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Breaking Star by XradicalD

File Name: Breaking Star
Submitted: by XradicalD
Authors: XradicalD
Demo: Yes
Featured: No
Length: 49 exit(s)
Type: Kaizo: Light
Description: "Yoshi was gambling with Bowser and he bet his eggs. Now you need to get them back, but... where are we?"
(Formerly known as "Alternia Adventures" and "XradicalD's Hack")

This hack includes 5 Worlds for you to run around, themes including: Grassland, snow, caves, forest, haunted forests, day/night levels, etc.
The hack has a total of 49 exits, so you'll be occupied for a while.

It has been quite a while, specially with a 8 year hiatus (2011-2019) but here it is a revision.
I have on mind what I want to do with the last levels, but we are still too far from that.

While aiming for visual quality and general enjoyment is the main goal, this hack is no stranger to the use of glitches and poor planned traps to annoy the player.

While the hack may be a Kaizo one, most of the levels don't reach a difficulty of "TAS Required" skills. At worst, a couple of levels can be extremely difficult.

If you're making a Let's play, feel free to message me on Youtube/Twitter @XradicalD, I do try to watch them all.
Screenshots:
This is an interesting hack. It kind of blurs the lines of kaizo lite and very hard a bit in my opinion and kaizo lite is probably the right category to submit under currently.

You started the hack back in 2008 and its incredible that the hack project has been going on for so long. This carries with it some unfortunate qualities though as a lot of the level design could use some overhaul.

1)Kaizo-lite is a save-state free category. While I was able to beat most of the levels I played.It was pretty clear to me that the levels and the game itself was not meant to be played with without them.

1a)You start with 5 Lives and you do not get a save after every level. So if you game over you are going back to the beginning of the game (or last save point). I had to patch in infinite lives to make the game playable to the point where I could offer feedback.

1b)Levels were very very long with no checkpoints and this was just the first few levels of the game. I'm scared to see what a harder level would look like.

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2) Level design is all over the place in terms of difficulty and pacing.

Ive provided a few screenshots to help explain.

a1) https://imgur.com/7AXSseF
a2) https://imgur.com/EnS4AoN
a1+2) I've circled in red what i thought were decent kaizo obstacles. They challenged the player to play with precision and are of a fair difficulty. On the other hand i've circled in white sections that either had absolutely nothing in them or were completely trivial when compared to the other sections. These sections just make the levels unneccassarily long and don't add anything to the gameplay.

b1)https://imgur.com/ZPnzToJ
b2)https://imgur.com/YUZmyRu
b1+b2) Same color scheme as the previous example. There were so many empty sections in this level where I was just waiting to get to the next hard obstacle and it made the level very tedious.

b3)https://imgur.com/8AZwJHO
b3) Special example here because this is where I quit playing the game. The red balls kept despawning, forcing me to die, because of the bullet bill generator and other sprites on screen. This happened to me more than once in testing the obstacle. The severity of the issue is amplified by the fact of how long it takes to reach and attempt this part of the level.

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Honestly I'd hate to see all this hard work go to waste as the hack looks very beautiful and has its own unique sense of style which I like. I feel like at the least it needs some kind of better life and saving system to be playable.

I think running through the levels themselves without savestates and identifying problem areas should be done. If you die multiple times on the same obstacle in a row you should consider nerfing it because you are already going to be way better at your hack than others at playing it.

You could possibly fill in the empty spots with more challenges and add in checkpoints to offset the increased difficulty.

These are just a few ideas and ultimately it's your hack so you know what is best for it. I think that if you want people to play and enjoy it you should at least consider them though.