THIS is considered a good level now?! 

Now we need to show Paul Joseph Watson this level

test tube was probably a testing level for the creators ideas. a place where if they wanted to see if an idea worked decently, they'd go there to see. test tube was likely not designed to even be a level played by others, but maybe they decided to publish it for fun.

the only thing that really annoys me is the fact that some people say that this is a masterpiece of art and an amazing level. the thing is, its not. it is really just a mess of objects and ideas, but its just interesting. its not good, not bad, just interesting, and i think thats all it should be. it shouldnt have such high praise but it also doesn't deserve all the hate its getting either. in all, the level is very interesting and works as art, but is in no way a masterpiece or an amazing level.

i think the problem with the "can gd levels be art?" debate is that art isn't some higher classification you give something to make it good art is just communication through a creative medium everything we create is inherently trying to communicate something, no matter if it's a grand sweeping statement or something small so yeah, test tube by blanketaddict is art is it good art? that's a far better question and debating it would probably lead to far more productive discussion

the thing i see most in the community and especially when this tweet dropped is that everyone just has to be so one way or the other on everything which is just a massive drag on the state of the community i think. If the same person who made the argument of "The idea that all art is subjective is bad" is the same kind of person who would criticize people who like test tube, i think they kind of disprove themself in that regard. different people feel different things caused by different past experiences and i think what people dont understand is that the subjectivity of art derives itself directly from how people's lives are completely different.

i wish i could enjoy these kinds of levels like how others seem to but i just cant. i can appreciate them for being unique but i still end up gravitating towards more traditional levels.

this really reminds me of 2003devin's style of making his levels, since he really doesn't care how his levels end up being or he really just uses interesting ideas and stitch them together to make a very interesting level, he doesn't care what anybody thinks of his levels and he just do it to experiment different designs in gd, he does random things thrown off unexpectedly on any levels, like making a random comment in the middle of the level, or creating random art, like in world war.

my twitter timeline was overwhelmed with debate about this level as well and it kinda just seems like a huge amount of people are missing the point because theres a predisposition on what a level should be or have in qualities, like, i think it was only really criticised as object spam cause people have the idea that the "[most] interesting" level should be presented in an easily digestible, geometry dash-like way where its instead mistaken for something else. which kinda sucks cause its literally not worth complaining about. this video is awesome and sums up my thoughts well !!! i love it

my definition of art is: "something created by a person to cause an emotion". I know to some people this definition would make a lot of things they don't consider art to be art, and to those people I say "yeah, it's still art."

I personally like the level. Its really just a gimmick showcase that doesn't worry about cohesion whatsoever but the gimmicks it shows off are very creative. Some of the craziest things i've seen in GD put in an order that has you guessing and taken by surprise. Its not a traditional level at all, but it has its own aura that makes it feel unique. Its a level that's not affected by creating standards simply because it was never built with the intention of following them. I would not even classify it as a level tho bc its just too weird for that

I really wish no one talked about this level because recently people have really been ruining it. I found this months ago in some random playlist and it was a cool and weird find, now everyone's just desecrated that bottom of the bargain bin vibe.

People really need to remember that art can be bad. People keep saying "this isn't art" when they really want to say "this isn't good". Saying it's not art just makes themselves look like a bigger dickhole than they would normally since they're implying that they have the final say in the matter of whether or not something can be considered "art". This is much more snobby than any piece of art they designate as such.

I've known of this level for a while. My personal opinion is that this level does not work at all, as a level. The gameplay is obviously not even playable, and the decoration isn't practical in any way. As a piece of art however, a test, this is PERFECT. There are incredibly strange and new ideas. This level is thrown together in a similar way to how Devin levels are thrown together, except Devin levels are specifically made to look good. This level isn't meant to look good, rather, it's meant to feel good. It's meant to have emotion to it. This level is emotion, it's cognition, in it's most raw form. This level looks similar to how I imagine the human brain would look if we could plug it into a gd level.

