One of the clones in the vast, strange realm of The Impossible Game clones became more popular on YouTube than the original, and thus a community was established.
Geometry Dash was released on iOS on August 13, 2013, and on December 22, 2014, it was ported to PC. It is straightforward in and of itself. Avoid the spikes at all costs. Platforms can be jumped on. Avoid hitting the walls, ceilings, and, hell, even the saw blades.
There are several game modes to choose from, including a simple Impossible Game-style jumping square, a spaceship that must be flown up and down, a rolling saw blade that can change gravity, a Flappy Bird-style UFO, a “Wave” that can only move diagonally, a Little Stomper-style robot, and a spider that flips between the floor and ceiling. On March 8th, 2017, a new image previewing Update 2.2 was released, showing a spherical gamemode with three rockets strapped to its back.
The first few levels are included in the lite edition. Geometry Dash Meltdown (2015), Geometry Dash World (2016), and Geometry Dash SubZero (2016) are some of the mobile sequels (2017).
This game provides examples of:
Aerith and Bob: There are only really two prominent characters in Geometry Dash (the vaultkeepers) as a whole (three with the Gatekeeper), being known as Spooky and the Keymaster, them having named their secret coins “Sparky” and “Glubfub” respectively. Spooky lampshades this trope post-Update 2.1:
Spooky: (after the Keymaster calls the player out for taking Spooky’s Secret Coin) “What does “Glubfub” even mean?”
Alternate Reality Game: During the official 2.0 Rewards, an ARG called “Octocube” was started. Beginning with a hidden image of a tentacled 2.0 monster on top of a series of glyphs and messages, it’s noticeably more serious than even the outer narrative of 2.1’s characters, and features someone trapped in a place that they only call the Vault, stuck with the demon that owns it. They mention that the demon’s unstoppable and that there’s no way they can only get out by themselves. All this suggests that there’s more to one of the game’s Vaults than we can see.
Shortly after, a follow-up called “Cod3breaker” began. It adds some time-travel themes to the ARG which suggests that the “Vault” and its keeper correspond to the prison inside the Keymaster’s basement. Because of the entity’s Slasher Smile, it may very well be the Eldritch Abomination depicted in the glyphs.
Both ARGs, however, only led to two 2.1 codes for the Vault of Secrets, which of course only gave icons once entered.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: All the achievement rewards are purely aesthetic, except for two of them.
Author Avatar: RobTop exists influencing the few characters in Geometry Dash. He was responsible for trapping the Demon Guardian inside of the Keymaster’s basement, and seems to be looking for Scratch and his black market.
Automatic Level: The player can create automatic levels in the level editor and the difficulty rating for automatic levels is “Auto”.
Auto-Scrolling Level: Every level. Even the ones that don’t seem to move are actually moving at the same speed as your character.
Bottomless Pits: More like a Ceilingless Sky. If you fall out of the level while in reverse gravity, you fall until the sixty block height limit, where the screen stops scrolling and you die.
Big Bad: The now-insane and evidently disgraced Demon Guardian.
Broken Bridge: The Demon Gauntlet doesn’t open until you find the missing key to it. To quote the Keymaster:
“It’s no use, that Gauntlet’s locked. The Demon Guardian was the only one who could open it. Not sure what happened to him. He was always a bit crazy.”
That key comes from the basement. The Demon Guardian went off the deep end which led Rob to seal him off from the outside world.
Check-Point Starvation: There are none in normal mode. Averted in practice mode, where you get to place all the checkpoints you want.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The orbs, the pads and the portals are differently colored according to the type and intensity of their effects.
Cool Gate: One of the elements in the game is a portal that teleports you vertically.
Creepy Basement: The Keymaster has one, and tries to convince you to stay away from it (or at the very least not to touch anything after beating his level.) Why’s he so anxious about keeping you out? A Man in the Iron Mask lies imprisoned down there. Heavily implied to be the former Demon Guardian turned insane, he seems like he’s completely secured off from the world of Geometry Dash, but he has the location of the keys keeping him locked crystal clear in his mind. He tries to convince you to find the keys needed to release him. He succeeds.
Deadly Walls: If you touch the side of any block, you die. You also die in most instances if you hit the bottom of any block as a cube or robot.
Dem Bones: The icons you obtain while completing Update 2.1’s mini-narrative are, in order, a skull cube with a gradient, a robot that’s a straight-up skeleton, and a skeletal version of the default spider.
Downloadable Content: Any user created level.
Earn Your Fun: Some levels are incredibly difficult but incredibly satisfying when you beat them.
Easier Than Easy: Exaggerated with the Auto difficulty.
Everyone Calls Him “Barkeep”/Spell My Name with a “The”: One of the vaultkeepers is simply known as “The Keymaster”.
Everything Trying to Kill You: Blocks. Gears. Monsters. Even the floor, on some occasions.
Fake Difficulty: Many harder levels have hidden obstacles, separate paths and traps that you can’t know how to pass on your first play-through, although you can use practice mode to learn these beforehand.
A common complaint of updates 2.0 and 2.1 is that the introduction of complex graphics, moving objects, the z-axis, and the shake triggers are adding this to a large majority of featured levels.
The final cube sequence in Clutterfunk is… bugged, to say the least.
Levels of longer length (such as Electrodynamix or Blast Processing) have a tendency to lag on some devices.
Some newer player-made levels tend to use a heavy amount of detail, lagging mobile devices. Thankfully, most of these levels add a “low-detail mode” to reduce lag. Not that this always works 100%…
Spider sequences in general can be “guilty” of this. Often one will try to teleport from this platform to that one, only to find that they are instantly killed by an in – between sawblade or hazard. Especially in 3x or 4x speed, where it is very easy to get flustered quickly.
Fake Platform: A typical level component which can be found in the editor.
Final-Exam Boss: Not really a boss, but Theory of Everything includes every obstacle from the preceding updates. Averted with TOE 2, which doesn’t have mirror portals.
Fragile Speedster: Most of the time, your square travels at a fast speed, but it can only stand one hit before exploding into a bunch of smaller squares.
Foreshadowing: In any update after 1.9, if you press the info button on the coming soon page, it remarks a hint about the update.
Gravity Screw: Some gameplay elements flip the gravity upside down.
Gravity Master: The character in ball or spider form can instantly switch gravity.
Guide Dang It!: Most of the Vault’s answers contain “clues” that make little sense until you search up the answers.
Indie Game: Robert Topala has been the sole developer of the game.
In Name Only: Future Funk level has nothing to do with the Internet music genre of the same name and sub-genre of Vaporwave.
Invisible Block: User levels sometimes use these to make levels harder and occasionally for effect.
Last Lousy Point: A few of the achievements, which include liking/disliking 1000 levels and beating 1000 user created levels.
Leap of Faith: Sometimes a platform will appear out of the ground after you jump.
Level Editor: One feature of the game.
Made of Explodium: Death effects cause the player character to explode violently in one of fourteen ways upon crashing, ranging from electricity to collapsing in on itself. The last death effect plays it straight where crashing simply causes the icon to produce a large generic explosion.
Malevolent Architecture: A lot of the levels are comprised of bizarre structures and deadly traps.
Man in the Iron Mask: The Keymaster has the Demon Guardian trapped in his basement. He’s a threat so big one can wonder why he even kept a chest (with an icon, no less) down there.
Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: Two player mode is hardly ever used because of the controls and difficulty.
