hi at one point i changed my computers language to japanese and it destroyed everything so if there's any random japanese characters in here jjust pretend like it was part of my judging. i tried to clear them all out. also my hands are cold as im typing this. i miss the summer. also sorry gbreeze!!! --------------------------------------- Entry: 00 - Wii2 Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 5/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 12/50 The fog is hilariously ugly. Beyond being a sore to look at, it also serves as an uninteresting visual obstacle to limit where and what the player can see. However, this isn't much of an issue considering most of your obstacles are randomly places goombas and koopas who serve little difficulty whatsoever. Requiring a bullet jump to get to the second floor outside is silly, and is just another tedious obstacle. I feel this level misses the point of the mystery of ghost houses ・it's just an unfocused collection of p-switch runs (the latter involving the springboard is fairly skippable by just waiting near the springboard and then jumping into the exit area once the p-switch time is up) and a shoehorned in secret exit that was thankfully rather painless despite not adding anything whatsoever. The lack of a midpoint was also odd, but the level isn't that long or challenging so it wasn't a huge issue. The boo ring was boring as well, as the player is just forced to wait the first time they encounter it with virtually nothing to do. The second time they have to wait (inside the boo ring) is slightly more action-packed, but still rather uneventful. --------------------------------------- Entry: 01 - Lsh0426 Level Design: 4/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 8/50 (11 without -3 penalty). You put an awful lot of obstacles for the player to maneuver through before they get access to the first powerup. Once the magikoopa showed up, I realized you just took the chance to use every sprite in the castle tileset with no real focus on anything. This is just a castle with random sprites tossed around and a magikoopa that causes sprites graphics to not appear occasionally, either because you have the wrong sprite memory header or you just have too many sprites on-screen for poor vanilla Mario world to handle. The castle block I need to stand on near the beginning of the level would also occasionally despawn. However, the level goes from rather boring and cluttered to genuinely awful. Your second room is a nightmare. The boo cluster ceiling is annoying to deal with to begin with, but you throw in a million more eeries and force the player to jump into the cloud itself all the while you rarely give the player any powerups creates an absolutely atrocious experience. On top of this, the dark bg causes the sprites to become transparent, meaning that the eeries and boo lasers have the same transparency as the bg boos, but unlike the bg boos these sprites hurt the player. The third room is boring and presents so little challenge compared to the room prior. All of this, naturally, is just the first half because this level is overlong and has a million rooms. Rather than dissect the following rooms (which I feel are about equal in quality, though none as bad as your boo ceiling room), I'll just end this by encouraging you to consider playtesting for future levels. Penalty: The elevator room uses unintended layer 2 scrolling behavior. --------------------------------------- Entry: 02 - SomeGuy712x Level Design: 21/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 34/50 This level has a rather excessive amount of coins. I remember getting numerous lives from coins playing through this level a few times. Powerup question blocks being one tile below a ceiling is a no-no, as they require the player to awkwardly duck jump on top of them if they get a fire flower. However, this is only the case in the powerup next to the door that brings you back to the beginning - a door I didn't see much of a point in? I was not a fan of the second room's section with the yellow turn blocks trying to find a p-switch. The eeries are more of an annoyance than anything, seeing as they will never be in the bottom row so I just have to duck and wait for them to pass by. At least it wasn't a generator though. With the bad out of the way, all that is left is the good. And, fortunately, this level is pretty good! It doesn't overstep its boundaries, it works around with some neat ideas (avoiding the eerie chains of 5 at the beginning and end of the second room was cute), and the first area was open just enough to be fun to move around and tackle obstacles differently without being confusing or too large. The switch palace blocks also add a lot to the level, and don't just seem to be hamfisted in for the sake of being hamfisted. Your bonus room was also very cute, although the spam of coins was a bit unnecessary. Otherwise a solid level! --------------------------------------- Entry: 03 - Nariofan101 Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 32/50 I'm not sure why this level has 7 dragon coins. This palette isn't the greatest thing, either. This level has an interesting idea, playing with the block snake. The first half is rather messy and unclear in where the player should be following the stretch of grinders over spikes. I'm assuming the player is expected to jump up into the rope section and avoid the grinders, because there isn't much else for the player to do. However, this is really boring, resulting in the player just jumping between a grinder for 800 hours waiting for the saw to come back on the top. The second half is a bit neater, although some of the grinder jumps are rather annoying since you have to take into consideration their speeds vs the autoscroll speed and how Mario sticks to the ground, so he always has to move right to say centered on the screen. Otherwise I thought this level was decent, it just needed some layers of polish to really wrap it’s core concepts together. --------------------------------------- Entry: 04 - Centipede Level Design: 20/30 Creativity: 17/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 36/50 This level is really interesting and creative, but I think it is not without it's flaws. Primarily, I think many of the jumps are rather awkward. Not sure if it's intentional, but the first jump I don't even need to activate the rope, since I can just jump right and land on the platform (tho I can't get the dragon coins this way). Hitting that dumb message box most the time I try to jump on the next rope is rather annoying, also. The note block before the rope following the introduction of the fuzzy nets is kind of shitty. I’d imagine pushing up the note block by one would make it more of a proper obstacle, or making the jump from the platform to the rope wider so you actually hit it from a large misplaced jump. Instead, the player has to awkwardly weave their way midair to avoid the note block yet land on the rope right underneath it. I am also able to skip out on some obstacles in the second half by spinjumping on the rock the digging chuck digs up and jumping above the screen (it's the part with the rope slopes with the digging chuck high above). It wouldn't be a major issue if it wasn't really easy to do. This level also suffers from sprite memory issues, where the blue parts of the ropes would often disappear, or occasionally fuzzies would disappear when the gray platforms