In this lake, you can see for miles across a great, light coloured forest, with some tall, rocky orange mountains in the distance, below an oddly dark blue, plain-looking sky. The backdrop for the underwater sections at the bottom of the level are simple green bushes with a few little red berries here and there.

Everywhere around this lake you'll find all sorts of old, crumbling ruins of a forgotten society. The ground Sonic and Tails stand on is an old, cracked brick pattern of big yellow, orange and grey stones, with grass on top. The stones get darker coloured as you move in front of them, supporting a path above the one you're on, and they appear more green and red when seen from underwater. Long stone pillars are in abundance, either holding up some ground above you, or just standing crumbled and broken, and wide waterfalls drop gently into the lake below. Big hollow tree trunks are used for bridges in some areas, which you can either pass through or over, and loads of bushes hang down from the very top of the level, or rest on the water. Rustling noises are created when you make contact with some, shaking down loose leaves too. You'll find that there's a lot that often obstructs your view of the character, be it chunks of ground, bushes, logs, pillars and all sorts of things in this busy little forest. Usually having a lot on-screen in any one place, this is a bright, cheerful zone with lots to see.

When it comes down to it, this zone has two main areas; one is straightforward and lies above the water, and the other, far more difficult one runs parallel to it, completely submerged under the lake. Both routes head in a fairly basic rightward direction, and the water occupies the whole bottom half of both acts. If you fall in it, you'll end up somewhere in the parallel, underwater route below, where you'll be forced to resume the act from there, so the idea is to try and stay on the top route. In this way, it is possible to get through this water level without even touching H2O. The top route is made up of multiple paths, sometimes two or even three at a time, above and around the surface of the lake. You can switch between these quite regularly, but the thing about them is that they tend to be very intertwined, sometimes going behind or through each other, or switching vertical positions, leading to a bit of a tangle at times. This makes for quite a cramped layout up there, in Act 1 at least, and the bushes along the top of the stage, plus the vertically-thin nature of the map make this part quite enclosed, and not particularly open. Act 2 on the other hand is a bit bigger, and there are more gaps in the path, meaning that you can fall into the water more easily. These upper paths are pretty bumpy, and filled with slopes, curves, hills and taller-than-normal loops, making it quite a speedy area, plus there are platforms to jump across. They're mostly based on fairly thick chunks of ground that sit on top of the lake, but they often become thinner as one path intertwines with another or travels along above it. This is quite a unique, interesting structure.

Meanwhile, the lower, submerged route is based much more on one, solid path across, and besides the occasional diagonal passage, cut into a large block of ground, it's actually more open down there, with long single rooms spanning across the act. The water makes your movement a lot slower, and as with all water levels, Sonic and/or Tails need air to stay alive during the long periods of time which they'll be down there for. Your air runs out in 30 seconds, unless you can top it up by grabbing a large air bubble, which are produced by small bubble clusters sitting at various points on the ground. In the last 10 seconds before you run out of air, a countdown will start on the screen, accompanied by that scary music. If a countdown starts with no music accompanying it, that represents Tails' need for air if you're playing as Sonic & Tails, so don't worry about that. The paths in the underwater portion are a bit less bumpy, and obviously a lot slower, and you normally have to hop between platforms or avoid obstacles to progress. Usually, you're not able to get yourself out of the water until the end of the act, where you have to hit the edge of a springboard to catapult yourself upward a fair distance. Be ready to grab every air bubble you see, in order to stand a good chance of getting through. You'll pretty much always be heading right, so you can't really get too lost, and there aren't many hidden areas or shortcuts around. Fortunately though, there are no death drops to worry about at the bottom of this lake.

Platforms to jump across come in a variety of flavours here. There are typical ones based on the stone ground design, which stay still or fall when you land on them, or move in the usual basic vertical or sideways motions. Grey pillars with flat tops and broken bottoms float on or in the water and will usually fall when you land on them, and sets of three thin brown platforms will rotate slowly around each other, attached by circular chains. You can also get singular ones that swing 180 on the chain like a pendulum, one of which actually gets thrown off its chain and onto the water surface. Both above and below the lake, some grey pillars on the ground rise up when you get close, and stand in your way. Jump up nice and high and land on the top, letting your lethal spinning body shatter the pillar into pieces. Because of his weaker jump, this may be more difficult if you're playing this level as Knuckles, in Sonic 2 + Sonic & Knuckles, so use another platform or take a run up at it. Located on other, scenery-only pillars, you'll spot an occasional arrow launcher, which are small grey blocks with Eggman's face on them. When you get close, the eyes will start flashing red, and when you actually step past it to the right, the side will open up and an arrow will fly out, hoping to catch you in the back. These can be found in one, two, or even four to a pillar, in later areas.

Thin stone ledges aren't very stable in some places, and will crumble under your weight, so if you need them to re-generate in order to get to the next platform, leave the area and come back. More dangerously, bottom ends of pillars that hang above a path may fall down when you get close. They're heavy, so if they happen to catch you as they fall, they'll either squish you into the ground, or, in a glitch, force you below the path, where you'll either fall off the screen or be lucky enough to get away with it and land on a lower section. There are alot of red Sonic 2 springboards around the level too. These aren't as powerful as regular springs, but can be used to fly across a large distance if you hit them with enough speed, from the left side. In order to get the best height off of them, for use at the end of the long underwater routes where you need to get back up to dry land, be sure to jump on them at the far tip of the board. While underwater, extra air comes in the form of small bubble clusters which, as always, pump out a large air bubble every once in a bit that can be sucked up by one of our heroes for an additional 30 seconds worth. You'll probably be needing a fair few of them.