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Marisa and Reimu's Hack BETA TESTING

Standard: Very Hard

Marisa and Reimu wanted a hack together, so... what are you saying they didn't?

DIFFICULTY: Very Hard

LENGTH: 8 Exits

DESCRIPTION:
In Marisa and Reimu's Hack you control Marisa and Reimu, each with unique abilities and you have to switch between them to get through tough platforming challenges. This hack features pixels, bits and notes.

SCREENSHOTS:



DOWNLOAD (Beta 1.1)
Marisa and Reimu's Hack Beta by RussianMan
Tested on Snes9x 1.60

Pretty standard Nintendo Presents (unedited) + Title Screen.
Not sure if I'm the only one to think this, but their faces are kind of weird when looking up.



The cutscene system is REALLY cool, I love how the faces slide in and change expressions from each text box.
It's a bit odd how the background and overall terrain are quite basic, compered to the higher quality face portraits. (this applies to all cutscenes)
One small change that'd be neat to see is moving the text one or two pixels down, just so they don't overlap with the ground tiles.
A "the" between "change" and "hack's" is missing.



And here we go onto the overworld, off the bat I'm not a huge fan.



The jagged tilling used everywhere is rather unpleasant to look at, and creates cutoffs on the ladder, both at the top and bottom.
Also, there's a few perspective issues you have to keep in mind, mainly these two.



I'll point out more stuff about the overworld as I go along, mostly because the lack of the map scrolling.

Tutorial Level:

As said in the cutscene, the level is rather basic.
The control changing works as intended and the explanations were easy to understand.
Great tutorial level.

First Level:

Decently challenging first level, it took a bit to get used to the switching and combining but ultimately wasn't that difficult.
At certain parts there's a lot of Thwomps (and Thwimps) hitting the ground and causing earthquakes that gets really annoying after a while.
The stage clear is phenomenal, I like how the "Stage Clear" waves up and down. Really cool.

Beach Episode Level:

This level is somewhat easier than the first one, though I do have complaints about it.
It wasn't really as fun as the first level, mainly because of the urchins.
Most of the time, you'd get a bad pattern and have to backtrack (or die) for a better one, which I don't really find appealing.
The first urchin obstacle after the midway is the worst offender, because every time I tried it I got a bad pattern, and since it was a bit difficult to backtrack there, I took a hit and went on.
Otherwise, the water gimmick was pretty cool, took a tiny bit to figure out that you can jump out of the water and switch without having to land on the ground.
One more thing that caught me a bit off guard is how you have to hold up and jump to get out of the water, it's tiny, but gets really annoying at times.

Advancing the map more, there's more perspective issues and some rather questionable choices.



One thing I didn't touch on is the beach palette, sure, it looks nice but it's a bit too bright and doesn't show the edge shadows well.
The fact you used the ledge tiles also doesn't help, and makes the beach look like it's floating, rather than y'know, actually being a beach, lol.
You also have more ladder cutoff shenanigans, again, due to the odd tilling.
As for the perspective issues, these two at the edge of the screen. (the bridge not having a shadow also doesn't help)



Bad Weather Level:

Another missing two "the"s, between "in" and "previous", as well as in "in" and "water". (though I suggest changing that text box altogether)



The "a" here is unneeded.



Probably the hardest level I've played so far, the wind is just so annoying and sends you flying if you make a single mistake.
The only real way to get past the second section is in one semi-perfect run, and you have to be careful everywhere.
It's a bit reaction heavy (and I'm not the greatest at those) but it didn't take an extreme amount of time to beat.
Overall, pretty okay, though it is a big difficulty spike.

Ghost House Level:

"Sarcasm" spelled wrong.



This has to be my favorite level from the whole hack.
Automatic switching is, to me at least, way more fun that switching manually and makes for really intense gameplay.
The ending of the first section got me on my toes, it was definitely a great ending to such section, having to time it perfectly.
I adore the second section, with the switching and boo streams it made for a very fun experience.
The dry land in between the water is neat, though that section is a bit tighter than it should be, in my opinion.

