I love me a good sky themed level. Soleil has some really solid, consistent designs across its runtime, and the pillar structures work pretty well here by creating more verticality in the foregrounds, which sells the lack of "bounds" and makes the level overall feel a lot bigger. The same goes for the multiple layers of wind and rainbows - the foreground ones are more visible, brighter and are used as accent pieces in areas with less block design to fill space and add a bit of colour, while the background ones are much larger and dimmer. A lot of elements of this level use this sort of simple parallax to create extra depth, and the consistency with its incorporation is a big part of what makes it work.

One of my criticisms of Soleil is the effects. In concept, I love the idea of the blocks flying apart and disintegrating in the intense sections, but the effect is quite blocky and the movement is too regular to feel natural. It definitely needs some more variation in the particle size, speed and rotation, and I do wish it was incorporated based on some specific song element like the loud synths near the end of the drop, rather than just whenever the part felt intense enough. I also don't like how the gameplay is balanced, as the wave parts feel significantly harder than anything else in the level, creating many frustrating choke points that hamper the playing experience quite a lot. If anything, I would err on the side of making the waves easier, as the gamemode in general is extremely mechanically intensive and (in my experience) usually works better when a bit easier compared to the rest of the level.

The transitions are also pretty lacklustre, particularly the one out of the first drop - the fade to black really hurts the attempt to fade from one part to another and feels quite jarring. I get that it's likely to match the sun setting during the transition, but having the clouds disappear slowly and the new block designs materialize in with some sort of effect would have been much better for the flow between the two parts since it would create a more logical implicit reason for the style shift between parts (the sun setting to darken the background, the new block designs and the removal of the clouds all accounted for). Overall, though, Soleil is very solid and I did enjoy it. I would recommend this for Feature and look forward to more from luhlamar going forward!