loaded onto screen. However, I enjoy most of the setups and I really like the ideas behind this level. It's tricky, but fun and very satisfying to get around most of the obstacles. Overall a very tight experience that could've used some more playtesting to air out the few sections that I was not super fond of. --------------------------------------- Entry: 05 - YoFilthyMudda Level Design: 3/30 Creativity: 6/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 9/50 I'm struggling to think of anything positive to say about this level. Frankly, I don't really have anything positive to say about this level. A combination of ice physics, tight jumps, and level design where the player has to stop every 5 seconds to either wait for an enemy to walk into a certain place to jump onto it to get up somewhere high or having to struggle with the ice physics with spikes thrown around is not a fun experience. The numerous blind jumps in the first half are rather abysmal. Also that reflecting fireball at the end of the first half where the player is expected to spinjump off of it is silly as hell. The second room is as much of a mess as the first, with areas requiring the player to not get hit so they can spinjump through turn blocks and having to backtrack for p-switches all while maneuvering really stupid jumps. Naturally, all with ice physics on top. I just found little positive to get out of this experience. --------------------------------------- Entry: 06 - Sariel Level Design: 19/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 32/50 What an odd level. It's a bit visually messy… the bg not scrolling horizontally is lame, and the random monty mole holes in the dirt are unnecessary considering this level doesn't use the moles to begin with. I don't get the point of the turn blocks embedded in the ground near the first powerup, they seem kind of just thrown in there. I like the idea of these wall running segments to unlock paths for how to deal with stuff, though. This level sticks to a gimmick and utilizes it fairly well. Avoiding the rexes is a little annoying in some of the more closed off spaces, such as dealing with the one that blocks the area to the dragon coin (which in and of itself is annoying due to the awkward requiring of duck jumping). The shell guarding the dragon coin in the second half is barely an obstacle since you hit it from atop just walking above, and the rex at the very end guarding the last dragon coin is also a bit awkward to deal with. Overall this is a bit of an odd level with areas that work and areas that don't. --------------------------------------- Entry: 07 - Agent Q Level Design: 27/30 Creativity: 18/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 45/50 A pretty solid level from front to back. The obstacles are fun to avoid, and the first half utilizes the water mines very well, a sprite others tend to avoid. It's a solidly designed first half with thought put into the placement of each obstacle and enemy. The only complaint I would have is that avoiding hammer bro hammers in layer 3 water (which pushes the player) is a little annoying, but it was not a big concern. The second half's gimmick is rather unfortunate in the context of this contest, however. The janky gimmick of the water mines not interacting with walls and falling out of water is rather odd, but since Nintendo did this in the Sunken Ghost Ship, it doesn't end up being any actual penalties. The obstacles throughout this area are rather well done, though, and it ends up being a satisfying level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 08 - kamekku14 Level Design: 6/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 9/50 A rather messy level in which sprites are spammed wherever with little thought put into how they would affect the dynamic of the level. For example, screen 05 has 7 enemies clustered together, with another on the next screen very close. Let alone the introduction of the bullet bill generator and flying koopa generator and this level becomes an unholy cacophony of a million enemies vomited at the player. The uncomfortable and utterly annoying slope jumps do nothing to help this level either. --------------------------------------- Entry: 09 - Prizm Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 30/50 (32 without -2 penalty) Not a fan of the trees with priority that cover cheep cheeps despite the fact that the water goes over everything. It's a weird nonsense priority issue (plus it's also annoying gameplay- wise). The way you tiled out the ground is rather unnecessarily busy as well. The jumping cheep cheeps are rather annoying enemies to deal with, and they weren't any more satisfying to deal with here. This level has a decent difficulty to it for the most part, the only real annoying parts (sans the jumping cheep cheeps slamming into me at a million miles an hour killing me instantly) were introduced in the second half. The gimmick of the thrown spinies and hopping flames raising up to the surface of the water is not clear to the player (and is also not intended behavior), and people are rudely taken by surprise when they get sniped by a pipe lakitu they didn't think they'd have to worry about. Gameplay for this section also largely consisted of me just continuously spinjumping out of water so if I landed on any spinies or flames I'd jump off, which isn't the most fun gameplay you could squeeze out of an autoscroll swimming section. Also, you bypassed the music in the second half meaning the song started up again from the beginning when I entered rather than transitioning normally. Not sure why you did that. Penalty: Thrown spinies floating up to the water surface is unintended behavior. --------------------------------------- Entry: 10 - Ivy Level Design: 12/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 22/50 A level with some semblance of an idea that kind of falls flat. There seems to have been a loose focus of lakitus hiding inside of the plant columns, with obstacles in which they throw them down on you or out from under you. However, in execution, most of these obstacles are nonissues or you accidentally step on the lakitu (or get ambushed by it since you can barely see them). Lakitu throwing spinies from off screen is pretty cheap as well, and it occurs a few times throughout this level. There's a lot of awkward jumps with land that is barely on screen, usually only being able to see the top of the plant. This makes these jumps rather scary as it's hard to tell if there will be a lakitu near them or beside them in a plant column that may be out of sight. Also those two gray falling platforms at the end of the level are uncomfortable as hell. This level is just full of uncomfortable jumps. The secret exit is a bit annoying, though at least you have the chuck to hint to the player that there is something down there. However, requiring a green switch when you have to make a blind jump down is pretty stupid, and can cause an unfair death if the player doesn't have the green switch activated. The palettes for this level aren't very good, either (primarily the bg's hill colors against the sky color). BG Palette 0 looks a lot better with the sky color than BG Palette 7 does. --------------------------------------- Entry: 11 - Luks Level Design: 25/30 Creativity: 18/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 43/50 This level is a very fun experience that uses thwomps in a cute way. Primarily, I really