Rating Curve

TosChee is a new level by electrin, but it feels like it came out 7 years ago. It has gameplay and decoration very reminiscent of the simpler levels rated. Sadly, I think it’s a bit lower quality than your average rated level back then, so paired with the level feeling as outdated as it does, I don’t think TosChee has much to offer. At 66%, the level has some parts that look like Deadlocked and Falling Up, although the execution is a lot more barebones and unpolished, and I feel like they felt weird paired with everything prior. Overall, TosChee is a very outdated looking level with not much to offer that I would have believed was from 7 years ago if I was told so.

Number Five is a 1.9 collaboration between  Mercury and DHK2725, with the former creator being one I've become pretty fond of. DHK is one of the most underappreciated creators from his time, never getting much recognition despite his talent in the editor, with an example being Golden Haze, a level rated a few months ago despite winning Viprin's Creator Contest 2 Unknown category. While I'm not sure who made what in Number Five, the level held up pretty well, like most of DHK's other projects. It doesn’t do too much to stand out, but it’s still a fun level with some really clean designs. While there’s one part at 65% I think looks a bit weird due to its structuring and designs, it’s immediately made up for by the last part, which is easily the best part in the level. It has a super sick waveform of blue glow that makes the gameplay visible to see, but only in flashes, as it goes dark before flashing again, making you really pay attention to the gameplay. The level ends right after, making for a pretty short experience, but one that I enjoyed enough to hope for it to receive a Star Rating in the future at long last.

Every once in a while, you come across a level that makes you think nothing except “what was this creator thinking?” and that time is now for me after playing Another Breath. Another Breath is a 2.0 level with a lot of creative ideas and a ton of questionable choices in every other aspect. There’s a ton to love here, but it’s often overshadowed by bad gameplay or colors.

I’ll start with the good in Another Breath. From the start, you can tell that JJjo had a lot more to offer than a normal design level. You start off on a block with angel wings that floats you up, and I love the animation on it so much. After a little bit, there’s a green ball part with super intricate and unique looking vines, which is super neat to look at, even though they feel a bit messy in their implementation. Finally, the coolest part has to be the piano part at 53%. The notes all go from the right to the left of the screen, static like normal objects. However, they perfectly slide into piano tiles on the left side of the screen. Whenever they hit, the notes light up, and they go to the actual notes in the song as well. This is a super awesome idea that I’m not sure if I’ve seen in another level, at least from this era.

Those were all pretty small moments in the grand scheme of things, considering the 3 minute long length of the level. Unfortunately, most things outside of those are executed very poorly. It’s about what you would expect from your average Unrated Demon from 2.0. In fact, I would say it’s worse than that. The colors never look good, with different color combinations used that consistently fail to work together. This alone makes it hard to love, but the gameplay is somehow worse, with constant blind and awkward gameplay that makes for an absolute nightmare to learn and put together. There’s also 65%, which is 25 straight seconds of hitting a row of green orbs with no change. While the level is undeniably raw, the execution is too poor for me to really get into despite a few cool ideas.

THOSE WHO PHONK is made to poke fun at the edgy phonk aesthetic, through the song and the level both being pretty unserious. Ironically, whlt ended up making quite the banger with this. While they don’t personally enjoy what they made, I found everything to be extremely clean and a fantastic blend of a red and white color scheme, which can be really difficult to pull off. It uses really flashy backgrounds that do justice to the intense and edgy feeling, and I especially love the background for the UFO. It’s not really a new effect, but it’s executed perfectly in a way that feels super fluid, and the colors remind me a lot of Persona 5. All the blocks perfectly complement the backgrounds as well, being simple but extremely clean. To point out the UFO once again, I really like the detail of the top of spikes being red and staying place instead of moving up and down like the rest of the blocks.

Even though THOSE WHO PHONK was started essentially as a joke, whlt knocked it out of the park with how clean everything feels. The colors are fantastic, the movements are super alive and fluid, and the whole level is super fun as well. I’m shocked that this didn’t get an Epic Rating, but it’s alright considering that it wasn’t too serious of a project. I’m certain if whlt puts a ton of time into a more serious level, they could very easily create a Legendary Rated level.

