#00, "BRAMBLE CLIMB" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: This level really evoked that classic DKC2 bramble level feel, and not just because it had the right music. I think you really used big levels well to capture the feeling being in a maze, even though the path through the level was straight. Being able to see other parts of the level before you got to them helped in that way. Mixing in the "pink" blocks to force the player to navigate the backside of a fence is a welcome addition to a climbing level, and I think you used the climbing koopas well with them. The conveyors were a nice mixup in the second half too. Aesthetically the level looked pretty brambly which is impressive for something using pieces of vanilla SMW graphics. If I had one complaint about the visuals though, it's that all the spike tips everywhere did make the level look a little busy. Timer felt a bit short even though I was moving pretty quickly through the level but I still beat it with ~80 second to spare. Nice work. -------------------------------- #01, "Vanish Castle" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 82/100 Comments: So I have no idea how you accomplished basically any of the gimmicks in this level but I am impressed. I'd better go try and understand what I just played through. (I went to go check at this point) Oh wow, THAT is clever manipulation of sprite limits. Really interesting that you can overload the level with sprites and cause everything else in the sublevel to despawn. That's some super technical creativity. As for the design itself, the only nitpick I really have is that the opening segment where you have to outlast the grinders on the falling layer 2 seemed out of place compared to everything else, though I understand you needed the layer 2 to be at the bottom before letting Mario continue so giving the player something to do while they wait is, at least, a good thing. I got worried when the 1up checkpoint popped up and I knew my timer was getting low, but thankfully I was able to get through the rest and the Big Boo fight with enough time to spare. The level looked and sounded pretty basic, but I liked the little animated "candles". They were a cute touch. -------------------------------- #02, "Crystal Forest" Design: 26/60 Creativity: 13/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 44/100 Comments: I don't think the opening search for the springboard added anything to the level. In fact, it definitely hurts the level. The ceilings in the cave are way too low, requiring duck-jumps and prayer to make the jump back to the clouds under the pipe while holding the shell. And then if you make the jump, you have to make sure you catch the springboard and not the shell. Did you know that Big Mario can just completely bypass your key-required pipe? As long as Mario's head is in line with the bottom of a pipe, you can push big mario into a sideways pipe. So I ended up skipping that. There was also no real indication that the midway point was going to be in that pipe during the line guide segment. I saw the path under the pipe and assumed it was a bonus path to take, so I didn't get the midpoint at first. While the level gives off a really cold vibe thanks to the graphics, palette and music, I found the palettes to be too monochromatic to easily distinguish what was solid and what was pass-through. Additionally, the palette on the background in the caves was dark enough that the line guides themselves were obscured, and so I wasn't sure when the path was turning in some cases. Overall it felt unfocused with the springboard hunt at the beginning, then the key hunt, then the line guides with dropping chucks, then the boo cloud. -------------------------------- #03, "Bounce and climb!" Design: 17/60 Creativity: 12/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 33/100 Comments: I think you did pretty good for a first level. I can tell you had fun building it and it's not just because you put a lot of bouncing note blocks and left an enthusiastic thank you note at the end! So here's some beginner advice. Don't be afraid to use the actual ground tiles next time instead of just logs (though I appreciated that you used two different types of log to make things look a bit more distinct). You should also focus on expanding on your level ideas. Bouncing around on logs is nice, but what if you put some hopping koopas that could intercept Mario's bounce and make the player carefully time their bounces and jump heights to avoid or stomp them? Think about ways to make your objects and sprites work together instead of existing separate from each other. That's a way to make a good level. Watch out for lopsided midpoints. Try to make sure they're placed in the middle of the level and not too far to one side of it. Also the P-Switch part was very unnecessary and only served to stop the pace of the level. It's not a great idea to use them as artificial barriers like that. As you are, this was a nice start. If you keep making levels, I think you'll eventually be making something really nice. Don't let the score deter you, keep trying and improving! -------------------------------- #04, "SUGARLESS CAVE" Design: 34/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 56/100 Comments: It was pretty strange how the path sort of splits after the midpoint if you have the blue switch pressed, since you can just choose to fall down and take a whole different way. That'd be neat, but it's completely unmarked that such a path exists, and I only found it because I fell down at random. The second half also felt pretty short, since if you fall down you just go in a pipe, hop some podoboos, and then come out of the pipe and walk about three screens to the exit. No powerup at the midpoint felt bad but not hard since the level was pretty easy overall. I didn't like how the buzzy beetle by the midpoint walks with the perfect timing to fall on you as you're trying to do the wall run since you activate his positioning when you get the P-Switch. I think the level needed more focus. The first half had the raft ride and wall run, the second half had some hanging platform platforming to do and the secret steam cave had podoboo hopping. But all existed in isolation so the level just felt like a sampler of cave ideas. On the other hand, I liked how the steam cave looked with that layer 3 added. Overall it wasn't that bad but it wasn't very strong either. Combine your ideas and let them work with each other, not in isolation. -------------------------------- #05, "Getting Up" Design: 13/60 Creativity: 10/30 Aesthetics: 1/10 Total: 24/100 Comments: This level felt terrible to play, partly because it was almost nothing but precise jumps and partly because it was so awful to look at. Seriously, the palettes and music here do the level no favors. The colors actively hinder visual recognition, and the music is just droning and boring. The music also seemed to be affected badly by sound effects that were happening. Note blocks had glitched sprite frames. There are a lot of moments where the player simply can't see what's ahead, and will only learn thwomp placement by taking damage or dying to it. I have no idea how to get past one jump in the beginning without taking damage even after a couple dozen attempts. Then we get to the vertical race against the thwomp. It's a neat idea in theory, but it's not fun at all in execution. You have to balance going fast enough to beat it back to the top and not despawning it by going too fast. Racing the thwomp wouldn't be so bad if the segment was shorter, or if it was the first thing you did in the level, but no you have to play 2/3 of the level to get to it, then the last 1/3 is repeating the middle 1/3 for the race. And there was no midpoint either. Had an interesting idea with bad execution, but poorly designed overall. -------------------------------- #06, "Adventurous Ascent" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: I liked this level a lot so I'll get the main problem I ran into out of the way first. I took the bonus path for the 2nd Dragon Coin but the hothead that's supposed to be there to help you spin jump up the 6-tile high platform didn't spawn, so I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what I was missing. I had to use the fact small Mario can jump 6 tiles with a running start to keep going because I was otherwise stuck. My time ran low because of this fact but I did manage to clear the level with a little bit remaining. The use of the big level to help climb the mountain was nice and lent it a good climbing feel. I really liked the "houses" and buildings you created from various tiles since they looked nice, but I appreciated even more that you used your palette to tell the player what was solid and what was walk-through. Blue things were all solid, gray were all walk-through (with the exception of the cement block but we all know that graphic to be solid anyway so it worked). Enemies were a good mix of castle and dino-rhino, though I think there was opportunity to mix them together a little more. In fact, if I had any real complaint it's that the level doesn't really have a unique selling point to it. It's mostly just an enjoyable trip up the mountain without much other than some nice scenery to really make it memorable. Still a good level overall, but I would've liked to see you expand on your ideas a little more. -------------------------------- #07, "le Reservoir" Design: 53/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 85/100 Comments: I made the level much harder on myself by assuming I needed to hit the p-switch block with a throw block to beat the level. It was only after a bunch of deaths when I finally hit the block that I realized it was just for the Dragon Coin and moon. With that in mind, my opinion of the level goes up (I'd been getting a little frustrated and the difficulty seemed to have spiked in the second half but since it was only hard if you were going for bonuses I'm more ok with it). An extra mushroom after the midpoint would've been nice though. The use of the Message Box to make Layer 3 vanish as an actual mechanic was very cool! It was nice that you had to go into the sublevels to get it to "refill" the reservoir. Smart idea to make the level go right-to-left to take advantage of the tidal movements too. Paragoombas made for surprisingly dangerous enemies underwater, more so than fish in some cases. I think you managed to make a nice variety of setups using just the water level gimmick and a few enemy types, and the level wasn't long enough to outstay its welcome. Visually, I liked the use of the midway point bars as caution tape and the boss doors as girders. Really helped make the place seem industrial. This was a level that was of a good length, but left me wanting for more. Good job! -------------------------------- #08, "Plumbing Job" Design: 41/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 68/100 Comments: A nice, simple trip through a sewer. The rising and falling Layer 2 water in the first half was used pretty well in conjunction with the cheep cheeps, since sometimes it was beneficial to wait for them to get beached so you could kick them away. Though I did also discover that the abundance of koopa shells meant that more often than not you could just carry one and kick it at a group of fish to get rid of the problem instead of interacting with the level design. The second half had a nice bit of backtracking with the water level lowering down. The level felt a bit short but not in a bad way. I think some ideas could've been expanded upon a little more, like maybe the backtrack could've been a bit longer or had you returning through a different part of the level. But overall the level wasn't too bad. -------------------------------- #09, "YESCROLL" Design: 47/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 75/100 Comments: I was worried when you said it was an autoscroller but I think you did some really neat things with them and big levels. I was pretty impressed! Wrapping around the cave a couple times at different heights with the autoscroller was a nice idea, and "breaking" the autoscroller with a pipe transition allowing you to explore the place without being on rails was a good way to transition to the second half. I'm not really sure how you managed to make the autoscroller work like you did for the second half but I thought it was really neat to have this lengthy scroller that went left, up, right and oscillated a little bit too. Kept me on my toes, wondering what would happen next. I do recognize that had I died more maybe I wouldn't be feeling as good as I am about it, since autoscrollers do mean you're having to wait a fixed amount of time each life, but you kept the player relatively active with enemies and obstacles, so it never felt like I was waiting too long to continue. Nice job. -------------------------------- #10, "STALWART RAMPARTS" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 73/100 Comments: I really liked how you were able to use the flying platform in so many different ways both to help and hinder Mario's movement through the level. You used them to go left, right, up, in an elevator, to block passages... tons of creative uses for them. I especially liked how you used them to block Mario in the second half. Don't think I've ever seen someone use the flying platform in an elevator before, and maybe for good reason since that path was MUCH more difficult than the other path at the midpoint. It was pretty fair up until the point where the spikes got really plentiful and were placed asymmetrically from one another. I made it through not by thinking, but just by acting and getting lucky. Another big thing I noticed was that for as long as the level was it felt pretty starved for powerups. It wasn't particularly hard overall, but it was long enough that I was very careful to avoid hits when possible. An extra mushroom in each section would've gone a long way to helping avoid this dread feeling of a potentially long trek back through a level. But overall this level is really solid and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Good work. -------------------------------- #11, "GLOWING IN THE DEEP" Design: 31/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 3/10 Total: 50/100 Comments: I understand what you were going for with the "glow" idea but man was it tough on the eyes. I think I'm still seeing purple. I think there are less eye-straining ways to show a glow than bright blue/purple color rotation. Something as simple as a dull glow back and forth would've looked a lot better. It didn't help at the end of the level either, where the glow is mixed in with a bunch of non-glowing objects and you have to stare long and hard at what you need to be doing. I recognize that's basically the level's gimmick; I'm just not sure that it was done very well. It would've been much more bearable with a less harsh glow. The first half of the level isn't anything special, mostly just going left to right with a few little things you can see with the glow active. It's all the sudden puzzle elements after the midpoint that make the level slow down a lot more and get a bit visually overwhelming. But after you strip away the glow it's not particularly interesting design, just a fairly standard "carry an item to this point and use it" puzzle. I think there could've been more interesting ways to use the glow overall. -------------------------------- #12, "ZA WARUDO TOWER" Design: 27/60 Creativity: 19/30 Aesthetics: 2/10 Total: 48/100 Comments: This level does an extremely bad job of communicating to the player what is solid and what is walk-through to the point that it's an active detriment to gameplay. You really should've just used two separate palettes for solid and walk-through so that the player can tell at a glance what is what. Because you use a lot of normally walk-through in vanilla tiles as solid platforms and vice-versa, but aren't consistent about it in the level. Vines aren't climbable, clouds are solid, solid blocks are pass-through. It's really bad about this. The spike alarm section is a nice idea but why did you even bother with a reset door at the beginning of it if most other parts of the section don't have a way to reset? The unforeshadowed grinder race and jump wasn't very good either, since there's no way to realize that that's what you need to do when you first get there, and the line guide for the grinder blend in with the black sky. It's all too bad because I can definitely tell that you put in a TON of work to making the level work both forwards and backwards when the layer falls down. It's just a shame that I was too busy trying to figure out what my path was to truly appreciate the level as a whole. -------------------------------- #13, "KingOfTheMountain" Design: 21/60 Creativity: 13/30 Aesthetics: 3/10 Total: 37/100 Comments: I suspect this level can't truly be beaten in 500 seconds without foreknowledge of what you should be doing. My own playthrough was full of stumbling and death to weird elements, and the path was generally not very clear especially in the second half when my timer ran low. At least a 1up checkpoint existed for the final part. I think the sprite and tile edits you did generally looked uglier than the vanilla counterparts, and in the case of the Chuck replacement actively hindered the player. Sumo Bros can't be jumped on, so to see a sumo head on a chuck body made me immediately assume it was a sumo and therefore couldn't be jumped on. Level design in the outdoor areas generally felt really messy, and there were tons of enemies placed with seemingly little regard to how they got put down, especially by the end. The on/off block stuff was also kind of neat but also felt like it was there just to slow the player down. And then there was that on/off falling layer 2 part over lava towards the end that seemed to require spinjumping on a blargg to get past and was stupidly precise for no good reason. All in all this level attempts a lot but doesn't do much of it very well. -------------------------------- #14, "Roaming Fiber" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 26/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 86/100 Comments: On one hand, you did a pretty good job of making an interesting level concept with nice variations. On the other, it's a real shame that SMW's engine doesn't allow Mario to move with a variable Layer 2 climbable object. It does lead to some weirdness when climbing, and Mario getting too clingy with the nets. That said, overall I think you made a really good level. Right from the start you introduce the idea that we're going to be using the backsides of nets to climb past obstacles, and from there you keep iterating on the idea in new and different ways. Eventually you even mix in the ability to manipulate the net placements by using the camera scroll. It's all very clever. The only puzzle I didn't like was the final one, where it's not at all obvious that there's enough room to slip behind the net. I basically just guessed that that might be the case. It could just be the slower-paced nature of the level, but it did feel pretty long. I didn't make it through in one life so I don't know how close I would've been to timing out. In general, I think the level was very well-designed, so good work! -------------------------------- #15, "Brown Block Factory" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 84/100 Comments: Man I love seeing the cool ways people use the block snakes and this level was no exception. It was actually fairly restrained in how it used them, giving the player short bursts of activity where they had to use them for