enjoyed their use under the ropes where the top of them were the real obstacles. It's a unique way to use them, and this level really played around with a concise idea that didn't overstay its welcome despite the fact that it uses two autoscrolls. My only complaint is about the turn block killing thwomps mechanic. Playing through this a few times, I could never kill any thwomps in the second room with the turn blocks. This is rather jarring since it's executed a ton in the first half, but it never seems to work in the second half. --------------------------------------- Entry: 12 - Cobsters Level Design: 11/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 6/10 Total: 17/50 A very disjointed experience through & throughout. This level is split between two halves which have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and each half has its own issues. The first half almost reaches being interesting, with the line guide platform obstacles after the big bush being pretty cool. However, the rest of this first level is just horrible rng footballs, a million goal posts (which look bad as decoration), and bats which hold no threat whatsoever. Bats are a tricky enemy to utilize, they often need to be up high enough to be any proper obstacle to the player whatsoever, but here they just happily fly right under the player without a care in the world. The second half of this level is just a cramped and claustrophobic castle which holds no similarities to the first half of the level, and houses a really annoying secret exit in which I'm expected to bring a shell halfway through the level back to the beginning, then bring a key all the way to the end of the level and fight a really boring big boo boss. There's also a lot of Big Mario Discrimination in this second half, which I'm not sure why you decided was a grand idea to play around with but it's just annoying. The main boss is interesting in how you created a path to Wendy, something I had not seen before. However, this path holds nothing interesting but two block extending platforms and just serves as a bit of a time waster. Also I have no idea what the hell your meat jokes were but the message boxes weren't that funny (I'm guessing they're a reference? An inside joke?). --------------------------------------- Entry: 13 - zacmario Level Design: 4/30 Creativity: 6/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 9/50 An initially creative looking level marred by the fact that it is not fun whatsoever. The autoscroll really took me by surprise and I liked it. However, this level fails to really acknowledge where the autoscroll actually scrolls, so most of the time I'm given half a screen to work with trying to avoid a million rip van fish or I just get to enjoy swimming around a million randomly placed note blocks. The obstacles and actual enemy execution here seems lazy as hell, such as the tornado of various urchins seemingly placed at random. The graphical effect in the first area doesn't look very good and is rather distracting when the background scrolls by at a million hours an hour. This level lasts for like .5 seconds and ends with a short area vomited at the end where you use literally the worst generator known to man: the fish generator. Ultimately a level that suffers from little thought put into its composition. --------------------------------------- Entry: 14 - glitch4 Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 19/50 A rather lopsided overlong level plagued with minor issues and a general lack of focus. The first part of this level isn't that bad, and you manage to make the bats somewhat threatening while riding the lakitu cloud. The bullet bills are of no threat though, and the surprise bullet bills are bad to use because they make no sound effect when spawned, so it's rather jarring even when you give the player a warning. Your next two rooms together are overlong, with the midpoint being lopsided. In VLDC I could imagine putting an 1-up checkpoint between the second and third room, but since this contest doesn't allow it you seemed content to have a midpoint 1/3 throughout the level. The midpoint room has the camera set too high. The castle area has a lot of issues with sprite memory, with many net koopas not having their heads or the bowser statues not having most of their bodies. The net platforming isn't that bad for the most part, and avoiding the koopas by going under them can be fun. I'm not sure why you thought it was wise to include a tubular section in your level's third section, but it's easily the least fun part of this level. Having a section that is effectively a one hit kill to the player when you have cluster sprites thrown into the mix in an overlong autoscroll section is not fun. Just because Wendy and Lemmy are easy bosses to edit doesn't make their fights fun when you jam bullet bills and reflecting fireballs in it. --------------------------------------- Entry: 15 - Enjl Level Design: 26/30 Creativity: 18/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 44/50 A really really fun level with only a few small issues. This is a really satisfying level to play, the obstacles are all very well executed and the level provides a fresh experience. The first room was very fun, and eased the player into what you were presenting. If I had to have any annoying nitpicks for this first room, it'd be the part on screen 07 where the player has to jump up one tile into a two tile high gap. Jumping into two high gaps when you're big Mario is annoying to do. The second room though was a bit underwhelming. I loved the idea of the chainsaws just flying up from underneath the player, but grew disappointed to see its actual execution to just get into a pipe right in front of the player. I assumed I needed to hit the turn block for something, but wasn't thrilled to just see a 1- up. That being said, perhaps it would've been hard to have elaborated on this idea. You could have done a layer 2 elevator, but it's hard to do layer 2 elevators that aren't boring due to how slow they move. I just really felt this room was missing a little something. A minor nitpick as well, but this level has a pipe exit and the next room doesn't have a pipe entrance, which is slightly jarring. This level really ends on a strong note though - the last two parts are very well designed and I didn't have any real complaints about them. --------------------------------------- Entry: 16 - Blue Leaf Level Design: 28/30 Creativity: 19/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 47/50 A very creative vertical castle with a few low points. I liked your effect of using black tiles on the outside of the level, guessing those were made with the black door tiles for the castle. The first section has a lot of fun climbing platforming, and is a unique setting for grinders which aren't used in this context a whole lot. The second room is pretty cool, but I wish it was expanded upon a bit, and I wish it was easier for the player to see that they aren't blind jumps. Maybe some coin indication or something. The mole room is a bit spammy in the cloud department, but the original Mario World did worse in the "spamming blocks incessantly" department at times. The section following this though is probably my favorite section of the level, and the falling platform platforming was really intense but really satisfying to navigate. You can slide kill the last grinder since it goes over a wall running slope, which is a