GD HAS FALLEN MILLIONS MUST UNINSTALL Loved the video. I know you mentioned this here, but I like(?) how this happened a while after you posted your art subjectivity video. A great way to apply what you said in that video to real life! Such a shame how so many people are so weird regarding art subjectivity and abstract art, not only in GD. I'm rarely aware of what's going on in the GD community anymore (my pfp is from 7 years ago lmao), is it more common here than in other places?

good video i agree with everyone said here and i dont actually have anything to add a few things that i feel like shouldve been mentioned (not necessarily in this video but more so by others since this video is speaking much more broadly on levels) is how this is a very literal 'test tube', an arrangement of incohesive (?) ideas all put into a single level, a set of random thoughts in BlanketAddict's mind, like it is a part of someones dream... and actually well the song for the level is from yumme nikki where you pretty much are in someone elses dreams. i dont know if this was intentional but either way its a cool detail. (i did not even think about that when i originally saw the level when it released 9 months ago and its not supposed to change anyones mind on the level, its just a cool detail) im pretty satisfied seeing this 1 year old level get more exposure to a more wide audience, tho twitter level criticism is horrible and boring because no one understands that disagreeing with others is fine and that this obviously is not 'object spam', most people seem to be extremely on one side or the other and its dumb. i just enjoy a lot of these more 'niche' levels that dont appeal to Most people or havent been exposed to many ppl. a lot of people have had a very fixed perception of what a """"good gd level"""" is supposed to look like and having very specific standards, which i find unfortunate also i feel like it is partially my fault for the level suddenly getting a lot of negativity due to captioning the tweet "the most interesting level" and "very creative" not elaborating much further, especially with the first 10 seconds of the level being what they are. it sets a standard to the viewer which immediately may be broken which id imagine caused the level to get more negative perception than it would have if it was captioned differently, but that is more of a twitter problem so

i think a lot less people would be pissing their pants about levels like this if people just said "i like this level its really cool" instead of stuff like "i love the creative ideas and thoughts expressed here" because it really gives the vibe of trying to be as pretencious as possible

I dont view this level as art. I view this as a literal test tube. Basically, its the creators constant stream of thought and experiments whilst making the level. I mean it has no cohesion, every part is just random as hell and i love it. I wonder if other creators did a level like that, it'd be a cool experiment.

I find this level really cool and interesting. It does so many bizarre things and makes it feel like a fever dream. Combined with the song, it consistenly gives a weird feeling of loneliness and the vibe that something is off. I understand people not finding this level very good, but I really like watching it.

its gimmicks and idea is pretty nice but like it does not beat any level in deco or gameplay or story its just a idea thrown out. its a test

I've loved the mysteries of digital worlds since childhood, and a special place in my heart is occupied by "developer test rooms", which could only be accessed by cheat codes or hacks. Blanketaddict's test tube gives me a very similar feeling. It feels like a place that doesn't make sense just for testing ideas and mechanics. That's right, the level breaks a lot of the established rules of level creation, which is what creates that very mystical feeling I love so much. It's a very cool level.

Test tube has some creative ideas, but creative doesn't always mean good and I will always stand by that. This level is just a mess and it looks awful

I think there will be no progress without the pretentiousness of art. watching/playing such levels always reminds me that gd levels is truly a form of art. Everyone can express themselves as they wish and it's great

I see this level as a representation of a dream. As you go through the level, you notice it really feels like a bunch of different memories put together to make some weird imagery. Obviously its not meant to be a fun level to play, its meant to be artwork.

very well said, I love how you showed how interesting it actually is. I love it

I think your skill in art is the ability to actualize what you envision. Like, I can envision a beautiful landscape, but don't dare to ask me to paint that.

Best thumbnail in GD RU-vid history

i could understand some people saying this is lazy in just SOME parts BUT i think it is a meaningful level that varies a lot, it has quite a few concepts i really fuckin like and i love this song

Isn't like the first thing you learn in english class (or whatever your native language is I guess) about literature analysis that it has absolutely no relevance what the author wanted to say, only what you read out of it

Not gonna lie, someone calling anything in gd “snobby” is the funniest shit I’ve heard in a while. 😂

how are people arguing about this? its a cool level, it displays some cool effects, gameplay ideas, deco, etc. the only issue i see is that theyre put together strangely

I feel like when people try to criticize stuff for not being "real art" they end up coming across as way more pretentious then the art they themselves are calling pretentious.

they put me on youtube

Who hurt that twitter user....?

Lets all agree that if this was released in 2010 it would've been the best level to ever exist in whole GD

gd has fallen. billions must crash at 98

It's a bad level. It's good art.

this is like a devin level but without art

billions must procrastinate

3:13 I personally think the level is terrible with some exceptions, but targeting someone else’s levels for the simple fact that they had a disagreeable opinion is too far

honestly, i really like the level because it's really unique, and what i mean by that isn't just something like how it uses underused styles or smth, it puts forward a certain "feeling" when you look at it, and in all honestly i think that's far more important than an actual meaning behind something because if you are trying to sell a certain meaning with a level and the feeling it gives off doesn't match, it just would seem poorly executed, but a "feeling" on it's own can carry itself and it takes talent to do that well, and i feel like that's what this level has done, i don't think some random guy's level in the recent tab could ever pull off that feeling very effectively idk, that's just what i was thinking tho

I sort of get why people are praising this, but people are acting like people don't get randomly shot into the spotlight every once in a while. There are plenty of levels just like this that are cool in their own respect, but this one just got popular so some people don't like it. Personally I don't care much for this level as a whole, but I like most of the concepts in it, I think they're cool. I don't like this experimental shit anymore because people get so worked up about it. I would be pissed if this was rated, but its not.