bonuses or wait for a wall to drop. If anything, I think it might have been cool to see the brown blocks used a slight bit more, especially the blocks that would rocket upwards. The puzzle before the midpoint was very clever too and a nice little breather that didn't break the pace of the level badly at all. The autoscroller was quick and kept me on my toes avoiding enemies and rogue brown blocks, though the final setup was a little tricky. I liked the choice of music and dark graphics to add to the whole "strange factory" vibe, though maybe the BG was a little too dark, as I didn't even notice it was there until I looked very closely. Nice touch with the exanimated blocks moving in the walls too. In general the level was a really nice, bite-sized piece of fun level design. Great job! -------------------------------- #16, "PLAINS WATER" Design: 48/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 76/100 Comments: This was a really simple gimmick that I thought I was going to dislike at first from a clarity perspective but you made it very easy to tell what was and wasn't "water" by making sure everything in the level had consistent palettes. It was fun to see all these objects that should be solid just be water because those were the rules the level presented. The level would feel a lot different if it wasn't for the visual gimmick. The level isn't even that complicated overall, but there was fun to be had in seeing what the next blue object would be to swim through and the level didn't disappoint. I had an honest laugh when I hit the Big Boo fight only to realize it's not a fight at all and I just needed to swim through the arena boundaries to the goal. Adding the scrolling layer 2 section was a good way to mix things up in the second half too. Basically, I didn't really have any problems with this level and enjoyed it quite a bit. -------------------------------- #17, "Darkmoon Riverside" Design: 19/60 Creativity: 11/30 Aesthetics: 2/10 Total: 32/100 Comments: This level definitely feels like a first time level. The boat ride was the most creative thing about it, but there wasn't much there beyond avoiding some parachuting enemies. The palettes aren't very good and the tiling is questionable. I'm not really sure what the point of the bonus room was since it was full of extra items like a key and springboard and p-switch but none were necessary? It's just not a very strong level overall but I think if you just spend more time with the game and continue making levels you'll be able to make some good stuff one day. Don't give up! -------------------------------- #18, "Quiz Mario Academy!" Design: 37/60 Creativity: 19/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 68/100 Comments: It's really hard to judge this level because all things considered it's not really that much of a *level* as much as a minigame built in a level format. So I guess I'll try and judge it on the merits of being a quiz. It's a creative idea to use falling and door warps as your way to put the player through different answers. I wasn't sure why you sometimes had throw blocks at the bottom of answers and fake doors for others. I assume the fake doors were just to prevent guessing, then seeing the right answer from where you were. But you probably should've done that for all the answers and not just the first few. I think the questions were good choices, but they weren't really balanced for difficulty or obscureness. Like, one of the early questions was one about the Olympic Games sub-franchise, right next to much more common knowledge questions like who Mario's voice actor is. I think it would've been best to keep all the easy questions at the beginning and then ramp up more and more. It was funny to watch the different reactions from the Mario statues when you got graded poorly. I know it was optional, but it would've been nice to get sent back to the post-graduation questions if you got it wrong without having to end the level and use the 1up checkpoint door. Like I said, it's hard to judge this compared to other traditional levels. It's good in the end and a nice little diversion from all the other levels I've been playing. -------------------------------- #19, "Flying Fish Fort" Design: 34/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 55/100 Comments: This level had promise in its concept, but it doesn't really do anything interesting with the flying fish. The blurps are basically just slower Eeries and the rip van fish are nowhere near as dangerous out of water. Using only these few types of water enemies that function out of water meant that there wasn't really any interest interactions between them and normal land enemies either. So most of the challenge was just spinjumping on a couple moving fish to cross spike gaps. But even that challenge was negated by the addition of feathers. It feels like this level just didn't test its concepts or ideas well enough, and so you end up with a functional but not very inspired level that's only okay at its heart. -------------------------------- #20, "The red ghost house" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 69/100 Comments: This level was pretty good, and went through a number of ghostly elements. Honestly it kind of felt more like a castle with all the layer 2 stuff and the layer 3 smasher! I especially liked the small rising layer 2 segment where you had to find the P-Switch in a room with a diagonal boo laser, but that was just one small portion of the level. Unfortunately, the midpoint felt lopsided and I'm not sure if it was just because there was that bonus path for the dragon coin or because there was the slow autoscrolling layer 3 smasher part. I didn't run out of time or anything, but I know that by the end I was expecting the goal tape around every corner. I also felt like the first half was loaded with powerups but around the time the layer 3 smasher entered the scene they started drying up. Granted there wasn't much danger after the smasher room was done but I was still looking for a powerup when I saw there were more rooms to go through. It sounds like I'm being kind of negative here but honestly I liked the level a fair bit. I think maybe instead of going for a wide variety of ideas like you did, focusing more on a couple of them would've been good. You had a theme going with different types of smashers, but that was only half the level, with the other half being mostly open rooms with ghosts. Just a bit more focus would've made this level a lot stronger. -------------------------------- #21, "HOUSE OF HOLES" Design: 32/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 53/100 Comments: There's a nearly level-breaking problem with your level: If you die past the midpoint, the camera loads too high upon re-entry and you cannot see the lowest rows of platforms. This is a HUGE design oversight and tells me you did not carefully test your level. The only reason it isn't actually level breaking is because you can still walk on the platforms if you know where they are, and the second half isn't very long. I don't understand why there are so many moons laying around when they do literally nothing in a game with infinite lives. I thought that you had a good idea using the bone-throwing Dry Bones in conjunction with the ghost house holes to give the player a projectile to avoid while waiting for the right time to proceed. That was a good interaction. But the use of the ghost house hole doesn't really go much further beyond that, and the level ends up being pretty simple overall. It could have done with some better ambition, maybe a vertical sublevel where you have to use the holes to go downwards, or avoid falling through them while climbing upwards. As it is, it's kind of lacking. -------------------------------- #22, "Greystone Grotto" Design: 54/60 Creativity: 28/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 91/100 Comments: You really used conveyors and Bowser Statues in some creative ways, and the addition of Layer 2 only strengthed the level. I thought it was especially clever how you "scooped" away some statues in the final part of the level, by letting a layer 2 platform come down under a stack of them, and pull them away from the path they were blocking. It was similarly cool how the middle segments of the level were both in the same part of the level, just coming from different ends with different layer 2 commands to dictate how the player move through the sublevel. I'm not really sure how you got the podoboos to jump away as high as they do, because I looked in LM expecting that it was a big level and they were just set really high up for a jump height but that wasn't the case. Then again, they were some kind of unused podoboo so who knows. Anyway, the level was extremely good and I had a blast playing it. You did a great job with it, and the level looked nice even with only minor graphical additions. Very well done. -------------------------------- #23, "BUSTER QUARRY" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 80/100 Comments: This was a really solid line guide level whose entire focus was grinders and line-guided platforms. Things were timed really well for it too. It was a rare example of a level where the delayed powerup at the start was actually not that big of a deal because being small helped avoid grinders anyway. Your saw setups got a little more complex as the level went on and the floor-guided ones were a nice mixup. I was hoping that the Torpedo Teds might get used more, but they were only for that one setup and getting into the bonus room. Would've been nice to see more of them. Speaking of the bonus room, it felt a little out of place since it really didn't have anything to do with the rest of the level, and was also really long and involved for just one extra yoshi coin. Felt a bit strange. I liked your palette choices, and the music had a nice industrial tone to it which fit the whole grinder-quarry vibe. Really nice level! -------------------------------- #24, "Cloudcracker Ruins" Design: 33/60 Creativity: 15/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 54/100 Comments: I have no idea what was wrong with it but the long rope in the second half only functioned on the top half of it. You could not climb the bottom half; it was acting like it was a short rope. I've never seen something like that before. Thankfully, the way that whole rope ripe was designed, I basically didn't have to move mario away from the very top of the rope, which is kind of poor design on its own since the player can just sit there and do nothing to get past it. Additionally in the second half, you really shouldn't have used floor grinders because they go behind Layer 3, meaning that they disappear or appear unfairly as well as make no visual sense. The goomba pillars were also inconsistent, with some of them being tiles you can stand on and others being passthrough. I just stopped using them as platforms because they were unreliable. It feels like the level lacks some final polish and testing in places, especially that long rope. It looked and sounded ok, but there wasn't much to the level's actual design. It was mostly just straightforward platforming across some clouds with a line guide or two, a lot of coins, and lots of powerups in the first half (but only one in the second). Could've been longer and stronger definitely. A better focus on the line guides could've helped. -------------------------------- #25, "THE CAMPING EPISODE" Design: 11/60 Creativity: 8/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 24/100 Comments: There isn't much to this level to be honest. It's nothing but going to the right on very flat ground, jumping on or over enemies until you hit the end. Nothing gets done with the nighttime idea, no enemy interactions are explored, Lakitu isn't even a threat because he's always at a height Mario can bounce on him. There's just nothing really interesting about how this level is designed, sorry to say. Palettes were pretty decent at least. -------------------------------- #26, "Easiest Judgment" Design: 7/60 Creativity: 6/30 Aesthetics: 3/10 Total: 16/100 Comments: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I mean I guess it was an easy judgment because there's not much here and the level feels like it's either joke level or was a last minute submission just to say it got in under the time limit. There's an element of flying and wall running here but neither are expanded on and the level ends fast. Nothing much else to say here. -------------------------------- #27, "HARMONIOUS HEAVEN" Design: 51/60 Creativity: 26/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 85/100 Comments: A really nice level with a bit a variety to it. It was neat how you introduced the bob-ombs being used to clear enemies with optional stuff in the first half before using them again as mandatory elements. Though I wasn't sure if an extended puzzle segment was great for the flow of the level. It didn't turn out to be too bad, but I think I definitely preferred the 1st and 3rd sections of the level better because you were continually moving instead of slowing down to figure out puzzles. At least the puzzles were good. I liked the one where you had to use the bomb to knock away one enemy and then quickly move it into the right position for the explosion. Retries in there were generous too and the transparent clouds were a nice way to add to the puzzles. The final section is strange because of that Yoshi glitch that prevents spinjumps but it wasn't abused to make a really difficult section or anything so it was a pleasant way to wrap up the level. One visual thing: I'm not sure if I liked the Pokey replacements or not. They stuck out a little because they were the only enemy graphic that got changed. I honestly think you could've just kept normal pokey graphics for them. -------------------------------- #28, "Cold and Colder" Design: 33/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 55/100 Comments: Not sure the hurtful frozen blocks in the second half are that great of a gimmick since it's basically just reskinned munchers placed kind of awkwardly. It wasn't very long though so it never got too hard to manage. The first half had some interesting stuff with dino-rhinos and ice physics going on, in that you don't usually see those two elements together. There were some sparks of ideas here but I think you could've taken the time to develop them more. As it stands, the level is functional but nothing special. -------------------------------- #29, "Tangerine Wetlands" ***DISQUALIFIED*** Design: 23/60 Creativity: 14/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 40/100 Comments: You didn't use the baserom and so this level is disqualified. Read the contest rules thoroughly next time. I will still leave comments for you to learn from. There were some ok ideas in here even if it felt like a remix of vanilla Level 104 to some extent. Mixing the water tides with the flying platform was a neat decision, and giving the player a choice between riding them instead of swimming down below was good. It's just too bad that because you didn't use the baserom sprites were disappearing or not spawning at all, meaning that more often than not Mario would get hit by an invisible water mine or koopa. There were just too many mines and koopas and platforms put down all over the place. Space out your sprites and use them carefully, not just to overload the player with stuff to avoid. The first half also went on longer than I think necessary, and it seemed clear that your ideas for platform setups were running low. The last few screens before the midpoint were just full of saws, mines and floating platforms, and the fish generator didn't help the level with its sprite spawning issues. Second half mixed things up by throwing in some chainsaws to intercept the flying platforms and I think this was a good decision. But it also suffered from a lack of good setups towards the end. There were some ok ideas in here, but the sprite spawning issues coupled with some uninspired setups meant that the level wasn't too great over. -------------------------------- #30, "The Frozen Way" Design: 53/60 Creativity: 26/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 87/100 Comments: The gimmick here is entirely visual and I actually liked it a fair bit. What was neat about all the frozen enemies and elements was that it felt like this castle had a bunch of different places that would normally inaccessible, but thanks to the frozen stuff Mario is able to find alternate paths through. The only enemy I didn't like seeing frozen was the bullet bills embedded in walls because I didn't actually trust that they would be solid, which ran counter to the message box you left. And later I saw that they weren't solid when a koopa fell through one. While they were a nice visual touch, they would've been better left behind just because they're the only thing that doesn't match your message. The level's design itself was pretty nice, with lots of up and down to go along with the frozen enemies and climbing up walls. The Yoshi Coins and feathers were rewards for exploration and taking the harder path, which made them worth going for. The Big Boo fight at the end wasn't much special, but it was nice that it kept its frozen theme going with some frozen enemies and elements visible throughout. Maybe it would've been nice to have some of the throw blocks be frozen too, just so it wasn't so easy to run up there and grab any block that was lying about. One nitpick: the skintone palette on the red koopas makes them look a little sickly for some reason. Not sure why you didn't just keep the same skintones across all four koopa palettes. Overall though, really nicely done level! -------------------------------- #31, "haunted as wolves, folly and brey." Design: 56/60 Creativity: 28/30 Aesthetics: 10/10 Total: 94/100 Comments: Well there's a lot to unpack here. I'm basically going to have to trust that all the graphical adjustments here are contest legal because there's no way I'll be able to figure out where all those background galaxy tiles come from. Dang rules. The level looked amazing and sounded pretty good too, though I think the music was a little loud and obnoxious in places. But it did fit the frenetic gameplay and danger-ridden lava planet we're tromping around through. I greatly appreciated the checkered line guides too to make it abundantly clear where the guides would go even against a dark background. I saw some really creative uses of the growing/shrinking pipe here when mixed with layer 2 objects. I did get crushed once by the pipe/layer 2 spike smasher at one point though. I think the pipe interaction clipped Mario into the spike and I was instant killed. Speaking of the smashers, the last one with the noteblocks on it right before the midpoint was a really creative setup for the player to avoid. Difficulty remains high throughout the level, but once I hit the midpoint I actually managed to get through without dying and get all the Yoshi Coins along the way. It was a close call though, especially in the water segment. Actually, the water segment felt a bit out of place to be honest. It was pretty, but it didn't really fit the rest of the things the level was doing other than messing with variable saw speeds. I assume variable speed saws were some clever use of tile 1F0, but it was covered up really well by still making the saw look like it was on the line guides. There are too many interesting and well-designed setups here to go into detail on each one. In general, I think you had a lot of cool designs with some little used sprites and found some fun ways to mix in layer 2, big levels, 1F0 and more to