This is one of the most reviewed and highest rated levels on the site AND it's also a level sometimes brought up in conversations surrounding the "greatest level of all time." I think it's a fantastic level deserving of a lot of its praise, but I don't quite feel the same conviction regarding this level's gameplay.

I'll briefly talk about the visuals and progression in this level since they are without a doubt revolutionary and super ahead of its time, but I mostly don't have anything to add to the discourse that hasn't been said already. I love the way Lit Fuse starts out super lethargic, quiet, and muted with its colors to match its song slowly fading in. The next two parts with a lot more color but still being slow yet becoming more tense leading up to the drop are also amazing. The release of energy at the drop is unlike anything else that was being released at the time and is still mind-blowing considering the fact this was made almost 10 years ago. It's with all of these things combined that make Lit Fuse a precursor to what people began to do with song representation years after, and for that it deserves to held with such high critical acclaim.

So why am I only giving this a 7? Well, something else this level did that no other level has before was that this is the only level I've ever beaten that has given me physical pain. Something to keep in mind is that I beat Lit Fuse as a new hardest almost exactly a year ago and I grinded it out in just 4 days, but on each of those days I poured at least an hour and a half into it each day.

There isn't anything to note in the first section, it's mostly fine though it can get a bit boring. Instead, my first problem with how this level plays comes going into the first ship. It's another ship that is mostly fine, just a bit boring to have to play a lot of. What I don't like is just how jarring the shift in brightness is going into this ship. After playing the dark first cube for a while, getting to the ship is like being flashbanged. In fact, this ship maintains its high brightness and saturation for so long that one night while I was playing the level, I closed my eyes for a bit and I was still able to see the ship part. It's maybe a bad sign if the ship gets burned into my eyes...

On a different note, let me tell you about how the dual part is the bane of my fucking existence. The entire time I was playing Lit Fuse, I was never able to get this part consistently. The ship really sucks to control since it feels a lot heavier when in dual gravity, and the UFO constantly needed spamming to get through. So, I ended up having to try different methods of spamming and praying to get through the dual. Practicing the dual and trying different things may have sounded like a good idea, but what I ended up doing was sending my hand into complete pain from constantly spamming as best I could. At this time that I was grinding Lit Fuse, I was spending my mornings and afternoons volunteering at a summer camp at my local art museum so I was always experiencing the pain from playing this level trying to do basic tasks, all the way down to just trying to open doors. By late day 3 or early day 4, I started to feel like this was becoming too much on my hand so I had to switch to using my left hand for the spam in the dual. One silver lining to this dual was that the second half was a fair bit easier because the wave is not subject to same bullshit gravity the ship is while in the dual, but that still didn't stop this part of the level from feeling like a massive bottleneck where I would have so many attempts get to this dual in one session, but only a single digit amount get to the drop afterwards.

After getting through that dual spam from hell, the drop is quite manageable by comparison. In fact, I'd say it's my favorite part gameplay-wise. While it is meant to be the most climactic part of the level, it's the 2nd easiest part behind the beginning. I never really struggled with anything in this part of the level, the only real problem I have with the gameplay here is that some of the transitions are rough, especially in the second half where you're going into a gamemode portal on the ceiling or ground and you can't really see what comes next very well. These were the roots of some unfortunate deaths (especially 95% twice), but it never hurt truly as much as the dual before it because I felt like I had more control over my cube at this part.

Despite this, would I recommend Lit Fuse as an entry-level insane demon? Yes. I know a good amount of people who still really enjoyed Lit Fuse and there is definitely a possibility for a new player trying to get into insane demons to have a better time with this level than I did. These issues I have in the gameplay aren't overwhelming enough to get in the way of me celebrating this level for what it is and the impact it had.