Npesta is currenty verifying the new hardest platformer level in Geometry Dash- Cave of the Scarlet Sky. In this video I will be reviewing the level along with another upcoming top 1 platformer level "DON" by Nicrodox and more.
Hey thanks for your thoughts on DON! However, I can absolutely guarantee you the gameplay has nothing to do with what’s currently popular on the platformer list. DON was conceived back in late 2.1, and is based on a famous fan game with a similar concept, as many of us are genuine fans of the needle community and have been for years prior! I hope when the level releases it’ll be interesting and unique to you 🙏
thinking of making a follow up video talking about the things I love about top platformer levels too since I do think don is actually really awesome, didn't go into depth about the levels I said were innovative and cool so I think that would make for a good video honestly
There is actually a reason for this, robot has the highest friction of any platformer mode, with jetpack 2nd, Npesta explained this in a stream once, if you quantify the amount of time it takes for a platformer mode to stop moving after you release the key, robot is 0.1, jetpack is 0.2, making robot the most responsive. I do completely agree that we need more diversity within platformers, though I think it's still important to mention that robot is just objectively the best mode to use for a difficult platformer as it makes skill a bigger factor.
"it's boring when people use spikes! geometry dash is a precision platformer, which is to say it's not meant for precision platforming" come on, you're better than that
I feel like people are really overexaggerating how many IWBTG styled platformers there really are. There's like 2 (or 4 if you count How to Platformer and The Abyss) out of the 18 extreme platformers that are obviously IWBTG styled; and these levels are literally Tower XXII and Tower of Infinity, two of the earliest platformer extremes to come out... There's also people that complain about how platformer levels are wasted potential because of IWBTG styled levels, but like, there's literally only a handful of rated IWBTG levels, yet there are thousands of creative and unique levels that also exist. It's worth mentioning that there's a reason why most pro platformer players play these kind of IWBTG styled levels. Platforming skill mostly involves visual hand-eye coordination stuff and the control of your character. Robot is the gamemode with the most control (least amount of friction and varying jump height), and having a consistent set of obstacles (spikes from IWBTG) makes the visual aspect of super hard platformers less frustrating. Classic levels mainly test muscle memory at a super high level, which is why creators can take more liberties with effects and how obstacles look. Of course, levels like caveofthescarletsky aren't exactly creative and there are ways to improve it while maintaining clear, consistent, and responsive gameplay, but just calling it "robot hitbox abuse" gimmick is not helpful.
I agree so much with this!! Robtop clearly has a bias against rating that type of gameplay despite how much the needle gameplay niche enjoys them. It pretty much isolates people to the multitude of unrated platformer extremes to build skill, but many such as myself don't find it worth going for one if it's not rated. I also agree with your statement that robot is the best gamemode because of its versatility, but sadly many people fail to appriciate that and don't understand the fun had in perfecting a consistent setup -- it's sooo much more satisfying than spamming through like a dozen dash orbs in 2 seconds and praying that you make it through! Clearly, if Rob doesn't rate more of these actually skill-based platformers soon then the future of gd platformer gonna be real grim.
@@GadoGDLike a lot of plat demons that currently already exist? Bro that is the point. I have seen many levels that do exactly that. The commenter literally addressed this very point already in their comment. No hate or anything but Im just saying thats not mearly sound enough of an argument to me personally.
I don't think it's really fair to put don in the same pitfalls as IWBTG as don goes out of its way to differentiate itself throughout. It has 0 hitbox abuse, 0 corner jumps, every gamemode is present except jetpack, loads of different gimmicks and mechanics in different rooms, double jumps and and wall jumps for every gamemode, etc. Just labeling it as "generic IWBTG gameplay" is a bit much in my opinion. I think you also vastly overrate this gameplay style's prevalence in the mainstream platformer scene. Only 2 of the 18 extremes use this style, and they are some of the oldest extremes right now. The unrated platformer list is where this gameplay style is really popular, but that list has almost no quality control and I agree that it suffers from oversaturation, however the unrated list isn't really mainstream, with its top 1 verification having 12k views vs. the abyss having almost 200k, and I can say the creators of don really don't care about the unrated list at all. Don doesn't use needle-inspired gameplay because "IWBTG is the only popular platformer", it is because the level is loosely inspired by a needle game that the friend group making the level enjoys, and they've been in that community for a long time separate from GD.
yes i agree with this, I talked about how I like levels like free solo, but don't go into much depth on the more prevalent, unique levels. Just used the two as an example of this gameplay loop I suppose. Yes don is not entirley iwbtg stuff but I do think there's quite a bit of it right
The reason why I’m so disappointed with the platformer demons is because I was expecting them to me something like Mario maker or pizza tower kaizo levels. Abusing the games mechanics and physics to make some of the most chaotic and fast paced gameplay.