FIRE IN THE HEART is a… concerning level. For some reason, jaizereal thought it would be a good idea to make a murder mystery dating simulator with the GD difficulty faces turned into real people. To be honest, as concerned as I am, they cooked. It’s easy to understand, looks great, and has awesome humor. The randomized captcha to open up the app on the computer is hilarious, but the best part is obviously the characters. Each character has their own custom art of a realistic body with the difficulty face as the head, and the art is shockingly well made. None of the characters or interactions are super in depth, but what is there is cute and well executed.

After you understand what you’re doing and talk to all the characters through the phone, you go on all your dates with them to figure out who the culprit is. The dates are super short and lack a lot of depth, and it’s a shame because you can basically figure out who it is just through how they look or where their room is. I wish you had to pay attention to more subtle details in their dialect, but I suppose that would make it inaccessible to other languages. Either way, the level isn’t actually too long, and even though it’s randomized, there isn’t much replay value since you’re forced to talk to all the characters anyways, and they don’t say anything different on separate playthroughs. 

There’s a big flaw with completing the level I found, which is that it isn’t explained that you must talk to all characters. Once I figured out who it was, I tried for 5 minutes to beat the level, but I was never given an option. Despite that flaw, FIRE IN THE HEART is a cute level that certainly deserves a Featured Rating, but I still think it could have expanded on the idea more.

Cyclone Machine is an “impossible” 1.7 styled Extreme Demon by Electro2001, originally made all the way back in 2.0. I say “impossible” because it’s since been verified by exsii. A few people may remember Northernsense by the same creator, a very difficult Extreme Demon version of Polargeist by RobTop, verified by Atomic. Like Northernsense, Cyclone Machine is known less for its decoration and more for its ruthless gameplay, which looks unfeasible to most players. However, unlike Northersense, Cyclone Machine has much more to offer. It’s a completely original level, but still uses a song from the main levels, Time Machine.

Despite being an original level, Cyclone Machine still doesn’t have much to offer outside of any other old styled level. A lot of the parts are reminiscent of old creators or levels, and seemingly completely random ones, from Flappy Bird to High Life. There’s plenty of questionable color choices as well, which combined with lots of barren looking parts, result in a really strange Extreme Demon that has gone super unnoticed. I don’t think Cyclone Machine is worthy of a Star Rating, but I respect the huge accomplishment of beating this beast of a level.

Like some of Enfur’s past Extreme Demons, YIPPEE is a rainbow themed Extreme Demon. Outside of having flashy rainbow colors, YIPPEE doesn’t have much to offer with it’s simple designs and backgrounds. The gameplay is the main most, but I find it super straightforward for an Extreme Demon, although fast and requiring super quick inputs. Outside of the elements I just listed, there’s hardly anything else to this level. I found the first part to be my favorite, as it at least has a rainbow parallax on all the blocks which are pretty cool to look at. Unlike some other levels by Enfur, the colors are much more saturated and bring more life into it, but are unfortunately ruined in the later parts by the absurd amount of white animated objects covering most things on screen. Overall, I see YIPPEE as yet another rainbow level by Enfur. I could see it getting rated, as the decoration is decent at times, but I wouldn’t personally vouch for one.

The best way to describe ASHES is raw. Everything is structured and composed in a uniquely detailed but unpolished way that makes the level stand out a ton. It starts by throwing you head first into an unapologetically dark and gritty atmosphere for half a minute before finally calming down. The calming part doesn’t last long, as you’re thrown right back into the action. As it starts to calm down again, you get suddenly sent to the sky. The level's entire tone shifts, as you calmly fly through a minute of a heavenly sky. I say calmly, but as hard as the level is, nothing is very calm to play here. All of this is very fitting with the song at hand, resulting in both complementing each other quite nicely.

Most designs in the level are super compact in detail, but it also has a ton of empty areas and designs as well. The part at 0:46 shows this well, as the overly detailed crystal blocks contrast sharply with the simple gray blocks. Paired with a lack of movements on a lot of structures, the level can look super odd at times. For this level though, I really like the strange and unpolished look it has. It does bring it down at times, but it also makes it stand out. This level just feels special, like xHeiDax put their all into making an emotional and compelling level, which is exactly the case. Even though the level looks off putting at times, I simply like how unique it feels. What I’m not a big fan of is the optimization, as the compact details are often made of hundreds of objects, bringing the level to 306,000 objects. This is also the exact reason why some things can feel so off, as so many compact details will always look strange paired next to emptiness. Still though, ASHES is a memorable Extreme Demon, and the Featured Rating it got is fair considering the polish and optimization.

