YMMV / Geometry Dash

• Awesome Art:
  • Deadlocked (and 2.0 in general) represents a massive step up in the game's visuals, particularly during its Jetpack Joyride-inspired section where moving objects and masking are used to simulate laser fire.
  • The official 10th anniversary celebration video contains a hand-drawn animation of a Boss Rush against some of the community's most iconic "boss fight" levels, portraying the Player Character as actually fighting them head-on with weapons and magic instead of simply outrunning them in an Animesque manner that has to be seen to be believed.
• Awesome Music: Since it is a music game, you're bound to hear some of the nicest and most awesome electronic tracks you'll hear in a game, featuring artists from the likes of Waterflame, F-777 and DJ-Nate. Update 1.9 added the ability to add custom songs from Newgrounds, increasing the number of Awesome Music used in the game.
• Breather Level:
  • Blast Processing comes after several insane levels and one demon, notably three absolutely brutal levels in the form of Clubstep, Electrodynamix, and Hexagon Force, and comes right before Theory of Everything 2. It's significantly easier than any of the aforementioned levels. That is, assuming you're playing the levels in order.
  • While it's harder than Blast Processing, Geometrical Dominator is sandwiched between two demon levels, the brutal Theory of Everything 2 and the merciless Deadlocked, both of which are far harder than it is.
• Broken Base:
  • Geometrical Dominator proves to be the most controversial of the main levels due to being infamously difficult to sight-read at times, especially for a mere Harder. Some feel like it's the worst example of Fake Difficulty among the main levels, while others think it's a fun challenge to have very quick reaction times in some parts.
  • What is the hardest official Demon? Clubstep, Theory of Everything 2, or Deadlocked? While Deadlocked is generally considered the hardest (it's seen as a Medium Demon while the other two are on the harder side of Easy Demon), the exact ranking of the two others is disputed. Theory of Everything 2 tends to be harder overall, but the final ship sections of Clubstep require razor-sharp reflexes and are said to propel it above the other demon.
    • A more serious example was when Russian players Vernam and Eiriley (which are known for lots of questionable speechs) didn't like the Pointercrate rules and demon placement, so they made their own demonlist, which was at first named "RCGD demonlist", and then renamed to "Global Demonlist". While in the international community most people prefer Pointercrate, in Russia there were lots of arguments about which one is better. It ended with Eiriley somehow losing control over his demonlist and both lists placing Avernus at top 2, followed by the level having no serious progresses for 2 months.
    • The reason of this is because while GD has official leaderboard for players who grind stats, such as stars, coins, diamonds etc., it does not have an official list of the hardest demons, so community members create their own lists with their own ranking systems and rules. Apart from this list, there are many more niche lists, such as "Challenge List"^Explanation List of hardest short levels, "Sh—-y Demon List"^Explanation list of deco-less remakes of hard levels, "2 Player Demon List" etc. The only ones that might have some broken base are "Mobile Demon List" and "High Refresh Rate Mobile Demon List", because the first one only allows max of 60 FPS on mobile devices, while the latter allows any real FPS. However, the list teams themselves aren't in bad relationship unlike Pointercrate and Global List used to.
  • Opinions in the community are divided on whether Scarlet Surge (the second level of the Chaos Gauntlet) is a good level or not. On one hand, people hate it because of its length, its flashing light effects that go on for the entire level without any change, and some parts being rather challenging and unreadable for a 6 star, such as the last ship part. On the other hand, people love it because of the song, the effects that looked visually appealing for a 1.9 level, and because they find the gameplay actually fun despite being over 2 minutes long.
  • Avernus has become possibly one of the most controversial levels in the community. A level intended as a sequel to The Golden, defenders of the level point out that it has good visuals and most of the people who hate on the level have clearly never played it. Attackers of the level point to the creator's response to criticism, the use of fixed hitboxes in the level, and the poor execution. It doesn't help that the level ended up being the Top 1 level on the Demonlist after October 2023, which sparked some backlash in this regard and stirring up some people to say that it doesn't deserve to be a Top 1.
• Demonic Spiders: Obstacle example in sets of triple spikes. There are also tight quadruple spikes, which are a pain to jump through as a cube and is prevalent in "impossible" levels.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Can't Let Go is notorious for its upside-down section from 70% to 86% being very difficult to play without former practice. It doesn't help that there's a coin in the section that throws you towards a spike with no warning.
  • Time Machine and Cycles introduce you to the concept of triple spikes ALL OVER the place.
  • Clutterfunk is MUCH more difficult than its predecessing levels and even some following levels because of the sawblades and new mini form.
  • Electrodynamix is a relatively easy level for a 12-star Insane up until 60%, when the game hits you with two tight sped-up ship sections. Some players may argue that the difficulty should be Easy Demon because of those ship segments.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "RubRub", the nickname given to RobTop himself by the vault's guard, is now a very common nickname for him from the fanbase.