How are you going to do a critique of top 1 platformers when you literally didn’t talk to any of the people who play those levels, or even just look into what levels are made? how do you even start critiquing the gameplay of something you literally don’t play
im formulating an opinion based on what I think by looking at it? I don't think I say much about enjoyability, I comment on the uniqueness and I can make a comment on that just by looking at it
@@GadoGDok when criticising top 1s, i think its unreasonable to expect the top 1 level to be a minigame level or have weird unique physics, thats not what top players strength is so how could they verify a top 1 with that? the reason top 1s are usually short challenges is because thats what platformer players enjoy more, people dont want to be locked into one level by an insane amount of checkpoints for days on end. In terms of platformer as a whole i really dont think you looked much into what has been made, theres some really cool levels, i mean most of the rated extremes are actually pretty unique compared to eachother.
@@Ellie_2810 I talked about how the abyss, jetpack trials and free solo were good top 1s, I didn't go into depth because this was about problems with some of the top 1s. yeah I accept there are good ones but the two most popular ones are flawed
@@GadoGD honestly wether the top 1 is a masterpiece or not doesn’t actually matter. what matters is wether top players find them fun, and pushing the skill ceiling of the game.
i get what ur saying but just because theres parts that are precise robot jumps doesnt make it a IWBTG ripoff 😭like are we just not able to use the robot gamemode anymore lol
Thank you for your critiques. In the complete nature of honesty scarlet sky was made basically just for npesta to have something hard to verify (It’s pretty clear I didn’t put as much polish in as I did with the abyss or the next level i’m working on) Though I will say don and scarlet are trying to do different things so I wouldn’t really compare them
I'm not a big fan of platformers myself but I think it would be so awesome if someone made a level like "beatpulse" but without checkpoints. I think having a music based level where you have to clear every room back to back would capture what makes classic gd so special in the first place. I'm not a big fan of checkpoint based gameplay and personally I really hope that when save and quit gets added every level with checkpoints will absolutely fall of the list.
I just wanted to say that I strongly disagree with your opinions about needle gameplay, but I still enjoyed hearing your perspective on the matter. I feel the same way about levels like Chromaside as you do to levels like I Wanna Be The Guy, and vice versa. If anything, I think there's not nearly enough rated needle platformers, and Robtop refusing to rate the many non-rated needle levels such as Ascension Tower likely shows Rob's preference toward tech gameplay. Sure it can be argued that needle gameplay is not as "innovative" but there will always be a minority of players such as myself who crave that kind of gameplay and advocating against such levels would be no better than advocating for getting rid of all "tech" levels. I don't see why there shouldn't be a solid mix of both out there. Overall, I truly enjoy needle gameplay and think levels such as DON and Caveofscarletsky are awesome.
I would personally love to see extreme demon time attack levels. Like "no checkpoints, you have 60 seconds to reach the goal or you lose" type beat. Bring some of that Mario Maker energy to the scene
Tbh I dont understand the hate against this type of gameplay. I beat how to platformer and shortly after IWTBG (ik that its not much, but I myself dont like platformers that much in general, so...), and I can say that its actually pretty fun and satisfying. I cant really see a reason to hate on levels if the gameplay is fun and deco is good.
The reason why things feel so similar is because the movement for the platformer modes that we have right now are already so limited in what they can do, causeing most gameplay to be very same-y in nature. The only real way you can get "veriety" in a top1/harder platform extreme is by making a whole new gimmick, or game mode, and since the platformer modes physics are so clunky in nature, it's really difficult to make anything different that feels smooth with difficult gameplay. Take kiazo mario hacks or celeste for example that make great, unique and smooth gimmicks in their custom maps due to the somewhat "complex" nature of the controls, and since gd platformer mode is so simple you can really only have this simple gameplay that is very challenging. However the simple answer to this is to just make simpler gimmicks to go along with the limiting controls. Even though the controls are limiting there's still a lot you can do with it, take i wanna be the guy fan games for example, with the very basic 3 buttons and clunky game play, people are able to make unique gameplay, that plays around the same core gameplay. people keep asking for more "variety" but smaller gimmicks, and different decorations are all your really going to get, there's not much else you can do for top1s/ extremes. We should work with what we got instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
I like JSAB, I've played it a lot, but I just don't find the JSAB-styled (bullet hell) platformers that are rated in gd to be fun because of the glidy ahh jetpack physics. There might be a better way to make them, but there's no official all-four-arrow movement capability in the editor yet.