Lava Level:

This level is really cool considering it's all about intensity and reaction time with switching and all, but there is a HUGE flaw in it.
As far as I am aware, you cannot beat this level.
After trying for about two hours to get past the very last section (even trying with slow down), I opened lunar magic to see what's going on.
In this picture, the very right X symbol which (I assume) is supposed to be a water bottle, due to the fires, despawns, making it literally impossible to beat this.



Anyway, I moved the starting position to the door, because there's still more hack to test.

Before we go to the last level, there's one more thing to mention, and it's this perspective issue.



With that out of the way, let's go.

Last Level:

I don't know if my lunar magic tinkering had anything to do with this, but the icon here is slightly glitched.



Same with this big boo(?).



The small blue pipes do... nothing, as well as the small green pipes, past the first one.
I think they're supposed to shoot small bombs or something, but something might've happened for them to be like this.
This jump to the midway point is EXTREMELY precise, and for no real reason. The coin outlines don't help much either.



Fireballs have weird graphics, and this pipe shoots bombs. (still weird how the other ones don't)



This setup is also tricky, since you can't wall jump off of the same wall, making you do a really awkward jump to the right and back down the pit.



Random koopa here, for some reason...?



Honestly, I'm kind of blown away by how broken this level is.
Again, I have no idea if my lunar magic tinkering broke it or something, but it definitely isn't a good level to end off a hack (to put it bluntly).
Especially since the section past the midway is stupidly long, and I couldn't imagine how much harder it would've been with stuff working properly.

Ending Level:

And with that, the credits roll, which look awesome btw.
Though one small thing would be to make it slightly slower so you can actually read everything.
Should have an "a" (or "the") between "about" and "sequel".



But we ain't done yet, there's one more level.

Extra Level:

Pretty hectic level, it's basically a speedy version of every level.
I found this level really fun actually, aside from the broken ending section.
Although, it is surprising that one small blue pipe works, as well as one horizontal green pipe.

That's it!
I have to say, this hack has some really nice ideas but falls short at the end with rather unpolished level design and buggy enemies/obstacles.
It's really cool how the abilities work, as well as the switching, and most of the levels use it well.
Overall, the hack has huge potential, but still needs some serious polishing.
Awesome job, RussianMan! #smrpg{<3}

btw, sorry for the rather long post, didn't really feel like sectioning this one off into chunks. =P
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About Moving Text 2-3 pixels down

That'd require a lot of new graphics+the text is quite close to the bottom already, so I don't think it's necessary.

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About Overworld Errors

Well, I'd like a more detailed explanation on what's wrong and how to fix. You show me those lines, am I supposed to remove them or do something else? I'm not very good at overworlds, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix all issues (especially the floating beach one).

EDIT: I think now I know what you mean regarding jagged lines:



you mean instead of the tile on the left, I need to replace them with the one on the right, correct?

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Most of the time, you'd get a bad pattern and have to backtrack (or die) for a better one, which I don't really find appealing.


Never had issues with urchin spawns, well I guess I can see a couple places where the spawn can screw things, but I'm not sure how it can be "most of the time".

Quote
The first urchin obstacle after the midway is the worst offender, because every time I tried it I got a bad pattern, and since it was a bit difficult to backtrack there, I took a hit and went on.




I'm pretty sure you can get past even if you get the worst spawn (not sure what that'd look like).

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About Last Level errors

Must be because of lunar magic editing, because the version I used was 2.53, and 3.0+ breaks stuff. I never had spawning issue for that bottle (at least on BSNES v115), but I will remove one jumping flame nearby just in case. For the last level, I can make a couple places easier, but I mean, it's the last level, it's supposed to be pretty tough and lengthy.
Originally posted by RussianMan
That'd require a lot of new graphics+the text is quite close to the bottom already, so I don't think it's necessary.

Fair enough, though I still feel like some sort of barrier to distinguish them (fg and text) would be nice.

Originally posted by RussianMan
Well, I'd like a more detailed explanation on what's wrong and how to fix. You show me those lines, am I supposed to remove them or do something else? I'm not very good at overworlds, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix all issues (especially the floating beach one).

