Super Mario Archipelago

Thank you for moderating and the suggestions and critics. I was actually considering adding a way to die in level 0 so that it's possible to continue after seeing your score. I will also likely take your suggestion of just slightly changing the normal exit tile (likely its color) to avoid them suggesting 1 exit only.

This was somewhat frustrating to moderate because moderation requires getting all exits, which, in this game, required me to restart the game multiple times. You may want to consider multiple game modes: a high-score one and one which just lets you access all the levels, similar to the different modes in Nachos and Fried Oreos.

Having yellow-dot levels with secret exits is misleading. For 30 years, a yellow dot has meant "there's only one exit" as opposed to "there may be multiple exits". If you want to be ambiguous about it, you could use one of the tiles which may or may not have a secret exit (like a ghost house), or create your own tile, which many hacks have done.

I'm currently thinking of tweaking the score rank values a bit and changing the moons coin value to 96 (down from 192) + 2 lives. Seems more balanced, i may want to further prevent a possible exploit involving rugby ball spawning enemies. I will likely do these modifications a bit later.

@kellykelster I was not able to replicate this death by block over a few attempts, despite trying the same corner holding a shell as small Mario. This wasn't a case of a koopa still being in the shell getting out of it at this moment was it? I was also not able to replicate the skipping of red switch to get through the pipe in Aquatic Rampart by playing normally. Did you use some special bug to do it? In any case, I modified the placement of the blocks slightly so this shouldn't happen anymore, and slightly changed the pipe in Aquatic Rampart.

I have updated the game with a few minor modifications in the first levels regarding enemy drops, and changed the Yoshi coin value to 4 each. This way they are now worth a potential of 4*5 + 12 = 32, because 1 life is worth 12 coins in the end. The reason why the moons are worth 192 coins is because you can't collect them repeatedly, and this value makes sure they sufficiently offset the amount of coins you could get from repeating some level of your choice which has a good amount of coins (notably the large Castle level), instead of continuing to explore and go to different levels. Yoshi coins also don't remain in a level if you already collected all 5, but since they are in 5 different locations in a level, I want to keep their value reasonably low compared to the total amount of coins in a level, so that a player won't miss out on too many coins if they miss a Yoshi coin. So I am not adding an extra bonus on collecting the 5th coin, and I am not further increasing the value of a single coin because else a player may want to only collect 4, leave the 5th and may repeat the level for example.

@PROMETHEUS

In this instance I was holding a shell as small Mario and jumped into the corner of the coin block.

I think it is a decent hack, and I played for maybe 2 hours, just think it could be improved in some ways. Maybe have someone record a blind playthrough and see how they do. Also you may want to patch wall clips because I was able to skip a red switch palace by clipping into a pipe and entering it (happened almost accidentally, just jumped against pipe in Aquatic Rampart and went in). I am definitely gonna give it a few more attempts at a good score.

@kellykelster It is intentional that the secret exits aren't shown with red dots like in original SMW, to keep the secret exits more secret. It is not likely that you can get a very high score until you are familiar with the levels, but you can shoot for a lower rank before then. I have been careful to make most blind jumps in the game be either guided by coins, or you have had the view of below before coming up, or there is a non blind way back to where you can see below again and be safe. If you want let me know where you found blocks that killed you because I did check against this type of stuff! I made plenty of effort to make levels varied and interesting, and to balance the difficulty, sorry you don't like it! I think I am pretty skilled at level design I am happy with the result, although it would be possible to do even more testing and increase the quality even more. The maximum rank (Star) score has some room for mistake, but not a lot. The rank below (Moon) should be quite achievable on a good run, but hard, I think. You may consider that Flower or Feather are pretty good ranks already. And if you did just Mushroom, it's not too bad! I recommend avoiding trying to rush a lot, because that's dangerous. I would also suggest trying 2 player for a versus score if you'd rather do this than try to get the best 1 player score.

Every level feels bland and the same. It is impossible to get a decent score on your first playthrough. You need to be familiar with the levels and your route if you want to get the high score, and there doesn't seem to be much of any reward that is worth it. There are yellow dots with secret exits in them. There are question blocks above semisolids where you can clip through the corner and die. There are blind drops and blind enemies everywhere. I feel like dragon coins should be worth more as well since moons are worth a whopping 192 coins. The idea is interesting but it doesn't feel worth the grindy frustrating effort to achieve a good score.