WHAT is a 2.1 Hard 5* level created and published by Spu7Nix and verified by AeonAir.[1] The level is a spiritual successor to HOW, featuring more elaborate 3D effects produced with external programming.
Description[]
- 0-10%: The level begins with the player appearing as an actual grey cube, and then a section containing multiple three-dimensional objects appears. This part is tricky to sight-read because some objects are platforms while some are not. There are indicators for when to jump, but they are hard to see and disappear as quickly as they appear. Memory may be required in this part. In the last segment, the player must jump onto a yellow pad after switching gravity between two blue pads. When launching from the yellow pad, the level will show the player turning into a 3D wave and transitioning into a representation of a third-person perspective.
- 10-29%: Now, as a wave, similar to the one in HOW, the player must travel through a circular tunnel-like structure with different coloured L-shapes while avoiding numerous cubes of obstacles. The final obstacle consists of two hollow shapes. When going through that obstacle, the level will show the obstacle facing forward, then zooming far out, transitioning into the next part
- 29-48%: The game mode switches to a very unique-looking ship that has blue fire coming out of it (similar to how the engine is in the real Geometry Dash ship), and the player must manoeuvre between dodecahedrons and tesseracts of different colours. Then, the player enters a transition, with their ship control taken away. The screen fades to white, with some minor effects.
- 48-66%: Once the screen has gone white, the white 'wall' covering the screen breaks into cubes, revealing a magenta background with more purple-ish cubes getting created. As the level's title appears on screen letter-by-letter in tune with the piano in the song, the background first pulses to an orangey red when 'W' appears on screen, then it pulses to a more yellow colour for the 'H', then green when the 'A' appears, and then teal (similar to the one used for the background of the first part of Time Machine) when the words 'WHAT' are finished. During all this, the 3D cubes move out, and there is a faded, white outline of the fourth default cube in the game. As the icon goes from a white outline to the normal cube coloured yellow and blue (the colours of it on the Geometry Dash app icon for all devices), the font of the 'WHAT' text constantly changes, and the background of the part, now black, splits in half to reveal the default background and ground, along with the gameplay for the next part (at least in the low detail version).
- 66-80%: This part is the only one where the gameplay changes if the low-detail mode is enabled and only requires a single input. After clicking, the screen cuts between multiple levels in sync with the music as the cube jumps in slow motion. The levels in order are:
- WHAT (Low-Detail Mode)
- Another World by FunnyGame
- Lucid Dream by Dverry
- Hallucion by Spu7Nix
- Bionic Belly by MisterM
- Drift by G4lvatron
- Colorful Sky by AbstractDark
- Prism Break by ilrell
- Fiji by nasgubb
- Glyph by Optical
- Image by Hyenada
- Under by Serponge
- Xalagy by Echonox
- iSpyWithMyLittleEye by Voxicat
- Metropolis by DesTicY
- Azimuth by Knots
- Tsuretette by Xenoteric
- Sha by vrymer
- Sedulous by Samifying
- Change of Scene by bli
- Well Rested by cometface
- White Space by Xender Game
- HOW by Spu7Nix
- Bloodbath by Riot
- 80-100%: Afterwards, the player jumps through an animation showcasing distinct styles and dimensions of the editor, followed by a short staircase switching the creating style and cube with every step downwards. The icons are:
- The end screen follows, showing a minimalist image of the Geometry Dash logo with '2.1' and a heart below, indicating Spu7Nix's farewell to the 2.1 update. The '2.1' text briefly changes to '2.2' for a split second to indicate the upcoming update. The level ends with Spu7Nix's logo.
Gameplay[]
Trivia[]
- WHAT formerly held the record for the most objects in any rated level in the game at the time.
- Upon release, WHAT contained 655,350 objects, now reduced to 592,485.
- This record was beaten by a level titled STUDIOPOLIS ZONE, which contains 792,707 objects.
- This record was beaten again by an Extreme Demon platformer mega-collaboration level by TMco titled Dead Of Night, containing 950,460 objects.
- WHAT received an honourable mention in GDToday's 100 Greatest Levels of All Time list. It was not featured in the Top 100 because it was unrated then.
- WHAT was nominated for and achieved Best Hard Level in the Geometry Dash 2023 Awards.
- The song for WHAT is also in the Japanese rhythm game Arcaea.
- Before Update 2.2, the high number of objects and triggers in WHAT would cause the game to crash on most devices. On Windows, playing the level requires a patch that allows the application to access 4GB of virtual memory. The required patch can be used on any 32-bit application and can be found here.[2] Due to 2.2's optimisation and Geometry Dash now being a 64-bit application, the level would now be able to run without crashing on most devices.
- Additionally, WHAT also temporarily crashed the servers after release before the servers returned to normal. RobTop did not know the servers were down at this time.
- A Geometry Dash YouTuber made a 'joke' video on how Spu7Nix nearly killed the game itself, saying it was because of WHAT.
- Additionally, WHAT also temporarily crashed the servers after release before the servers returned to normal. RobTop did not know the servers were down at this time.
- The low-detail mode version of WHAT stylises it after 1.6-1.8 levels.
- The same style shows up in the non-LDM mode after the cutscene.
- The cube, wave, and ship parts mimic game modes with collision blocks and move triggers, making the ship feel heavier at 30%.
- WHAT features a unique version of the cYsmix's original song specifically created for Spu7Nix.
- Despite being used to crash the game, WHAT still got an Epic rating, unlike HOW.
- It is unknown if WHAT is a sequel to HOW.