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[REMOVED] The mystical adventure - zakaria

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This was a really short hack, not just due to the amount of levels in the hack, but due to the length of each of them. The hack didn't have anything else edited besides four levels and the submap, therefore I'll be doing a review for each level of this hack so the verdict of the hack will be more precise since. Though I suggest you to submit a longer hack next time. Here are the reviews:

In the sky: Felt kinda boring in general, there wasn't a good variety of terrain in this level, most of the plain areas lacked enemies which made they feel empty. It's not a bad level at all, but it could be more interesting, it lacked variety which could've improved the level a lot more. The level isn't a bad start if you're new on hacking though.

Cave of Swoopers: Sadly, this one was a bit more boring than the first level. There was a tad use of variety there, most of the design of the level was plain and empty. The aesthetics of the level were supposing a challenging level for me at first, sadly there was anything actually challenging or threaten for me.

The beach: Surprisingly, this one was actually quite fun! I've always been a fan of tide-like levels even if this one seemed a bit too "keep jumping and go straight" level. I think you forgot to make the tide have priority to everything in the level (just like the original "Yoshi's Island 4") which caused weird ideas of perspective there. This level was mostly fine.

Ghost house: This one was fine as well. Though it was really a pain to get to run on the triangle so that Mario could run up on the wall. You probably don't know but there's a specific tile that acts exactly for the triangle act properly and make it not be hard to run on it. As I said, the level was fine, but that issue was really bad for a hack.

The fortress: In the submap, the fortress seems to be floating on the water. o.o; Aside this, the level was mostly fine, but the variety on this one could've been better. Also that area where you run on a rope with podoboos was pretty boring to go through it. The transition of castle to grassland was also weird, as the grassland was literally the end of the level after you just got the midway point on the castle, entered the door and went to the said grassland.

As for the verdict... uh, I'm not fully sure about the hack. It has its few good points but it has more bad points than good ones. I'll have to deny it for now unless most of the userbase thinks different. Don't feel bad with this review though, it's a chance to improve your hack, as I'd like to play it again if you improve it!
5 level long hack?
INSTANT MOTIVATION

Originally posted by Rules
11. Avoid submitting hacks that are too short.
Since it is hard to create a fulfilling experience in a very short amount of time, you should have at least around 10 minutes of gameplay, even for demos and one-level hacks.

Yeah, this one barly if even makes the cut.

As for the levels... well there really isn't much to say on 5 of them ^^
I gotta say, the overall design looks a little blatand. I actually checked in Lunar Magic, so I'm kinda amazed to see that it's not even the original levels...
Anyway, as far as the design goes, all of your levels are a little flat. Kinda just run through able. The Ghost House and Castle were a little better but still not really there. The levels also lack an actual thread. The few enemies you placed are easy to dodge.

As for other problems. In the 3rd level (The Beach) you should force layer 3 above all other layers (done here #lm{MARIO69}) It looks wierd having the water effect still work even if you can't see the water.
In the ghost house, you used the purple triangle from the Map16, the trainlge requires tile 0x1EB underneath it to work. You can use the Map16 to set up a custom tile with the act like setting to take care of that.



Final Verdict: Rejection
Mainly due to this hack being to short.
I asume this is maybe your first hack. If so, keep on working and improving and I'm sure some future hacks will be accepted. After all, if this really is your first hack, it's still A LOT better than other stuff I've seen.

+1
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the mystical adventure - zakaria:

judging from the screenshots, they are very blurry; you do know how to take screenshots, right?

there are only 5 levels in this hack; this isn't enough to make an acceptable hack. try making it at least 1 world; around 6-10 levels.

overworld: a small island; it wasn't bad, but it could use some work. the fortress doesn't look good at all in the water. try to make a small island there or make an overworld from scratch.

in the sky: very easy and very short. for some reason, the very beginning of the level felt like a blatant yoshi's island 2 edit. the rest feels edited, though.

cave of swoopers: this level, i believe, didn't have a single power-up and was ridiculously boring and short. there was also a buzzy beetle that fell out of the wall. i don't know how that happened, though. you better look through this.

the beach: this one was bland and repetitive, but felt a little better than the two previous levels. every screen or so, it's like: an island, water, an island, water, etc.. try varying it a bit more.

ghost house: this level surprisingly brings the first power-up. it was also bland, but this level wasn't that bad. the purple/pink triangle also had weird behaviors when mario couldn't properly run up the wall. try fixing that, as that is very important.

the fortress: like i said before, a floating fortress on the water in the overworld is not a good thing. i recommend starting an ow from scratch. there was also some repetitive sections in this level as well. try making some more variety and use objects and sprites in more creative ways!

verdict: honestly, this felt rushed. ? blocks, power-ups, scenery was all missing, all the levels were short, and the levels felt lackluster in design. i would reject this for now.

