They say that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. While this level is literal garbage, it is my literal treasure.

“Garbage” is a term for something undesired and completely useless to someone. It’s something to be thrown out. The only value in garbage is what someone makes of. When a piece of art is described as “garbage”, it comes off as a very shallow criticism because it doesn’t say anything specific about the product, rather it simply indicates that it is worthless. The wordplay in the title pokes fun at these poor criticisms. While it has been done before with levels like Bli’s “Absolute Garbage” what helps this level stand out is the sheer commitment to its title in concept and execution.

The progression in the level feels vaguely like the process of trash being collected, compacted and dumped in landfills. Frankly, the decoration does not look good. At all. Throughout the level you are jumping across piles of random geometry dash objects placed around without any rhyme and reason, creatively conveying that these objects are trash that has been thrown out. I REALLY appreciate that the level does not try to sugarcoat what the stuff you are travelling through is. It does not try to make it look pretty. The style is completely unfiltered and dare I say “raw”. The level is uncaring about anything but achieving its goal, to show you just how harsh and lifeless its garbage is. The only objects in the level that feel vaguely clean are the trash compactors near the start, and they are still very basic and boring to look at. After all, there is mot much life in the heaps of trash that they process. It is not to be seen by public eye. As the level progresses, the level becomes even uglier, with clashing colours, hectic structuring and seemingly nonsensical object use as you are transported into the landfill and you travel deeper and deeper through it, the colours getting more and more repulsive. The decoration excellently compliments the title, as it is.. garbage after all.

This level earns the funny title much more than something like Absolute Garbage to me. While that level is very pretty, it doesn’t do anything interesting at all really with the name. It’s a well-polished industrial level with a funny name. Compared to this level, which is completely unabashed with the its nature, the commitment to the theme feels like night and day compared to Absolute Garbage.

As for gameplay, I haven’t been able to play too much of it so far but I enjoyed figuring out my way through the obstacles in practice mode. There’s an overwhelming feeling of the gameplay being unpolished and disorganized however. I think that’s brilliant theming wise, and it adds a sense of immersion as you have to constantly fight to make it through the disorganized garbage blocking your way. We’ll see what I think when I beat the level, which I definitely will.

Back to what I said at the start,  “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Garbage only has value if someone makes value out of something worthless to someone else, and as a criticism, describing art as garbage inherently devalues it. This level looks bad and has very strange gameplay yet I can’t help but love it. To someone else it may be completely worthless but I personally find value in it. It’s my own treasure. I didn’t know any of Ydo’s levels before this (if so I only vaguely remember seeing them on twitter) but this is enough to make me a massive fan. Great work and I can’t wait to see what else you make!

This is farther down in the queue but an update has made this level relevant recently so I'll hop on the bandwagon! The first thing I really considered about the level was the name, especially since it was just a line of text in a spreadsheet to me until yesterday. I do have very uncontroversial opinions about self-deprecating level names, including the related Bli levels Absolute Garbage and Trash Level, but once I thought about it more and got around to playing it, Objectively Garbage is definitely worthy of the title. Both Bli levels have a similar double meaning, simultaneously a description of the theme and a funny jab at poor level criticism, but Ydo takes both far further, being unapologetically raw in detail and structuring, and of course with a masterfully tongue-in-cheek spin on what poor level criticism looks like nowadays. Both are so bizarre in their execution that it makes it really hard to dismiss out of hand, which I can appreciate.

I hate spending such a large part of a review talking about unrelated things but I unfortunately don't have a ton to say about the level itself. While I certainly don't mind levels being messy, I think this one in particular should have leaned harder into parts like the ship, which use the array of blocks and slopes as a landscape and theme with more coherent foreground elements to develop it. The crusher part was really fun to figure out and I think they mesh really well with the more chaotic elements of the part. However, as Objectively Garbage develops it both becomes even messier and strays further away from its central ethos. The robot, for instance, feels less like a junkyard and more like having a ton of overlapping slopes and slabs was the entire point, which considering my praise of the balance this level strikes given the title is a bit of a letdown. I enjoyed playing through it - I don't think I would enjoy beating it but it was fun to figure out - but it's another thing that devolves along the runtime. For its strengths early on, though, Objectively Garbage is a very welcome play on both words and an abrasively unpolished style.

Well executed theme but every other aspect doesn't really live up to that

Kinda wish the back half was just as good