I think this is what killed platformer so fast for me, every level I tried (regardless of its difficulty) was literally just a recycled robot challenge. Only a few levels stood out to me, like Chromaside or Speedtek for example, but it just wasn’t really enough to captivate me, and they weren’t even commonly made enough to compete anyway
im sure no one here knows what game im talking about, but im a sucker for the insane worlds in everybody edits. a lot of them are precision, but they all take advantage of the arrow blocks that work similarly to force blocks (with the extra gimmick of acting like a temporary gravity switch). id love to see something like that in gd
I mean, look at the top 100 in early 2017, it's all filed with red, dark or nine circle level, and at this period even a random could have made a level that appeard in the top 100. 2.2 have been release in like 6 month, in my opinion it's normal if there isn't that many ideas, we still don't know like famous platformer mapper who want to post extreme platformer or giant megacollab. + I understand the concept of making an extremely well decorated level for an extreme demon in gd, it's plesant for the eye of the viewer, and making it as hard as a "top 1" make it extemely challenging and that what people wanna see. But, i can't see the meaning of creating a well designed non I wanna be the guy "top 1". I'm not a top player but Cave of the scarlet sky looks extremely hard, at a point even if somone created a danmaku (bullet hell) or a hollow knight, or even a DOOM like level the difficulty wouldn't match, or it would look unplayable. I think top 1 platformer will never get as much attention as legendary top 1 had. However, for me, platformer are extremely fun for medium, hard or even insane demon, it's were you can easly get all the imagination you want, and balance the thing to be as fun as challenging. But making a top 1 designed to be as hard as humanity can accomplish with levels as static as platformer, I think it's not a good idea, or only for people who are really into the thing but it wouldn't get much visibility.
The only reason I don't like iwbtg is because my headcanon is that it single-handely caused rob to remove the slippery physics, making GD platformer feel samey to coolmathgames indies and lose its personality since low friction plats made for neuanced gp ideas
yo its me the guy mindcap cooked you should scroll down and saw what i replied with. im not the biggest fan of needle but its still a gp style that shouldnt be disregarded
I guess I have my own other compliants about scarlet sky First off, this isn’t the first “strawberry jam” gd level. That goes to tower XXII, based off the advanced red level. Tower XVI. Now if you’re going to try and make a level based off of a SJ level, then I feel like you should try and reflect off its gameplay as well. Tower XXII I can give a bit off a pass since it was the first one, and dream blocks aren’t remotely possible in GD. Cave of the Crimson Sky, the grandmaster yellow level in SJ, focuses on precision with both double jump crystals and your dashes. There’s also 2 spring types in that level, normal springs and special springs that retain momentum. Let’s look as Scarlet sky now, we got… precision robots only. No jump pads to reflect the occasional springs, no double jump, and not even any jump orbs or dash orbs. It focused on the precision only, which turns the gameplay to just torment. The jet pack part has no ties to the original level, with only being here to represent the last part of crimson sky, and the cube part falls flat as another gameplay mixup Precision is always the focus for hard platformer gameplay. No one is looking for other routes of being tough, not even memory or stuff like that. Personally a GD version of SJ grandmaster red level “shattersong” could make for an interesting extreme demon, though I do know recreating cassette blocks can have other problem such as being inside one when it activates.
@@GadoGD fair, though strawberry jam adds a lot of modded content along with the levels. You can probably search up the levels to get a better understanding of the original source material. Surprised there aren’t as many Celeste inspired levels, but then again, a majority of major mechanics can’t easily be recreated (throwable objects for example. Though if someone could recreate it I fear that platformer difficulty would spike up drastically)
hello, gado, I would like to tell you that you should not poison a person, otherwise it may end very badly for you because the rcgd is not just some kind of community, geometry dash is a community that can do anything to take revenge
Robot precision makes me instantly tune out a platformer demon 99% of the time. It’s so overdone and nobody does anything new with it. I really wish people would vary the gamemodes more and/or come up with new gimmicks with hard robot gameplay.
Im not usally interested into platformer stuff but this video was interesting and enjoyable and i enjoyed listening to a topic i dont care much about because of this video Another sakaki pfp W Interesting topics , good vids my fav gd content creator by far
With enough practice I wanna be the guy is actually quite easy. I beat it around 3 months ago (so around a month after platformer mode came out), and it only took 30 minutes. This is probably because I also play celeste (and other platformer games) but it really isn't THAT hard.
