Hey everyone, it's been a minute. While I've mostly moved on from SMW hacking, I still cherish the memories and community. Especially the VLDC's have always had a special place in my heart. Even though I doubt I'll be working on a level of my own, I'm interested in seeing what all of you manage to come up with. Since I have a thing for rating and ranking stuff and look back fondly on my previous fan judging experience. While I wouldn't consider myself neither an expert at level design nor aesthetics, I still believe I can provide feedback, which may help a few of the contestants, or at least make them feel more comfortable with their submission.
I will start off by reviewing the levels in order of submission, but I'm more than open for requests, which I will be prioritising. Please bear in mind that reviews might end up taking a while. I prefer and intend to go more in depth, allowing me to both take time to appreciate what each level does well, but also to detail where I see room for improvement. So I want to apologize in advance for all requests I may not get to in time.
Now, with all that out of the way, let's get started with the reviews:
Index:
New judge comments (alphabetical order):
2pvenezuela - bry
codfish1002 - Enjl & Waddle
Fostelif - Humberto Quackenbush
idol & Squirrelyman157 - Klug
Previous reviews:
001 Heraga
002 GbreezeSunset
003 Samuel Zuccati | (UPDATE)
004 Kori
005 ninj
010 IronFoxGaming
011 DetectiveZvarri
014 Infinity & Green Jerry
016 Ryman
017 Donut & Segment1Zone2
018 arghhh5
020 Anas
021 LuigiTime
026 RZ1 | (UPDATE)
041 PiyoPiyori
qantuum
Kusrry
MrMartley64
001 Heraga
Design: 46/60
First, I've got to applaud the bravery of submitting a p-balloon level to a contest. Not gonna lie, the level name had me worried. While you weren't lying about upping the difficulty, you fortunately also managed to up the fun-factor with clever setups and great pacing throughout. The two sections while very different in gameplay, feel coherent and like a logical delevopment of the level's gimmick.
The first half benefits a lot from being an autoscroller, making sure every obstacle gets enough attention, while also getting rid of the annoyance of the p-balloon timer running out too early. I encountered one or two slight bumps in difficulty in the first section, which threw me a little off on my first playthrough, like this one, but most obstacles have the perfect balance of being tricky but fair.
The second half shakes things up in an intersting way, requiring you to dodge the p-balloons this time around. While I love the creativity, it overall felt a little ruffer to play. It might be just me, but the balloon hitbox always felt a little janky to me, making the fairly precise jumps feel very demanding. During the first half you usually had multiple approaches or cylces to attempt each obstacle, whereas the second half leaves even less room for error. Still, don't get me wrong the setups in the second half are very clever and varied, and a ton of fun to breeze through once you've got them down, with the only execption being this one, which I still struggle a lot with.
Also I did happen to play the first version of the level, which included a third section. While I did enjoy a lot of its ideas and thought it fit neatly into the overall concept of the level, I did consider it to be easily the weakest section of the level. Whereas the rest of the level, while tuff, appeared to be beatable on the first try, the time trials gave the player way too little time to react to obst acles, making it overall mostly a frustrating trial and error experience.
Creativity: 24/30
The level succeeds in both presenting an interesting gimmick and theme for the level as whole, as well as providing tons of unique setups, which will make sure to keep you on your toes. Especially the twist on the key gimmick in the second made sure to keep things fresh. Great job!
Atmosphere: 6/10
While aesthetically the level does little to stand out, it manages to feel feel very polished. Both the music and palette are decent and fit the overall mood. The grass decoration works and helps the ground look less empty, although the few dark brown pixels stick out a bit too much for my taste. My only minor complaint are the glitched tiles when bouncing on note blocks, but since I'd assume that it counts as "known visual glitch", it won't affect the score anyway.
Total: 76/100
002 GbreezeSunset
Design: 37/60
Let me start off by saying, wow, this might just be the most creative gimmicks I've seen in a vanilla level in a very long time. I'm almost certain, a lot of people will take inspiration from it in the future, which is why it pains me to say, that I didn't find a lot the level particularly fun to play. Aside from the third room, which is more on the puzzle side of things, a lot the level essentially boils down to resetting a room over and over, till you jump on a platformer or throw/kick an item at the exact right time. Aside from the key room, which I struggled a lot with, the difficulty of the rooms was fine, I just didn't happen to like most of them on the gameplay side of things, which most likely is just a me-thing. The yoshi coin room was a ton of fun though, and how I wished more of the level would be like.
