Vanilla Flavour

This was pretty fun. There were a few levels here and there with kinda psychic-requiring level design, things jumping right at where you're going to land without you possibly being able to know. I eventually lost interest in going for all dragon coins after about world 5.

But overall a very Vanilla Flavour™ed hack indeed! I thought the 'boss fights' were an interesting approach to ending castles.

Thanks for making!

Edit: Forgot to add, I liked that bonus world wasn't kaizo stuff. Too many hacks just assume "It's bonus content, so I can make it 10x harder", but they were just extra stages like in vanilla SMW, and I respect that.

I thought this was clever and enjoyable. The platforming was super fun. My only complaint is that the music seemed slightly out of place but as you previously established, that is subjective. I rate 4/5 !

Thanks for your critisism! I personally don't think my levels are tedious, but if you feel that way, it's fine. Some are maybe too long, but i think i filled most of them quite nicely, even if some sections aren't that special. I do think a traditionel level doesn't need 100% memorable sections, some laid back sections in between are fine imo.

The first World is a bit bland maybe, but it's hard to make a memorable first World, because how memorable a level is, is often tied with challenge. (Not enemy Spam but interessting Set ups) and a first World should be laid back a bit.

I agree with the overworld.

Music is subjective, but i can See your point with the mario kart Track.

Overall i think your critisism is valid even if i dont agree with alot of it personally. Even tho it would have been nice to not only read what you didn't like, but it's fine.

Thanks for playing!

Music: ok. Some of them are out of place like the Super Mario Kart ice track music in a grass level

Abuse of vertical scroll at will, and the BG scroll are sometimes wrong or not adequate. If this is vanilla, it should be next to what nitendo would do instead.

Very long and tedious levels. Personally I hate when used constantly. Sometimes the secret exit is not creative at all. This somewhat reminds me the "SMW The Lost Levels" hack, but with less difficult.

You should've made the levels shorter and somehow memorable, especially at first stages. Remember: the first stages are the "welcome" stages, to show how your hack will be presented to the player. A good first impression is always formidable.

If it's too big and repetitive, with terrain up and down constantly, players will finish the level and will forget the previous level soon after they play the next stage. Longer levels make players wish to find the goal tape soon as possible. It's boring. However, big stages are only reasonable if used with precaution and with purporse, and not to fill unecessary gaps.

Overworld isn't detailed. Some parts are too square-ish. I think there are multiple examples of good vanilla overworld designs. Personally overworld is my favorite "first impression" thing, and when I see a good overworld design, it makes me want to play the hack for sure.

Thanks for the comments guys. I agree that the special world kinda sucks. I didn't rushed it but i was simply out of good challenging level ideas, so i decided to play it safe there. Also the reason for some repetetive bits here and there. I tried to come up with new ideas but at some points i just ran out of them. I would say the last 2/3's of special world suffered the most from that.

Very vanilla-like hack that focuses mainly on platforming with some tricky levels here and there. It was a nice change of pace from tough kaizo hacks, as in this one you don't really have to brainstorm a lot, the platforming in this feels pretty natural.

As of criticism, I thought that the obstacles occasionally felt a little repetitive (for example, similar Koopa or Chuck obstacles are being used a lot), and the Special World felt a little underwhelming. World 6 and 7 were quite challenging, while the Special World had only two levels where I felt challenged. It felt a little out of place for me.

Overall I think it's a nice hack if you're looking into something simple and that focuses on pure platforming. I'd say this hack feels more like Standard: Hard with a couple trickier levels, but it really depends on your previous experience. If you've played harder hacks or kaizo, it's not too bad, but if you don't have much prior experience, I could see it being quite tough.

Pure vanilla, no gimmicks, just fun platforming. The overworld is as simple as it gets. The levels almost all feel like they flow well so my brain can shut off and Mario can take over. There are very few levels I dislike, none I dislike enough to bother to write down the name. No ultra-hidden secret exits. Good custom music.

Top tier hack. Agreed with folks below that it's more Hard than Very Hard.