@@Eclipze-qd3hp it took me like I've ran hour whixh is longer than bloodbath would've taken, I went on to practice iwbtg a lot more and I beat it in around 7 minutes as my pb
@@GadoGD no no no no, I meant to reply to the original commenter, not you, because I also think saying Limbo and Collab Level are not innovative is absurd
i wonder why everyone is making needle gameplay? surely not because its actually fun to play, no no no, it must just be that everyone is too lazy to make "good" gameplay!
Honestly the critique you gave the don wasn't very deserved. And i thought you were judging platformer levels by gameplay by this video so i dont understsnd why you tackled its deco in such a way. And you're argumenting for the theme of don's being "the creators doing what they want" is in my opinion not very good. It just comes off as more like personal bias, and not enough points were brought up to prove that the theme is a misstep. Don's gameplay being included is puzzling because the level focuses on diffirent gimmicks which many IWBTG levels don't. IWBTG levels have robot and some spikes, Don has robot,ufo,ball,cube with double jump gimmick, wall climbing, jump boosts, the arm thingy in culuc's part etc. This video felt more of personal bias towards Don and an unfair judgment towards it aswell.
i just pointed out one of the things I didn't like about it, I'm planning on making a second video talking about the amazing things about platformer top 1s too
"Its annoying that most of the top levels are like this." But...they're....not tho 😭. Like most top levels are literally NOT like the copy paste. That is like atmost 5 extremes that do that. You call THAT overdone? Really? Talk about blowing things out of proportions. Needle gp is just as valid as other types. AND its not even overused yet. It can be overrated or overly popular. But that isnt relevant to the discussion at all. Most platformer extremes do something different. Most platformer anything-not-extremes do A LOT of creative stuff. The point of comments disagreeing with you is not that you are wrong for thinking their should be diversity. My point atleast is that you are making claims risen from just biased bases and bad faith. No, most top extremes arent the same copy paste formula. No, it ISNT long enough for any of us to make a proper judgement about the state of platformer scene. 5 months is literally infancy for a community like this. No, just because people have a hate boner of anything needle gameplay related and just because there were a few bad levels abusing it does NOT give yall the right to declare levels like DON that do it well and in moderation bad. Please man cmon now. Im not a top player either but this is getting ridiculous.
im allowed to not like something because it's done a lot, I mention ones I like because they are very unique lol but I'm going into those ones in my next vid
@@GadoGD Never said you werent. But the thing is regarding the authoritative tone that sounds as if you are providing factual data in favour of most top levels being bad. Basically Im saying that the tone in the video comes off as much more objective than it should. Thats the only thing. If I was in any way too agressive for a bit there, that was DEFINITELY unintentional and just got translated over text poorly. I dont have any hate or ill will towards you chief. For an aspiring yter you are doing good. So I respect that. Just wanted to state how I felt. I hope its cool between us bossman.
i rly dont like how incredibly diverse the platformer mode can be because of the seemingly endless gameplay gimmicks and styles that are possible with it all being overshadowed by hitbox abuse slop, platformer is such a new and interesting gamemode the wasted potential here is kinda sad
Classic level standards: The gameplay in isolation is some of the most fun I’ve had in video games, and the decoration is some of the best I’ve ever seen. However, the parts are slightly unbalanced. 7/10. Platformer Standards: This level used more than one gamemode? 9/10!
@@emeraldeleganceGDhardest platformer? I beat iwbtg in 7 minutes when it was top 1 then stopped playing the mode because it became boring and over saturated, I went back to normal mode and became top 50 challenge list and beat crimson planet
good video honestly was never a fan of the needle type of gameplay. i prefer the dash orbs and actual new mechanics. hopefully this wont become the standard for extreme platformers honestly i dont mind seeing it occasionally but being just like classic top 1s would be sadge
@@GadoGD most of the critiques about this whole thing are insanely superficial as needle or mini robot gp is like wave based levels (funnily enough you are wave carried) where there could be a really big diversity in just 1 gamemode, and this also happens in other games too! oh and as to why we dont use gimmicks that much is because a the game is insanely buggy and some gimmicks are either really limited or b they just dont work with difficult gameplay due to a variety of reasons or c they just break after a couple of checkpoints we could use cube too and we do but robot is like a typical iwbtg fangame, plus precision based gp just works in this game anyways try to talk about things you know about or have played to an extent point instead of just looking and judging to then convert your extremely superficial and non experience judgement into a slop 8 minute video with don and npesta in the thumbnail
