If you're reading this, you probably know me and know that I play Geometry Dash. My impostor syndrome won't allow me to take credit for being a decent player or creator, so I will only list some facts that might put my work in the game into perspective.
I've played GD for a while. It's one of those games that I've come to and
gone away from multiple times. As of today, it is one of my main games, a
title obtain late in 2018, and that it hadn't had since around the middle of 2017.
I first bought the game in 2016, after playing and beating most of the levels
in GD Lite. Back then, I would race my friends who had also recently bought the
game to see who could beat all the RobTop levels the fastest. We all kept a
surprisingly close race, with one of my friends completing Base After Base
before me. However, I stayed ahead of them most of the time.
The game quickly became my main game in 2016, and played it nearly endlessly
while anxiously waiting for 2.1 and RobTop's new level to come out.
My skill reached a plateau when I beat my first demon, Clubstep. After that,
my progress slowed down slightly as I started playing some easier online levels
and started messing around with the editor. Making fun, simple levels became my
new pastime as I transitioned from a player to a creator.
Obviously, back in 2.0, my creating skills were close to null. I knew nothing
about creating concepts and standards, and barely knew how to put blocks and triggers
together. Evidently, the results of this lack of knowledge we all start with appeared
in levels such as Jump and Bounce, TOE 2 2, and Moonstone. I legitimately thought I had
a chance at one of those levels being rated, given by the "plz rate" found in Jump and Bounce.
After making TOE 2 2, I started losing interest in the game. Update 2.1 was taking an
extremely long time to come out, and I got tired of waiting. I stopped playing the game
and continued working on my other interests like composing black MIDIs.
I would still open up the game from time to time, play a few levels, build a cute
little thing, then stop playing again. I have a tough time remembering if I made any
big progress or started any projects during this time, since the timeline is choppy
and irregular.
When 2.1 had finally come out in early 2017 (it's been nearly 3 years, damn), I
had almost completely lost interest in the game. I was hyped for the update, and
beat Fingerdash the day it came out, and messed around with the new triggers, and
farmed some orbs, but the hype quickly died down and my interest with it.
As a result of this pseudo-hiatus, I do not remember which of my levels
(apart from the ones that are obviously made in early 2.1) were made during this
period. By now I had certainly moved on from only using default blocks to build
and started learning how to use triggers better. My skill was still in a plateau;
the only demon I had beaten was still Clubstep.
From early 2.1 until late 2018, I had not done much in the game. I came back
to it because I hadn't played it in a while, and ended up going back to playing
demons again. This time, my skill started growing again and finally beat the
other two RobTop demons, as well as a few other easy demons such as The Nightmare,
The Lightning Road, and Dear Nostalgists.
Late 2018 was also the time when I started streaming on Twitch. I started out by
streaming Minecraft with my friends. Nobody watched me back then. We mostly did it for
fun. Eventually, I moved on to also streaming Overwatch, and eventually Geometry Dash.
GD was the only game in which I got any viewers, and is still now the game through
which I met the vast majority of my community.
Around February 2019, I became inspired to begin building levels in Geometry Dash. When I had
some free time, I experimented making backgrounds and block designs in the editor. I ended
up liking it and continued making different sections of the level, with gameplay and decoration
inspired by KrmaL's levels. I decided to also stream the creation of this new level, which I
named "Aura," after the song I was using for it. I eventually finished and verified Aura, which
was by then my hardest demon, surpassing Deadlocked. Having finished Aura and received
good criticism and motivation from several creators I still know today, I decided to
continue improving my skills as a creator and as a player.
In late April, after I had finished Aura and had already canceled a new project that I could
not find ideas for, I found a song that I had known previously on Newgrounds. I noticed that no
one had used the song at all in Geometry Dash, so I decided to start building a level
with it. I revealed the new level, Misty Mountains, on my stream on May 12, 2019, and I have
continued to build it to this day.
Building Misty Mountains has been a pretty undescribable process for me. It has been
by far my most ambitious project in Geometry Dash, and probably the biggest
art project in my life. I found a lot of inspiration, but I also faced lots of demotivation,
doubts, and impulses. I was proud of the fact that I had come up with the concept of a
mountain-themed level, of having found a unique and decent song,
but the passage of time, and seeing creators around me succeed massively,
caused doubts to pile up in my mind. This level will never get rated.
It doesn't look that good. Nobody truly likes it...
Late in 2019 I entered a period in which I lost a lot of motivation to build, and was strongly
considering outright deleting the level and quitting creating indefinitely. I didn't,
and I'm glad I didn't. I feel slightly better about the level today, especially because it is
very close to being finished, and I'm genuinely very excited to play it and start verifying it.
As I mentioned before, my mind won't allow me to take credit for making a "good level,"
but the support I've seen tells me that at least someone out there does care about the level,
and that's more than enough reason for me to keep trying.
That's about as much as I can say about Geometry Dash so far. I hope that my story continues
becoming more interesting in the future. Most of the events in "The Return" happened in my
streams, so I have a primary source of evidence on top of the more recent memories of them.
If that section seems a lot more detailed than the previous ones, it's because I've forgotten
a lot of things.
Note: This page is in dire need of an update. Most of this was written around December 2019 and
a lot of things have changed in terms of my Geometry Dash history since then. I will update this
page when I'm in the moood to and have time on my hands.