bit silly but it's not the biggest deal since I'm pretty sure you can do this in the original game as well. --------------------------------------- Entry: 17 - Final Theory Level Design: DQ/30 Creativity: DQ/20 Polish: DQ/10 Total: DQ/50 Comments: What a waste of time. Please don't bother making this kind of joke stuff if it's just going to be a mess of random shit - that's been done numerous times before. At least try and be unique or don't bother entering, thanks. --------------------------------------- Entry: 18 - Nao Level Design: 23/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 38/50 A rather fun and satisfyingly hard level. I liked how you stuck to a core concept throughout, and worked with various different setups regarding the sumo bros. For the most part everything felt natural to play, and had a tight challenge associated with each obstacle. I was slightly less fond of the second half, however, primarily running into some issues regarding being able to pick up throw blocks when there were too many sprites on screen, & the last obstacle I feel is not fun to play. You should've expanded the concrete out by at least one more, as trying to land on a one tile block when jumping from a wall-run and trying to grab a throw block is all kinds of not fun. I also yearned for a bit more creativity from this level, some setups to really wow me or something, especially near the end of the level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 19 - LX5 Level Design: 12/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 16/50 This is an odd yet rather uncreative level. This seems to just be more or less a mashup of Star World 3 and Star World 5, with nothing else really added to the fire. All you really do is expand the secret exit slightly and add another lakitu to a section very similar to Star World 5, and that's more or less・it. For being a Star World 6, I was hoping you would do something unique and yet still in that same vein, but this is clearly just a rehash of other Star World levels. --------------------------------------- Entry: 20 - Super Stiviboy Level Design: 16/30 Creativity: 9/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 23/50 You certainly do climb and dodge in this level. This is rather messy visually, and fairly cramped. While you didn't just make this play like a typical left to right flat experience, the platforming isn't that exciting and you don't really do much with the climbing other than avoiding maces sometimes. Waiting for the turn block bridge isn't terribly exciting either, as often when I got to it it was extending upwards making me have to wait doing nothing. The second half is very short and rather uneventful, with two dragon coins on the same screen. This definitely feels a bit rushed. It's also not wise to start the player on moving platforms, as the player has to process everything on screen when they transition into a new area and having the player character instantly start moving can mess with people (and, in this case, caused me to die by adjusting my character seeing them move & falling off). --------------------------------------- Entry: 21 - FrozenQuills Level Design: 24/30 Creativity: 17/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 41/50 Really interesting sprites used here - you don't see people using the floor holes and the gas bubbles very often, especially not in a ghost house. The layer 2 focus is also neat, and the setups for the most part are pretty interesting. The player can be left waiting sometimes for the long layer 2 moving, but usually the player has something to do or blocks to navigate to get a dragon coin or something while they wait. Spinjumping the turn blocks on moving layer 2 causes a graphical glitch where the breaking animation isn't in the right place as well. I liked how the platforming changed depending on which side the layer 2 scrolling was at, but I felt the enemy obstacles weren't nearly as interesting. The blue koopas didn't add much, and most of the time were pretty inconsequential. The second half is well done, the blind jumps are a bit offputting to begin with, so the first jump should've probably had a coin trail. The area with the two jumping koopas felt like a bit of a lazy obstacle, especially compared to the other much more involved and thought out obstacles throughout this level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 22 - AbuseFreakHacker Level Design: 16/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 31/50 A very hard level that goes a bit too overboard with sprite spam in some areas. I really did enjoy most of this level frankly, it was very satisfying to deal with obstacles and formulate ways to approach them. However, there were a few setups that were just frankly annoying to deal with, and one major annoying aspect of this level that I think really hurts it. The first obstacle is a big no-no. This isn't kaizo, the player shouldn't have a second to respond when they spawn into the level. I'm not sure why you thought this was a wise idea to do, but it leaves a horrible first impression. I would cut the sumo bro on screen 6, as the flying koopa, pitching chuck, and pokey are all more than enough to deal with. The muncher and cement block next to the Yoshi question block are annoying, as they either force me to be small or to awkwardly duck jump. The sumo bro's flames also glitch out Yoshi's graphics here. However, the midpoint area is a complete shitshow of a million things that are not satisfying to attempt to deal with, and these next few screens are where this level really takes a dip in quality. The hammer bro feels too low, and it's rather annoying to try and deal with it's hammers while also worrying about a mole running towards you. The two lava lotuses and pitching chuck with moles after this area though are overkill, especially if you're trying to bring Yoshi with you. The baseballs can just barely hit you from that top platform, giving the player no safe area to evaluate what they need to do to get by. The Yoshi was what really made this level annoying though, as it's only necessary for the last Dragon Coin and you are more likely than not going to die trying to get the stupid steed through the clusters of projectiles and moles. Remember, you need to get all of the Dragon Coins in one go for it to count in normal SMW, and the expectations for the player with how dumb requiring the Yoshi was is just nonsense. --------------------------------------- Entry: 23 - Flan. Level Design: 0/30 Creativity: 6/20 Polish: 6/10 Total: 2/50 There is nothing fun about this. Hard levels should feel satisfying to play, there should be some feeling of accomplishment when you pass obstacles. This is just cluttered nonsense with annoying timing, awkward jumps into two high spaces, an obstacle involving dodging a grinder that you cannot see because it goes behind dirt (screen 05), incredibly annoying timing with a bowser statue and a moving castle block right after it, and a ton of precise spinjumping on bowser statue fireballs. The second half introduces some fun gimmicks such as not being able to jump on platforms because they sink very easily into layer 2 lava and avoiding lava lotuses and pitching chucks all in one package. There is genuinely nothing good about this level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 24 - NeXuS15 Level Design: 14/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 24/50 The composition of the