During 2019 and 2020 or so, probably because of the pandemic (might need some data), the amount of stargrinders rose quite a lot. Because of how stargrinders play, we focused much more on gameplay than decoration. To many, the value of a level became more like how long we could play it, instead of enjoy it visually or artistically. It became really easy to brush off fantastic works of art because of strange or "bad" gameplay. From my experience, a level with fantastic gameplay is more easily remembered than one with fantastic deco. This probably explains why glow-flow is such a popular style of gameplay. Many who fall under that category assuage their opinions of the values of levels as more learned, thus more superior, most likely because stargrinders are usually more experienced. Really, art in geometry dash became more objective than subjective, focusing on the playing aspect of the game rather than the creation.

I feel like this is a good experimental level, basically throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks. Some ideas are bizarre, some are bad but some actually look good. And to be butthurt like dugondbd is not really the way to go (basically shitty twitter mentality)

I like creating stuff like test tube/Devin style, just letting my mind free and just building whatever comes to mind is just so relaxing to me. Also, an art piece is something made to make people talk about it. Test tube did exactly that.

This is exasperation all over again

i saw that tweet too and i liked that level tbh

i am opening my mind, genuinely looking at the level, and there is NOT a single interesting thing about it.

Honestly, even if the level isn't really that polished, it's still has some interesting things to look at, my personal opinion. Good video !

there's a point when a geometry dash level isn't considered fun. this level is at that point and chooses to make the player go "oh neat" rather than get them to play a level, which is indeed a concept worth diving into when making anything in any kind of media but in geometry dash it's not the thing to do. If you want to make something different / interesting you can try and take a concept (e.g. player death, screen behaviour, object properties) and change them in unexpected ways, letting the player find out on their own how quirky your idea is.

calling this good is like calling conical depression a masterpiece calling this interesting is like calling modern art interesting, its not good whatsoever but it is definitely interesting (interesting can be interesting in a bad or weird way) this reminds me of a 2003devin level, in every way they suck, are underdecorated in looks, and devin only puts time into him putting graphic images in a kids game, but its still interesting, and in that way its good

i personally think the level is cool because it reminds of a level to test stuff i had on my old acc, and oh boy do i miss it

Not a dumbass plug or anything but I tried to convey something similar in my level "Lifeless Nightmare" except I used invisible blocks as block design throughout the entire level, visually it looks empty but that's the point. The message I tried getting across was how bland and lifeless I feel Geometry Dash moderators pretty much are but that's just entirely my opinion. The point is a visually appealing level meant to be good isn't the only way to convey an interesting message through art in the GD editor

Here's hoping there's more sarcasm than initially seen

Imo the biggest issue from the controversy is more just, the GD community is extremely emotional for like no reason Like on twitter I either saw people god-praising it claiming that people who didn't praise it were dumb, and people who were treating it like the most insultingly bad level when like It's literally just a weird GD level

Looks like it would make me quite mad playing it (gameplay looks unfun) but there’s a lot of interesting ideas going on. I question the cohesion but I like parts of it.

I think a big reason people get pissed off by stuff like this getting attention is because in GD it's really hard to get any sort of focus on your own work unless you're already well known. When stuff like this which gives the impression of being lazy (you cannot pretend this took much effort to make) gets a lot of attention, people who have put a lot more time and effort into their own levels but can't get any attention for them will see that as an insult to their work, which was never the intention of the creator of the 'art'. I think there is definitely a fair bit of elitism in the community, especially with levels by well known creators getting a lot of attention regardless of how good they are. If knots dropped a level he spent like 5 minutes on and was utter garbage it would probably still end up rated just because it's a knots level, and because usually the stuff he makes is clearly extremely high effort and quality. Meanwhile, other more unknown creators spend hours of their time on their next big level and then cannot get it rated, I myself have been frustrated by having one of my own levels (which I think is definitely rateworthy) sent by Wulzy and then never rated.

