there's also a sort of meta humor to the traps that are placed (trickster!). The gameplay is filled with fakes and traps that I wouldn't call fair, but when you die to them they make you go "Oh you cheeky bastard Rob ;)". So there's a lot of hate and anger and despair experienced while trying to beat Clubstep for the first time but also a background humor to it. That combined with the visuals of monsters carved into and creating all the block structures, and the background colors, really makes it like you're flying through some kind of Hell Circus. I think this feeling of flying through monsters' mouths and guts that make up the blocks themselves, like the monsters ARE the world, is felt much more powerfully through the classic GD style than a more modern artistic style could achieve. It's more immersive, not like art painted on top of gameplay. For sure the majority of one's experience beating this level for the first time leans more on the hell side, it's pretty painful and difficult. But I find I always appreciated how the traps were designed, and now the difficulty after the level has become easy for me.

In terms of enjoyability, this level is very fun, it's one of the official levels I go back to routinely to replay for the fun of it. While the trickstery gameplay is something people have moved away from in modern GD, I think it was very appropriate for the first official demon level at that time. Solid gameplay, decent visuals, ULTRA SOLID AURA

I go back and forth on this level. I used to love it, then I didn’t like it, and now I’ve settled into appreciating it while still seeing many flaws with it. On the one hand, the level is extremely unbalanced. Two parts right next to one another will have wildly different difficulties. Said difficulty is almost entirely oriented around the ship, which feels off for a level that’s meant to be a kind of bossfight for the game as a whole. What’s worse, the level has several mistakes which make it look incredibly rushed. In that respect the level falls flat.

However, I cannot deny what the level does well. The “demon face” is incredibly iconic for a reason, and it just feels right that a demon-difficulty level would be themed around structures that actually look like demons. This kind of top-down design also allows for the gameplay to feel just a bit awkward, but in a good way. This is especially true in the mini-UFO, because the mouths are so wide but the UFO’s movement makes it feel so cramped. It makes the level feel so imposing. I also love the few parts where Rob really uses vertical space, especially the cube part right after the first ship. It makes the level feel like a big fortress that you’re only seeing a small part of.

So that’s where it stands. Its highs are really high, but it’s marred by some major problems. Overall though I cannot deny how iconic it is. It’s closer to an 8 than a 6.