make a really standout level. It was even, dare I say it, really fun despite the difficulty. Excellent work. -------------------------------- #32, "Frozen Grassland" Design: 42/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 69/100 Comments: I liked how you have to go through the level forwards and backwards, but with differences in enemy placement and pathing via those yellow and blue blocks and staircases. Difficulty felt moderately high to me and I can't say I liked the spin-jump required segments in the night level. The first one was ok because it was right at the midpoint, but the second was right at the end of the level and the bullet launcher there refused to cooperate and would always fire as soon as I hopped off it to make my jump. I died a couple times to that bullet messing up my jump and dropping me in the pit instead of on the saw. I'm also not sure the final room was required, since it was a completely different type of platforming over a pit with timed platforms all of a sudden. And while it wasn't long it was just very different from everything you'd done previously. Not sure why you chose to do that. Lastly, the level is probably too long, and time can definitely run short here. The level doesn't do too much fancy, but it looks and sounds good, and the simple gimmick works well enough. Just, maybe make it a little shorter next time. -------------------------------- #33, "Dimension Traveling" Design: 38/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 64/100 Comments: While the vertically flipping room was neat, I didn't really like how you would occasionally place falling spinies right over an exit pipe. Yes, there was a warning in the message box that they start at their starting location when you flip, but they often fall before you can see where they are located. I definitely died to them falling on me a couple times. The dark room felt a bit out of place with the rest of the level too, since the other gimmicks all involved changing the level using pipe transitions. This one just used invisible tiles. It felt like an idea meant for another level more than anything. Not sure how much the "main" section of the level was necessary. I feel like you could've just started with the flipping portion of the level instead of having this transition area to go through. Time got a little low by the end, and that final, unnecessary autoscroller almost timed me out. There's good stuff in this level--the main gimmicks seem pretty good in concept and decently executed. It's just that there are a few small decisions that pile up that lower the level's standing overall. -------------------------------- #34, "go directly to jail" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: im in jail now It's really interesting that you got the Layer 3 cage working, or at least a recreation of it. I think the first half especially could've used with a little bit more leeway to clear jumps and avoid spikes since some of those jumps were really tight. Mixing it with the special scroller was a pretty good idea, and those moving holes were clever and challenging. One thing I didn't like was the no-Mario pass-through blocks that held a couple thwomps in them, since they look solid but simply aren't. The vertical swimming section was also pretty challenging, though it's unfortunate that you had to rely on a random Eerie generator for additional challenge instead of fixed enemy placement, since generators are always unreliable. I also don't think it was a good idea to obscure the mushroom at the midpoint, since I only saw it after looking at the level in LM. Then again, it was easier to dodge the eeries while small so... Interesting level, shorter than I thought it'd be but that's not a complaint. I think the level set out to play with a concept, did it, and then ended before the level got too long. Good work. -------------------------------- #35, "Overless Night" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 67/100 Comments: Midpoint felt a bit lopsided, with the first half being much longer than the second. I suppose it makes up for this fact by making the second half be a slow but relatively short and difficult autoscroller, but the point still stands that the first half felt a bit lengthy. Could also be that I kept dying in the first half since this level was surprisingly tricky at times. One big complaint I have is that the black line guides are nearly impossible to see against the night sky. You really should've made them white or tried using the checkered ones from the castle tileset instead. I also wasn't a fan of the bullet generator in the second half. It wasn't *too* bad, but it still felt like it added an unnecessary layer of things to avoid in a sublevel where there's already a bunch of bullets, rocks, and shells flying around. I think the level was generally well-designed, but some difficulty spikes with hammer bro platforms and the bad visual design for the line guides hurt it a little bit. A little bit more polish might have alleviated some of those issues. In general it's a decent athletic level held back ever so slightly by some design choices. -------------------------------- #36, "Silver Sky" Design: 36/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 60/100 Comments: This level feels like it'd fit into maybe a World 2 of a hack. Which isn't to say it's bad necessarily, but it does feel very simple. The slow autoscrollers didn't help matters when there was generally one threatening enemy on screen at a time. Many hotheads and floating "mines" were completely unthreatening to Mario. In fact, a Ninji ended up being the only thing that damaged me by complete accident. It kind of feels like you were a little more concerned with the aesthetics of these nice, floating, mostly symmetrical buildings than the actual level design of the buildings. Because most buildings ended up having one, maybe two enemies inside them and lots of open space to avoid danger. And again, it's not a bad thing to be an easier level, but there's a lot of missed potential here. From the graphics being used I was expecting to see falling gray platforms, or maybe some of the floating grassy platforms actually be their sprite versions floating in the air, or moving up and down. This level feels like the start of something better, but just didn't go the distance to really take its concept to a good endpoint. -------------------------------- #37, "VANILLA EMULATION" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 80/100 Comments: Maybe I'm just getting better at SMW hacks but I didn't end up needing savestates at all which is great because I was worried for the level's score with a warning like that. As it turns out, this level is a pretty good challenge level, fast-paced and interesting while being relatively fair with its challenges and simply requiring almost pure player skill to successfully navigate. Lots of interesting setups with the throw blocks and spinies, and knowing when to hold them and when to throw them was key to many puzzles. The use of the skull raft in Parts 2 and 3 to make sure the player kept going forward and didn't have time to hesitate actually allowed for a sort of "flow" to emerge as I played, and I found myself just very focused and calm as I died to munchers and lava a good few times. The worst part of the level was the extended "Spin Low" spiny hop at the start of Part 3's raft ride, because I had a lot of trouble figuring out a setup that worked consistently compared to many other parts of the level. Otherwise I found many of the challenged asked of the player to be pretty fun and manageable. The raft rides were definitely the strongest segments. If I have one big nitpick it's that visually the level isn't great to see. Something about the neon just didn't jive with me. I will admit though, that the lack of proper colors and unnecessary details did mean that I was pretty much entirely focused on the level and what I was doing instead of gazing at pretty graphics. So if your intention was to create a visual style where the player is just going to be totally focused on playing the level, that was some subtly good design. -------------------------------- #38, "Rocky Forest" Design: 40/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 63/100 Comments: This level didn't really push any boundaries but it was a competently made forest level. The layer 3 bushes made for a nice, simple visual addition, as did the cave tiles. There were some Dino-Rhinos in the early parts of the level, but their usage dropped off at the midpoint, instead focusing more on the timed lifts for crossing some gaps. Aside from that though, there wasn't really a central focus of the level as much as just a forest theme. Piranha plants helped in that regard, but they were hardly a central idea. The level was good, but it wasn't anything outstanding. A nice, filler sort of level that you'd play as a refreshment between other, more focused levels. Levels like this have their place, but their downside is that they usually aren't too memorable. -------------------------------- #39, "Turrim Caelo" Design: 32/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 3/10 Total: 51/100 Comments: One thing I immediately noticed is that your graphical changes are not good at all. The red "koopa" looks nothing like a koopa, and instead looks like a bob-omb. But it's not and actually the blue ones are bob-ombs. Two completely different enemies given the same graphics but different palettes. And don't get me started on what the Ninjis look like. Doors too--I had no idea that those were doors for a while. Nothing about them suggests they're a door. When changing graphics like this, you have to stop and ask yourself if what you're doing is actually a good change that enhances your level and visual clarity, or if you're making the change for the sake of just making a graphical change. The only change I actually liked was the Rocks being turned into bouncing Munchers. If I seem to be talking at length about graphics here it's because it really was that big of a hindrance to visual clarity. As for the level design itself, it was mostly focused around On/Off line guides and did an okay job at it. The toughest part was the tall "O" shape in the first half where you had to do a strange curved jump to hit the switch and make it back to your rising platform. The second half was better than the first because the line guides and level design seemed to wind around itself a little more, but it was so short that it didn't have a chance to actually get too interesting. And the little "Survive" challenge at the end felt tacked on and was easily exploitable to not take damage. The only reason I did was because I got lazy timing the same jump over and over until the P-Switch finally fell down. The second half especially feels like you ran out of time and had to end the level where you had it. A shame too because it seemed like it was starting to go places right before it abruptly ended. -------------------------------- #40, "BONEY BASIN" Design: 31/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 52/100 Comments: This level was very short, so it was hard to really get invested in it. I liked how you were doing the "going down" type of level pretty well, but it very quickly hit the midpoint and transitioned into a short water level. The only thing really unifying the two halves were the titular bones, but those are purely graphical and could be replaced with any other tiles and maintain the same design. It feels like the level wasn't sure what it wanted to do, so it did a couple different things, but was afraid to commit to any of them for too long and so all the parts were very short. Oh, and your downwards pipe transitions were not placed correctly, a sign that you might not have tested your level very thoroughly. Overall, it just didn't do that much as a level, and began and ended so fast that it's hard to form much of an opinion on it. -------------------------------- #41, "NEVERLAND" Design: 26/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 46/100 Comments: This level had a really strange layout to it and was built without using any normal tileset elements, just logs, vines, pipes and blocks. It was a bit of a puzzle level, a bit of a climbing level, a little bit athletic--but none of these parts felt very strong to me. For whatever reason, it's just really hard to put my finger on what this level was trying to do, and whether or not it did things well. It had the player go up and down, carry items around, dodge munchers, and subvert a Kaizo trap at the end by finding a different P-Switch. That was honestly the most unique element of an otherwise not very memorable level. It lacked focus and exploration of ideas, and the lack of themed tileset graphics meant that it didn't even have a basic level theme identity to fall back on. The level was...just kind of "there". -------------------------------- #42, "Fort Hoversaw" Design: 40/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 68/100 Comments: To say this was a hard level would be an understatement. The various ways of making the player do things while spinjumping were cool, but its main problem comes from how precise it demands the player to be at most times. Spinjumping is already challenging enough on quickly moving obstacles, but making them carefully time low and high bounces while transitioning from one moving object to another without hitting spikes? That's a recipe for a rough time even an experienced SMW player will find tough. But the main thing that stops me from scoring the level like I've scored very difficult levels like this in the past is that each section was very short and given a midpoint. Make it through, and you're rewarded with a checkpoint. There is no mega-endurance run here and the level is much stronger for it because a death doesn't feel that bad. It's only a few seconds back to where you died. I think the first and third sections were the best designed parts of the whole level. The first had a bunch of interesting setups with the saws and kept the player on their toes. The third was the boss fight and while I didn't truly like the bullet generator I concede that it was probably necessary in order to add an extra layer of depth to the fight. The second section was basically one long segment but it felt a lot harsher and less tightly designed. I died at least 20 times before I figured out the timing and positioning to hit the turn block, and then died a bunch more at the end trying to position myself along the podoboos. The level seems good overall but very hard and difficult to judge because of it. I honestly think the thing that saves if the most is the fact it isn't an endurance run. Without the short segments this would have been much more frustrating and scored much lower. So thank you for keeping the level mostly sane in terms of length and checkpointing. -------------------------------- #43, "CLOUDY LAKE" Design: 18/60 Creativity: 11/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 33/100 Comments: So first off, the orange clouds are a bad idea because you made them out of muncher tiles which have a full 16x16 block hitbox, not a sloped hitbox like the graphics of the clouds would suggest. This means it's very easy to take damage from visually nothing at all, which is very bad. The second half also felt really strange because it halfway abandons the swimming concept and shoehorns in some forced damage segments with the orange clouds (which again have block hitboxes and don't match the visuals at all). The first half is loaded with powerups, but the second only has them where needed for the forced damage. The two halves of the level just don't work together at all and bring the whole thing down. Focus on one idea instead of trying to do unrelated ideas in the same level. Or do your best to combine them together. -------------------------------- #44, "Underworld Chapel" Design: 32/60 Creativity: 14/30 Aesthetics: 9/10 Total: 55/100 Comments: This level has a great morose, dangerous aesthetic to it with its sound and graphical design. My big problem with it is that every corridor is so cramped and full of enemies that move in patterns that are made more dangerous with low ceilings. It feels like there's always an enemy coming towards you, leaving the player little time to sit and get their bearing. It's a little overwhelming at times. I can tell that every single Eerie is placed and you never rely on a generator, which is good, but I think you could've afforded to let up slightly with how many avenues are covered by Eeries and other enemies. Additionally, it seems like while there's an abundance of powerups, every single one of them is dangerous to get, either requiring a shell kick or dealing with a high-jumping koopa in close proximity to the ? block. There's three different paths through the level, two of which skip over the midpoint entirely for no good reason. The "correct" path to the midpoint isn't really marked either. It was by complete chance that I stumbled upon it. The design gets better in the glowing lava cave because of its more straightforward platforming but difficulty remains a little higher than necessary at times. All in all, I think this level stumbles by letting its difficulty get the better of it, and its early non-linear design hampers the experience by hiding the midpoint on one of the branching paths with no forewarning to the player. -------------------------------- #45, "Skyway Sanctum" Design: 35/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 59/100 Comments: It's kind of strange that you put the hint about spinjumping on enemies after a part of the level where you had to spinjump on enemies, isn't it? Well I'm glad you offered the blue switch palace because there are parts where I would have been infinitely more frustrated without it, especially the spin jumping section after the midpoint. That looked like it would've been hellish to bounce through. But although you offer the switch blocks I can't help but feel like that's not a very elegant solution to the level's design, because if I'd played without them the experience would've been much different--much harder for little reason. If you can mitigate a significant challenge by placing down a couple solid blocks to stand on, was the challenge well-thought out? The level was also very stingy with powerups. I counted two in the whole level not counting the midway bar. For a level with as high a challenge as this one has, I think that's a little mean. The first half of the level had some ideas with the climbing nets and climbing behind the scenery, plus mixed in some Layer 2 and 1F0 to add challenge to the nets. But after the midpoint the nets and layer 2 basically disappeared in favor of more complicated spinjump plaforming. The Thwimps sliding on 1F0 were an interesting obstacle in the final sections, but it wasn't really enough. By the end, the interesting design had mostly disappeared, with little but simple Thwomp and Grinder setups before the end. A bit of a weak ending to be honest. -------------------------------- #46, "G.U.C Plains" Design: 39/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 64/100 Comments: I replayed the level a second time when it became clear that it basically had two completely different paths to take depending on if you're going for Yoshi Coins. And while I appreciate that you attempted a more exploratory level, you really should've given the player the full 500 seconds instead of 400. For reference, I got all the Yoshi Coins and finished with 33 seconds left. When I skipped those paths and went straight to the goal I got there with about 230 seconds left. This also means that