Levels like these are the worst when you see other people praising it but the best when you randomly find it on the magic tab. I personally hate it when people say artistic levels like these are masterpieces or the best because they just aren’t good as levels and it ruins the charm with their “actually my favorite level of all time” nonsense. I found a random super long but terrible gameplay level on the magic tab once and it always stuck with me, not because it was enjoyable but because I wondered why it was made. The whole point of why these levels are fun is because you can wonder why the creator would spend so much time on something so bad, calling these kinds of levels amazing is missing the point.

I think the main problem with this is that people will decide to call somebody else's subjective interpretation of art "wrong". Isn't the whole point of subjectivity supposed to be that there are no wrong answers? Dislike art all you want but you can't stop others from liking it.

Though, an objective point, though hard to measure, is what the majority of the community likes and how well it is generally percieved. In the end, this is a lacking question with no answer; it is merely a matter of definitions.

I really like the level!

this is art

What kind of "emotion" are we supposed to get from this? Lol

how dare someone appreciate something

Put this in the magic tab and then forget about it

This level has a lot of cool ideas and it genuinely is interesting but i really can't see myself enjoying much about it. Even though to me, art is about conveying emotion and much more abstract concepts, i'm just not a fan on its style and execution. It's probably because of my preference of showing emotion in art in more traditional ways. An example of this is 'Since I Met You' by Skywalker14 (Amazing level btw.) Where it's a level about a tale of finding love, joy and simple things in life and it's conveyed like a collage or snapshots of certain moments of life in different parts of the world and they all flow and transistion into each other and very cohesive. Like at one point where the level is basking and travelling across the beach, and another point where the level is in a mansion where a couple dances and embraces each other. It's all so joyous. And the fact that these different moments of everyday life flow and transition so well and are so cohesive is so faithful to the song the level uses made by The Avalanches. I could ramble on how SIMY is a masterpiece but i'm getting ahead of myself, i think that's how i feel about on conveying emotion in gd levels and art in general. Based take btw.

its silly how we say level standard is to high and to low at the same time, its just a little goofy i guess :/

Looks like a deep dream. like something you think you can recognize but cant

I think test tube is like a "liminal level" something that feels very off to me. I think it's no surprise BlanketAddict used a track from Yume Nikki to accompany this. Personally, I enjoy the level a lot. It's not really a playable level, but it achieves something else for me. I guess surreal and liminal are good words? This level is kind of hard to describe but it really digs deep into my mind. I'm really confused as to why people view art subjectivity as something elitist. My interpretation of this level could very well mean nonsense to others, but that doesn't make their interpretation or my interpretation any less valid. And I'm not an elitist for feeling this way about this level. It's just how I feel. I'm also confused by the Geometry Dash community's persistence in equating hard work to good art. Hard work may make good art, but good art does not have to come from hard work.

The whole "youre being pretentious and lazy to hide the fact that youre bad at making levels!" argument sounds so stupid imo. You have to learn the rules first before you can figure out how to break them

Can you make a video on floating outskirts actually?

It's called Test Tube, which makes me think the level was literally just a collection of tests the creator wanted to do. Doesn't really seem like there's a deeper meaning other than pure experimentation.

This level isn't it for me Abstract art needs some sort of cohesion to make sense (take the music of Anton Webern for example, while his music may seem like a mess of notes at first, his use of techniques like 12 tone rows and form give it cohesion that can allow you to appreciate its meaning) This level doesn't have any of that I think in order to create good avant-garde art you need to first be an expert in the more conventional art to be able to experiment without creating garbage (take for example Schoenberg, someone who extensively studied tonal harmonies and even wrote a book on harmony was the one who successfully departed from tonality) This creator doesn't really have that, which causes their levels to be messy and lacking meaning (this is just my opinion, from someone who loves avant-garde classical music)

That level is really really awesome

peak thumbnail

test tube is actually good people are just jealous they couldnt make something as unique

What’s the background song in the beginning? I’ve been searching for it for a while.

