dropdead by Quitora is the first ever "gimmick" layout I saw, and that's probably a common sentiment for many others. About six years ago, Mulpan posted a video showcasing dropdead, and that's where many people learned about these types of levels. Including me! I absolutely LOVE this level with all my heart, it introduced me to one of my favorite music artists (Frums) and just has an insane amount of rewatchability.

Up until I first watched this video, I never really knew about the layout scene. I had seen Sh4rky's Overtime layout and that's about it, so imagine how absolutely shocked I was watching THIS for the first time. dropdead is a layout to the song of the same name, and showcases many gimmicks involving the wave and different speeds.

One very cool thing about this layout, is that you are never at the normal speed. You're never at one of the in-game speeds I should say, you're always either slower than 0.5x speed or faster than 4x speed. It's incredibly fitting for the song and makes for some incredibly unique gameplay for the time. I remember watching the first part for the first time and instantly opening GD on my iPad to try and make slow gameplay like that for myself, of course failing instantly and going back to the video. However, it always stuck with me in the end. This level uses speed to its advantage though, staying slow in all the slow parts, and going EXTREMELY FAST during the fast parts. That might feel obvious, but the way dropdead does it feels just right and I think Quitora got everything down perfectly. The fast parts feel almost humanly impossible on first watch and feels like you're traveling at mach 10. (Just like the song!)

While the varying speed is very cool, the main gimmick of the level involves these fake waves. At multiple points there will be fake built in waves to the level to aid the gameplay or visuals. The first time you might notice this is about 30 seconds in, when two mini waves fly across the screen and create a little corridor for your mini cube to go through. It's incredibly smooth especially for a level from SIX YEARS AGO. The other wave gimmick is a very cool spider-esque wave, where you hold to teleport up onto a platform and let go to transfer to a bottom platform. It makes these very interesting looking square wave, and I'm pretty sure it was inspired by the arcs in Arcaea.

The level ends with a final dash orb where you go through the entire level backwards at incredible speeds and turn into 5 mini waves. This part looks INSANELY cool for early 2.1 and I remember watching it and having my jaw DROP at how something like this could be possible. Obviously, with new abilities in 2.2 and even a lot more knowhow in the editor in 2.1, something like this might be very easy to create. However, back during this time, layouts like this were essentially unheard of in the mainstream. It definitely inspired a lot more gimmick layouts like it and I'm very happy that it did that. :)