When it comes to pixel design based levels, it’s very hard for any to stand out to me. To make for a great pixel design based level, it needs to meet three requirements for me: it must have good colors, fun gameplay, and most importantly, bring plenty of new and fun ideas to the table. I find it really rare that these types of levels meet all these criteria, and even if they do, I’ve found projects like Geometry Dash Odyssey to be too messy and abusive of shaders for me to enjoy. While Skystrike has moments where I thought the shaders like shockwaves were unneeded, as well as some slightly messy moments, I felt as if most aspects were done much better than those levels.

While parts of Skystrike are fairly basic, parts like the sky part, bossfight, and ending stood out to me a ton for having loads of character and gorgeous use of pixel designs and colors. The sky part in particular has the best designs, reminding me of Quebrantar by Debihan, and the final part has beautiful warm colors, even if the part is a bit messy. The bossfight stood out to me as being super cool, actually utilizing making the boss pixel based instead of tons of other pixel based levels with bosses that don’t. This keeps the immersion of the part intact without feeling like the boss doesn’t fit, which is very refreshing. On top of that, the attacks are readable and don’t feel unfair, like many levels from 2.0 to mid 2.1 did.

While there is a lot to like here compared to most pixel design based levels, I still have my nitpicks. There’s the obvious unnecessary shaders, like the shockwave at 0:48 that feels obnoxious as an example. I’ve never been a fan of unnecessary camera rotations either, when the camera rocks back and forth. A few moments can get a bit messy, like the dual at 2:03, but the fun gameplay makes up for it. The gameplay isn’t always the best though, as a lot of the moments I didn’t mention have pretty uninteresting gameplay. It’s not bad, but not too remarkable. A few of the moments have some readability issues due to all the objects as well, but with practice I didn’t find it much of an issue. Overall, I think the positives speak louder than the negatives in this level, and I have high hopes that TheTechniTeam can break from these small tropes in the future and make a project worthy of obtaining an even higher Rating than Epic!

Duckstep is a really peculiar level, being the 9th level of the NCS x GD event. Creators were chosen and asked to build a level in a short span of about 2 months, with Knots being asked to make a level with Duckstep by Teminite and Chime. It’s quite an unusual dubstep song, that essentially sounds like a joke more than anything to me. While Knots did what he could with the song, this was bound to make the level feel a bit strange, especially with it not sounding like something they would normally use, which is all outside of Knots control. Still, Duckstep got a Legendary Rating, so Knots clearly did a lot of things right.

As usual, Knots skills in art and graphic design shine as bright as ever in Duckstep. Knots surpassed simply being a GD creator a long time ago, as their graphic design skills are up there with the professionals, and I believe that Knots has the potential to have a great career as a graphic designer. The fact that they still spend the time to make amazing levels in Geometry Dash is super awesome, even if at times I feel like it can actually negatively impact their levels. Like other Knots levels, Duckstep has a few gameplay moments that are unclear due to the nature of their artstyle, making it hard to differentiate obstacles and background elements. Some moments like the first ship can also feel a bit static, as the amount of details better correlate to an image that you would look at rather than a moving piece.

Despite the small issues that would be challenging to fix with Knots style and the time given, Duckstep has many great moments to offer. While it would take too long to talk about them all, I want to specifically point out the parts near the end starting at 1:15. While I enjoyed the level for what it was up to this point, I think these parts where the song is the most intense are some of the best parts I’ve seen this update. The art is super in depth, and there’s a lot more movement that makes everything feel alive. While it already looks amazing, the giant Mecha Duck comes in to shoot lasers at you, and it’s incredible. Everything feels so intense and full of energy, coming together to make something incredible. While I think Knots has a bit of work to do with clearer gameplay and zooming in the camera more when it doesn’t need to be as zoomed out, Duckstep is still an awesome level well deserving of the Legendary Rating it received, despite the odd song it uses.