  • Those round things you hit to jump or reverse gravity are technically called "Jump Rings". In practice you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone not calling them "Jump Orbs".
• Fanon: The blue and yellow cube in the game's app icon is typically an important character in fan works, despite never appearing in-game unless you change your icon and colors to match it. Popular uses include making it a work's main character or the developer RobTop himself.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With the googology fandom, strangely enough. This is thanks to the Theoretically Possible Levels List, which catalogs levels that use trigger objects to count a player's clicks, requiring them to have an impossibly high framerate to complete the level.
  • As music by DM DOKURO is fairly popular for harder levels, it's unsurprising that this game has an overlapping fandom with Terraria Calamity which features his music heavily. One famous example of this is the very detailed Devourer of Gods that can be seen weaving in a segment of the background of the Extreme Demon Astral Divinity.
  • With the bullet-hell Just Shapes & Beats, another game about geometry and music. There are several Geometry Dash custom levels that are inspired by or even outright recreate the game.
  • With music bullet-hell Project Arrhythmia, which also has a community largely focused on custom levels. There are several Project Arrhythmia custom levels inspired by Geometry Dash and vice versa, alongside a noticeable overlap in song choices for custom levels in general.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • In its early days, Geometry Dash is extremely popular in Korea. Most of the popular players and creators in the early era (up to 1.9) such as ZenthicAlpha, Jax, Neptune, Dorabae, Cyclic and even FunnyGame are Korean. There has also been several Korean-based GD communities featuring (mostly) various Korean GD players, such as Team N2, who created The Hell Factory and A Bizzare Phantasm. Nowadays, the most famous Korean players include level showcaser Partition, content creator Mulpan, professional player Dorami, "spam master" Mr Topi, and if you count him as one, EricVanWilderman. ^{More Info} He's born in Canada, but currently lives in South Korea.
  • Oddly, Geometry Dash is significantly popular in Spanish-speaking countries by virtue of the most prominent players being from said countries, and thus the majority of the game's playerbase is Spanish or Spanish-speaking.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2022, GD Colon released a video that criticised the secret coin placements in Geometry Dash SubZero. A few weeks later, RobTop released an update that changed most of the secret coin placements, to which he responded by releasing another video that praised the changes.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Simply put, it's the sound effects upon completing levels, unlocking achievements or collecting coins or stars. Some player levels and occasional official levels even play music before completion.
• Narm:
  • "I like this part *smiley face expression*" shows up at the end of a robot part in Deadlocked. It appears that RobTop liked the 56-72% section of said level, and forgot to remove it before finishing the level, making his opinions public. It is widely parodied, usually "I hate this part *sad face expression*
  • Whenever a level is beaten, the end results screen will say a random phrase, which can make it jarring if it says, for instance, "Impossible..." when the level is an effortless auto.
• Never Live It Down:
  • TrusTa's infamous nerfing of Yatagarasu. Aside from the Memetic Mutation involved, it caused Yatagarasu (which was believed to be harder than Sonic Wave, the current #1 demon at the time) to be placed at #2 on the Demons list, below the easier level, Sonic Wave. Cue the outrage towards TrusTa for the nerfs that contributed to its spot on the list. This would eventually be fixed, with Yatagarasu being placed at #1.
  • Famous players that were exposed for hacking, such as Noobas and Noctafly, have still not been completely forgiven by some of the community, despite some becoming legitimate players.
  • Spanish player GuitarHeroStyles is a victim of this. Who was once a beloved and respected Spanish-speaking GD player (his channel was the most-subscribed GD channel on YouTube excluding RobTop, and still is) has fallen from grace once his rather sultry messages towards women (and one of them being a minor) were exposed to the public. Many players soon wanted him to step down from his fame, with the Twitter hashtag #AdvyOut to trend in the following months. While some actions have been done against Guitar (such as moving his levels to a RobTop-owned account named TheShadowRealm and deletion of his moderator status, as well as his Twitch channel being banned, his YouTube channel has not been taken down yet. In fact, even RobTop hated him so much, that not even a mention of him is in the 10-year anniversary video. To this day, people remember Guitar for his inappropriate actions (especially against children) more than him being a skilled player and successful content creator.
    • Similar to Guitar, famed creator AmorAltra, player Just a GD Player, and musician Geoxor has also faced similar controversy and backlash from players, despite their works being enjoyed by the fanbase (before they got exposed).
• Nintendo Hard: The three locked levels (Clubstep, Theory of Everything 2, and Deadlocked) WILL have you dying many, many, many times before beating them. Demons in general tend to revolve around this, of varying degrees. The Secret Coins that are required to access these are 10, 20, and 30 respectively.
