Originally posted by yv64nGot rid of the baby yoshi shaped island as it was kind of goofy looking, just made it more of a regular island. Might mess with it a bit later to add more curved paths.
Then again Valley of Bowser is just straight lines too, so I might leave it
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Also I finally figured out how to make decent recordings, so here's gameplay, level design feedback appreciated
I'm aiming for design that feels close to the original game, like Return to Dinosaur Land.
Yoshi's Island 1
Yoshi's Island 2
Definite improvement over your previous efforts, the level design feels more like something you'd find on the original games, specially for world 1.
One thing to consider though is that, outside of bonus areas, the enemy selection seems to be rather conservative, featuring stuff that you can find on most spritesets in the game. By comparison, as early as YI1, SMW was already introducing unique enemies like Banzai Bills and Rexes that you wouldn't ever see again until much later (iirc), allowing an otherwise simple introductory level to stand out. Another thing to consider is that you can also keep the level design fresh by progressively introducing new mechanics into the game, whether it's a new item/powerup, layer 2/3 shenanigans, unique autoscrollers, sprite generators, rare enemy interactions, etc, even a combination of them can work out. You already did good by introducing tides on the second level, but its always good to keep this in mind in order to retain the player's interest, even later on in the game.
As for the overworld, I prefered the bigger pressence of non-linearity in the previous version, even though technically it was a carbon copy of how it was in the original game.
My hacks:
Justice for Mario /
Unnamed Kaizo Hack
Greedy Ghouling