obstacles in this level do not seem to take the player into mind too much. The oval of fuzzies on screen 4 are annoying to deal with, as if you jump over them and try to land on the platform again you only have a small amount of time to jump back off before the platform flings off into oblivion. The circle of fuzzies shortly after is another obstacle that is annoying to predict where exactly on the platform you should be, and the coin guide following it does not actually follow the trajectory of the platform as it falls off of the line guide. It also disappears when it hits the ground, which is rather janky. The way that the fuzzies load onto screen changes how approachable these obstacles are, where times like the one on screen 0E are synced to pretty much be over the platform the entire time, the one at the end of the level is a lot better of an obstacle and can be jumped over properly. My favorite part of the level is the little platforming segment following the rope after the midpoint ・it felt good to do and was just stressful enough. When making a line guide platform level, it's important to test where the obstacles will be in relation to the platform and how the player would naturally try to approach them, because many of these obstacles seem ill timed. --------------------------------------- Entry: 25 - solareclipse13 Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 26/50 There isn't a ton to say about this level. While it has a unique theme in the context of this contest, the gameplay isn't really here that much. It's rather boring, with very basic jumps over koopas and the occasional eerie or boo which really stand little threat. The boo rings are a big no-no however, as the majority of the time they cause the player to have to stop and wait for a while to progress. Using the boo rings well is difficult, as using them on a singular path will just cause players to have to wait doing nothing to enter them. If you use them, using them in ways where you can bypass them and they contain something valuable or using them in a way where there is more than one path through them is better. --------------------------------------- Entry: 26 - alexandrite Level Design: 17/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 28/50 This level kind of reminds me of how the original SMW treated autoscroll levels. It's rather short, it has no midpoint, and is fairly simple. The platforming with the rotating gray platforms were not great in this kind of autoscroller though, as parsing the best way to deal with them and not bonking your head on the top of the cement felt more like luck than it did skill. The piranha set ups were cool, and it would've been cool to have seen more playful experimentation with them. Overall this level is decent and plays it safe, but could've branched out a bit more to be a more unique and memorable experience. --------------------------------------- Entry: 27 - Sokobansolver Level Design: 19/30 Creativity: 17/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 35/50 This level very creatively utilizes the autoscroll from Donut Plains 4, and creates a very interestingly moving layer 2 autoscrolling level. Unlike Donut Plains 4, which generally gave the player a bit of space to move around and keep up with things, this level is rather cramped, with as annoying-as-ever podobos scattered about. Thankfully it's not overdone, but in their few appearances they are a nuisance more-so than a genuine obstacle. I am not a fan of how often I am forced to hug either the back or the front of the autoscroll, and the way I am expected to approach the level is very controlled. There feels to be little freedom in the players movement, as often they end up enclosed in a box waiting for layer 2 to fall or are in a situation with mega spikes above them. The layer 2 net with thwimp near the end of the level sucked, as nets on layer 2 move rather weird and I was closed in with a thwimp which is not fun whatsoever to avoid when I have little room to move around. With how easy it is to die in this level, the long autoscroll becomes pretty boring pretty quick. The beginning was pretty cool though, it really set the level's interesting gimmick into motion. --------------------------------------- Entry: 28 - mes Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 27/50 This is a very odd level, and for the most part I applaud it for being something completely different. The first half could have been fun, if it weren't for the fact that you decided to give this precise platforming area ice physics & a gimmick where if you hit the edge of the screen it kicked you out of the level. A first half that focused on platforming around mushrooms in an autoscroller would have been better than just jumping on glass blocks around mushrooms. The second half is a lot more interesting, doing away with both things that made the first half a bit lame. Some of the platforming here is a bit messy (the two note blocks with a third mushroom that falls down on the player after a few seconds comes to mind), but for what it is I thought it was cute enough. The first half really cuts back the fun of this as a whole though. --------------------------------------- Entry: 29 - toad64 Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 21/50 This level suffers on both fronts: its first half is on the boring side of romps, being rather mindless with little effort needed to make your way through and little on-screen to generally attract interest to the player. It's second half, while tackling on a gimmick, drowns in its own repetitious design as it's just setup after setup of virtually the same thing. The final jump can be done without bouncing on the fish as well ・something I am unsure if you intended or not. Ultimately this level doesn't do much with its theme and instead plods around playing it extremely safe. --------------------------------------- Entry: 30 - Shiny Ninetales Level Design: 6/30 Creativity: 6/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 11/50 A level comprised almost entirely out of slopes is far from the wisest idea. Having to control my movements constantly through tight platforming with moles that shoot out every 5 seconds is also far from the wisest idea. Combining both of these into a single level is, well, incredibly unfun. Constantly having to press back and forth or jumping to realign myself on 1 tile thick slopes over nothing avoiding lotuses is incredibly tedious, and for the most part this level is just flat out not fun whatsoever. Having different kinds of slopes and no 1 tile thin slopes would have made this a lot more of a pleasant rompy experience. --------------------------------------- Entry: 31 - DogLivesMatter Level Design: 15/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 23/50 Is this what subways in New York are like?? The upside-down piranha plants serve very little harm to the player since you can just duck right under them even when they're fully extended (they do not harm the player). Footballs are often annoying obstacles, especially when you have to charge towards a chuck who is kicking them and you have a small window of time in which you can accomplish said task. The obstacles in the first half aren't terribly interesting, but with the exception of the horrible RNG footballs and the piranha plants who serve little purpose, they aren't that bad either. Having a pipe exit not spawn the player from a pipe is always jarring, since