for the most part, there's no reason to go on the non-yoshi coins paths because they're mostly uninteresting and don't visit the cave at all. Seriously, if you skip the yoshi coins this level becomes really short. I feel like the level would've been stronger overall if you'd abandoned the multiple paths idea and just make the main path the yoshi coin path, give the player 500 seconds, and spent your time polishing one path instead of two. As it stands now, this level gains little from having the split paths. All that said, I did enjoy the cave spelunking for Yoshi Coins. I think those sections were pretty strong and they looked nice. It seems like you put the most time and effort into their designs. Only thing I disliked was the falling coin trail in the second cave just doesn't work out well because there's no time to react to the swerving the coins do. It doesn't matter where you land, but the coins can mislead away from the ? block partway down because you can't fall left and right fast enough. -------------------------------- #47, "Deep Soda Sea" Design: 38/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 62/100 Comments: Bold decision of you not to include a midpoint. I suppose it wasn't really necessary because the level wasn't too long or difficult, but it was definitely something I noticed by the end. The level wasn't too bad, keeping difficulty pretty good overall and giving the player enough tools to deal with underwater threats, such as fireballs and throw blocks. I think the main thing is that the level could've stood to have a midpoint and be longer. Maybe transition the level into a second sublevel and change up an idea. Because good as it is right now, when you get right down to it this level isn't all that different from, say, original Soda Lake in execution. It just has a bit prettier graphics and a bit less of a focus on Torpedo Teds. Could've used a bit more ambition, but wasn't too bad. -------------------------------- #48, "Knuck If You Chuck" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: This level had some interesting ways of working Chucks into "athletic" setups with rotating and floating platforms, as well as using Chuck Rocks and footballs as obstacles. Footballs are less good because they're random, but I was able to maintain fireballs throughout the level so they were a mostly null issue. Some jumps felt semi-blind even with coins just because it was tough to see what you'd be falling onto in certain cases. Visually, parts felt kind of lazy because you heavily relied on cement blocks for platforms. I appreciate that they were two-tone if nothing else. Second section looked better but the background felt empty since it was just a gradient and nothing else. It was okay and provided a decent challenge, but I couldn't help but feel like it needed a little more to it. I'm not even saying a longer level because it was already a little long. But like it needed something else inside it to really stand out. Maybe I'm looking for a tighter focus on the platforms or Chucks since you pretty much used all the different variations available to you instead of choosing a few that worked well and exploring their uses. It's still not a bad level though. -------------------------------- #49, "DEEP DELUGE" Design: 36/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 58/100 Comments: There was something kind of strange about searching for keys to enter pipes here because the keys were almost never far enough away to be considered proper "searches". And I'm not sure why you felt the need to add that little sign for the second time it happened to let the player know that a key was needed. I mean, the player has already seen that exact setup once before just to get to the point where the sign shows up, haven't they? They should recognize the setup. The P-Switch also felt similarly unnecessary, since it was just slightly above where you need it, and it was just used to get through two quick walls. The beginning and midpoint sections felt almost entirely unnecessary to be honest. It feels like you should've just started with the haunted underwater section and maybe made each one a little bit longer to compensate. Despite the abundance of boos, bullets and spikes, the level felt kind of unthreatening. I think it's because you can take your time and carefully navigate basically every section as long as you're not carrying an item. -------------------------------- #50, "Crystarp Hollow" Design: 55/60 Creativity: 28/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 91/100 Comments: A very action-puzzle focused level revolving around seldom-used puzzle elements. It's surprising we don't see more Yoshi-centric puzzles in levels, considering how many possible puzzle solutions he can provide. In this case, it was making sure you feed Yoshi under increasingly complicated situations using Tile 1F0, then the second half involved manipulating fireball pathing and bounce using 1F0 and solid tiles. I've never seen puzzles like the fireball ones in the second half before to be quite honest so nice job finding something very creative to work with. Really, the main element here was use of 1F0, and all the additional unique puzzle elements were just ways to garnish new uses for the tile. I think you used the Jumping Bowser statues with 1F0 pretty well as they created a nice medium speed bouncing obstacle to avoid and Diggin' Chuck rocks were used similarly in combination with Yoshi to provide Yoshi-only platforms to climb up. I think I would've liked to see one more feeding Yoshi puzzle in the second half, maybe in combination with fireballs somehow, just to tie both halves together a little more, but what puzzles you did present in both halves were really interesting and fun. If I have any one real complaint with the level is that due to the uniqueness of the puzzle elements, the time limit really does become a factor. I would've just barely had enough time to finish the level in the provided time had I not died, but the solution to the final Yoshi/fireball combination puzzle really had me stumped for a while. It's a level that benefits from knowing some solutions ahead of time, since you can breeze through other segments and give yourself extra time to use later on. If you have to reset some puzzles a couple times on your first playthrough, you're probably not making it to the end in time unless you can figure out what's being asked very quickly. This isn't a huge strike against the level, but it is something to keep in mind. Very well done! -------------------------------- #51, "" Design: /60 Creativity: /30 Aesthetics: /10 Total: Disqualified/100 Comments: The patch doesn't work and from what we discovered you created it wrong by patching from the modified base rom, not a clean rom. Disqualified. -------------------------------- #52, "Metallic Metropolis" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: There's no denying that you've created a very visually interesting level. It's kind of incredible you were able to make the tiles you were. But, I think you spent a little too much time figuring out if you could make the level look like it does, instead of thinking if you *should*. Because for all its impressive tiling my biggest fault with the level is that it is extremely visually overwhelming. There is so much detail crammed into every single inch of this level, be it things moving in the walls, the backgrounds, or the pseudo-backgrounds on Layer 1 that part of the level's challenge, for me, was simply figuring out if a platform was solid or not. And I know you kept solid platforms visually similar using good paletting but the fact remains that there was just so much going on at all times that I still had trouble navigating the level. Once we get past the visuals, I'd argue that the design is good but nothing amazing. The best parts are the both interior sections because of the Layer 2 adding an interesting element to it. The fast piston smashers looked nice and added a good late-level challenge to circumvent, and the falling platforms section over the not-lava worked well too. Honestly, both of these could've been expanded upon greatly instead of having as many outdoors segments as you did. Because for the most part, not too much interesting happened outdoors unless the spark-grinders were involved as they traveled across the exposed powerlines. (They was a graphical replacement I really liked by the way.) It was mostly just koopa obstacles with nothing else going on to make them interesting. A bigger focus on the sparks or smashers throughout the level would've gone a long way. Lastly, I disliked the boss fight for two reasons. First, the smashers are not adequately hinted at and caught me off guard. Yes, there was the flashing ! tile there, but in the past it was used for the "lava" or for smashers that were *visible*. These ones start completely offscreen and give no hint of their existence until they smash down. And seeing as the player is probably going to go for the throw blocks located under where they smash down, there's a good chance the player will get surprise smashed. Second, once you realize the smashers exist, the fight becomes completely easy. That trail of sparks looks cool but you never have to interact with it because it doesn't do anything other than sit in the middle of the room, and there are no other obstacles in the way of fighting the boo. Oh, and I guess a third point would be that I really didn't like the music in the boss fight. It sounded glitchy and mechanical and shrill. All in all, this level is really pretty but seems to sacrifice its level design and some clarity in pursuit of visual grandeur. Don't forget that visuals are just one part of making a good level. -------------------------------- #53, "YOSHI'S ISLAND 2" Design: 27/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 47/100 Comments: Let's address the elephant in the room first. The second half dark room is really badly designed solely because of how dark it is. Seriously, I didn't even realize a light switch existed until I basically smashed my face against my monitor trying to figure out if this was some kind of joke. The darkness obscures everything, from solid ground, to enemies, to projectiles. And once you do get the light cone it really doesn't change that much because lots of things still hide in the darkness, and the level expects you to make leaps for platforms that are barely visible outside the light cone. The darkness gimmick here does absolutely nothing for the level and in fact makes it *much* worse. Outside that room, there's a lot of questionable decisions too. Munchers hanging from leaves, a large number of Pitchin' Chucks and small rope platforms make for unnecessarily precise platforming at times. I didn't understand why you had randomly rotated and flipped ? blocks and other tiles since they functioned the exact same way but looked wrong. The sideways turn blocks will rotate back into their normal position too so it just looks a bit buggy in the end. Overall this level tries to use darkness and projectiles but fails to create a very fair environment for the player to appreciate what little good design does exist in it. -------------------------------- #54, "Caelum Coast" Design: 35/60 Creativity: 14/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 57/100 Comments: I think this level spends too much time trying to look pretty and while failing to offer a compelling reason to be a nonlinear level. There's a lot of up, down, left and right exploration to be found here but it's mostly for Yoshi Coins and in the end mostly just obscures the path forward. The actual path forward turns out to be rather short too and aside from the not very good enemy graphic replacements, only really has one interesting idea in needing to use a springboard to hop over some brambles. But that only happens one time in the whole level and the rest is just very standard Mario level stuff but with a little added verticality and ambiguity towards what's actually solid. Those castle towers are not clear at all that they have holes to jump up in the middle of them and there's nothing really to suggest that the water at the bottom of the level is actually void. The bullet cannons look solid but aren't, except for the cannon itself, the brambles overextend their graphics and don't match their collision like mega castle spikes do. And while we're on the topic of graphics, why are the Goombas replaced with half Eerie half Bony Beetle things? they didn't look stompable at all at first. And why do the birds explode? It feels like you changed their graphics just because you could, didn't you? Oh and it turns out there's an entire part of the level I missed and only found in Lunar Magic because I guess I didn't check all the paths in my two playthroughs of the level because I was too busy trying to figure out what the point of the P-Switch above the midpoint was for (still not sure even after looking in LM to be honest...). This level needed way more focus and expansion of ideas. I'd make it less vertical or put less emphasis on secrets and additional paths that don't actually add to the level design, and tighten things up more. Graphics can't carry a level on their own. -------------------------------- #55, "NIGHT GRASSLAND" Design: 38/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 61/100 Comments: This is a relatively short level that doesn't even have a midpoint in it, but the difficulty is low enough that you don't really need one. It has two paths, and all but one Yoshi Coin is on the upper one, giving you an incentive to try and stay high up there. However, I didn't really find a good way to actually get up to the upper path without a feather, which can only be grabbed later in the level right near the goal. If there is a path up there that doesn't require the feather, it's not obvious. I think the level could've benefitted from more variety and probably a bonus sublevel, but there were the beginnings of ideas here. Using the Banzai Bills in conjunction with the sloped hills and Time Lifts was a good start, but they weren't used more than once each. There was some climbing, some water, some triangle block use, but all were used only once for the most part and so this level feels more like a sampler of level elements than a cohesive level. Still, I think the upper and lower path split was a good idea with proper reward for staying up there, but needed a better way to get up to the upper path and overall some more length and variety. -------------------------------- #56, "MUSHROOM LANGS" Design: 42/60 Creativity: 19/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 68/100 Comments: There was something really charming about this level for whatever reason. I think it's because it was really bright, the music was cheerful and the difficulty was pretty much perfect for a World 1/2 athletic level. The simple mushrooms platforms and cloud background were lovely accents to the level. However, I do think you could've done more with the line guides in the second half. They get used once for a saw setup after the midpoint and then they're gone for the rest of the level. The level would've been stronger had you done just a little bit more with them. I think the bonus room, while evoking the original game's early bonuses, could have stood to be a little more unique or have something else in it visually. Part of me wants to say you should've added more sprites but considering you're definitely aiming for that earlygame difficulty, I think what was used was pretty good. -------------------------------- #57, "TRAUMEREI" Design: 51/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 82/100 Comments: I think it was pretty cool how you used the Thwimps sliding along 1F0 as not just obstacles but also as puzzle elements, then kept building upon them as the level went on. Timing them with turn blocks so they'll hop onto a track instead of the block was pretty clever. In general this level features a number of "hopping enemies", so I was kind of surprised I didn't see any Hopping Bowser statues in the level mixed in with all the stationary ones, thwimps and hopping flames. The Yoshi Coins were good puzzles too, asking the player to think just a little harder before moving on. I was pleasantly surprised by how much leeway there was with the difficulty too. There were reset pipes for parts that could be failed, there wasn't a ton of danger from the enemies being used as puzzle elements, and there was plenty of solid ground to stand on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard which made for a good time while solving puzzles. The palettes were bright but pretty easy on the eyes, and I liked the Thwimp graphic replacement. The only weird graphic was the solid blue flames because I totally didn't expect them to be solid for whatever reason. Overall, very nice level. -------------------------------- #58, "Timber Tower" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: I think it took until the second half of the level, particularly the last quarter of the level for it to really start shining. The hint to run through the upcoming segments as the level slides back and forth was appreciated and those little racing bits were the best part of the level overall. But unfortunately much of this level has a very slow and plodding pace to it, with many powerups and other side paths requiring lots of waiting around for the Layer 2 to finish another cycle. And up until the second half the waiting wasn't particularly interesting either, being mostly composed of simply waiting for the path to open up. But the second half had cool ideas like climbing up vines quickly and avoiding bubble enemies while the layer 2 wall is trying to shove you off the vines, as well as the aforementioned race towards the end. The level even opened up a little with less solid walls and more sliding, pass-through log platforms allowing some freedom of movement and platforming. Had the whole level had these more inspired setups it would've done better overall but as a whole the level is only just good. It was the slow pacing in the beginning that really brought it down for me. Special shoutout to the brief part before the midpoint where you have to jump up platforms with angry wigglers to contend with. It was a surprisingly nice platforming challenge. -------------------------------- #59, "LOOPY LABYRINTH" Design: 46/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: I don't know what it was, but something about the way this level looked, was built, and was populated by relatively few enemies really made it feel like a labyrinth, and I can't really explain why. As it turns out, the level is fairly linear and only gets a bit non-linear if you go for the Yoshi Coins. Perhaps it was the abundance of pipe transitions that gave the feeling of getting lost because you're never really certain where you are after a transition until you recognize some element of the level you've already seen. Or maybe it was the long diversions for most of the Yoshi Coins. Oh, and let me quickly complement your choice of the wall springboards for climbing vertical walls because I think they helped navigate this very vertical level nicely. I'm really torn here because this level was, strictly speaking, very simply designed, but it manages to feel more like a maze than I would've imagined without actually being frustrating or confusing in its layout. I'll go one step further and say that despite my initial uncertainty towards the graphics used here, I think the abstract background, low detail foreground, and very secondary colors palette manages to create an aesthetic that enhances the feeling of getting lost. I