Rating Curve

I'm a big sucker for the mechanical theming of Powercut. I really like the general mechanical-electrical meld of aesthetics on display here; in particular, I think the lightning present in the middle of many of the structures is very nice and adds a new layer of movement and vibrance to the otherwise static mechanical designs. This is at its best around 0:22, with the brighter lightning serving to accent the interior lines and designs rather than stand alone, which helps make the designs feel more "alive" due to the added movement and colour.

While I like the overall consistency with the gameplay and colour scheme, each part tends to have a mind of its own with the effects used, which is especially rough with the camera controls. Quite a few parts in the midsection of the level have either really strong camera bounces, or frequent sections that slow or disconnect the camera from the player, which feels jarring as there's not much consistency as to what these sections synchronize to in the song. This is most obvious with the very intense camera and shader usage in the part around 0:14 contrasting heavily with the mainly background and pulse-focused effects in the following part, with no change in the song to compensate. There's also a giant fantastical skull design at 0:19, which really sticks out against the mechanical block deco and feels very out of place.

Most of my complaints are relatively common in large megacollabs - generally, it takes a lot to perfectly align a group of individual creators on a specific vision. Powercut does a decent job at this in a lot of aspects, and is a pretty enjoyable play thanks to the high energy and solid designs, but suffers from lacking consistency in effect work, among a few more minor things. Regardless, I think this level is cool, and I would like to see it rated.

Jetstreams is quite a welcome callback to 2.0 efforts from creators like Superopi and Codex, in particular through its structuring. The blocky 2.0 lego brick ground spikes do quite well at filling space, and the subtle detail blocks used to texture them add some needed part-to-part variation. I also like the grass and flower blocks used to add further variation to the outside of the spikes throughout the level. The actual structures fading into the ground spikes when placed in them is quite nice, and helps the spikes feel more "solid" and imposing enough to justify them creating what is effectively a tunnel across the whole level, which is quite a cool way of doing that and mostly works due to how consistent this choice is across the level.

With that said, I'm not a big fan of most of the glowy foreground effects used. I think they clash pretty hard with the designs that consist of mainly sharp corners and flat colours with very little blending, particularly the full screen moving glow bars in the first couple parts or the screen edge accent flashes across the level. Each part of the level being mostly monochrome means the bright glow tends to muddy a lot of the details, which I think could be fixed by introducing more secondary colours as highlights into the block design, particularly the block outlines as these are important for gameplay readability. I do, however, like these effects when they come out of the structures vertically, as this is a neat way of showing the player the intended path ahead while also accenting specific structures that are important in one way or another. This helps my overall enjoyment of Jetstreams, and I'd recommend it for Feature personally, but it's great seeing modern creators still put out faithful callbacks to the legends of 2.0 sometimes.

In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I won't talk much in detail about how this level connects with Deltarune, but it is heavily based on a section of one of the game's chapters. In terms of technical execution, the level of detail is on par with the source material, and I quite appreciate the additional lighting effects on the church windows and the saws to make them pop from the darker background. The added background texturing is nice as well, as particularly in the ship at 0:45 the layered, floating particles feel almost like dust or stars and give the illusion of the level having far greater depth than it does, which helps the environment feel grander.

This is what makes Prophecy quite a one-dimensional level, though, as it sticks to its source material very faithfully rather than taking advantage of the GD editor to provide a more unique experience. The few rhythmic elements in the level aside from the gameplay are elements already present in game, and in particular I would have loved to see more usage of the rings as an "echolocation" gimmick as they have quite a large presence in the original chapter, yet only appear in parallel to the scripted intro sequence. I'd also have liked the level to feel more distorted and fragmented akin to the second sanctuary - the whole concept of it being a reflection is unseen in the level in favour of the more basic, overall church theme that was chosen. Not to say what's here is bad, I just think it's missing a lot of potential that it could have achieved by taking the chapter's mechanics and environment and turning them into a more complete, unique experience by taking advantage of more of what the editor offers. I'd recommend Prophecy for Feature.

The pop culture mosaic that is the "dreamcore" aesthetic is something I rarely see translated into Geometry Dash, but Fat Donkey does a decent job of it. The most defining aspect of dreamcore to me is the omnipresent shifting rainbow colours, and I appreciate how in this level most of the details that are coloured in use unique hue offsets as to not use the same colour at all times. In particular, I love contrast between the very saturated snaking trail around 0:30, the multicoloured, lighter ground spikes and the block designs that feel like little windows into desktop backgrounds or popular video games. These all combine to create a lot of visual distinction between each major element, while also nailing every element of the "dreamcore" style pretty well - I like the inclusion of the pop culture references in the block designs, as it gives each design some space to shine as the player's eye is naturally drawn to them due to them serving as hazards.