I can go through this pipe holding a Buzzy Beetle and I spawn in the next room doing kicking animation despite not holding anything. The last half is more of the same, although it starts with a completely harmless chuck just falling into the lava. You should always test if your obstacles actually matter. The last dragon coin is also annoying to get, as football chucks are not fun to avoid when you have to directly charge them (if you insist on using them, they're better above the player where you aren't forced to try and jump over their crazily bouncing footballs). --------------------------------------- Entry: 32 - lolyoshi Level Design: 26/30 Creativity: 17/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 43/50 An awfully bold move to submit a Bowser's Castle for a contest, but I really enjoy when people take risks and present something different to the table. As this is structured similar to the original Bowser's Castle (aka it's 8 rooms), it requires multiple playthroughs of the level's contents to fully grasp it all. For the most part you've really nailed creating an interesting but short room each with their own gimmick. I found the room with the layer 2 pipes was the funnest, and for the most part the rooms were pretty well designed with little complaints. Room 8 is the weakest room, primarily because of Mario's wonky hitbox when running up walls. It was pretty noticeable here especially with the Bowser Statue, where often its flames could either just clip through the player without hurting him, or it would hurt the player when the fire was a block above him. I might have tried a different setup with grinders here or something instead of the fire, although Mario can still phase through the grinders sometimes depending on where he is in relation to them when running up the wall. Funnily enough I was actually kind of hoping for a Bowser fight at the end of this level. I mean, it is Bowser's Castle after all, where is he?? --------------------------------------- Entry: 33 - Wind Fish Level Design: 11/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 18/50 An oddly-indoors airship level that moves at the pace of a geriatric mulling down a hallway in their retirement home. Slow Auto-Scroll is exactly what it says on the tin: slow. There are many places in this level where the player can comfortably fast forward and not be in any danger, since they have nothing else to do but stand still and wait for the screen to scroll to bring something new on screen. The Bowser statues were interesting obstacles, but the rather flat geography of this airship made traversing it as such a slow speed incredibly boring ・you should've had variation. Instead of having one airship, why not have a few, some higher up and some lower, give the player things to jump from, vines to climb up, areas to go down, anything? This plays rather uninspired despite the clear inspiration to make a spooky airship level, and ultimately just falls into being a rather drab experience. I would also note that the spikes are hard to see, as they blend with the background and the fog rather easily. --------------------------------------- Entry: 34 - Kyanite Level Design: 5/30 Creativity: 2/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 7/50 This is a bafflingly short level with little substance. I mean, the meat of this level is 4 screens long and then it just・ends when you bring the springboard left. The secret exit adds little to this level as well, as it does not elaborate on anything and is just "Hey use the springboard here instead of there". This feels like a comedic condensation of a normal sized level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 35 - Matheus2653 Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 25/50 Boo rings are borings. Get it?? They do nothing here but stunt the player and make them have to wait doing nothing until they can go through them. boo rings are one of the hardest sprites to use well because they inherently just stop the player in their tracks and force them to wait. This levels composition is rather odd ・perhaps not unlike a ghost house, but there is little puzzle element here and the multiple doors that take you to the normal exit are rather silly. This levels composition is also rather flawed regarding the last half and the secret exit. The boo Ceiling is very annoying to deal with, especially when you force the player to go up into it in order to maneuver around the levels Ther. The secret exit involving Yoshi is also confusing, as on my first playthrough I assumed you expected me to go through the door with Yoshi while small, and doing so allows me to bring Yoshi into your boo Ceiling room. This causes the problem of Yoshi becoming nearly invisible, and then you have two different forms of the goal room, so the one you access through the door you cannot fly around with this Yoshi anyways. While there are some neat ideas here, the execution is rather flawed and it seems you glazed over the possibility of breaking things in the second half. --------------------------------------- Entry: 36 - RussianMan Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 13/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 31/50 The first room is cool, but you should avoid two high gaps when there are spikes underneath, as it's very easy for the player to get hit by the spikes trying to shimmy themselves in and around. This level's gimmick is very interesting, although much more could have been done with it. While your setups are pretty intuitive for your gimmick of no jumping, the fire was more of a time waster than anything as they just involved the player to duck and wait. I also had the Yellow koopa despawn the first time, making it's obstacle rather jarring as I had to go through, pass it, then respawn it. The level is also on the shorter end of things, and doesn't seem to take the time to really explore what it presents (I mean, you even admit it's rushed at the end of the level). What is here though is pretty neat all things considered, but I wish you explored more with it. --------------------------------------- Entry: 37 - Grugi Level Design: 21/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 29/50 A fairly safe yet fun athletic level with solid but simple obstacles. There isn't a ton to say about this level, it's quaint but slightly forgettable. The obstacle with the two chainsaws and the brown chain platform is pretty annoying however, as it's very easy to get flung into the saws when they go around, and it stands out more than any other obstacle in the level for feeling like a bit of a cheap hit. Overall the level feels a tad uninspired, but it manages to do what it aims to do effectively enough. --------------------------------------- Entry: 38 - Pink Gold Peach Level Design: 17/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 31/50 The rows of blocks with Blue koopas are not the best execution you could have done for handling this snake pattern, as there is little the player needs to deal with while they wait for the snake to continue turning around. The rest of the first half plays very nicely, and plays rather well to traverse around with the snake. The second half is a large misstep however, with a ton of waiting where the player doesn't need to do anything. The bullet cannons are essentially pointless if you duck ・only the last one poses any threat whatsoever. The Banzai Bills are used well, but they are