Creativity: 30/30
I can't justify giving this level than a perfect score in creativity. Not only is the gimmick something I've never seen before, but the indiviudal rooms happen to be just as clever and perfectly showcase how much versatility the concept allows for.
Atmosphere: 5/10
There's quite a bit to like about the level's atmosphere. The palette is pretty and the background, while repetitve, fits the level's theme insanely well. I'm not exactly sure how you pulled off the timer, but it did help immensly in making the gimmick feels as intuitive, as it did. There is quite a lot of obvious cutoff (vines, lava) and most of the foreground consisting of nothing but ghost house blocks, which brings the level down on the visual side of things. Also too bad I didn't get to hear more of the music, due to constanly having to press p-switches.
Total: 72/100
003 Samuel Zuccati
Design: 31/60
A mostly satisfying collection of tuff 1-screen rooms. While I do have my issues with a number of rooms and the consistancy of the difficulty, there's a lot to like, even if I clearly prefer the first half of the level. The first two rooms neatly introduce the level concept and the two eating snake block rooms shortly after maximize the level's potential, giving the player all the time in the world to observe the room, and being all about timing your jumps right. The thwomp room is the only I actively dislike in the first half, being both way too precise, while also only allowing for a single attempt. The second half is unfortunately where things start to fall apart a bit. We start off very strongly though with one of the few rooms not based around precision or timing but pure speed with a neat twist. All upcoming rooms except the very last one now require you to ride a line-guided rope while dodging saws, which gets dull rather quickly and at times way too difficult to find a reliable strat for. The room I disliked the most was this one, because I often times wasn't able to jump high enough to reach the falling platform. My biggest complaint overall though, and luckily an easy fix, is that half the rooms can be cheesed by being able to grab a throw block from the starting positon. Take the screenshot I posted above (not the one I linked) as an example.
With a few changes made to balance the difficulty and some more variation in the second half, I could really see this level doing well.
Creativity: 19/30
The concept is simple but something I've rarely seen done before, especially in non-kaizo levels. Most of the setups in the first half were pretty neat, unfortunately the second half wasn't quite able to keep up. I would have loved to see a bigger variety in terms of enemies.
Atmosphere: 7/10
A decent effort overall. Visually and musically the level gives off quite a mysterious vibe, which I like. The background is mostly kept as is but the additional cloud layer and greyish tone certainly adds to the atmosphere. As for the FG palette, I would have maybe liked a bit more constrast or at least darker outlines though. Aside from that, there is some interesting tileset mixing, and a very neat and clear visualisation used for tile 1f0.
Total: 57/100
Wish I could deduct points for the yoshi house though.
And this is where I'm going to leave it at for today. Feel free to ask, if you want me to review your level.
Check out my new hack thread:
Now, with all that out of the way, let's get started with the reviews:
Index:
New judge comments (alphabetical order):
2pvenezuela - bry
codfish1002 - Enjl & Waddle
Fostelif - Humberto Quackenbush
idol & Squirrelyman157 - Klug
Previous reviews:
001 Heraga
002 GbreezeSunset
003 Samuel Zuccati | (UPDATE)
004 Kori
005 ninj
010 IronFoxGaming
011 DetectiveZvarri
014 Infinity & Green Jerry
016 Ryman
017 Donut & Segment1Zone2
018 arghhh5
020 Anas
021 LuigiTime
026 RZ1 | (UPDATE)
041 PiyoPiyori
qantuum
Kusrry
MrMartley64
001 Heraga
Design: 46/60
First, I've got to applaud the bravery of submitting a p-balloon level to a contest. Not gonna lie, the level name had me worried. While you weren't lying about upping the difficulty, you fortunately also managed to up the fun-factor with clever setups and great pacing throughout. The two sections while very different in gameplay, feel coherent and like a logical delevopment of the level's gimmick.
The first half benefits a lot from being an autoscroller, making sure every obstacle gets enough attention, while also getting rid of the annoyance of the p-balloon timer running out too early. I encountered one or two slight bumps in difficulty in the first section, which threw me a little off on my first playthrough, like this one, but most obstacles have the perfect balance of being tricky but fair.
The second half shakes things up in an intersting way, requiring you to dodge the p-balloons this time around. While I love the creativity, it overall felt a little ruffer to play. It might be just me, but the balloon hitbox always felt a little janky to me, making the fairly precise jumps feel very demanding. During the first half you usually had multiple approaches or cylces to attempt each obstacle, whereas the second half leaves even less room for error. Still, don't get me wrong the setups in the second half are very clever and varied, and a ton of fun to breeze through once you've got them down, with the only execption being this one, which I still struggle a lot with.
