Rating Curve

Love how expressive the movements and animations are. The simplicity overall works well but there are some parts where I’m left wanting a little bit more.

Love how well Kiriia’s style works with the song here. Wish it was longer but that might just be because I haven’t seen many levels like this and I love this.

Having also participated in making a three and a half minute level for the discord contest myself, I really respect the effort Bli was able to put into this. If you’re actually making new decoration for each part and not just inverting the colors or changing the level slightly, this requires you to make seven minutes worth of decoration under a tight deadline. The fact Bli was able to produce something fairly consistent in quality under these constraints still baffles me, and normally I don’t really find levels memorable for whatever makes them technically impressive but this is a little exception. It isn’t like this level repeats a lot of decoration either, since Change of Scene features around twelve distinct parts.

Even if it may be consistently high quality, I wouldn’t say it is conceptually consistent. Part of this feels intentional, as if to better represent freely jumping between ideas like the level claims its theme is, though especially towards the middle you start to forget exactly what this is themed after due to just how random the level can be. Especially at the matrix part I start to lose the narrative, since I feel like that could have been executed way clearer with more artwork if Bli just had the time to work on it more. I think the seven seas, the dragon, and the wild west are very good ideas for parts when the level is half themed around plays and media, the rest doesn’t really hit as hard for me though. The two “modes” of Change of Scene decide if the level “comes to life” or not, but honestly I wish more work was put into the path where the level is more reserved. The first few parts offer a really charming play aesthetic that I mentioned, with the monsters and structures seeming to be puppets made of cardboard and paint. After these parts the levels kind of just loses this theme and I think I blame the pixel part. The level tries to bring its theming back at the end with the short little recap before the bossfight, which I like but ultimately still am left wanting just a bit more. The bossfight itself… doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense in the context of the level. It feels like it was inserted in just to add a finale without really giving much thought towards how it would work with the rest of the level’s theme. It’s overall a really solid level, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best thing the game’s seen and part of that definitely was because of the gauntlet deadline getting in the way. The level feels a tad bit rushed, but I don’t blame Bli due to how I also struggled with my entry.

Gameplay is alright especially considering how hard it is to make an XXL easy demon fun. Ending is a little weird to play though.

I have to admit this level was very inspiring to see due to how much I could connect it with my own experiences with building my entry, so even if it may have flaws, I can ignore some of them.

There is a demon on my shoulder demanding that I build 16 remakes of Kocmoc and I can’t get it to shut up therefore making this level memorable. I don’t even want to remake Kocmoc.

Not named after the Yu-Gi-Oh card, but maybe we will pretend it is despite me knowing nothing about Yu-Gi-Oh (I think that would be silly)

Is it egotistical to like… still find your level funny like months after you made it? I don’t know why but I’m starting to have a bit of a soft spot for this level just because of how dumb it is. Like “objectively” it isn’t great and it’s a failure of a remake (plus it has 10k rotating glow pieces that grind your game to a halt intentionally) but it’s just so unserious that I can’t hate it like I do sometimes with Snake Game and Into the Night.

Not trying to glaze my own level claiming it’s funny though, because that’s dumb. This level being silly is literally just my only thought about it.

Should not be fun to play but it somehow is and wave is still my worst gamemode. Gotta admit I wish the first part wasn’t as tiring as it is though.

Pretty solid level. I kind of vibe with Metalface’s style here, but I wouldn’t say it’s very memorable since it kinda blends in with Metalface’s other levels a little (I think it’s because of the specific blocks Metalface likes using and the overabundance of the color black you see in so many of their levels).

Probably will come back to this later to do a more in depth review but this is one of my favorite extremes.

Very very fun level even if it isn’t for everyone. It may seem boring of me to say it but I honestly just love the intensity and charm of this level. This level isn’t afraid to be unpolished with both its decoration and gameplay, and just strives to present whatever the creator thought was cool. Thus, this level wasn’t really made to adhere to conventional standards, but it still plays a thousand times better than YeeSangHaeYo. I love the ending, feels really like a finale from 0. I think this also works really well with its song.

third times the charm

Beautiful imagery, theming, and progression while still feeling like a Geometry Dash level (and not having that take away from the experience either).

Never been a big Pixar or Disney fan but I still understand the themes of nostalgia and growing up that the level is trying to express and I respect the level for it. I think overall the level is very well put together and is heavily under-appreciated, however I’m not sure I like the black and white mode as much as the color mode. The text I feel is close to telling an interesting narrative, but it feels too attached to what the song is currently trying to say. An example of how this limits the level can be seen at the very end, with a text that says “then I sing my last word to you. You’re up against only duuust”. This level is trying to be serious, but to appeal with pathos it tries a bit too hard to insert qualities of an unserious tone (such as the repeating letters) to make the text seem more human. I think the last line would stand fine on its own without the repeating letters, like when the level used only dust for the first time.

That being said, I feel like the consistency of the text overall makes this level a lot better. If you choose to take the path with the text, you’ll be reading a narrative throughout the entire level instead of it only being present in a few parts, left as an afterthought to complete an idea. This level does depend on its text, but it seems to do so in a more natural way. I don’t like comparing levels to each other, but I feel like Split Path by Jayuff is important to bring up here to show how text does not inherently make a level worse by telling instead of showing, though more focus is put upon the text in Split Path than in PIX. The nature of having to focus on playing Geometry Dash is somewhat what limits typical the game’s levels from approaching telling ideas through text, since unless you make a level auto you have to focus on multiple things at once and the meaning can only be absorbed well over videos. Levels usually don’t give you time to soak in their words, and if they do potentially the gameplay may prevent the player from actually understanding what is being said.

This is an entirely new side of the argument on whether “telling instead of showing is a good thing” that I’d rather not go much deeper into but I think this level poses some interesting questions to how we should approach telling stories in levels.

Visually, I think this succeeds at evoking a feeling of nostalgia, since the slow pace of the level combined with the old television filter work really well with the song. I like the way this is structured overall too; the level doesn’t feel too empty or too messy.