I just got done taking my first look through the level... I decided to just walk (mostly -- ha ha nice one!) along the surface and give myself an idea of how much level there was to explore. When I came to climbable verticals (e.g. a mountain) I went up then continued right.
Tremendous variety, from what I've seen so far. Tilesets I thought I'd grown tired of have been given a new liveliness -- and often without use of actual "life" in the form of creature sprites -- thanks to your deft hand at backgrounds. This is truly a level for savouring.
My rightward journey was cut short when I dropped from the sky into some liquid
but along the way I caught a split-second glimpse of what you'd done to the void background which was tantalising enough to send me to the editor to read the message I hadn't had time to parse. It felt pleasantly like an Easter egg to me, but in case you want to throw some sky on the screen in question, it's x1038y993.
Now I'm off to enjoy some more nice, relaxing exploration. Levels like this are my favourite thing about Knytt Stories (well, tied for first with the level editor -- the sound you hear is me making Homer-Simpson salivating noises) and I'm very, very glad that Hmpf recced it... and that your signature made finding the actual downloadable .knytt.bin file nice and easy.
Edited to add:
I've now spent a very, very pleasurable couple of hours playing through -- I think -- the entire level. I really love levels like this (Gaia did much the same thing) which feature unexpected areas to explore above the surface.
Some of my particular favourite places:
the flying fish, the leap (well, drop) of faith, the underground waterfall, the waterfall that originated in the floating tree(?) thing, the idol-shift, the place with blue ground and orange flowers (just loved those star-shaped orange flowers against the blue), and the empty underground village and its glowing-foliage environs.
Nearly every area was stunningly gorgeous. The ones that weren't were often stunningly something else, such as creepy. The care you put into the appearance of this level continues to astound me. I kept pausing in my exploration to show particularly lovely screens to my fiancee.
The overall level design was subtly impressive as well -- it's just what would happen if one was really lost in an unfamiliar place that one would find oneself trying a new direction, only to find that path led back to someplace they'd been already.
As to the complaints from some players that "Lost in the storm" 'should have had' music / more creatures / more powerups / more cutscenes... I think those people were missing the point. Here's a counterexample: I find "Monocromatica Grotta" so difficult I need to watch a "Let's-Play" video on YouTube in order to enjoy it; but note that
I'm not saying it's too hard, just that I find it too hard for me to play through it successfully. So while "Lost in the storm" may not be to some people's tastes, those peoples' tastes do not constitute a universal standard for level-judging. (Nor do mine, of course, nor anyone else's.) For what it's trying to do, this level succeeded beyond what I expected.
Another point about the lack of music -- it really allowed me to focus on the ambient sounds, and how they changed between certain screens, and what that meant about the area i was moving into.
Overall, brilliant level design. I would happily play a new level like that every day. Thank you for making it and sharing it with us!