I like this level because it gives a similar vibe to the PLUS series.

what needs to stop is people who take art solely or mostly objectively comparing levels such as the one shown in this video to limbo by mindcap for example... a levle like limbo is understood to be objectively good "art-wise" and this level is clearly subjectively good based on its ideas and *abstract* "meanings". why do u have to try and compare and contrast them? obviously, that will just grow your own hatred for the level that took less effort, in this case the subjectively appreciated level... and less effort does NOT mean worse art

I think SeazeCool saying it's the "most interesting level" and hyping it up is what made people angry. If he just said it was "kinda cool" you'd have maybe 2 ppl calling it mid and no backlash.

the problem is that people take offensive sides whenever somebody posts a level. For some reason people think that the people that like the level are against the people that dont like levels and vice versa. It'd be nice if people were just like "oh shit i fuck with that" and if they don't then they don't, nobody actually cares about peoples opinions they just want to argue about shit. We need to start giving genuine reasons why you don't like something instead of why you don't like the people that like something or this community is just gonna be more hostile than people already think it is

after watching, I went back to 3:43 as for a second there I wanted to make a comment about how your following point about removed submission doesn't really disprove the commenter's point, but looking at the uncropped comment I think you do disprove most of it, up to where you crop it - obviously there are no objective rules, and there is no objective criticism. there isn't even a definition of "good art", words are pretty much always too reductive to describe anything other then other words. however i think their critique of modern/avantgarde/experimental art makes some sense. it's not a new idea, people have always been polarised by pieces like the fountain by duchamp (a literal urinal) or the hundreds of blank/single color canvases that hang around museums of the world. and I think that is because some people consider art only the piece it self, and want it to stand on it's own, disconnected from the context it was made in. very often the things you see in museums of modern art nowadays are more akin to political statements, to opinions or singular ideas made in physical form. and I would agree with gdartho that those pieces are very subjective and don't take much effort to make. which often makes them feel very cheap and uninspired to me. and people definitely do abuse that malleable definition of art to get ahead in their carreers or to get respect quicker or whatnot. and maybe that's a problem. some people who work much harder or longer on their works might feel that they are wasting their time if others can get by "so easily". Ideas are cheap, but finding really good ideas or ideas that work well together is still pretty hard. Yume Nikki (a song from which is used in this level by blanket addict) is my favourite game of all time. top 5 with many of the games that it inspired, like undertale, lisa, oneshot. I see and feel the atmosphere created by this barely connected dreamscape of ideas and feelings, and the discourse is interesting, so if nothing else I hope it gets new and old creators to experiment more, however devoid of context I see how it's easy to dismiss it, and I gleefuly disagree wholeheartedly.

Its almost like people cant accept that sometimes interesting and good quality levels are two different things.

I think it's cool with it being some kid putting every idea they had all into one without forcing it to have cohesion they just did it

I went through and watched this level for myself, and I really didn't think it was anything to get in an argument over. I can't say I liked it, but I can still see why some people would be calling it art.

I don't think the level is particularly good or artistic, but it's really interesting so I love it. It has some thought and creativity into it and I think it is a cool culmination of some of the creator's fun ideas

OMG TEST TUBE? II REFERENCE OMG!!!

This level reminds me of Yume 2kki. Just exploring for the sake of seeing interesting visuals. That game really changed my perspective on art, because it's visuals are so uniquely different and interesting.

I dont understand why everyone on gd twitter thinks its okay to be really fking mean about someones geometry dash level for literally zero reason. Blanketaddict never claimed this was some masterful level or that she was better than everyone else so why get mad at it. If you did this for any other art form, in any other community, people would think you're an asshole. What is the point!!

I'm not against what the level is trying to do but the execution feels very sloppy, If the level strayed further away from basic objects or even stuck really close to traditional layouts with the effects ontop then it'd be a lot more ominous. As it stands now the level feels like it puts bare minimum effort toward concepts rather than putting effort towards making the concepts bare minimum, You have to put a lot of effort into making simplicity work.

these people are making fools of themselves art has nothing to do with being good at creating it's a concept a concept of expressing human feelings and emotion into a work of yours art does not need to be good to be appreciated, those who fail to understand that about people other than themselves are ignorant.

modern art equivalent of a geometry dash level

why is dugong so pressed 😭

Modern (f)art

This level is like Kim Dracula's discography: Absolute avant-garde that not a lot of people prefer to listen (in this situation to look)

i saw this level. its more of a feeling than a design or anything. its just a level to test ideas and have fun in the editor. it doesnt need to be hated so heavily by so many people. however, i think the people saying its a work of art and its one of the best levels ever are pushing it a little too far.

2:05 sure but its still pretty bad ngl

this video's existence makes me hate twitter even more. edit: for the record I made this comment before I watched any of the video, I just knew naturally that he found out about it from that.

Can we just ALL just collectively accept all art as a well form of human expression? Even if you dont like the piece, you dont have to go off on a tangent about how theres a bad art movement going on. Why does art have to follow all these laws nowadays, why cant it just be?😅

the level probably wouldve succeeded if it had a walmart in it

I think this level is kind of cool. Nothing crazy, nothing terrible.