Rating Curve

My best level! And luckily, other people seem to agree with me on this one. I absolutely love how this came out, and it solidified the idea in my mind that any level I make should have a "message" propelling it. This message can change while you're building the level, like it did with beachcombing, and that's perfectly fine. For this level in particular, I'd like to point out that the default white outlines "represent" white sand. Alongside all the junk hidden beneath the surface and sticking out of it at parts, this is not a pristine yellow coastline for tourists to sunbathe on, like you'd see in Calypso Blitz. It's messy, dirty, even hazardous. Alongside that, the "sun" is a gear object—I honestly can't even explain why this is so great, but I think anyone who plays the level can agree that it's way better than a basic glowing orb. I like to think that the sun is somehow distorting your perceptions, eventually leading to the ship part at the very end, where the objects you saw buried in the sand earlier now float placidly over the water. There's also a subtle shift in perspective at the ship portal: throughout the whole level, the way the outlines are placed suggests that the "camera" is located over the water, looking at the player walking parallel to the coastline; however, right at the ship portal, the player flies off a cliff, as if they had been walking towards the sea the whole time. I love this level, and I'm glad others love it as well.

Also, notice how I didn't turn off the glow on the outlines? That's because the glow looks better. Don't believe the mainstream media!

People don't seem to like this level much, from what I've seen. I like it, though! While it started off as a pastiche of Laser Room (hence the name), it eventually morphed into a comment on the state of 1.9 levels in the community. I quite like the 1.9 style, with its limited object pallette and relative staticity. Unfortunately, by looking at the levels made on the 1.9 GDPS, one gets the impression that they actually hate the update with how much they're trying to break past the limitations of the time. As such, Faux Room largely uses 1.9 objects and emulates the aesthetics of levels actually released during the update, but intentionally uses many features from later updates, including gameplay objects like dash orbs, in order to show that the usage of 1.9 objects is not a result of limitations, but of intentional aesthetic choice. I think the end result is quite neat, though UFO Circles definitely did it better.

I started DanceScape in early 2021 and finished it almost 3 years later, in October of 2023. You can really tell that the gameplay was made by a 14 year old just by looking at it. I actually had to replace the last 14% of the gameplay, because it was just that awful. When I started this level, I made a promise to myself that I'd eventually finish it, and I did! The level looks awful, of course, because I pretty much just forced myself to work on it against my own will, which resulted in me just putting down the first thing that came to my mind and thinking "good enough". I don't know if it actually motivated me to finish my projects, but I did start releasing levels more often from this point onward, so maybe it did. The level is just not good at all though.

My first finished level, at least the first one on my current account. This was made for a creating jam, which I think forced me to get off my ass and actually finish something for once. It certainly has potential: you explore an almost abstract landscape with a storm looming in the background, it gets progressively rainier, until lightning strikes and you're thrust directly into a whirlwind of chaos, having to weave your way through the very same objects you were calmly passing just a bit ago. Would have probably worked a bit better if the drop wasn't somehow more static than the predrop. Shame, but perhaps I can remedy this missed potential with a remake in the future. The "abstract landscape" was mainly due to the fact that I did not know how to decorate back then, but it definitely could work as intentional theming.

I'm not the metaphysical type, so unlike #​CertainPeople, I won't immediately deride it just for being made by the Soulless™ group, and will criticize the level on its own merits. With that, this is probably one of Cherry Team's better levels, alongside Void Wave and Belladonna. The latter two derive their quality from a (sorta) minimalist style of glow, but both have pitfalls that keep them from being great in my eyes: inconsistent style for Void Wave, and, weirdly enough, the exact opposite for Belladonna, with its constant pulses that really don't change with the song at all. KOCMOC is the exact opposite of this, and unfortunately, it still has the inconsistent style that plagues most megacollabs. In addition, I feel that in their strong attempts to make the decoration feel as intense as possible, they ultimately failed to rival the intensity of Slaughterhouse, because that level derives its intensity from the structuring: you can see, nay, feel how difficult the level is, just by looking at the gaps the player has to make their way through. It doesn't need many more pulses, since its main goal is already accomplished. If Cherry Team wanted to achieve the same intensity via decoration alone, then they should have gone even further, although funnily enough, toning down the decoration and allowing the viewer to actually see how damn difficult the level truly is would have resulted in the same effect. To sum it all up: I see immense potential in Russian glow, and I wish to see someone utilize the style to its full potential. That someone probably won't be Cherry Team though.

The zenith of neodesign, in that it caused the style to almost die down completely, because no one could make a neodesign "genre level" (the Geometry Dash equivalent of genre fiction) without it being utterly eclipsed by WELL RESTED.

Can the technically proficient GD creators please stop making levels like these? I can live and let live to an extent, but when this abysmal dreck is promoted front and center as THE EVENT LEVEL, I get a bit peeved. This level has NO GAMEPLAY! Well, there's a bit at the predrop, I guess, but the rest is a series of disconnected clicks that merely pretends to be gameplay. And even then, it doesn't work! There are so many places where you just die for no reason! We need a Geometry Dash Frankfurt School to weed out garbage like this. KILL THE FEDS

DeCode is so iconic that most people are willing to completely brush off the lackluster decoration and thematic inconsistency permeating this level. That's fine, I can do that as well. It's a fine 1.9 level, I guess, and I quite like how its perceived difficulty has dropped over the years (mainly due to wave becoming the dominant gamemode among GD players, but still).

I will not sugarcoat it: this level has some really awkward gameplay, and its decoration has not aged particularly gracefully; specifically, the dual part looks garish with all the rainbow objects. However, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel absolutely elated when getting to the drop after all that buildup. Progression in GD levels had always been a thing in the short term, and it'd be ahistorical to claim that this level specifically pioneered slow-burn XL levels (I mean, Lonely Travel exists), but I think this level really exemplified how stunning it can be, if done well. Plus, it popularized the use of Cacola's music in GD levels; who can complain about that?