don't know how other judges will agree with me on this because it could very well come down to purely personal feelings here, but there was something about this level that I just really liked in spite of its simpler design and sparseness of enemies. The level more than anything really evokes that feeling of being lost without ever actually letting the player be truly lost, all by using a lot of pipes and side paths to give them things to explore without exactly knowing where they are in the "maze". And I think it felt really good because of it. -------------------------------- #60, "Reach ForThe Summit" Design: 41/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 9/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: We sure could do with some Celeste ports on the site, couldn't we? I think that the 1st, 2nd, and last sections of the level were pretty good but the 3rd was very weak and I'll come back to it shortly. Visually, it looked almost perfectly like Celeste does. I'm pretty impressed actually. I think the 2nd section was the strongest one since the moving boxes and ball n' chains made for interesting setups when paired with the hurt blocks. I didn't like the bowser fireball generator though, especially as you climb up the right side of the level. They had a tendency to get in the way of the spin jumps required to progress. I liked the little "water" dream clouds in the 1st part, but wish they'd been used a bit more because otherwise the level didn't really have a special *something* going for it. The last segment did verticality pretty well and even had some good cape usage to scale the summit. The 3rd section though... I understand what part of Celeste you're trying to echo but the dream segment is already one of the weakest parts of the game, purely there to help set up the narrative. Representing it here with some trial and error cape flying with no enemies or meaningful obstacles for a substantial amount of time was just boring in the end. It looked nice but had nothing going for it. I would've loved to see your take on the Mirror Temple or something else instead. I'd be amiss if I didn't mention the fact the timer is obscured for some of the level's segments. I think this is a very bad thing because as it turns out I entered the final part with just over 100 seconds to spare and was surprised by it. Additionally, and critically, the midpoint *did not work*. I know there were shortcuts provided on the overworld but that's not really an excuse for not testing your midpoint. That's a critical flaw. A lot of little problems stack up in this level and the beautiful aesthetics can't hold it up forever. -------------------------------- #61, "Sky Castle" Design: 38/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 61/100 Comments: I think the designs tarted to fall apart a little by the end. It seemed like you were running out of ideas, so you just started adding in all the various castle sprites. Because up to that point you were mostly using Thwomps, Dry Bones, Wooden and Falling Spikes, and line-guided Grinders. But at the end you suddenly threw in ball n' chains, moving blocks, diagonal fireballs, bowser statues, hotheads and a mostly pointless P-Switch all with one use each and in rapid succession. This isn't a huge deal but I found it noticeable because usually the end of the level is where you want to "remix" how you use the elements previously found in a level to create a final challenge. While it wasn't outdoors like the rest of the level, I think the line guided segment was pretty good and a decent challenge before the midpoint. I would've liked to see it used again in the second half somewhere. Overall I think the level needed a little more ambition and you need to make sure you don't lose steam by the end so we don't have situations where you throw a bunch of random stuff in at the last second. -------------------------------- #62, "Otherworldly Monument" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 75/100 Comments: While I liked both halves of the level, they didn't feel very connected in ideas, just visuals. The first half uses diagonal boos and ghost house holes to make some interesting setups, but the second half is an athletic level with an emphasis on avoiding glowing red hurt diamonds and the ghosts are missing entirely. They only return for the big boo fight, which was pretty good as well. I think the 3 keys idea worked out since you had to scale different challenges to get to them and throw at the boo. Returning to the first half, the ghost holes were pretty good, but I found them to be a bit unfair at times. The one that goes back and forth over the hurt diamonds felt glitchy, as I would sometimes take damage from it even in cases where I was lined up with the hole. I also didn't like the section with 4 holes all in fast succession, because while it was a neat idea, you can fall through them too fast to have time to react to the muncher placements on the way down. Just felt a bit unfair is all. Second part's athletic was pretty good, though maybe it didn't need as many hurt diamonds as it had, since some of the setups made the player slow to a crawl and slowly move to avoid damage. Feels opposite to normal athletic setups, where the player is often moving through obstacles very quickly. I just wish it had had more to do with the first half of the level, since they really did feel like two different levels entirely aside from visuals. Oh, and you had 6 Yoshi Coins for some reason. -------------------------------- #63, "Olivine Pass" Design: 37/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 61/100 Comments: I know you were trying to make some big trees using the graphics available to you, but surely there was a better way than having big chucks of cutoff in the upper "branches" of the tree? The level makes ok use of tall levels to accentuate the feeling of being in a giant forest and going up, down and over big trees was neat. I did encounter one or two blind jumps though, watch out for those when building. The cave, on the other hand, felt really weakly designed to me. It has nothing to do with the first half, has an arbitrary P-Switch section, some big slope that went on forever with nothing but sliding koopas, a random banzai bill, and then some oddly precise and tricky vine jumps to get out of the sublevel. It just didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the level at all and I would've greatly preferred it if you stuck with the forest theme and kept expanding it for a second half. -------------------------------- #64, "Forest Blitz" Design: 5/60 Creativity: 2/30 Aesthetics: 0/10 Total: 7/100 Comments: This level is an absolute mess in both the visual and design spaces. There's no midpoint that I could find, unless it was hidden amidst all the visual clutter. There's no indications what is and isn't solid in places. The timer is short no matter what section you're in because the level just keeps going and going. The jumps in the first section are so precise at times, I only succeeded in one place because the wall springboard vertical wraparound glitch happened to me and teleported me onto it instead of into a pit. Enemies and platforms are obscured by priority enabled leaves and berries, pits are covered up, platforms in the pits are indistinguishable from air. The palettes are bad, Lunar Magic throws an error in sublevel AA saying that the graphics file is too large somehow. Constant vine jumps in the second half aren't fun. This level is just plain bad and there's nothing I can suggest to save it other than scrapping it and restarting from scratch. -------------------------------- #65, "Muncher Mountain" ***DISQUALIFIED*** Design: 38/60 Creativity: 18/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 62/100 Comments: (Upon further examination, we discovered this level breaks the 500 second rule by giving the level 501 seconds. Yes, this is basically inconsequential, but you still broke the rules of the contest. As such, we are disqualifying the level.) I kind of wish there was more to this level than just an unending series of projectile avoiding challenges. Because there's some ideas here like wall triangles and pokey munchers, but overall there's just so many baseballs being thrown around that they start making the level more of a slog than it should be. Especially in the second half where there's no powerups unless you find your way to the secret moon. I don't get why you didn't include even a single mushroom at the midpoint, seeing as you had tons of powerups in the first half. I couldn't even go back for a powerup either because of the Pitchin' Chuck setup right before the midpoint. I'm glad the level is as short as it is, because I don't think I could handle a longer level with a pure focus on Pitchin' Chucks. I just really dislike the enemy for how many projectiles it can summon. I just think requiring less precision and waiting around to time a jump would make this level more fun. -------------------------------- #66, "ATHLETIC SYNERGY" Design: 6/60 Creativity: 7/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 17/100 Comments: I don't understand why people submit levels like these to non-Kaizo contests. I can't judge Kaizo and semi-Kaizo on their merits because I don't play those hacks or levels, so all I can do is judge them based on regular design merits. And by those merits, this level is really bad. It's really weird that you touted the fact there was no midpoint in the intro because with a level like this, a midpoint would be greatly beneficial. Not that I think it'd even see any use because this level is so trial-and-error that I broke down and started using savestates in the first secion as soon as I saw that I needed to use that shell to get into the wall and fumble around blindly for the exit, all with the autoscroller chasing me down. The whole level centers around jumping on either fish or mines, and it basically requires perfection to have any chance. If I were playing this legit, I would've spent easily 200 lives trying to finish it. It's just so unfair to the player, requiring levels of foresight and reaction that are simply not possible without having died at each obstacle numerous times. If it weren't so ridiculously hard, or didn't punish with death every time you mess up a jump by pixels, the idea would be neat in places. Alternating jumping fish and mines as different ways to jump through obstacles is cool, and the pipe launch at the end is also an interesting idea. But all of these ideas are just ruined by how hard it is. Also, the level is very visually cluttered, with tons of coins placed all over, making clear angles for jumps more different to figure out than they should be. -------------------------------- #67, "Panic at the Docks" Design: 25/60 Creativity: 12/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 42/100 Comments: This level was pleasant but way too short, and didn't really have any true idea to it. The podoboos in pipes were fun, but they couldn't hold the level together on its own. All the enemies were just koopas or bullet bills, and they weren't really placed in any good ways, just as enemies to fill a level. It needs more substance. Style isn't enough here. -------------------------------- #68, "Koopa Kaboose" Design: 32/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 57/100 Comments: I don't think I've ever seen someone make a train level with vanilla graphics so that was pretty neat. I just wish I could say the same about the level itself. Enemies exist in it, but they feel really sparsely placed in mostly non-threatening ways. The physical level design is also limited by the train car aesthetic, meaning that you can't go very vertical, and have to deal with obstacles in a mostly confined space. Pipe Lakitus and Bowser Statues seemed like good choices here, but for whatever reason they just didn't feel very effective or dangerous. The level felt pretty much like a breeze, with the only reasons I was taking damage being my own fault as I chased Yoshi Coins. Would've liked to see you use enemies and other setups better. -------------------------------- #69, "Altair" Design: 35/60 Creativity: 14/30 Aesthetics: 2/10 Total: 51/100 Comments: This level is overdecorated to a messy extent. There is seriously too much decoration all over the level making the path and its dangers harder to distinguish from one another. Spikes are embedded in walls, Dolphins are used as their sprites and as solid platforms, there are coins all over the place obscuring the empty space that helps determine where Mario can and can't jump, ceilings are hidden by layer priority enabled leaves, line guides are invisible... And on top of all this, the level is very monochromatic on all layers. This makes picking out safety versus danger even harder. Powerups were scarce, especially before the midpoint where the difficulty spiked a little for some reason. I think you used the dolphins well as complements to the flying platforms as far as avoiding spikes goes. The tall horizontal level room was also pretty ok, but there wasn't much challenge in it...actually come to think of it, I don't think there was a single enemy in that room. And looking in LM to confirm it, yeah. Yeah there just aren't any enemies here. No wonder it felt more than a little barren. A few rotating platforms in there aren't really enough to save the room. Overall, the biggest complaint here is just that the level is far too visually cluttered for its own good, but it also feels like the level is kind of incomplete by the end with that enemy-less room. -------------------------------- #70, "MURAMUR" Design: 46/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: This level has some nice little challenge to it. I liked how you created setups with the diagonal podoboos that make them move relatively reliably in that diamond pattern. They're good obstacles like that. Mixing the timed lifts with castle enemies is something I don't think I've seen much of, and having to use them while avoiding thwomps and hotheads in the second half was pretty cool. I think you could've used a second powerup in the second half, because as far as I can tell there's only the one at the midpoint and the second half is the tougher part. I beat the level by having both hits from before the midpoint, but had I died and had to restart I probably would've had a harder time navigating some of the setups. Overall, a nice manageable challenge that I almost wish was ever so slightly longer, just because I was enjoying myself. -------------------------------- #71, "LIME GREEN LANE" Design: 22/60 Creativity: 12/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 40/100 Comments: This is pandering right? This color scheme...it's meant to make me happy, isn't it? :V This level has one critical flaw in its sprite usage and it's that the Monty Moles are really no threat because you placed this level on a submap and not the main overworld. This means that they hop out of their holes slowly. Basically every single Monty Mole can be avoided before they even hop out of their holes, meaning that there's little threat throughout the level. And since you used them as the main enemy in large sections of level, the level felt really empty. Like, the moles are there and visible but they haven't become obstacles yet and probably won't if the player is just barreling through the level. That one flaw really hurts this level's design since there isn't much else going for it. A mole-heavy level where they pop out almost immediately would make for an engaging time. But a mole-heavy level like this where they take too long to come out meant that there wasn't much to do other than make it to the exit pretty quickly. That said even without the moles issue, this level doesn't offer too much. It's very straightforward and doesn't offer any side paths or other ideas to the player. It's just a voyage to the goal post with scattered enemies along the way. And that wouldn't have to be a problem but there isn't much platforming to do either. There's no pits to fall in, no higher paths, nothing to climb, or swim or anything really other than go to the right on wide chunks of land with unthreatening enemies. -------------------------------- #72, "The Leaving Skies" *DISQUALIFIED* Design: /60 Creativity: /30 Aesthetics: /10 Total: DSQ/100 Comments: The patch loads and I get a title screen, but the game freezes after starting a new file. Out of curiosity, I looked in LM and it turns out whatever music track you selected for the intro level was crashing the game. I can get through to the overworld if I change it back to vanilla, but I can't rightly score the level if I have to change the rom myself just to access it. This is something that should have been caught immediately if you'd tested your level and patch properly before submitting. -------------------------------- #73, "Vanilla Valley" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 76/100 Comments: Man, why'd you have to add a bullet generator to the second half. I can tell all the rest of the level's design was carefully considered and placed, but that bullet launcher just adds a random element to the design that messes with timings and jumps and overall just hurts the experience. They just kept randomly firing in all the places I was trying to go. It's a real shame too, because I think this level is really pleasant otherwise. Enemies and platforms are placed in tricky but manageable ways, and the ice physics are somehow not that annoying or hard to deal with. Bullet Bill launchers and hopping chainsaws make good complements to the moving floating platforms, as did the few Diggin' Chucks that were hanging around the place. And I gotta say I thought the patches of snow on the platforms was a really cute touch. In general the level looked really nice and played great, but that final inclusion of the bullet bill generator really hurt the end of the level's design. -------------------------------- #74, "HIDE AND SEEK ITEMS" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: The 500-second time limit hurts this level a lot, but I think it's because you tried to stuff too many ideas and too many puzzle setups into one level. I appreciate the attempt because I really liked puzzling out each level, but I did die of time out during the ghost house segment nowhere close to the end of the level. Maybe I should've taken a more hurried pace but I had no way of knowing the level would be as long as it was, plus the puzzles do take time to understand and solve as a first-time player of the level. I think you should've accounted for the fact you know all the solutions firsthand better when deciding on the level's length. I thought searching for items to get through rooms was a fun idea, and I liked how you used the fact items will hide behind layer priority to obscure their locations. Searching through shells, behind clouds, in water, in bounce blocks--there were lots of fun ways you hid things. It was a pretty fun experience. One last thing: While I appreciate the messages you left, I couldn't help but feel like there were possibly an unnecessary amount of them constantly popping up and slightly breaking the level's flow. -------------------------------- #75, "THE GROUND IS GOLD" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 73/100 Comments: I liked both main ideas this level had but I feel like they don't really belong in the same level. They are very far removed from one another and don't really mix at all. Sliding down slopes in Mario is always fun, and it was neat to see you use the fact you can jump really far using them as a design element. Then dropping the bowser statue down through the