This was my first skywalker14 level, and I stumbled upon this in a rated list over a year ago not really sure what to expect (if anything at all) only to come out of the experience completely shocked at what I had just played. This level is my favorite non-demon level in the game, and in my top 5 favorite levels of all time. I highly recommend experiencing this for yourself first before reading this review.

The way the level starts is really interesting and it is immediately what comes to my mind when I think of what Storm does right. Most levels start right before the drop or at some point in the pre-drop. However, it is very uncommon to start a level in the middle of the drop or, as is the case with Storm, right at the end of the drop. When you start the level, you are immediately hit with these loud and intense horns, strings, and drums accompanied by flashes of white with every beat and then it stops. There is a fade to black, and when we can see again, everything around is calm and quiet. This bait-and-switch that skywalker is able to pull off so well just by choosing to start the level at an odd point in the song is something I've never seen done before and it still lingers in my head constantly.

Besides that moment at the beginning, the rest of the first part is just as amazing. You're hit with that intense opening only to be thrown into a quiet, barren yet serene landscape. There is a still river, dead flowers and grass, trees without their leaves, and crumbling buildings in the distance. Later in the part, the river spills out into a great lake or ocean, with monolithic busts and statues looming on the horizon and a ship sinking. All the while, the color palette is very muted and the song is lingering on these low, droning strings. This part, like most of the level, is devoid of human life. Some divine calamity has brought an apocalypse upon Earth. We don't entirely know what happened (nor do we ever find out) but this part alone already makes me feel sorrowful and it sets the tone really well for the rest of the level.

Another thing this first part does well to set the stage for the rest of Storm is introduce the player to the type of gameplay they will see throughout the rest of the level. Storm takes the unusual approach for XXL levels where the gameplay is more spread out over its runtime as opposed to being all condensed into 1-2 minutes. This approach doesn't work with every XXL level, but it is absolutely perfect for Storm. This, combined with how the only gamemode is the cube and the level being in slow speed for most of the level allows the player to truly take in the atmosphere of this level and look for all of the nuance in this level's complex, layered backgrounds.

Next, we climb up into the mountains to find it equally in ruin. Buildings and cars in disrepair, wrecked trains and tracks, stone hands pulling out of the ground, and a statue depicting a divine soldier's final moments. However, there's one peculiar thing among all of these: a diamond road sign that reads "THE END IS NEAR." Not only that, but it is a metal sign that is burning in the middle of a blizzard. It may seem like an odd occurrence, but it's great foreshadowing (a sign, if you will) of what's to come.

After the mountain, we find ourselves somewhere beautiful. The song is starting to pick up, the colors are becoming more vibrant, and we are starting to move faster. The grass and trees are alive and the flowers are blooming. Perhaps there is some tranquility to be had during the apocalypse. The Sun is even out! The Sun is very bright and fierce, unusually so. We climb up a hill marked by another diamond road sign that is also on fire...

...to see everything else on the horizon is on fire as well. The Sun has burned an entire village to the ground and its villagers plead for mercy from the gods. In the distance, some humans are being taken into the sky, ascending into the heavens? Then, it happens to us too.

We find ourselves on top of the mountains again, high enough to see the Sun again and its unbearable brightness. At the peaks of the world, in the coldest of all places, the flowers, outposts, and an entire forest are still susceptible to the fury of the Sun. The gods made in stone look upon us and the world with shame and contempt. In stark contrast with the bleak stillness we saw at the beginning, the level is now blindingly bright and colorful as the song reaches it's screechy height. It's so hard for me to pick a favorite part of the level, but if I had to chose, it would probably be this one.

Back to the level's "story," we descend from the mountains back to civilization to find everything we once knew and loved to be gone. A great Storm of fire has completely consumed the horizon, and the world is an inferno. The ground and air are lethally ashen. We have one final diamond sign to tell us "THE END IS HERE" as we lose our ability to see in a blazing flash of red and orange and the level ends...

OK, so I got very carried away writing this. It's not much of a review of the quality of the level (of which I have zero problems with), but it's more of a description of what I saw and felt as I played Storm. If anything, the conclusion you can draw from my ramblings is just how phenomenal of a job Storm does at conveying these beautiful yet harrowing visions of the apocalypse. I'm not a fan of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, nor do I think I will ever truly be one, but I must say that this one 6-minute level is able to speak so much more about the beauty the creator of the level finds in the band and their music than any words can (maybe this is ironic to come from an over 1100 word long level review lol). It's truly, truly heartbreaking how this level got completely swept under the rug, with only a feature rating and 23K+ downloads as of me writing this. Please show this level some more love if you can, Storm is truly deserving of it.