Took ~4h to finish every exit. Video of most recent playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqvIHerHvauv3eKg3BuHK_wjPnNpf_rzP

Great hack, one of my new favorites. I think putting it as Standard: Very Hard is a bit extreme. I think Standard: Hard would fit this hack well. While some of the obstacles can be tough, they are used in a very fair way and the author showed restraint in level length, which is rare.

Fun vanilla hack. Would recommend if you're looking for some challenging vanilla platforming.

Thank you!

Finished it now with all 74 exits. Some more thoughts. World's 1-5 were fairly painless for a very hard hack. There were a few tough parts, like in castle 5, and I died a handful of times. It's getting hot in here was definitely like getting kicked in the pants, repeatedly.

World 6 was slightly tougher than earlier worlds, but Choco cliffs was particularly devilish. World 7 was a bit harder still, and the first part of castle 7 before the checkpoint was nasty.

The star and special worlds were both really easy compared to worlds 6 and 7 of the regular game. That seemed out of order to me. Also, what was the deal with the last special level besides all the freebies, anything?

Overall, I had a few hours of fun with this, and it was an enjoyable play. After having completed this, my rating remains unchanged at 4/5. Reasons for 4 stars and not 5 are as follows: The lack of a more developed overworld, lack of Yoshi, and lack of open levels that include flight mechanics. Another thing is that (almost?) none of the pipes in the levels besides those that lead to alternate exits go anywhere, which makes this feel like more of a obstacle course than a Mario game. This doesn't support saving at any time from the overworld, and doesn't have SRAM saving either.

Overall level design, consistently good choice of music, and the fact that I played through this without noticing a single bug gives this 4 stars. Thanks for this game, was fun.

I look forward to finishing this actually, and will return to comment when I do. Hopefully, the second half of this has just as good music as the first.

Thanks for your Feedback. Yes, the overworld is mostly just there to be there, creating them in lunar magic is annoying as hell and not fun, so i thought f it and tried to make good levels instead. I disagree however about the non-existence if a difficutly-curve. Well, at least kinda. While world 1 is easy (for a very hard hack), world 2 will get more challenging quickly and World 4 has the hardest Level in the hack this far. It's not an optimal difficulty curve, but the worlds hardest level mostly beats the hardest level in the previous world. Also, world 5 will have a slight difficulty-spike and World 6 will make you question your sanity. Have Fun.

I'm just over half way through this now, and here are my thoughts this far:

The overworld, even though this is clearly a vanilla hack, is awful. Paths and map layout world to world (I'm at the castle on World 4 with 2 star world levels beaten, and all paths fully explored up to this point) is linear and flat design wise.

The levels, however, are challenging in all the right ways. The level design here seems to be based on precision, timing, and reaction speed more so than each level just being a free-for-all against an endless swarm of enemies. If I had to summarize the game with a phrase, it'd be "tough, but fair".

The difficulty of this is an interesting bit. This hack doesn't really have a difficulty curve, it's consistently hard to very hard, but has a few levels and sections in levels that I think are closer to kaizo light. The levels I've completed thus far are beatable without savestates, I didn't use them, but there are a few particularly nasty levels that I had to replay to finish. I'd recommend this to players of any skill level. 4/5 all day.

Marcos, my laptop died, so i dont have access to the Hack anymore, otherwise i whould have looked for the music names.

solid hack. would recommend to all level of players.

I just got 74 exits without save states. I'm dizzy, I can't even believe I did it. It's almost 1 am, I've played for over 4 hours. omg.
Anyway, the hack is good, fantastic level design, but the overworld is bogus.
Here's a few levels that can go fuck themselves:
Castle 4
This stage rocks
Fire something i don't remember
The last god damn castle
Yoshi's house

Also, I'd like a list with the music used in this hack, would that be possible?

Good hack. I was debating 4 or 5 stars, but Tower of the Dolls as BGM in the last stage pushed it over the edge to 5.

I have two remarks. One is that I don't understand why the Special World has easier stages than the main path. The second is that I don't think this warrants the Very Hard difficulty rating, if a hack like Jump 1/2 is rated only "Hard."

This hack was fantastic from start to finish. Fun levels with good increasing challenge as you progress. Really nothing bad to say. The music choices were 100/100. Thank you!

good hack