  • And if you think those are enough, try playing the user-made Demons. Particularly Insane and Extreme Demons.
• Older Than They Think: While Supersonic helped popularise the "megacollab" concept and was the first with the usual 10-creators, the first one was actually saRy (of Red World fame)'s "Collaboration" (made with a few notable creators during 1.8).
  • Most fans date the demon rating as being introduced in 1.6^note the update when the first Demon-difficulty main level was added into the game, when it was actually introduced in 1.3, yet as only an "online level" rating
• Scrappy Mechanic: Mirror Portals. While they don't seem annoying on paper, the animation that plays when reversing is juuuust lengthy enough that it can often cause you to get disoriented and die to obstacles you couldn't have avoided unless you knew they were there ahead of time and played accordingly. This is especially pronounced in Theory of Everything and Electroman Adventures, which are known for their poor use of these (tellingly, the latter was the last official level to use mirror portals at all). And with 2.2 now granting the ability to reverse direction immediately without even needing a portal, mirror portals have essentially become obsolete entirely.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Geometry Dash Meltdown and Geometry Dash World, being free demos, both feature easier levels than the main games; the hardest levels in both of them are rated 3 stars.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Geometry Dash SubZero is much tougher than the other 2 demos, being full of camera effects and random reverse movements that are TERRIBLY annoying, specifically in "Power Trip".
• That One Attack: Some levels has that one part that many players tend to struggle with.
  • Update 1.6 added coins to all main levels that didn't have them before. Of all those coins, the two that stand out the most are Stereo Madness' third coin, a tight ship part even for the first level, and Polargeist's third coin, which needed a very tight jump to a blue jump pad hidden within the ground spikes, only for the recovery later on to be a blind jump.
  • Can't Let Go has its reverse cube section near the end, which tends to trip newer players. It is faster-paced than anything in the game so far, and requires good sight-reading abilities.
  • Clubstep's late mini ship sections require very precise inputs due to their fast gravity changes and narrow margin for errors.
  • Theory of Everything 2's last ship section is short yet infamous for its precision, with a layout that doesn't seem out of place for a wave section. It doesn't help that it's the last major obstacle in the level and that many good runs were lost in it.
  • Geometrical Dominator has its incredibly infamous "dark" part where the platforms suddenly appear through pulsing before disappearing again for a short period of time. This results in a rather unsightreadable segment that needs to be learned and practiced enough times to be able to know the patterns of the flashing platforms.
  • Deadlocked's waves are undoubtedly the hardest of the base levels due to their very high speed. The second also introduces you to your very first mid-wave gravity change, which is all but guaranteed to turn your mind inside-out the first time.
  • Another infamous part of Deadlocked is its ship section (see a pattern here?) where you must fly between colorful moving blocks. The problem is that the path you must take is only revealed when you are close to the blocks, so the whole section is pure memorization to the frustration of sight-readers.
  • If collecting a single coin is tough enough, how about collecting 10 mini-coins for one coin that even missing one mini-coin would lose you the chance to get the coin? That's Fingerdash's third coin for you, with 10 mini-coins scattered around the wave section at near-death locations.
  • As criticized by GD Colon and memed to death by the community, Dash has a short but tough spider part near the beginning that goes sideways with little indicators on where to go. The structuring of said spider part can cause confusion to both new and experienced players who have not practiced the level before.
• That One Level: Has its own page.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • This is a minor example of this trope. The new gamemode in update 1.9 is called the 'dart' in the game files and the 'wave' in the update notice. Players tend to call this gamemode with the latter name due to associating it with Darnoc's level Wave Wave that may have inspired this gamemode. However, in update 2.0, the gamemode's name was changed back to 'dart' in the game. RobTop changed its name back to 'wave' again less than a month later after community backlash since update 2.01.
  • Whenever a Map Pack or Gauntlet level received updates, primarily to buff the level for whatever reason. Theory of Relativity is the most infamous example - it abuses 2.0 features to the point where some of the level is unsightreadable, such as the cube part in the middle of the drop with moving objects that are hard to predict. Then there's Magmatic Sanctuary, which received an "erratic speed" update that made the formerly invisible speed portals visible again, and the players ended up wanting the original version of the level back.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The Impossible Game and Geometry Dash have the exact same gameplay styles. (except non-cube gamemodes, triggers, portals or pretty much anything other than blocks and spikes are missing from The Impossible Game.) Since The Impossible Game came first, fans of the game and haters of Geometry Dash have stated that Geometry Dash copied The Impossible Game despite the latter not having any customizable options for cube design, difficulty options, etc or any other mode but the cube.
  • Word of God states the game was inspired by The Impossible Game and the WiiWare title Bit.Trip Runner, as mentioned in a Reddit post made when Update 1.0 was released.

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