I also quite like how varied DwcA's approaches to the style become throughout the level. 0:44 has the song's increased energy and warbling synths sync alongside lots of very trippy shader effects, exploding block designs and hallucinogenic backgrounds (especially the giant blinking eye), making for a much more abstract and dreamlike part. The following part's spinning vortex of space viscera and even greater shader usage, especially the bulge shader to give an unnatural sense of depth to the part, works well off of the previous part exploding into nothingness and still feels very dreamlike due to the unnatural shaders and the flying space debris. Lastly, parts like 1:13 feel straight out of an old early 2000s website, with bright, saturated rainbow colours, heavy emphasis on lineart and a lot of very roughly drawn art of cats. All of these parts, while very much rough around the edges and sometimes lacking in terms of more traditional elements (I'm not big on the block designs around 1:01), still does a great job at replicating the main elements of the dreamcore aesthetic in the context of a GD level. Fat Donkey is a fascinating experience and I would recommend this for Feature. Go play it!!

I do appreciate good atmosphere creation in levels, and cloudnine has a lot of that. I like the juxtaposition of the calmer first half of the song with the foggy, blended particles and gentle flashing effects as it creates a somewhat dreamlike environment that goes nicely with the lower energy song. This is helped by the large, oddly shaped floating structures, and the slight bouncing movement on them makes them feel like they're floating in space, which is a good touch and adds to the dreamy atmosphere further.

The second half of the level changes approach to a much cleaner, almost Frums-like visual overlay and flashier, higher-energy colour and effect work, to compensate for the song's increased energy. While I think this looks very good, and the playback bar in particular near the end is a standout visual that really works in the part's favour to build a strong identity, there's really no correllation between the two halves of the level beyond colour. The design style, while simple, completely shifts from the first part's muted colours and invisible block patterns to the second half's flat coloured spikes with no transitionary period, which is jarring and not particularly called for since the song's synths and melodies remain quite similar.

The gameplay is communicated to the player quite clearly, as all of the structures use very distinct outline colours (usually rainbow offset about 90 degrees from the rest of the level) that separate them from the background successfully, so despite the aforementioned issues I think this is quite a solid level. I would love to see more work done incorporating a strong, consistent theme into the level as a whole, while also leaving room for each part to maintain its own visual identity as they do now. I would recommend this level for Star Rate.

GabberFly has the fundamentals of 1.9 design down quite well in all regards. I appreciate that each part individually has its own defined structuring style, as it gives each part a much stronger identity and keeps the level as a whole feeling varied. For example, the 45 degree sloped structures in the UFO around midway through are a visual standout as this kind of structure was not as popular back in 1.9, but also serves to create some fairly interesting gameplay as the slopes nearly match the natural gravity of the UFO gameplay, placed at odd positions and using gravity portals to add a memorisation element without the need for fakes or invisible gameplay.

Most of the block designs follow the same general template, with a darker "outline" of one type of block (generally brick, flower or metal blocks), and a lighter inner section that tends to pulse more strongly and contain more detail. This template on its own is quite solid, and the contrast it creates between the two main design layers is very nice, but I would have liked to see more variation on it throughout the level. Mixing the outline colours with the inner section, swapping designs, or even having everything on one design might have helped certain parts stand out more - namely the wave-cube dual at 0:35 where the colouring across all of the elements is similar enough that the contrast factor is minimised, leaving the designs as a whole quite messy. Aside from this, though, the level is solid in most aspects, and I'm quite surprised this was never rated. Nowadays I would recommend it for Star Rate.

There's a lot of unbridled "early 2.1 art level" energy going on in Revelations, and in that aspect it's quite solid. The art quality is rough at times, with many of the assets having small visual errors, inconsistent outlines or otherwise very obvious usage of certain default blocks for texturing (namely the bricks near the beginning), but personally this is something I enjoy and find quite nostalgic. I like when levels take creative liberties to recreate real life without leaning on blending, alpha or other similar mechanics to create smoother, cleaner art as is more common nowadays.

I couldn't tell you much about this level's overall theming, which is a big point of criticism I have. When your level is so art-centric as to necessitate nearly every aspect of it being geared around a singular aesthetic or inspirational setting, as Revelations' individual parts are, I think a pretty strong overarching theme or stylistic correlation is required to create a cohesive final product. More traditional styles like design generally do this by way of specific habits creators will fall into with their works, like structuring shape, usage of specific blocks or textures for details (think Namtar's late 2.0-early 2.1 works), or even how they use negative space to highlight their designs like someone like Chase97 would with his comparatively simpler backgrounds and very complex, angular block designs. This is extremely hard to pull off in an art level without a cohesive theme, and in the case of Revelations each part's ideas are pretty much completely different (a castle placed next to what seems to be the inside of a creature's stomach chronologically, with no real transition between them), leaving little part-to-part connection. (edited)

With that said, I will commend xGDFUNx for integrating intuitive structuring into their art. Every part's hazards are set up in such a way that their nature is quite obvious to the player, which is relatively uncommon in these kinds of full art levels. My favourite example of this is the long, waving neon green tendrils towards the end, s they mesh very nicely with the acidic theming while also standing out as being hazards in both colour and shape. This makes the level quite enjoyable to play, so despite the aforementioned flaws I would personally recommend it for Feature. There's tons of potential for this creator to further explore art-based levels, and I look forward to seeing more of them in the future.