level as it fires at you was also neat, though messing up the puzzle at any point was a heavy penalty to the player since they had to restart the whole section over, not just the part they messed up. I know that it had to be done that way, but it's still a pain to have to replay all your progress. Thankfully, that part was short. If the two halves had more to do with each other in terms of design and not just visuals, then this level would've been stronger. But as it is now it feels like two separate level ideas smashed together. They're both good ideas, but they don't mix well. -------------------------------- #76, "Dents d'Ouranus" Design: 26/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 48/100 Comments: I had a lot of trouble with this level and it's surprisingly short, as though you ran out of time and just had to end it there. There's a lot of nearly-full extension jumps required of the player with little time to react to the setups since falling platforms don't stay still long enough for you to observe the parakoopa flight paths. As such, much of this level felt like trial and error, the kind of level you only beat by dying through it a bunch of times, learning each setup and jump by dying to it once. I also found the Yoshi Coins to be completely not worth getting, since the first one had a tendency to trap Mario on the little chunk of land near it and not spawn the parakoopa to get back to safety, and the third one didn't seem possible to survive once you got it. A few coin trails seemed a bit unreliable, and overall this level just felt like it lacked some general polish when I saw a hothead spinning in the air, an easy fix for sure had you done some testing and polish. -------------------------------- #77, "VLDC11 - getthefish" Design: 42/60 Creativity: 17/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 64/100 Comments: Wow the tonal shift between the two halves nearly gave me whiplash. The second half is definitely the star of the level even if I did enjoy the simple variety platforming in the first half. The Layer 2 water with a special scroller just made for an unpredictable, but enjoyable ride. It was pretty tricky to predict how you needed to avoid the Thwomps. I wish the first half had more to do with the second instead of being a simple platforming section without a big central theme to it. At least it introduced the floating water right before the second half. Last note, I liked the little visual touches in the first half with the pipes being suspended from the ceiling. It was a cute addition. -------------------------------- #78, "Vanilla Plains" Design: 31/60 Creativity: 13/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 49/100 Comments: I get the feeling this is your first level. If so, this was pretty passable! Let me comment on specifics so you can learn from this. So the first thing I noticed was that there was a blind jump on Screen 04. The camera can't show down that far, so the player just has to jump and hope they'll land safely. On Screen 05, the triangle wallrun is fun, but it doesn't really serve a purpose since all you do is use it to go up a wall and immediately back down. The platform jumping on Screens 0A to 0C are nice, but those jumps are *really* long and Mario barely clears them. It's a big jump in difficulty compared to other parts of the level. I liked that you used a lot of Banzai Bills as a regular level enemy because it kept them from feeling like a random addition. At the same time, I think there were a lot of ideas explored here between the vine climbing, platform hopping, Banzai Bill use and other things. In the future, try choosing one or two elements and designing your level with them in mind. Make a bunch of different ways those ideas can interact and see what you can make. Keep it up! -------------------------------- #79, "Flames of Muspell" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 27/30 Aesthetics: 9/10 Total: 85/100 Comments: The combination of skull raft and Lakitu was a really good idea. However, after dying well over a dozen times just in the first half I did start getting tired of the Lakitu. For one, it's really hard to see the flames he's throwing against the background. He's also just tough to deal with because those flames can end up all over the place, and his hitbox likes to get in the way of jumps that take Mario closer to the top of the screen. But I think the level needs him because without Lakitu the raft rides would be much easier, almost inconsequential. In the second half, adding Layer 2 to the mix instead of Lakitu was a much better idea, but had the effect of making the level much more frantic and difficult. It still felt fair because powerups were generous and the Layer 2 lava pillars were not actually instant-kills. However, I think adding the fireball generator was a big mistake and here's why: The second half raft ride is very tightly designed so that the player will be approaching obstacles at specific times, with specific windows to safely jump through things. It's very learnable. But the fireball generator messes up this tight design by adding random fireballs to the mix. Sometimes they just get in the way of your required jump and there's nothing you can do to prevent taking damage. Other times they're up at the top of the screen where nothing is going on. It leads to more frustration and unintended damage than this level needs because without it the second half would be *really* good despite the high difficulty. Generators have to be used very carefully, and I think this level is hurt by its inclusion. Got to quickly shout out how nice this level looked Using the castle rock wall as veins of lava was a genuis idea, and the temple at the end looked fantastic with all the castle blocks and layer 3 pillars in the background. The palette communicated very well how boiling hot this level is supposed to be, and all the fiery graphical replacements were good too (with the exception of the Lakitu one I mentioned above). One thing I did notice in the second half was that the Blarggs went behind the layer 3 background, which did lead to a couple cheap hits. Watch out for things like that. -------------------------------- #80, "bridge i guess" Design: 50/60 Creativity: 25/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 83/100 Comments: I died at the end, Clappin' Chuck's rope wasn't a rope :( I think you did a real nice job of using the brown swinging platforms in combination with Rock placements and other platforms to make a nice athletic level. The brown platforms especially are a rarely used element in levels so it was nice seeing you figure out ways to use them. Placing them on the bottom of the visible level is an interesting tactic, since if you stay on them too long you'll get swing off into the pit. All variety of platforms were also used pretty well in the second half, where the tall level came into play. Setups started getting more complex, with the gray flying platforms acting both as obstacles and platforms to stand on. I do think the second half could've been a little longer, and felt kind of short and oddly a bit easier compared to the first half. Visually, this level makes some simple and pleasant alterations to graphics. I especially liked the more decorated arch ledges with the ghost house bg tiles as bricks. Just a very fun and pleasant level to play overall. Good job. -------------------------------- #81, "dont climb mountain" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 80/100 Comments: Nice Celeste reference at the start. This level has some really interesting, winding terrain. I don't really know how to describe it, but I somehow didn't mind the numerous enclosed spaces, holes with munchers and cramped piranhas strewn through the level. I think I just kind of entered into a state of Flow while playing, and just had a good time. Interesting choice to use Piranha varieties exclusively in the first half, and mix them in with sprite athletic elements like wall springboards and falling gray platforms. The first half was lengthy and tightly designed, but the second half was a little more interesting in some ways because of the tall level being used. Lots of wall triangle use here made for some good upwards movement and platforming. Vertical levels can be really hard to do right, but I think you managed to pull it off here. -------------------------------- #82, "BLUE DABADI DABADU" Design: 41/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 67/100 Comments: Ok first off normally music doesn't affect scoring too much but this track was just so loud that I could barely hear myself think while playing. I know you probably didn't make the track, but maybe you could've used something that was a more normal volume? This level is a bit weird in that I found the first half to be way harder than the second half. The fast Layer 2 Smasher is something that usually only shows up as a final challenge, but here it was out in full force with some pretty tight setups right before the midpoint. And this level's both fairly long and kind of slow paced in the beginning, so it wasn't that fun or quick to replay up to those hard parts. There was a lot of low clearance jumps required too. I did like how Spinies weren't affected by Layer 2, which made them into decent obstacles when paired with the Layer 2 smasher pipes. Honestly, with all the level's focus on pipes I was surprised you didn't use the Growing/Shrinking pipe sprite at all. It could have been a real creative addition to the level, one that I don't think I've ever seen with Layer 2 before. As it stood, I think the Layer 2 in combination with spinies and Lakitus worked pretty well for the level, especially in the second half where the level design was a bit less precise and let the player breathe despite all the smashers. -------------------------------- #83, "Bouncy Ruins" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 27/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 86/100 Comments: This level really has some length to it, doesn't it? 16h screens until the midpoint is quite the endurance challenge. I think I preferred the first half a little more to the second because it was almost exclusively about how grinders and wall springboards could interact with each other and the terrain, with nearly no other sprites to mess with that. The second half added thwomps and thwimps to the mix which felt like it took away from the first half's tightness of design in some cases, but I can imagine there are only so many different ways you can arrange the wall springboard and grinders before you start wanting to add new stuff into the mix. Plus, it did mean that the second half was freshened up with new content. Really, I was just impressed with how much mileage you got out of those two sprites in the first half. Most impressive was how you used the springboards. Since you can't start a spinjump off of them, you created situations where you actually have to respect the movement of the grinders and thwomps you paired them with. And they also negate spinjumps too, which meant you could always anticipate how a player will enter into a setup. I just think they were used extremely well both to add to the "bouncy" part of the level's name and to enhance the setups you designed. Difficulty was high throughout the level, which did hurt a bit when paired with the level's length. Dying late in each section meant redoing minutes of progress each time. I think there also could've been another powerup placed in the second half somewhere, since that part was harder than the first half. -------------------------------- #84, "CANYON OF BOMBS" Design: 41/60 Creativity: 20/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 67/100 Comments: Well, the midpoint was very lopsided I'll say that much. I think it would've been much better placed at the beginning of the big vertical climb or right before it. I liked how winding the level got by the end. It was interesting to try and figure out how you were moving through the level when you're going up and down and all over the sublevel in an attempt to reach the end. The vertical climb was interesting because there were a number of different short climbing setups for the player to get through, some with normal jumps, some with wall springboards, some with bullets as obstacles. By the end though, I felt like the enemy density got a little too high, bordering on spammy. The big layer priority enabled hills didn't help here either, because they liked to hide bombs in bubbles. I also encountered a bug right at the end of the level where the vine didn't spawn because there were too many enemies nearby. You probably should've used sprite memory setting 08 instead of 04 to try and prevent this. Overall this level does some interesting things, mostly in terms of the physical level layout. Parachuting enemies always make for interesting obstacles with their unique movement pattern as do bubbles. A better midpoint position and fewer enemies at the end would've helped the level a lot more. -------------------------------- #85, "*Industrial Desert*" Design: 16/60 Creativity: 12/30 Aesthetics: 1/10 Total: 29/100 Comments: You didn't use the right level settings and all your upside down slopes don't act correctly. It's possible to get stuck inside them and have to wait out the timer, which is a huge problem. I also think this level looks very ugly overall, with all the graphical changes being rather unclear about what's solid and what isn't. Then the darkness gimmick indoors happened and it really wasn't much better visually. There's just a ton of weird graphical choices here and it just looks very messy. There also seemed to be something wrong with the music, because I know I've heard that track before but this version sounded a bit glitchy, as if the instruments were wrong. Ending music was also glitchy. The level's design is unremarkable overall. It's fairly short, and doesn't really do much other than have some upper and lower paths you can go through. The on/off lights gimmick is the closest this level gets to a proper design idea, but it's not implemented very well because it makes the level pitch black instead of just hard to see. So you have to rush to get to the next On/Off switch because otherwise you won't be able to see your path in the dark. And to bring up the graphics again, they really affect the level's design by making it very unclear what you can stand on or walk through at multiple points. (Also because I looked at the level in Lunar Magic, you do know you can resize objects right? There's no need to place nearly 5000 objects tile by tile when you can stretch things.) -------------------------------- #86, "Sunny Shoreline" Design: 34/60 Creativity: 16/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 55/100 Comments: This level is pleasant, but it feels very empty. The Layer 3 rise/fall tide is nice when combined with the Jumping Cheep Cheeps like you did, but aside from that, the water level didn't really feel like it had much consequence in the level. There wasn't really any point where the water level mattered to the level's design, so it mostly felt like decoration. There also wasn't any real swimming to be done in the level, so I barely had to interact with the water at all. I would've liked to see you use the water level more to the level's advantage, maybe by making the player swim in it for a period or time, or by adding more fish or water hazards to the mix. Because cheep cheeps aside, the enemies that were on land were just basic koopas and goombas who felt like they were placed just to put enemies down, and not because they were carefully positioned. The level's also quite short, which isn't a bad thing, but when it's also as easy as it was the level ends up being over in a flash. A little more length, a stronger central idea, a better use of layer 3 tides, and this level could've done much better. -------------------------------- #87, "Black And White" Design: 11/60 Creativity: 8/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 23/100 Comments: There isn't much to this level aside from the black and white aesthetic gimmick. Even then, you still missed a few colors like the browns in the bushes and the status bar. The level is extremely short, with barely any ideas explored before it ends. The midpoint is only 4 screens away from the goal! There's honestly very little to talk about here because the level is so short and basic. Make the level a bit longer, figure out some kind of neat idea you want to base your level around that isn't just an aesthetic idea, and then see what you can make with that idea. If this is your first level ever, don't get discouraged. Keep it up, keep trying, and work to make something great. -------------------------------- #88, "Militarized Iceberg" Design: 51/60 Creativity: 30/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 88/100 Comments: I think this is a brilliant level that's marred by overambition to the point that the cracks start showing by the end. First off, I don't think you needed any of the stuff after the vertical section. I think had you cut the level there instead of introducing a second midpoint and final cave section, it would've been a wonderful level and ended on a high, strong note. See, the beginning outside introduces the idea that the level is going to be built around sliding while ducking, and starts simply by adding noteblocks, bouncing, and various Bob-ombs as intercepting enemies to the mix. Then the first cave section adds some Growing/Shrinking pipes and moving Layer 2 to the mix. Then the vertical outdoors section adds, well, verticality and wall triangle runs, and holding momentum while you go through it all. This section, as an aside, was definitely my favorite because of the state of "flow" I entered into while playing it. It just felt good to get through, fast and smooth and clever. But then the final cave section shows up and things start to get iffy. For one, this level is already pretty long by the time it shows up, even accounting for the extra midpoint. But it also doesn't really introduce any truly new concepts to the level and instead just remixes older ones but in harder, slightly more frustrating setups. The Layer 2 that had been used previously as extremely well-timed moving platforms to keep moving forward becomes the fastest smasher around. Suddenly, you have to time things very well or risk missing the jump or even being shoved off the platforms by the smashers. I got past the setup on screens 0D and 0E once, only to die on the final screen of the cave, and then spent the next 15+ lives trying to wedge myself into the hole you gotta fit into to proceed. The Chuck on screen 07 was an endless source of annoyance too, constantly managing to wedge himself in the tunnel that you need to proceed down. Suddenly, the level's timings have gotten much stricter than what came before. Powerups were plentiful, but they didn't do much when I was falling off the bottom more often than not. And I didn't think the final smasher on the exit pipe was necessary at all, just mean-spirited. Yes, I died to it... Speaking of powerups, the one big flaw with this level is that if you're Small Mario, you basically don't have to participate in the level idea anymore. You can pretty much just skip the sliding setups entirely as long as you can safely get Mario into the sliding tunnel. That said, all the setups do expect that you're sliding through them as far as timing all the elements goes, so I did do my best to keep sliding even small. You can't get the Yoshi Coins if you aren't big, but otherwise there's no real penalty for not sliding like the level expects. I liked the first 2/3 of