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sydneylikesgd · 28 days ago

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Geometry Dash Awards Nominees 2024

Heyo, doing something a little different for the Geometry Dash Awards. I’m going to go through all the nominations and my thoughts on the levels I find interesting. No number ratings or anything cause who cares

Best Auto Level

Okay, it’s Interstice, like, no contest. Outside of GD, I do motion graphics, and I am just a huge fan of these sorts of animation videos. Color choice is wonderful, great compositions, everything moves in such a satisfying way–it’s perfect, the other nominations don’t even come close.

Best Beginner Classic

Back On Dash is definitely a really great level–I love AudieoVisual levels, but this one feels a lot less unique than his other levels, and it’s not surprising given that this was made for the NCS event levels. Still, pretty great, but I’m gonna have to give this one to Cosmic Dolphin

The song is such a classic, and it takes rainbow blocks and makes something really great with them. I’m a sucker for star/constellation themes, and this level certainly checks that box. But like, it’s just a really fun, cute level. It uses 2.2 features in a really tasteful way.

Another one of the nominations for this category is Rage Quit, which I suspect is going to be the winner and that’s going to be very controversial. There’s nothing I can really say about Rage Quit that hasn’t already been said, so I’m going to stay out of that discourse. Anyway, yeah, Cosmic Dolphin wins this category for me.

Best Intermediate Classic

I’m going to fucking kill myself if BUSSIN wins. I’m not going to go into detail as to why I hate that level, as I’ve already written a little bit about that. Anyway, CARASPACE is gorgeous, it’s absolutely the winner here. Back to back space/constellation themed levels, but look, they’re just pretty. This level has a lot of unique ideas and it executes them really really well. Also, fine, yeah, the rainbows are pretty.

There are some other solid picks in here, though. getHappier is honestly really good, but it’s a bit slow and doesn’t really capture me. I don’t hate it though, there’s for sure a lot to enjoy about it, just not really for me.

Subwoofer Lullaby is an interesting one to me. I might write a full review on this level at some point, because there’s something so curious about a really well-executed Minecraft-themed level made in GD, which is a game with a very powerful level editor, but it wasn’t really intended to do a lot of the stuff people are doing, while Minecraft’s custom content tools have intentional design and are generally pretty good, even if there are a lot of issues lol. There’s a lot to chew on here.

Still, CARASPACE takes it for me, it’s fantastic in so many ways.

Best Advanced Classic

Honestly I don’t have a lot to say about this category. Next Cab Soon and MAGISTRO are both really solid, I’m just not crazy about them personally. WANNACRY is pretty cool, but has a lot of stuff I dislike, and I have a mostly negative view of Citadel and Astralith.

All of the other ones are alright, but nothing to write home about, except for I See Stars. And, to be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to write about for this level. It’s really great compositionally, and color choice and pulses are really well done. The final part with a cube on a glowing glossy field of spikes is just gorgeous. Great level, I See Stars wins best advanced classic for me, no contest.

Best Expert Classic

commatose, commatose, it’s fucking commatose, commatose is the best GD level I’ve ever played in my god damn life and nothing is ever going to top it. I don’t think I’m going to write a whole lot about it here, because I’m planning on writing a full review on it once I beat it.

I will say though, glass beach saved my life. I was in a really dark place when I listened to the first glass beach album for the first time, and it was able to reach out to me when nothing else could. It was an honest depiction of the world for trans people at the time, and it’s only gotten more resonant as the years go by. It’s honestly very uplifting, listen to the first glass beach album it’s so fucking good.

So I was thrilled for glass beach’s second album, plastic death. Initially, it didn’t really speak to me in the same way tfgba did, but over time it’s grown a lot on me. commatose is a beautiful song in every sense of the word, and this level is such a perfect love letter to it.

And, yeah, if it wasn’t obvious, none of the other levels in this category come remotely close to commatose. Out of This World is pretty interesting, but like, god damn commatose is so fucking gooooooood

Best Extreme Classic

I honestly don’t really have much of an opinion on this one. I’ve never really enjoyed extremes, because they’re just too hard to make playing it feel worth it. Mostly the only extremes I like are absolute classics like Bloodbath.

However, DISSONANCE is honestly really great. It’s such a colorful and different experience–I can’t speak much to its gameplay, but visually it’s a whole lot of sparkly digital fun. Good level, ImMaxX1 is a great creator all around.

Best Beginner Platformer

So, platformer levels, huh. I have a lot to say about even the simple existence of platformer levels, but I’ll avoid getting into that now, or else this post would be at least twice as long. Though, a significant portion of my opinion on platformer levels is fueled by the common use of pixel blocks. They’re just ugly as fuck, man. I don’t doubt my opinion on pixel blocks is colored by my experience doing pixel art and 3D models for Minecraft, but like, knowing that doesn’t make pixel blocks in GD less ugly lmao.

