How to Make Less Annoying Gameplay in Geometry Dash

fun fact i don't actually play that much geometry dash aside from messing around in the editor and coding some projects related to the game i don't find myself trying out many custom levels but lately i've been getting bored so i decided to scroll through the featured list to see what kind of stuff the community is making besides i really need to stock up on orbs for 2.2 and that's when i noticed that while the levels usually have really nice looking visuals the gameplay can be pretty annoying at times obviously every level is going to play differently but there's a handful of recurring issues i see in pretty much every level i try one of the most notable rules for good game design is that every mistake should feel like it's your own fault if it takes a hundred attempts to beat the level because the gameplay was super buggy chances are people are only going to have negative things to say about it this video is going to focus less on bad gameplay like poor sinker ufo spam and more on things that are genuinely unfair to the player in my opinion gameplay should always be prioritized over decoration and creators should strive to make their level as fair and sight readable as possible so without further ado here are 10 extremely simple ways to make your level less annoying in case you haven't spent much time in the editor s blocks are invisible objects that cut off the effect of a dash orb when you touch them they're generally used as a way to stop the player from choosing levels or just holding down for longer than they're supposed to however the main problem with these blocks is that they're completely invisible if you're going to use s blocks in your level be sure to give a clear indication of where exactly they're placed while a basic decoration or arrow is usually enough to get the point across i recommend following what finger dash did and place a small gravity portal alternatively you can go with the much better method of not using s blocks at all if you put spikes or saw blades on the path of a dash orb it'll be much easier for the player to tell when they should let go it also gives players a little more control by eliminating the surprise of having your dash suddenly get cut off my rule of thumb is to leave the player in charge of releasing the dash and only use s blocks as a fail safe in case they managed to pass the point where they should have let go if you play easier levels frequently you've probably noticed that a lot of creators really like placing invisible blocks that correct the player's mistakes and put them back on the right path while this is a nice way to reduce the stress of an easy level the big problem is that the objects are well invisible and that means that the blocks are most likely going to interfere with where the player was expecting to go this really bothers me because the creator's essentially hiding major parts of the level and blurring the line between visible gameplay versus what's actually there if you truly want to make easy and readable gameplay just make all of those invisible corrections viewable and merge it with the existing gameplay in short what the player sees up ahead should be the same as what's actually there you'd think that with over 20 000 rated levels on the geometry dash servers people would know how to make good transitions by now unfortunately a lot of them still suck and i understand why when play testing your own level you always know exactly what's coming up and what to do next the important thing to remember is that everyone else doesn't so even if you spend four hours making the world's coolest transition it's just going to make players angry if it gives them no time to react to the next part of the level i'm not saying that transitions should be removed altogether in fact a lot of them are really creative all you have to do is give the player a good second or two to process what's up ahead before continuing along with the level's gameplay this also applies just as much to blind jumps or really any pawn in the level where you can't see the gameplay appearing from the side of the screen let's imagine you have to sit through a five minute level with absolutely no objects chances are you'd get bored and start making your icon jump around which is fair enough because what else are you supposed to do anyways now let's take that blank level and replace it with a quick message or logo or cutscene or whatever i still don't understand why but whenever people put pauses or cutscenes in their level you almost always die if you try jumping either they're moving the icon to a very specific point behind the scenes or they just really don't want you to jump there either way try not to do this when play testing your level make sure to test what happens when you try clicking during these pauses and do everything you can to stop the player from dying oh my god where do i even begin with this one the fact that people still get away with doing this is very concerning if a decoration resembles a spike or triangle in any way it probably isn't a good idea to mix it in with the gameplay because if it looks too much like it's in the foreground people can and will confuse it for a real spike in fact more often than not it's hard to even see a difference the least you could do is raise them off the ground or add outlines to the real spikes so players can tell them apart but well you know how it is i have nothing against marking jumps with arrows in fact i think it's great but the chevron arrow kind of exists for a reason so please this one only really applies to the ufo and ship but please don't put jump pads inside of portals like ever first of all you could barely see them and second of all just why every time i play a level that does this i end up flying right into the ceiling and then by the time i get back there i forgot that the pad even existed so i'd die again either way make it so there's no punishment for flying too high or just don't put jump pads in portals it's really not that hard i recommend just placing a flat platform which you can rest on for a second more often than not people are going to stack multiple portals on top of each other for example a transition into upside down ship needs both a gravity portal and a ship portal the problem is both of these portals need to be readable by the player if the ship portal is in front the gravity portal probably won't be noticed and if the gravity portal is in front it'll be hard to tell what game mode you're switching to the easiest solution to this dilemma is to just space the portals out a little bit chances are you don't have to switch size or gravity on the exact same frame that you touch the portal so don't be afraid to move it forwards or backwards a little also if you're using custom art for your portals make sure it's still easy to tell what everything is you don't want people confusing a gravity portal with the wave or something like that it's not a coincidence that modern two or three star levels play super differently compared to older ones this is because in order to get a star rating that low you basically have to treat the player like a two year old pretty much every jump in the level is done for you and any flying parts require two or three clicks at most i don't have too much to say about this one other than please stop babying the player if the level truly was easy then players would already know where to go so you wouldn't have to carry them through the entire thing chances are you already know what i'm going to say for this one so yeah make sure your moving objects are predictable well obviously it's nice to have surprises and such but the number one rule is to make sure any moving objects don't interfere with what the player thinks is coming up ahead and if it does put some sort of visual indicator so it's easy to tell where you're supposed to go for objects with multiple movements you can communicate the movement by putting the object on a makeshift track or by finding some creative way to telegraph where it'll move next [Music] if you played mario maker you're probably familiar with the idea of a little timmy level essentially it's just a level that looks like it was designed by a four-year-old and unfortunately they exist in geometry dash as well usually with demon layouts it goes without saying that making hard levels is much much much easier than making easy ones but if done poorly they're just gonna come off as annoying demon levels should be about technical and fast paced gameplay rather than just a big gauntlet of a million challenges that you squish together gimmicks like straight fly and tight robot jumps are definitely hard enough for demon difficulty but they're not really fun to players it's just a method of artificially raising the difficulty a little demon level should still be fair and readable the only difference being that the gameplay is much more technical and has less room for error if your idea of a demon level is just spamming straight flying crazy ufo parts well really you're just being a jerk to the player at that point and that about does it for this list this video is pretty different from my usual content but i feel like it had a lot of really good ideas worth sharing there's a million other points i could have gone over but my advice is to just let a friend play test your level and take note of wherever they die if you have any thoughts or things to add be sure to share them in the comments and i'll try to read as many as i can i'm really interested in hearing what you guys thought of this list whether you're a creator or just someone who enjoys playing levels with that being said thank you for coming to my ted talk and i'll see you in 2022 when i upload my next video later nerds

Channel: GD Colon

Views: 2,449,937

Keywords: gdcolon, gd colon, geometry dash, geometry dash gameplay, geometry dash good gameplay, geometry dash levels, annoying things in geometry dash, geometry dash editor, geometry dash tutorial, how to make levels that don't suck in geometry dash, how to get a girlfriend by playing a two dollar square game

Id: Q56X4-blZT8

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021