this level for being so creative, imaginative and fun to play. I just wish I could've all the parts of the level and not come off it with a sour note. It was an ambitious level that unfortunately didn't know when to quit and suffered a little for it. But don't let that stop you because I seriously loved the ideas the level presented. Just work on perfecting the execution, and don't be afraid to cut parts of the level that might not be truly needed. -------------------------------- #89, "Temple of Fish Gods" Design: 46/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 76/100 Comments: I think the first half of the level was a bit better designed if only because it felt a bit more manageable than the second half. It was cool to see the Rip Van Fish get used out of water, since they act a little differently that way. Using them to spinjump across spikes looked dangerous at first, but was actually easier than doing so with a grinder since they moved slower. I can tell you took the time to carefully align and time the line guides in the second half, but I felt like they were a little too weirdly placed at times. For one, I could never get past the porcupuffer without taking a hit because he was always positioned exactly in the middle of the platform I needed to jump on to proceed. And messing up a jump meant falling in the pit. By contrast, the first half felt more fair because you would often get penalized for messing something up by just landing on spikes, letting you continue on and try again next time. Since it wasn't on line guides, it also meant you could just take your time and I enjoyed that section a fair bit. Lastly, I think the final few screens of the second half were unnecesary, since they didn't really add anything new after the line guides were done. I'd have just cut the screens and ended it after the line guides finished so you weren't left with this hanging bit of level design that looks like it wanted to be part of the first half but couldn't be otherwise it'd make that part too long. -------------------------------- #90, "Linear Farms" Design: 35/60 Creativity: 14/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 54/100 Comments: I can tell this level had a ton of effort put into its graphics, but it comes at the expense of the level itself being pretty boring. There's an alternate path in the first half, but it doesn't do much either, just allowing the player to get a few 1-ups. It doesn't really explore any different ideas than the main paths, which mostly revolve around a few bubble bob-ombs and pipe lakitus. Pokeys show up on occasion, and I liked how you used them on the 1F0 beams as obstacles. But the biggest idea the level had was in the second half when you did the layer 2 sinking section. After that though, it was back to the pipe lakitus and bobombs and not much else to say about the level before it ended. I think you focused too heavily on making the level look unique, and not enough on finding a good idea. Large pieces of the level are populated with very few enemies, and the ones that are there aren't usually very threatening by themselves: Pokeys are slow, bubble bob-ombs aren't dangerous until they pop and have been placed really high up so you don't even have to worry about hitting them most of the time. The Jumpin' Piranhas weren't even the fire-spitting ones, making them even easier to deal with. Pipe lakitus can get annoying if you sit around long enough for them to throw a Spiny, but with as few enemies as there are in the level there's almost no instance where you can't stomp the lakitu before he throws a Spiny. You had some grinders in the first half but they disappeared immediately, and you were trying to use 1F0 as beams for enemies to move along but that didn't get used much. Lastly, the level's palettes were so monochromatic and the foreground was such a dark combination of dark red and dark gray that it was hard to tell what was something I could stand on or not at a quick glance. Better color balancing would've gone a long way to not making the foreground look messy and monochrome. I did like your Layer 2 and 3 background though. They were really nice. -------------------------------- #91, "SUPER MARIO BROS?" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 19/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 67/100 Comments: I appreciated the subversion here, it was pretty neat to just fall through the ground into some weird underworld reality. The level design down there was very strange, but thankfully you had Mega Moles to help out. As far as Mega Mole riding gimmicks goes, these rides were pretty good, requiring you to be active both on and off the mole, clearing paths and keeping up with him as he traveled. The timed lifts were used well to move Mario between segments and climb over obstacles. I liked the falling Goomba section as well, just because it was hinted at with coins. I suppose if I had some complaints to level against the level, it's that it doesn't always look the best at times. The tile transitions and spinning munchers are ok, but could probably look better with a bit of effort. Then again the spinning munchers are there to lend a "weird" vibe to the level so I probably wouldn't actually get rid of them. The midpoint was also a bit early for my liking. I think it should've been placed a couple screens later. Weird take on a subversion level, but fun enough. -------------------------------- #92, "Petroleum Pipeland" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 26/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 81/100 Comments: I wanted to like this level more than I did by the end, mostly because it has some great ideas but goes a little too hard on the execution and started tiring me out. It was still pretty good overall though. Using Timed Lifts and 1F0 is a fun way to extend their usefulness, plus you can use it to shift the lift downwards as they fall. It felt really good to bounce through obstacles in the first half, deftly avoiding danger and making it to the next safe spot. It changed a bit around Screen 12 towards the much more difficult. Jumps started becoming kind of awkward, either needing really small hops to avoid munchers, or big long ones to clear lava gaps. The lack of powerups started to show as well, as by the end of the level I was really hurting for one. I understand that your challenge to the player is to get there with a mushroom to get the final Yoshi Coin, but that should just be an optional challenge and not affect just getting through the level so much. An extra hit would've been really appreciated. I also felt like the Yoshi jumps at the end were pretty finicky. I had a real hard time getting him to be thrown through the red ? blocks so I could land on him once again. The level is really creative and the setups with timed lifts and 1F0 are great, but watch out you don't go overboard with difficult setups especially at the end of a lengthy second half. -------------------------------- #93, "PURPLE WAVES" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 78/100 Comments: The core idea in this level is really interesting but it's SO easy to mess up and die to. I actually found the second half easier than the first for some reason. I figured going down was going to be much tougher but it turned out to be the opposite. Alright so it's a neat idea having to manipulate the camera to not rise up and move the water level with it. It's just really hard to work with on occasion, and there's pretty much just one right path through the level despite what it might look like. Thankfully the level isn't *that* long, but the first half is long enough that dying late in it does feel like a pain especially when it's so easy to die because you moved the camera and water just a pixel or two too high up. The second half was neat because you had to figure out what objects would allow you to shift down the water level, but I felt like it was too short compared to the first half, and didn't feature nearly as many ideas. I question making such a big part of that half about the floating brown platforms that turned into express elevators downwards when using them. I was expecting a wider variety of ways I'd have to lower the water, but they were the majority of that segment. I've never taken flight off moving platforms though, so that was pretty cool to see. And I liked the final puzzle in that you both had to figure out how to get up to the key and back down. If it hadn't been for the coin hints I think it would've been much worse, so thanks for adding those. Overall a level with an interesting idea and execution, flawed a bit by how deadly the idea is in the first place. Nice work. -------------------------------- #94, "PHANTASMAGORIA" Design: 17/60 Creativity: 8/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 29/100 Comments: It's a very basic level, not much to say about it honestly. There's some ideas with boos and boo blocks, but for the most part it's just straight left-to-right design with an occasional obstacle like vine climbing or 1F0 hopping. The whole second half of the level is just a big flight segment through a cloud of boos and doesn't feel very fair since they're just placed randomly. You shouldn't use the bottom row of tiles since they aren't visible to the player, and you should watch out for blind jumps in the second half. There just isn't much to say here. Wish you'd included a background that wasn't just a starfield so it could be a bit more visually interesting. -------------------------------- #95, "Get the mushroom!" Design: 43/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: It feels like you just totally ran out of ideas or time at the very end, because the midpoint is very late into the level and there's only two puzzles left to solve after it. I think there were some interesting ways to make the player chase down a mushroom and keep it until the right time shown off in the level. But there were some weak parts too. The puzzle before the midpoint wasn't really much of a puzzle since you just needed to throw a shell at a couple blocks. I also wish you'd indictated that you needed to keep the shell at the end of the first segment. The level should've been longer with a couple more puzzles before the end. As it is now, I'm left wanting a better conclusion. -------------------------------- #96, "Technical Loopholes" Design: 55/60 Creativity: 30/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 92/100 Comments: Probably some of the most creative uses for Chucks I've seen in a long time. Their variety of movement patterns, interactions with terrain and large size mixed with non-interactive layer 2 and the screen loop technique made great obstacles you could take the time to learn the patterns for and get past safely. But the screen loop itself is the star of the show and the Chucks are just one great element being used in it. I greatly appreciated that every place where something was going to fall from the sky was marked with an indicator. You could see something was coming and plan for it. And you used a great variety of things falling from the sky all with different ways of moving and interacting with the water bubbles or line guides or 1F0. Chucks, Thwimps, Rocks, line guided platforms, paragoombas, it was all there and each of them had a different way of enriching the level. Was it a tough level? Absolutely. The second half especially started feeling like an endurance run with the two survive sections and three platforming sections. A 1up-checkpoint wouldn't have gone amiss after the first survival segment to be honest. There are places it also could've probably let up a little, but there was something about the high difficulty that would probably make the level feel a bit less special if it wasn't there. Some things could have been better. In the second half there's a part where you have to wait quite a while for a line guide platform to return but there's no real indication it's coming back other than a guide zigzagging below you. Some of guided platform jumps were real tough too, especially the one at the very end of the first half, and the ones right before the goal. But overall this level was super fun to play through and was very creative. I really enjoyed playing it. -------------------------------- #97, "Have Sweet Dreams" Design: 49/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 79/100 Comments: This level is pretty, but I noticed a lack in consistency on what platforms were solid and which were passthrough. Weirdly, the foreground elements with darker outlines were not solid and the ones with pastel outlines were, running counter to almost everything you'd expect out of a platform game. This decision messed with me a few times, resulting in unnecessary damage. I also wish you'd made line guide visible, since that really helps when judging guided sprite movement. Aside from the visual complaints though, I think the level was fairly solid. The most unique segment was the final one with the autoscroller. I didn't expect line guided stuff to show up because I couldn't see the guides, so it was interesting to have to dodge all sorts of enemies and ghosts while climbing those three levels of vine. I was actually surprised that I was enjoying the vine climbing as much as I did, because usually it's pretty slow and uneventful, and doesn't make for very interesting gameplay. But I was proven wrong for the most part and this level was a nice time. Good job. -------------------------------- #98, "SWEET DREAMS" Design: 48/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 10/10 Total: 82/100 Comments: Hoo boy, I'm not really sure how to judge this level. Is it even a level? It feels more like artistic expression that just happens to use SMW as a medium. As an experience, it was unsettling and atmospheric in part to the dreamlike palette and music in a way that I can't recall ever seeing done in an SMW level. I guess I'll try to write some words on the design itself, though there aren't many I *can* write. The level is very short and doesn't actually have much to it. There's pretty much just one fish that swims by anywhere near Mario's path through it. There's a bit of swimming and Yoshi Coin collecting, but that alone doesn't make a strong traditionally-styled level. It's very short overall, overstuffed with powerups, provides no challenge and ends very quickly. It's not really a great "level" on the surface, but... You know, it's funny. I think this level would be stronger if you completely stripped out all the coins and powerups and enemies and just left the level design, the text, the music and everything else that's trying to tell a story. Basically, make the level into a non-level and focus on the atmosphere and storytelling. Dive fully into how you can use the engine to tell a story like this. It'll probably look insane of me to rate this as high as I'm going to in a contest that's ostensibly about "level design" but I suppose level design doesn't always have to be physical, traditional Mario design elements. It can be just a vehicle to tell a story sometimes and I think that's what was so strong about this level. It feels like a deeply personal level, like something we're not meant to be reading, or something that the author has worked up the courage to write about. I don't know. This level just hit me in a way that I didn't expect any level to when I set out to play stuff today. It actually made me sad. I think it deserves some recognition for that alone. And to the author: I hope you're doing okay, pal. -------------------------------- #99, "Mountan Castle" Design: 5/60 Creativity: 27/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 36/100 (Did Not Finish) Comments: I give up, I just can't finish this level. I've spent over an hour trying to get through it using savestates even because the difficulty is so unbearably brutal, and I cannot figure out what is asked of me to get in the pipe after carrying the baby Yoshi. And looking ahead I have *another* segment still to do before the end? No, I give up. I can't do this any longer. The level is creative like crazy, using a ton of glitches in an all-out gltich celebration to make its design. But this level is just not fun at all, at least not for me. I don't know all the glitches going on here and had to learn a bunch along the way. It's so brutally difficult, there's no time to breathe, the extra midpoints are nothing but hollow reassurances because all they end up indicating is that there's more insanity still to come. Parts of it are cool like the section after the proper midpoint because you have to rush through all sorts of crazy obstacles but it just asks so much of the player. It'd be right at home in a Kaizo Contest, but this is VLDC. Submitting Kaizo is a gamble, and this one didn't pay off for me at all. My hands hurt. I gotta take a break. -------------------------------- #100, "MECHA MOUNTAIN" Design: 48/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 77/100 Comments: While I liked a lot of your mechanical graphics, I did find myself having trouble picking out the green munchers and other spikes from the rest of your graphics. I'm not really sure why, but I definitely took damage to them a lot. Just watch out with your graphical changes in the future and make sure that hazards are clearly defined. When you change a lot of graphics, it can be hard to pick out the dangerous tiles if you're not taking it slowly. I thought this level was pretty fun. I liked how you created a winding path with the tall level using line guides and platforms. Guided grinders were a good choice for obstacles, as was the cramped level design. It made it so you had to actually take time to avoid enemies and not just immediately jump over them. Plus the slightly vertical nature of the level meant that putting Koopas on platforms that aren't so wide meant you had to time some jumps upwards. I do think you could have done a little bit more with the line guides, since their use was kind of basic, but what you had was a solid start. Lastly, the level isn't super long, but it feels like it's just as long as it needs to be. -------------------------------- #101, "GRAND KOOPALOPOLIS" Design: 40/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 69/100 Comments: This level is not reasonably beatable in 500 seconds without prior knowledge of the level's design. It took me 350 seconds, with rushing because I'd already died a lot in the first "half", to reach the midpoint, after which I timed out in the final Layer 2 section. There's simply too much ground to cover in the level to get to the end before a time up the first time you play. It doesn't help that the midpoint is lopsided and placed around the 2/3 point of the level. That's a lot of progress to re-do every time you die in the first half, and I died plenty from small mistakes or slip-ups. I think you went pretty hard on the graphical replacements, and sometimes missed the mark. A few things were hard to tell as solid or passthrough at first glance ue to tiles used or colors chosen. It looked okay overall though. As for design, I think the strongest parts were the Layer 2 ones, since you used a variety of smasher speeds and carefully placed coins and obstacles to signal safety and give the player something to avoid while they waited for the layers to shift around. The outdoor part was less memorable or focused, though I did appreciate the use of the conveyors to make the Bowser statues move around. All the net climbing in the second half kind of came out of nowhere, but was an okay mix-up using some things in the castle tileset you hadn't used previously. Thinking about it, the Ball n' Chain use was pretty good too, as