And yeah, pixel blocks aren’t exclusive to platformer levels, obviously, but creators seem to use them a lot more. So that’s why Last Fate sucks. Okay, but, yeah, Automata is pretty good. Not crazy about any of these, but Automata wins. Geometry Club is a pretty cool concept, and looks pretty nice, but talking about that level opens up the door to the GD-as-a-game-engine discussion, and that would also probably double or triple the length of this post.

Best Intermediate Platformer

There are some pretty solid levels in here; I mean, half of them are pixel blocks, so they get immediately disqualified (sorry AbstractDark), so the three main contenders for me were 3Depth, The Backrooms, and Pseudo Zone.

The Backrooms is probably my least favorite of the three–it’s pretty cool, but I’ve never been a fan of the direction that the internet took the backrooms concept. It morphed from an uncanny but entirely unhostile environment to a bit of a horror playground. Creatures are just a negative addition no matter how you slice it. I like the idea of the environment itself being the threat–it’s not that some scary monster is gonna kill you, it’s that you’re stuck in this endless, monotonous labyrinth with no hope of escape. The isolation is the terror. Ironically, the addition of monsters humanizes the environment.

So, yeah, cool level I guess, just not crazy about the theming personally. So we’re left with 3Depth and Pseudo Zone. As much as I really admire the concept and execution of 3Depth, it’s ultimately not a GD level. I don’t think making a game on top of regular GD makes a level bad, but it makes a level not a GD level. It’s really cool, but it’s your own concept. And that’s hopefully all I’m going to say about the GD-as-a-game-engine discussion in this post.

In the end, I think Pseudo Zone is the better level. There’s nothing obviously super crazy about it, it’s just really solid. Great concepts and visuals, and it’s just overall fun to play.

Best Advanced Platformer

It’s Flipswap Factory. I don’t have to go into more detail; Coaster Mountain is pretty solid, I mean, it’s made by Serponge after all, but Flipswap Factory is simply a masterpiece in level design. I’m not crazy about most of the visuals, it’s on thin fucking ice with the pixel blocks, but the gameplay concepts are so perfect I can look past that.

The flipping panels function flawlessly, and are just a great extension of normal platformer gameplay. It’s just great.

Best Expert Platformer

Do not talk about Otu, do not talk about Otu, do not talk about Otu…

Honestly, I’m not crazy about any of these levels, but the one I find the most interesting is Orbdancer. I’m not fond of a lot of the UI/menu stuff, but it’s so visually compelling that I’m willing to overlook that. The abstract bright neon aesthetic is wonderful, using orbs/pads so heavily is somehow a very unique concept while also being wholly GD.

Orbdancer isn’t my favorite level by any stretch of the definition, but it’s compelling enough to me that it wins the top spot out of this selection.

Best Extreme Platformer

Look, I am just anti-voting for Throat of the World. It’s so ugly, genuinely awful use of pixel blocks. Not fond of the gameplay either, and it’s astonishing to me that it got a mythic rating, but the rate standards debate is way beyond the scope of this post, which is why I’ve been totally ignoring the in-game ratings up until this point. It’s just so wild that a level I dislike this much would get the highest possible rating.

So, uh, Terminal Heaven wins, I guess. Nothing against Kebnekaise, but I just prefer Terminal Heaven a bit more. G4lvatron levels are all pretty solid.

Best Streamer

This is a level review blog, so I don’t have a whole lot to say about some of these additional categories, but I’ll write about them for completionists’ sake. I’m voting AudieoVisual on this one; I love his building streams. Not much else to say about that one.

Best YouTuber

This one is pretty tough. I’ll get into this a bit more with the next category, but Colon makes some banger videos. He’s a great writer, and the research he’s done for a lot of his videos is absurd.

Best Video

This is absolutely the most difficult decision I’ve made while voting for these awards. Doggie’s Codependence video is kinda out from the start, because, I mean, at the end of the day it’s a video about beating a level that uses primarily gameplay VOD footage. It’s fine, but there’s a limit to how good those videos can be.

My least favorite from here is probably twd’s GD video essay–it’s really well-written, but there’s kind of a lack of substance there. Yeah, I have a lot of nostalgia too, and it was fun to take a look back at things, but these last 4 are just built different.

I mentioned before, Colon makes great videos, and The Secrets of Fake Geometry Dash is no exception. It’s just like, such an absurd series of events, it’s hard to imagine him making a bad video about this topic. It’s great and was enthralling all the way through.