essentially the only source of action in this rather plodding second half. --------------------------------------- Entry: 39 - yogui Level Design: 23/30 Creativity: 16/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 38/50 This was a good level! I like the variation of platform heights, as it makes a normal going right level a lot more interesting. The rompy athletic nature of this level finds a place to excel here in how it doesn't just adhere to the basic norms of athletic levels, such as the reliance of line guided areas in a relatively flat horizontal state with the platforms and the fuzzies and not much else. Instead, you've hit a really satisfying mixture of interesting to scale block formations, many obstacles that span diagonal (you approach from bottom left to top right or vice versa), or follow line guided platforms in loops to bring the player around. The brown block spam here was fairly iffy, and cement blocks or the yellow logs would've worked much better here. The second fuzzy in the row of three line guided fuzzies gets stuck under the solid blocks for some reason, while the other two do not: this effectively makes it a pointless obstacle which poses no threat to the player. The jump between the munchers is another rather awkward obstacle, harder so with no coin guides for the player so they have to assess what they need to accomplish while on a swinging platform with little else on-screen. Otherwise it's a very fun level! --------------------------------------- Entry: 40 - Minuy600 Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 21/50 Bonzana... Did you mean Bonanza? Anyways, this level doesn't feel terribly playtested. Primarily, the Banzai Bills serve absolutely no purpose until your last setup - they are all out of the way for the player, and the player would have to actively try and hit them themselves for them to have any purpose whatsoever. There also seems to be little thought put into the placements of the charging chucks, and often the player just accidentally stumbles upon them as they progress down a slope or jump down or anything. The actual level design of this level is not bad at all, but the enemy placement feels like an afterthought in regards to everything except the bullet bill cannons themselves. --------------------------------------- Entry: 41 - TheRealGDColon Level Design: 8/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 11/50 It takes this level 5 screens before it introduces its main gimmick, and in those 5 screens there is little personality for this level other than some basic jumps and random koopas. The actual gimmick of this level is rather uninvolved however, and the majority of the on / off line guide sections the player doesn't need to do anything other than stand still and jump when they're under a switch. This level offers little actual interesting gameplay, and there is an absolutely underwhelming amount of obstacles. in fact, from beginning to the goal this level is 22 screens long, and it has 9 enemies. The last 5 screens only have one enemy, a blue koopa, at the very beginning. All the line guide riding sections except one near the beginning have no enemies to avoid and nothing for the player to do other than hit an on / off block when it comes above them. There is just little to do in this level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 42 - yoshimap Level Design: 11/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 19/50 For all the attention you put into the visuals with this level, you actually made this look worse than regular Super Mario World does. First of all, the big thick trees do not have branches in the original SMW because of the tile priority: the two wide trees have priority, yet the branches themselves do not. Secondly, you put turn blocks inside of the canopy, so if they get hit they cause really noticeable cutoff. That out of the way, this level has an unnecessary secret exit and an oddly lopsided midpoint. This level has a cavalcade of enemies, where new enemies are introduced every few screens until the finish and the only real link throughout are wigglers. The fact that there is really nothing between the midpoint and the goal is funny as well, as it's just a straight forward path with a few bullet bills and then you're finished. --------------------------------------- Entry: 43 - DaiaNerd Level Design: 5/30 Creativity: 3/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 8/50 A lukewarm experience. The first half is incredibly stale, offering little for the player to do but just go right without any issues. The Dragon Coins are just spammed wherever, seemingly with little thought put into their places, and the composition of this level seems uninspired at best. The ending seems especially cobbled together with little thought - you have two dragon coins blocks away from each other with the same pipe and piranha setups as if creating this level was an entirely mechanical process. Overall this level is very lacking in the "make something engaging to play" department. --------------------------------------- Entry: 44 - snoruntpyro Level Design: 21/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 36/50 I was really on board with this level until the last two setups. There is something so unnatural feeling about forced hits in non-kaizo setups, and these areas of this level felt jarring. They were much less complicated than the platforming segments prior, and were plainly simple in their execution. The player should feel rewarded about navigating these environments and losing a hit being a direct punishment to them failing to navigate said environment ・however, by forcing a player to lose their hits, it is rather silly in this context. The setup with the 3 grinders and the turn blocks was also annoying, as the timing was way too slim to jump in-between so the player seemed forced to spinjump on top of them and focus on timing your spinjumps with them & grab the throw blocks at the same time. There was also a bit of slowdown sometimes in the area with the 4 jumping bowsers, as the screen prior 1 and a grinder, and the screen after has a grinder, combined with the mushroom sprite there could be too many sprites on-screen depending on how you approached it. It was an overall enjoyable difficult level until the end, though. --------------------------------------- Entry: 45 - Gloomy Level Design: 22/30 Creativity: 13/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 34/50 For once a level has an actually subdued and clever secret exit, so congratulations!!! Solely in terms of design this level is pretty well designed, giving the players quite a few ways to deal with situations depending on how high or low the tides end up being. There is a bit of slowdown in the area near the key and springboard, as it has those two sprites, the keyhole sprite, three cheep cheeps, and then a koopa shortly after. I got pretty consistent slowdown every time I got to this part. I also found this level a tad visually overdesigned, and cutting down on some of the trees probably would have done the trick to have this level be a bit less cluttered. The final dragon coin area with the puffer fish is a bit of an unpleasant surprise, and I got ambushed by it in a way that felt rather cheap. --------------------------------------- Entry: 46 - Pseudogon Level Design: 21/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 35/50 This is a rather well designed underwater castle that