they were almost always in a threatening position, but not so threatening you couldn't avoid hits from them with proper timing. Really the biggest faults in this level are that it's too long and that the midpoint is lopsided. These are pretty big faults though. Don't let overambition get the best of you, and make sure you place your midpoints appropriately next time. -------------------------------- #102, "TO2LLY TERRIBLE" Design: 50/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 78/100 Comments: I was really worried once the Lakitu showed up and I died to him a couple times that he was going to tank the level's score with his movement patterns, but he wasn't that difficult to bop on the head while ballooning, and it was basically the end of the level anyways so thankfully he was a danger that could be dealt with. P-Ballooning levels must be hard to build since you have to make sure they're full of things to avoid at all parts of the screen, but also that it's fair to the player since they only have one hit even when big. And I think this level did a pretty good job of threading that needle. Parakoopas and Parachuting Bob-ombs were two really good choices for enemies with threatening movement patterns, and I liked how you kept the bob-ombs until the second half of the level to act as a remix. I didn't realize the gray platforms worked like that while ballooning, so that was another neat way to incorporate more elements into what's usually a pretty restrictive ballooning level design. Pipe Lakitus and hopping flames were also well placed to be threatening, but not too deadly. All in all I just think you did a surprisingly good job with a ballooning level. It wasn't TO2LLY TERRIBLE after all. -------------------------------- #103, "GENERAL TROTYL" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 72/100 Comments: I really appreciate that you used non-interactive colored coins to signal when you should and shouldn't press buttons while being rocketed out pipes. Those diagonal pipes have always been a favorite element of mine since they can lead to these sorts of miniature automatic sections when combined with enemy bouncing. I think you explored interesting ways to use them pretty well, which is good because there wasn't much else to the level. I don't mean that in a bad way this time, just that it was the one major idea being explored without much else in the way of standard "Mario" level design. A couple suggestions I think would've improved it more: Red is kind of a harsh color to base your whole level around. Thankfully you didn't use pure, bright reds and went for darker ones but watch out with how much you use it. Next, I think it would've been good to have more mushrooms in places where you have to bounce on enemies, because if you mess up a shot or bounce you can end up hitting them instead. I suppose that's the danger, but I feel like the level's challenge is more about learning how to time your maneuvers, and not really about avoiding damage. And lastly, I think the sublevel entrance camera placement for a lot of pipe shots wasn't too good. A lot of them shoot you up where Mario's off the screen and you can't really see what he's doing until he touches ground for a second and it moves up. This was most evident on the final shot where the camera really should've been placed higher since the action was up higher. Fun level overall, really enjoyed blasting out of pipes. -------------------------------- #104, "AMBROSE ASYLUM" Design: 48/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 77/100 Comments: I think the final Yoshi Coin was a bit poorly marked, since up to that point you'd had some sections where a coin or something else had signalled that there was safe ground below it, so I jumps down into the pit to get it, only to discover it wasn't safe and the actual path to it was a hole in the wall further ahead. Just a minor sour note I encountered. This level makes good use of many different castle enemies to keep the player on their toes as they make their way through it. I thought it was pretty clever to use the climbing Koopas and grounded saws falling from above in conjunction with a line-guided rope. Don't really see that too often. The level was a bit on the long side with few powerups, but it didn't end up feeling too hard with a little learning and practice, and time wasn't ever an issue. It was a decent challenge. One thing to watch out for is your graphical changes, and making sure the player always knows what is and isn't solid. You weren't entirely consistent with your palettes in that way. Like, the skull boxes look bright, like they should be solid or at least a platform, but the solid bridge tiles used a dark palette, suggesting they were passthrough like your other level decorations. Be careful with visual consistency. -------------------------------- #105, "Grandma's Paradise" Design: 52/60 Creativity: 25/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 83/100 Comments: This level has a really simple premise and I greatly enjoyed it. You signposted things well using different colored coins to tell where you should probably jump on the parakoopa and which direction he was moving. I also liked the outline blocks being used to signal horizontal parakoopa flight paths before you ever saw them. This lets the player anticipate and plan what they'll be doing next. The turn block bridges were great dynamic additions to the mix, offering variable types of obstacles to jumping and progressing. And the setups the level asks the player to get through are never too difficult either. They always felt very fair, and messing up was usually bad timing or positioning on the player's part. Two things here: I'm not sure how much of a difference the ice physics actually made in the sublevel, despite the fact that I liked that you used it as a mixup. There weren't really any big situations where the ice physics did something you couldn't have made without them. At least they provided a little visual change. Secondly, I'm surprised to say this but I think this level didn't need mushrooms at all. Because of the focus on jumps and how the failure to perform them is instantly death, being small Mario is actually preferable due to his smaller hitbox. Otherwise you'll spend a bunch of time duck-jumping through things. All in all, I quite enjoyed playing this one. Nice work! -------------------------------- #106, "Shrine of Souls" Design: 50/60 Creativity: 24/30 Aesthetics: 8/10 Total: 82/100 Comments: It was cute how you used a falling Layer 2 to "save" those Dry Bones's souls. It worked nicely because by the time you get back to them, enough time has passed for the Layer 2 to sink down and the illusion is complete. I'm pretty sure I've seen the ghostly rising arch ledges somewhere else before, but regardless they're well used here as a camera trick. And it was neat how combining them with the falling Layer 2 made it so that new ledges would appear and be in position as a rising platform as you backtracked to the door that was now open. I think you ended up making really good use of big Hotheads as enemies, especially in combination with the arch ledges, throw block falls, and winged ? blocks. I loved the graphical replacement for Pokeys and the hopping flames jumping out of the candelabras were a nice visual touch as well. The only real suggestion I have is that the final segment right before the goal felt a bit unfinished or tacked on, and I would've liked to see one more soul search in its place before the level finished up. -------------------------------- #107, "OH THAT'S HOT" Design: 54/60 Creativity: 28/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 88/100 Comments: Now I've seen everything. An athletic skull raft level! This was actually an extremely cool level and I don't think I've seen skull rafts used this creatively before. Deliberately shrinking their size, having pieces of the raft fall from above, making the raft split along two different tracks because of 1F0 usage...it was all really cool to see develop over the level's length. At first I was going to suggest that having Swoopers and other enemies just sittin in midair didn't look great visually, but I quickly realized that if you took the time to "attach" them to background elements you wouldn't really be able to make the gameplay as engaging as you did. It still doesn't look great to see them floating there but so be it. Big walls of fireballs and swoopers are the main enemies to avoid here, and the Timed Lifts made for good ways to transition between skull rafts while still keeping the challenge high. But the challenge was always fair too, as long as you could keep up. This was a lot of fun to play and I'm actually glad there was a third segment to the level because when I hit the midpoint I was getting disappointed thinking it was going to be a short one. Turns out it wasn't and it was very good. -------------------------------- #108, "Sunset Land" Design: 31/60 Creativity: 13/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 50/100 Comments: This feels like a pleasant enough very earlygame level, like a World 1 or 2 at highest. Its biggest flaws are that it doesn't really settle on a central idea even though it uses a couple different sprite sets. You use a lot of different enemies and other sprites, but only once or twice each for the most part. Moles are the only enemy that get used frequently in the second half, but because this level is on a submap, they don't hop out quickly and are little danger. It also doesn't have very many enemies in the first half, and those that do exist are often on slopes, which means you can just slide kill most of them. It's basically a little too much on the easy side. Next time, try and figure out what enemies or other sprites you want to really focus on in your level and try to make some good design that works with those ideas, instead of making the terrain and just populating it with enemies afterwards. -------------------------------- #109, "Magnetic Net" Design: 41/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: This level is weird because despite it having a central idea in the 1F0 nets and line guides...it actually feels unfocused? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact there are a ton of other snippets of seemingly random design. There's the first cave where you place keys to form a bridge over a gap, then there's a spinjump "choose your path" section, there's a small key hunt after the midpoint, then a little bit of optional swimming, then finally apart where you lead a rainbow shell to continue. Basically, I think there's a bit too much extra stuff that didn't contribute to the core ideas. You should have used the 1F0 nets more often, as well as the line guides. When you used those two ideas, the design was good. I liked the big line guide maze after the midpoint because it reminded me a lot of the mazes vanilla SMW did a few times, and I think thwimps sliding back and forth across the nets was a neat way to make the player spinjump to safety. Speaking of thwimps, I'm curious why you didn't just replace the thwimp graphic with actual thwimps instead of using the accidental bob-omb ones. Seems like an oversight to me. Just wasn't focused enough for my liking, though there were good ideas sprinkled throughout. -------------------------------- #110, "PRIMARY PIPES" Design: 45/60 Creativity: 22/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 73/100 Comments: The way you mixed together pipes on Layers 1 and 2, as well as used the growing/shrinking pipe really made this level feel like something you'd see in a lategame New Super Mario Bros level. I thought it was really neat! Though there were a few issues with it. The time was pretty short, which wasn't great. 300 seconds isn't really enough time, and you had 500 available so why didn't you just use that? Powerups were a little scarce, though the level wasn't super long so it wasn't a huge deal. Also, while I liked the setups with the brown swinging platforms, I think a few of them were a little difficult to get through without taking a hit. And the one before the vertical section had a very long jump attached to it that I didn't like very much. The boss fight felt a bit out of place, though I guess Wendy does live in a pipe so it did fit thematically. Like I said though, I really enjoyed how you used both layers and the sprite pipes to enhance your level design. It was good that you switched up to a horizontal scroller in the vertical section, since all the layer 2 before that had been smashers. -------------------------------- #111, "CREVICE CLIMB" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 6/10 Total: 71/100 Comments: I think the first half of the level was stronger than the second, by virtue of it being mostly platforming stuff. The puzzles in the second half weren't bad, just a bit less focused on platforming and I happened to prefer the platforming in this instance. Plus, you locked away the only powerup in the second half behind a P-Switch puzzle that I couldn't even do because I couldn't figure out how to safely get the P-Switch in the first place. While I'm listing complaints, I did notice that one of the brown platforms critical to proceed in the second half didn't spawn once, and I couldn't continue. Lastly, I think that little intro in the forest was completely unnecessary because there was absolutely nothing in it other than a powerup and a few screens of empty terrain. But once we get beyond these complaints, the actual vertical climbing in the level was pretty good. Shifting between being on the platforms and having to jump off them in the first half was a great idea executed well, and it felt tricky without being too hard. I wish you'd done a little more with the first half's ideas in the second half, instead of veering more into a variety of different line guided puzzles, but overall this was a solid enough vertical level. -------------------------------- #112, "Level Entry" Design: 28/60 Creativity: 13/30 Aesthetics: 4/10 Total: 45/100 Comments: This level is pretty wide open but doesn't really seem to do anything major with all its space. Despite all the ghosts and climbing koopas, it kind of feels empty with how much open space there is.It was also pretty easy, although that might just be because of how generous you were with powerups and green ! blocks. There's about three different ways you can get through the level at any given time and no one path really seems like the "correct" one to take. Instead each one just has a variety of enemies tossed in with seemingly little thought behind their placements. Sometimes too many enemies were placed for some of them to spawn. I noticed that the flipping gates didn't activate later in the level and looking in Lunar Magic, you didn't use the SA-1 sprite header to allow for more enemies. Palettes were a little drab too, mostly being desaturated or strangely colored. By trying to present many paths for the player to take, you ended up making three very average paths instead of one great path. Big levels or not, I think you would do well to put a little more focus into your level designs. It's functional, but it's just not that great. -------------------------------- #113, "Dude, Jill" Design: 19/60 Creativity: 23/30 Aesthetics: 7/10 Total: 49/100 Comments: At first I was going to strike points for this level not having a midpoint. But I looked in Lunar Magic and found that there is one, it's just at the end of a path that's hard enough I may as well not even bother going for it. Seriously, it's not cool that you hid the midpoint behind an unnecessarily difficult optional path. It's also not cool that you decided the best time to introduce instant kill setups a couple minutes into the level, so you had to constantly go back through all the opening bits over and over again. I gave myself my own midpoint at the final section because it's just not reasonable to expect the player to do all of this without a proper midpoint. And remember, I didn't learn about the midpoint's existence until after the fact. I did enter the path it's at the end of, but after dying in it a couple times, I remembered that the first optional path I discovered had nothing but a Yoshi Coin at the end, so I assumed a similar case here and just kept going on the main path. If you'd skipped the optional path for the midpoint entirely and just put it right where the player can see it, this level would have been a little more bearable. Just a little though, because everything after the midpoint is so weird and carries the spectre of instant death as you phase through platforms that smash too fast for Mario to even track that he's standing on something. And then all the lava swimming with the Lakitu constantly throwing Spinies upwards? The only reason I was able to get through it was because I managed to bring a throw block with me through the pipe and could drop it on his head for a brief reprieve from Spiny tossing. The ideas here are interesting but the execution is just unfair. And to have to die and go back to the map and restart every single time when death is so common just starts wearing on the player. I wish the level had mostly been a longer exploration of the first segment because that was interesting and tightly designed. It felt very fair because you could learn the patterns of how the Pipe Lakitus threw their Spinies in relation to the water and the Layer 2. There was no instant death, and it was actually a fun section to play. Things got weirder when you started messing with the fast smasher because it's just so annoying to have to deal with for platforming purposes, lava or not. This level is just...lots of creative ideas, but poor execution for the average player and for this contest. This level doesn't necessarily feel like it'd fit proper Kaizo, but it would probably be a lot more at home in a KLDC. -------------------------------- #114, "Tangle Race" Design: 44/60 Creativity: 21/30 Aesthetics: 5/10 Total: 70/100 Comments: This was a fun little race level! I liked how you had to keep a good pace to avoid losing the vine, but it wasn't too difficult to keep up. Tossing throw blocks into holes to make the vine keep going felt good too, since you could chuck them and keep jumping to the next one. Midpoint felt like it was placed a little early but the level is short and fast enough that it really didn't matter too much. I actually think the best race was probably the first one, because you were interacting with the blocks blocking the vine's growth more. The second and third races were more about running around fast to get to the occasional obstacle you had to clear. I think you could've actually gotten away with having another race in the first half of the level. Making it two races before the midpoint and another two after the midpoint. Basically I'm trying to say that I enjoyed the level quite a bit and wanted more of it. That's a good feeling to have after hitting that goal tape. -------------------------------- Design: 60/60 How well-designed is the level? Is it overall fun to play? How well does it execute its theme, gimmicks and level setups? Is the difficulty consistent or is it frustrating or boring? Does the level function properly or are there issues such as unintended slowdown? Creativity: 30/30 Does the level present any unique or interesting ideas using SMW’s resources? Does it have any original, nice setups? Is the theme/gimmick innovative? Aesthetics: 10/10 How does the level look aesthetically? Is it polished? Does it do anything interesting with the original game’s graphics? Does the music fit? Is the music a nuisance to gameplay? Are there any broken sound effects or samples?