+1
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The Mystical Adventure by Zakaria

In the Sky
     Instantly the first thing that grabs my attention is that the first two screens of the level are extremely similar to Yoshi's Island 2. After it, it starts to look a lot like Yoshi's Island 1 with a bunch of changes. The rest of the level was okay, but the beginning seemed like a blatant edit. I do realize it was probably made from scratch, however, try to be more original.
     The level itself was extremely short. There were also lots of switch palace blocks, and there doesn't seem to be any switch palaces in the hack. Maybe you should only have one type of switch palace block instead of 2. I saw yellow and green.
     This level also had a lot of flat land. Try to add more structures that the player has to jump through, or more obstacles.
     The final thing about this level is that when I smash the rex's, there is glitched graphics. Their smashed graphics seem to be chuck's arms or something.

Cave of Swoopers
     The beginning of the level looks a lot like an original SMW level. Differentiate it a bit more.
     The ghost house spikes and blocks at the end of the level are very out of place, as they aren't in the rest of the level at all. Use munchers and real walls instead so it fits a bit better.
     The sprites don't interact with layer 2 correctly, which renders some of the enemies useless.
     The last sublevel with the exit is a bit inconsistent. The palettes aren't ugly in any way, but they don't fit with the sublevel that was being played right before.
     If the player brings a buzzy beetle shell into the goal sublevel, it looks like a glitched mole because the level uses a different sprite gfx slot.
     Overall, this level was very short as well.

The Beach
     This level really didn't feel much like a beach at all. I'd suggest you learn how to insert ExGFX and use a beach tileset if you want this level to be a beach.
     This level is very short, but my main complaint is that it was another very flat level. Cave of Swoopers wasn't actually that flat, or at least it didn't make me think of it being flat. The layer 2 was placed well for making me feel like it wasn't flat.
     Also, the layer 3 was behind the mushrooms. Try to use the option that forces layer 3 above of all layers. It's somewhere, I don't know completely where it is.

Ghost House
     The level itself was a bit short, but the puzzle was pretty neat, in my opinion. I could tell easily that the beginning of the level was a blatant edit of one of the ghost house levels.
     Another annoying thing was that the triangle block was not working correctly. I had to jump onto it to be able to run. This was pretty hard because there was a boo closeby, and I jumped into it a lot.
     Overall, this was one of the better levels from the hack so far.

The Fortress
     I haven't played enough SMW to know if this is a blatant edit of an original SMW level. It did feel pretty fun for a level.
     The one complaint I have about this level is that when the springboard needed to be placed, I barely had any idea where to go since there were no coins to lead me.
     I also could not know where to jump after I was on the top, because I didn't pay attention to what was to the right. You should also add coins to lead me down.
     Other than that, the level was pretty short again, but it was on par with the Ghost House level. It was fairly fun.

Overall
     This hack has a ton of short levels and they are very flat. It has its fair share of problems, but the main removal reason I'll be giving is that the levels are overall not very fun because they are too short and too flat.

Final Verdict: Rejected

+1
Short hack and therefore a shorter review.

Starting off, I must say that this hack is not as bad as most hacks of this type but this one still has its fair share of problems. Starting off with the levels and their design, I immediately notice that the first level is based off the original Yoshi Island levels albeit with some changes to them. Being honest, these changes were drastic enough to be different from the original levels but I would still encourage the creator to start completely clean when making levels by pressing CTRL+Delete in Lunar Magic. Other levels were also based off some original levels which were mostly from Yoshi's Island but Ghost house I suspect was based of the secret ghost house in the original Donut Plains. The levels overall are not really bad but they could use some work in variation to avoid blandness and boring level design. That is the biggest problem of the hack.

Other areas I can speak about include the overworld and glitches. The overworld seemed rather simplistic and squarish which does not really look the best. Play some hacks to see what overworld ideas you can use when making maps and submaps on the overworld editor. Variation is the key there. As for glitches, there were not many but I did notice some slowdown in a few levels (most notably the level In the sky). Sprite memory issues also happened in the ghost house though they were not really noticeable.

Overall, rejection would be the best solution for this hack. The level design here needs to be improved on before it can considered being accepted and I would also suggest making the hack longer. I would suggest the creator to get some beta testers to test for glitches as well as it can be really helpful before uploading the hack to SMW Central.

