Submission Link
Length: 8 exits
Difficulty: Normal

Review:

While this hack has some potential, I'd say it needs more work, to be honest. The design, even though not bad, has quite a few issues, both global and level-specific.

Design-wise, it seems the hack has some trouble coming up with obstacles overall; most of it feels either overwhelming (such as the start of Grassland 1 and the fishing boo section at the ghost house) or boring (the level with Minecraft graphics). I highly recommend working a bit more on the sprite placement, as it definitely feels like an afterthought right now.

There are also quite a few specific issues with the design, such as frequent sprite memory errors (which could probably be fixed easily), a few enemies that provide no real challenge (notably on level 1), sections you can only go through as small Mario for no apparent reason (secret exit of the cave level (maybe it was intended to be small Mario-only though, so you can ignore that I guess) and a few other issues (confusing block behavior such as the outline switch blocks used as invisible coin blocks or the vine block, this particular setup, considering I didn't know that was a coin block before).

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I feel like this could be better with some more polish, but I'm not sure if it's acceptable right now. I recommend working more on the enemy placement and overall design.

Verdict: Remove

For a first hack, I must say that it's not this bad! However, there are lots of bad things in this.

Good job on making an actual level design: most of the first time hacks are just random bunch of linear levels, while yours is an actual big effort. Though that doesn't means yours is good: instead, there are lots of silly parts. There is everything, from the boredom to the unfairness. While some sections could (maybe forcedly) go, most of them need polishment. Overall, nice first try, but it's still a not fully acceptable one.

Your aesthetics are kind of weird, I can hardly identify which style you were aiming at. Generally, when making an hack, you should pick one style (like vanilla, redrawn, cartoonish, realistic, and so on) and try to follow that style as much as you can, avoiding clashes. The first level is an example, where you used NSMW Wii-styled FG, but keeping a vanilla BG. You can maybe find a workaround with paletting, but most of the time, it's recommended to go with both custom BG and FG. On their own, they weren't looking this good either; they just feel decent, you could've work around them a bit, but no, you just left them as they are. As overall, indeed... just decent.

Technical issues are all over the place:
- The level "I really do this..." really glitches music in accurate emulators. Using AMK rather than the older am4 is the best option for modern hacks;
- A few levels suffer from sprite tile limits: the night level is an example, since you can't see the switch on top of the pipe because of it;
- It's annoying that some tiles that are supposed to be passable are still solid. The vine blocks, the yellow switch blocks, are still solid even if their tile is empty. What it matters is the actlike of it. It's ironic that the only time you've set it right it makes the section impossible (talking about the House of Ghosts).

Difficulty is normal, the difficulty curve is a weird one going trough all the 4 kinds of difficulty.

Even if as first try isn't bad, it's still not acceptable, so I'd go with a rejection. Don't give up though: for clever ideas, I'd suggest you play others' hacks (unless you already do), since they help with ideas and figuring out what a good hack is.

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+1

The hack has been removed. Score points were given to Zone355 and Wakana.

Thanks for the tips, I will work on it ;)