As for the perspective issues, it is pretty simple to fix some, but a little graphics editing to fix others. When doing overworlds, it's important to get perspective right, otherwise it can look a little weird.
The way to achieve this (talking in general, most stuff is case by case) is matching the top grass portion, to the lower coast portion, like this for example:



As you can see, the grass top and the low coast match tiles, which is what you're supposed to do. Dirt length is also important, since you need to keep everything at a certain length of dirt tiles. I'll return to one of the perspective errors I mentioned earlier and show you how you can fix it.



As for some of the others I mentioned, you'd have to do some graphical stuff to make it work. For the beach, instead of using regular tiles but recolored, you have to use custom tiles, that look like they're really going underwater. For example, here's what I used for my OWDC 2021 entry.



You'd need to also create custom tiles for stuff like connecting the beach and the mainland.
If you're interested, I can send you the graphics used here, though I'll warn you, they're a bit of a mess in both the optimization and palette department. =P

Originally posted by RussianMan
you mean instead of the tile on the left, I need to replace them with the one on the right, correct?

Yup. Just as I used in my examples above.

Originally posted by RussianMan
Never had issues with urchin spawns, well I guess I can see a couple places where the spawn can screw things, but I'm not sure how it can be "most of the time".

I guess it's due to the screen scrolling, because I was taking the levels rather slow at that point, getting used to the controls and all that, so that's probably why I had mostly bad spawns.

Originally posted by RussianMan
This one?

First of all, that's not the one I was talking about.
Second of all, my apologies for getting the setup wrong, it's actually this urchin obstacle after the midway.



Must've forgotten the other one since I tend to write the reviews after beating the levels, so some things probably slipped through.

Originally posted by RussianMan
Must be because of lunar magic editing, because the version I used was 2.53, and 3.0+ breaks stuff.

You are indeed correct. I redownloaded the bps and since I had the save file from the previous playthrough, I replayed the level.
Honestly it's not as difficult as the glitched version, mostly because the gray platforms actually spawned and made the jumps way easier. Though...

Originally posted by RussianMan
For the last level, I can make a couple places easier, but I mean, it's the last level, it's supposed to be pretty tough and lengthy.

While I do agree with you, I feel like you should pick one OR the other, because as is it feels more like an endurance match, rather than a final level.

Originally posted by RussianMan
I never had spawning issue for that bottle (at least on BSNES v115), but I will remove one jumping flame nearby just in case.

There's actually one more spawning issue I failed to notice.
This bottle here, that only spawns if you pick up the previous one.



And, I figured out why the bottle on the gray platform doesn't spawn, and it's rather weird. See, if you don't die during the whole level and don't respawn on the midway, the bottle spawns, but if you respawn on the midway, the bottle doesn't spawn. Why? I have no idea.
I've updated the main post with beta version 1.1 update.

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Fair enough, though I still feel like some sort of barrier to distinguish them (fg and text) would be nice.


Maybe for the follow ups, but for now I'll leave them be.

Quote
Second of all, my apologies for getting the setup wrong, it's actually this urchin obstacle after the midway.


Ok, yeah I thought this might be the one which can screw the player. I changed it slightly, hopefully it's better now.

Quote
While I do agree with you, I feel like you should pick one OR the other, because as is it feels more like an endurance match, rather than a final level.


I still edited a couple places, but it mostly remains the same.

Quote
There's actually one more spawning issue I failed to notice.
This bottle here, that only spawns if you pick up the previous one.


I figured why, I forgot to despawn the bottles when they're offscreen (I assumed the player would pick all of them along the way).
I don't feel comfortable releasing a hack with just one tester listed, I'd like to have at least a couple more testers.
I'll take a look. I shall edit this post once I finish the playthrough.

No level design flaws, as far as I can tell. All the levels have very well made. My favorite has to be the ghost house which forces the player to be reactive. The extra level was a nice challenge, as well. I had a blast playing through this hack.

I only found two typos so far.



"emberrasment" should be "embarrasment"



"inconvinience" should be "inconvenience.


My feedback is up there. Sorry for taking so long.


Standard: Very Hard