+1
Pretty short hack indeed. That's one of my biggest complains, I finished theis hack in 5 minutes around. Even if this is already a big minus, I'm going to show and review other aspects of this hack.
In terms of level design, your hack is poor: all of them suppose the player go "one way right, avoiding random placed sprites". This pretty much sums that you didn't care much about the level design. Some more efforts on it would've made the hack much better. Accordingly, your levels felt short, and clearing them didn't took much time.
Speaking of level design in general, there's a big game breaking that could stop the player to go forward: you forgot the time 1EB below the triangle tile. Unless you jump on it while running, that part isn't possible to climb, the ghost house level idea was nice but this brings it down totally. Always test before submitting~
I don't have much to say about the GFX, which is vanilla and it's decently used (although the OW was excessively flat designed).
In conclusion, the lenght, the level design and the fact that you forgot to put an important 1EB tile below the triangle tile in the Ghost House makes me want to reject this hack. Try making bigger hack and better designed levels. Don't forget to test the final product as well, or, at least, take someone do that for you~

+1
Title Screen & Intro

Both of these are unchanged and the original intro message is still there.

Overworld

The overworld is rather square and blocky. There is a castle floating on the water which looks strange and there are bits of cutoff.

1. In the Sky

First thing that strikes me is that the beginning is very reminiscent of Yoshi's Island 2 from the original game. After that there is a hill section which looks like it came from Yoshi's Island 1. Just 20 seconds into the level I hit the midpoint and another 20 seconds later I'm already at the goal. The level was extremely short and rather flat. You also have yellow and green switch blocks which seem odd because there is no Switch Palace to be found in the hack. You could also do with adding more decoration so that the level doesn't look too bland.

2. Cave of Swoopers

This level was very short and boring as you are mostly running along a flat surface. At the second layer 2 you have to wait for the yellow cave ceiling to move up. At another one of the raising floors, a Buzzy Beetle falls through making that enemy pose no threat whatsoever. After that part you have to wait for another ceiling to move up. Going past that there are some ghost house spikes which look rather odd in a cave level. At the end, there is a pipe attached to some wooden blocks from a ghost house. I'd just use the cave wall instead so it doesn't look out of place.
Going through the pipe takes you to the goal area where the palette looks rather different to the first area. The transition is very odd. Also, because the sprite tileset is different, taking a Buzzy Beetle through to that section will make it appear glitched.

The path on the overworld to the next level is revealed incorrectly because you placed the events in the wrong order.

3. The Beach

Another flat level which the player can breeze through in about less than 40 seconds. You should also make the layer 3 water appear in front of the foreground so that Mario doesn't look strange swimming in mid-air like so:

Also, place your goal point in a separate sublevel because beating the level makes the water disappear.

4. Ghost House

The beginning looks an awful lot like the ghost house from Donut Plains since I immediately recognised the placement of the Boo ring. The P-Switch puzzle is quite creative but I ran into a problem when attempting to run up the wall. The purple triangle requires tile 1EB to be below it in order for it to work properly. Because that tile was absent, I had to jump at a specific angle to make Mario run up the wall. This was made harder with the Boo nearby as I jumped into it quite a few times.

5. The Fortress

The level starts of quite well with a couple of spike balls and Thwomps to avoid. However, the level starts to get quite bland as you go through it. The spring part was rather pointless as it was just an artificial way of 'extending' the level. After dodging a few more Thwomps and a couple of Grinders there is a very flat rope bridge section across a pit of lava with Podoboos jumping out. However, these are rendered harmless due to the fact that the player can run straight under every single one of them.
After hitting the midpoint and going through a door, there is a very odd transition to a grassland section with the goal point which makes the midpoint rather useless as the finish is about 5 seconds ahead.

Verdict

Overall, this is a very short hack which can be beaten in about 5 minutes or less. Each of the levels don't even last more than a minute. Also, your level design was rather flat. In conclusion I would have to agree with everyone else and reject the hack.

+1
The overworld to me felt very blocky. You had a large square landmass with a few levels on it and then another smaller landmass. The levels also didn't correspond with what's in them; a beach is not located underwater and the fortress, which was on water, had nothing to do with water at all. Some more varied terrain would do well for the overworld.

The levels themselves felt very... eh. Overall the levels weren't too bad but they lacked any sort of 'wow' factor and used a very limited set of enemies and obstacles in the same way. However the exception to this was the idea with the coins in the ghost house - I felt if that idea was expanded on it could have been a great puzzle level, but unfortunately that was killed by the length and linearity of the level - which brings me to my second point. All the levels were extremely short. The first level took no more than 45 seconds, on the first try. I feel as if levels were rushed. None of the levels had any sort of gameplay or gimmick that made it stand out.

I think these issues would be solved if the player was thought about more. Currently, it feels like the terrain was made and then the enemies and power-ups placed as an afterthought. Apart from a few special cases in the cave level, all you need to do was follow the same move-right-jump to defeat them. The spike balls in the water level did absolutely nothing, and the rotating platforms were pointless since there were no enemies near or under it.

I have to vote this hack for rejection. I feel as if it lacked focus and thought.

+1
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