Also I did happen to play the first version of the level, which included a third section. While I did enjoy a lot of its ideas and thought it fit neatly into the overall concept of the level, I did consider it to be easily the weakest section of the level. Whereas the rest of the level, while tuff, appeared to be beatable on the first try, the time trials gave the player way too little time to react to obst acles, making it overall mostly a frustrating trial and error experience.
Creativity: 24/30
The level succeeds in both presenting an interesting gimmick and theme for the level as whole, as well as providing tons of unique setups, which will make sure to keep you on your toes. Especially the twist on the key gimmick in the second made sure to keep things fresh. Great job!
Atmosphere: 6/10
While aesthetically the level does little to stand out, it manages to feel feel very polished. Both the music and palette are decent and fit the overall mood. The grass decoration works and helps the ground look less empty, although the few dark brown pixels stick out a bit too much for my taste. My only minor complaint are the glitched tiles when bouncing on note blocks, but since I'd assume that it counts as "known visual glitch", it won't affect the score anyway.
Total: 76/100
002 GbreezeSunset
Design: 37/60
Let me start off by saying, wow, this might just be the most creative gimmicks I've seen in a vanilla level in a very long time. I'm almost certain, a lot of people will take inspiration from it in the future, which is why it pains me to say, that I didn't find a lot the level particularly fun to play. Aside from the third room, which is more on the puzzle side of things, a lot the level essentially boils down to resetting a room over and over, till you jump on a platformer or throw/kick an item at the exact right time. Aside from the key room, which I struggled a lot with, the difficulty of the rooms was fine, I just didn't happen to like most of them on the gameplay side of things, which most likely is just a me-thing. The yoshi coin room was a ton of fun though, and how I wished more of the level would be like.
Creativity: 30/30
I can't justify giving this level than a perfect score in creativity. Not only is the gimmick something I've never seen before, but the indiviudal rooms happen to be just as clever and perfectly showcase how much versatility the concept allows for.
Atmosphere: 5/10
There's quite a bit to like about the level's atmosphere. The palette is pretty and the background, while repetitve, fits the level's theme insanely well. I'm not exactly sure how you pulled off the timer, but it did help immensly in making the gimmick feels as intuitive, as it did. There is quite a lot of obvious cutoff (vines, lava) and most of the foreground consisting of nothing but ghost house blocks, which brings the level down on the visual side of things. Also too bad I didn't get to hear more of the music, due to constanly having to press p-switches.
Total: 72/100
003 Samuel Zuccati
Design: 31/60
A mostly satisfying collection of tuff 1-screen rooms. While I do have my issues with a number of rooms and the consistancy of the difficulty, there's a lot to like, even if I clearly prefer the first half of the level. The first two rooms neatly introduce the level concept and the two eating snake block rooms shortly after maximize the level's potential, giving the player all the time in the world to observe the room, and being all about timing your jumps right. The thwomp room is the only I actively dislike in the first half, being both way too precise, while also only allowing for a single attempt. The second half is unfortunately where things start to fall apart a bit. We start off very strongly though with one of the few rooms not based around precision or timing but pure speed with a neat twist. All upcoming rooms except the very last one now require you to ride a line-guided rope while dodging saws, which gets dull rather quickly and at times way too difficult to find a reliable strat for. The room I disliked the most was this one, because I often times wasn't able to jump high enough to reach the falling platform. My biggest complaint overall though, and luckily an easy fix, is that half the rooms can be cheesed by being able to grab a throw block from the starting positon. Take the screenshot I posted above (not the one I linked) as an example.
With a few changes made to balance the difficulty and some more variation in the second half, I could really see this level doing well.
Creativity: 19/30
The concept is simple but something I've rarely seen done before, especially in non-kaizo levels. Most of the setups in the first half were pretty neat, unfortunately the second half wasn't quite able to keep up. I would have loved to see a bigger variety in terms of enemies.
Atmosphere: 7/10
A decent effort overall. Visually and musically the level gives off quite a mysterious vibe, which I like. The background is mostly kept as is but the additional cloud layer and greyish tone certainly adds to the atmosphere. As for the FG palette, I would have maybe liked a bit more constrast or at least darker outlines though. Aside from that, there is some interesting tileset mixing, and a very neat and clear visualisation used for tile 1f0.
Total: 57/100
Wish I could deduct points for the yoshi house though.
And this is where I'm going to leave it at for today. Feel free to ask, if you want me to review your level.
Check out my new hack thread: