As strong as cometface's evolution has been much after this level, LAKE ZURICH remains to be one of my favorites from him. Fantastic sense of progression and an eerie atmosphere and the execution was a hint of the perfection that was to come.

LAKE ZURICH was the first level of cometface's I ever saw, way back around December 2021, and it's quite incredible to see how far their style has developed since. This level's designs are very rough around the edges, with many cases of large structures with minimal detail or too much negative space (namely the platforms starting from 1:35). The structuring is generally ok, but is quite basic and doesn't really work with the complexity of the shapes many of them take; they tend to end up feeling somewhat incomplete due to the interior details not fitting in very well with the shape of the structure, as well as the lack of interior details in general, and the first part's large ground structures are the best example of this. I would also have greatly appreciated more variation in colour, as LAKE ZURICH mostly sticks to a single, dark shade of blue right up until the final part. Considering how much depth the song's production has, and how much it changes throughout the length of the level, some hue-shifted pulses or complementary highlights to match the vocals or droning synths would have been nice.

With that said, pretty much everything else about this level is excellent, albeit unpolished. The theming is fantastic, and the slow transition from indoor to outdoor elements throughout the length of the level is subtle but executed very nicely. This also lines up with the way the song slowly adds in more and more "light" sounding elements like the synth plucks and guitar notes. The first part having the night sky only visible through the "windows" creates a very nice sense of depth and helps sell the player being in an indoor environment, making the payoff when everything opens up into an expansive nighttime landscape at 1:12 very rewarding. The final part has very nice structuring, with the constellations making for generally quite unique shapes while still having solid thematic and visual synergy with the rest of the part since it is set in space. The floating glow bars reminiscent of the Aurora Borealis help to further this, and they also help fill in some of the excess negative space left between structures.

LAKE ZURICH is a very solid foundation for what would eventually become the "neodesign" style cometface helped spearhead, and it still holds up very well today, almost 4 years later. It has excellent theming, but lacks a lot of polish and execution in terms of its more traditional design and structuring elements that cometface has slowly iterated and improved upon over the last few years.