But Sdslayer’s video, How Well Do GD Youtubers Know The ROBTOP LEVELS?, is just as good as Colon’s video in an entirely different way. The concept is really good, and again, it’s hard to imagine this video turning out poorly; game show-esque stuff is always really fun, and it was executed really well here. There’s plenty of fun extra stuff too, like the GD-inspired visuals and bonus stats at the end.

Now, I can’t ignore Spu7Nix’s BTS video of WHAT. I’m such a sucker for flashy visuals; as I’ve said before, I do motion graphics, and I looovee Spu7Nix’s graphics here. The narrative is told excellently, you can genuinely feel the pull of the downward spiral that Spu7Nix went through when making WHAT. It does a great job of explaining what into the level, absolutely in part to the great visuals. The video takes you to the point where it feels like you could make the level too. There’s so much going for this video, but I’ll stop here for brevity.

Okay. Now we’re at How I Made Geometry Dash In Minecraft by CraftyMasterman. This video is fantastic, and I feel so conflicted about placing this one. While I love Colon and Sdslayer’s videos, it was definitely between this and Spu7Nix’s. Crafty is really cool and makes great videos, and if you talked to me personally you would not be able to ignore my love for Minecraft. But. This isn’t really a GD video. This is a Minecraft video. And because of that, I’m choosing to vote for Spu7Nix’s video. Don’t get me wrong, there’s so much about this video that’s great–it honestly mirrors the BTS video of WHAT in many ways. It explains the creation of the project really well, and this is probably the coolest redstone creation I’ve ever seen, but I’ve gotta give it to Spu7Nix.

Honestly, great job to everybody who was nominated for this category, as well as the many great GD video creators who weren’t nominated. It’s so wonderful seeing all this individual passion, creativity, and skill put into making such entertaining and visually captivating videos, which is a part of the reason why it was so frustrating seeing GD10 being included in the nominations last year, but that is absolutely a topic for another day.

Anyway, yeah, amazing videos all around, but I’ll extend a tiny additional bit of praise to Spu7Nix. Phew, that category was a doozy.

Best Classic Creator

There’s so much to write about with this category, but in the interest of not having a repeat of the last category, I’ll keep it brief. Not really a fan of Grax or Subwoofer; kira9999, Glubfubers, and Aimbotter2123 are all really solid; Knots is great, just not for me; ImMaxX1 is a really great creator, but I’m sorry–AudieoVisual is in here and I love his levels, so he kinda wins by default.

Best Platformer Creator

This category is honestly pretty weird, because it’s sort of split in two. There’s good platformer creators in the traditional sense: striving for great visuals and gameplay, but there’s also good programmers. CreatorCreepy and MoistenedEgg are absolutely in the latter, and I’m not discounting that, but levels with good programming just don’t interest me at all from a gameplay perspective. Like, guys, please, just make your own game; it’ll be way easier and you won’t be fighting against the editor designed to make 2D platforming levels.

Out of the rest of the bunch, it’s zejoant no contest for me. Overall, I’ve never been a fan of platformer levels at a conceptual level, but zejoant is genuinely doing great stuff with platformer mode. Good job, zejoant.

Best Classic Player/Best Platformer Player

This category has always been kinda weird to me, like I get the idea is to showcase and honor the dedication and contributions of top players, but it kind of ends up turning into a popularity contest.

For classic, I mean, it’s Zoink, of course it’s Zoink, he’s just the best GD player currently and there’s not really any arguing that.

For platformer, I literally haven’t heard of any of these people, so I’ll just pick AyumiRenko because hehe funny pink robot. Which, sidenote, cool idea representing classic players with cubes and platformer players with robots. I don’t know who on the GD Awards production team came up with that idea, but it’s really cool honestly.

Final Thoughts

It’s really wonderful seeing how talented the GD community is. This year was the first one where 2.2 content was up for nomination, and it’s been really interesting to see the whole community evolving. I’ve written a bit about this, but at first it seemed like 2.2 wasn’t all that groundbreaking for creators. The 2.1 editor is honestly powerful enough–once you get to the point where you’re just making regular art with the principles of design, I mean, additional tools are going to help, but our building skill and creativity as a community is already extremely high.

Those things grow over time, and now we’ve had time to see them grow with 2.2. And, yeah, people have made some great stuff. As critical or pessimistic I can be about specific levels and certain parts of the community as a whole, it’s still a treat to look back on all the great things artists have done with GD.

I’m sure we’re going to see even more of that at the 2025 Geometry Dash Awards, and I can’t wait. Thanks for reading.

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