Whether this is a new project or old ones from back in 2014 or so when Rublock5 was an active creator, Rapid System is a nice little callback to the "good old days" of Geometry Dash. Even for the time it was likely made (1.8 or 1.9), it's quite simple and draws pretty heavy inspiration from Theory of Everything 2, using large chunks of small invisible squares, vertical blending glow pillars and lots of other timely decoration choices. I don't have too much to comment on here due to how simple this level is, but I do appreciate how concise each part feels. Every part has its own defined idea or stylistic choice that it centers around - the aforementioned invisible square structures guide the player through a gravity portal corridor with a ship, one part uses many identical vertical 3x1 blocks to form a little staircase for the cube, and another uses slanted pillars to direct the ship between some spiked structures. The level as a whole flows nicely from one part to the next, and quite a high level of understanding of general design criteria is shown for the time. This is a pretty impressive project for the time it was (likely) made in, and I do hope it receives a Star Rate. Nice work!

tran la luot takes a pretty interesting approach to controlled chaos that mostly works, with some caveats, although it definitely lacks in execution in some areas. The way emily419 showcases the overdriven, compressed bells in the predrop is quite nice, as the level slowly vibrates itself apart at the seams as the bells get more intense before jumping into complete, rainbowy chaos at the introduction of the backing synths. This contrast combined with the full-screen glitch effect is a great build and release of tension, and makes the transition between the two parts feel just as impactful visually as it does audibly. I particularly like the usage of the spinning circular setpiece asset in the background, almost wheel- or portal-like, as its massive size and constant movement means it does a good job of representing the grandiose, buzzing backing synths of this part.

I also like many of the individual effects in the drop, and their usage is generally solid. The tight, blue-purple glitching effects are a good counterpart to the bitcrushed snare drums, and the heavy use of glitching overall combined with the scattered single blocks for structures and the RGB colour scheme feels like the level is breaking apart, which feels quite fitting with how loud and intense the song is. The rotating messes of lines towards the end feel even more like the level is pulling itself apart at the seams, which is a nice addition to contribute to the level's high tension throughout the drop.

Unfortunately there is very little to tie each individual element of the level together into a cohesive product, and even then many of the elements seem misplaced or desynced from the elements they feel like they're meant to represent. The first two parts do have quite a strong visual identity, as the aforementioned vibrating movement is carried between parts in the form of flower structures and glitching masses of lines on the top and bottom of the screen. The rest of the parts don't really share anything in common aside from the general "glitching" theming; the designs and structuring tendencies are completely different from part to part, there's little consistency with colour scheme or gameplay style, and even the effect usage becomes really inconsistent at the end because it stops being attached to specific elements of the song as the first half of the drop does by attaching the glitches and flashes to the percussion. I would recommend having a more concrete idea in mind as to a level's overall progression before going into decorating it, as realistically any form of recognisable theming would have done wonders to improve this level's overall cohesion, be it design tendencies, structuring, colour scheme, effect usage or background detail. However, this is still an impressive showing for emily419's first created extreme demon, and has a lot going for it in terms of its ideas with design philosophy, "setpiecing" specific assets and effect work. I would recommend this for Star Rate.

Fellow reviewer playeruan has cooked a surprisingly faithful 1.9 remake of the legendary 2.0 megacollab Fusion Z. I personally really appreciate how this feels like a real, plausible 1.9 level; none of the designs are outstanding, and many are reminiscent of popular creators around the time like MaJackO, Xaro, etc. The designs consist primarily of metal and other default blocks, with many flat black structures. It's a bit of a nostalgia trip, honestly, and brings me back to the days of levels like Toxin Lab II that really popularised the intense flashes and shifting of colours between shades of green and pink alternating with the base reddish orange theme. It's an easy way to add to the level's overall intensity, and in my opinion looks very nice especially considering the heavy limitations of the 1.9 editor.

Unfortunately, this is still a fairly unremarkable 1.9 level. The gameplay is fun, but ultimately pretty flat and doesn't do much to represent the song aside from click sync in some areas. I do think that even in 1.9, we saw certain creators like Millepatte making use of unique movements and repeating concepts to represent certain song elements, and that's something that really helps tie a level together with its song, so its absence here ends up leaving the gameplay feeling pretty bland. The cohesion from part to part is also spotty at best, and while it's nice that each individual part has its own style and flair from its respective creator, I would have liked to see more repeating elements like structuring, design choices and gameplay elements rather than just the overarching, vague reddish colour scheme.

It's cool seeing creators work within the limits of the 1.9 editor, however in Fusione's case I don't think it really helps the level. I would like to see better use of concepts such as creative song representation with gameplay that aren't as affected by editor limitations from modern 1.9 levels.