remains a fun experience through and throughout. It's a tad odd that sprites like the rip van fish go through the layer 2 skewers, as it makes avoiding them slightly harder (especially in the section with the two skewers back to back). However, I'm guessing this was a safety measure to prevent the rip van fish from getting stuck inside a skewer if it crashed down on them, so it's not the biggest issue in the world. The boss was rather boring, however, and I think you could've done something creative with either water physics or just including water in the fight, as opposed to it being yet another Lemmy koopa battle with a million other enemies tossed in for good measure. --------------------------------------- Entry: 47 - turbofa Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 17/50 Comments: This level is full of claustrophobic jumps with Dino Rhinos crammed everywhere. The secret exit was nearly impossible to find since you have this level set to no vertical scrolling unless running / etc, and the pipe for the secret exit is off-screen, and frankly I'm not even sure how you're supposed to get up there unless you are really asking the player to do mid-air Dino Rhino jumps. I got up there with a shell jump off of the sliding koopa, but there's no way in hell this is the required solution. The Dino Rhino jumps over munchers is pretty claustrophobic as well, and it's very easy to just hit the side of the pipe and fall. The keyhole is also way out of reach, and probably requires another really silly mid-air Dino Rhino jump (I got this one with a mid-air keyjump lol). You have two bonus hidden 1-ups like two screens from each other in the same setup, which is something you should avoid. The muncher jump Dino Rhino hallway after this is not a very good obstacle, as I just need to wait in place and jump on each Dino one by one and then cross it without much issue. --------------------------------------- Entry: 48 - ft029 Level Design: 24/30 Creativity: 16/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 40/50 Needing Yoshi and giving no powerups does make this level pretty odd in the fact that it almost follows a kaizo-like mentality of any mistake = death, but thankfully it's not that hard to do what the level wants you to do. I kind of wish this level was possible without Yoshi and Yoshi would have just made it easier, but the fuzzy-snake parts aren't very possible due to the double sprite spinjump glitch. The first on / off part is exponentially harder than anything else in this first half, as it's hilariously easy to accidentally throw Yoshi off of the edge. I would've expanded the note blocks to be three wide instead. I found it was pretty easy to accidentally desync the obstacle on screen 3 of the second half, and often I would be forced to jump from the snake blocks with no chance of actually landing on either the fuzzy or the line guide platform. Some other times it would be synced normally, so I'm not sure why it would be impossible some times and totally fine some others. The final snake area in this half doesn't really change much from the first halves, and as such is probably the most filler obstacle here. --------------------------------------- Entry: 49 - Gamma V Level Design: 12/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 18/50 (20 without penalty) This is a pretty visually cluttered level, and many enemies go behind the backgrounds throughout. The amount of times a koopa would come out of nowhere from behind a tree, or the Jumping Piranhas would jump behind the tree canopies, was incredibly often. Getting the key in this level is also lame, as it's incredibly easy and likely to let the key just fall into the water since you need the P-Switch to access it, thus turning the brown used block when you hit a question block into a coin makes it so the key falls straight down when hit, going through the player if they're still mid-jump and falling straight off-screen. The spiny lakitus could cause slowdown in some areas where the spinies couldn't walk off-screen, plus them throwing through solid platforms above them is a glitch. Penalty: Lakitu throwing through solid blocks is unintended behavior. --------------------------------------- Entry: 50 - LucasRCD Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 5/20 Polish: 5/10 Total: 10/50 Frankly, this level is an inconsistent conglomeration of different castle ideas with very little focus on any set ideas, and manages to not be fun in any section it presents whatsoever. The first room is odd, the visuals are a bit much, the building nearly entirely out of cement blocks is rather drab, and you can swim under the pipe past the door to get the midpoint and skip the first half entirely (although it's very hard to do this). The use of the piranha plants also doesn't look very clear ・clearly you've attempted to hide the fact that their stems are messed up, but them just barely peeking out of the pipes looks just as bad. The second room at least remains visually consistent, unlike your other two rooms, but the gameplay just isn't there as you've thrown in pointless Net koopas and very awkward jumps (such as the jump from the second Thwomp to the unnecessary net area below). The magikoopa also adds nothing as this area doesn't seem to really be designed to acknowledge its existence. The two sumo bros that you need to dodge while in 1 block deep layer 3 water is not a fun obstacle either, as you're usually forced to wait awkwardly in a 2-3 tile gap with fire on each side of you. The second half takes an even deeper dive in quality though, as neither section has anything in common with earlier content in the level, and are both incredibly short and lack nearly any interesting substance. The ice room has a bad looking background (it scrolls with the player left / right, and sticks to the screen up / down), and tight corridors with random Dry Bones & Bony Beetles. The water room adds nothing as well, and is over before it even starts frankly with two sets of mace obstacles and three waiting sections. --------------------------------------- Entry: 51 - dreamworkman Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 22/50 (25 without -3 penalty) The magic of color math earned you a very solid penalty here, since you should've known this falls pretty heavily under unintended properties. As for the level itself, it's a fairly fun platforming ghost forest that comes to a pretty dead halt every time you have a boo ring. boo rings are one of the hardest sprites to use well, and this level does them no favors. Every time it's always the same issues as well, in which you just come to a complete stop when you come across these rings and just have to bide your time waiting for the entrance, and then dick around in the middle of the ring and twiddle your thumbs and wait to be able to come out of the other side. The boo ring / boo block / boo setup with the Dragon Coin is a rather awkward one to work around, as you have to go rather far into the setup to see the boo block, then either drag it all the way back, jump over and then wait for the dumb boo Ring before you can pass. Penalty: Color math here is unintended properties. --------------------------------------- Entry: 52 - msi810 Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 33/50 I ran into a few sprite issues with this level: primarily, picking up throw blocks quickly in order to not get mutilated by a grinder would work sometimes and other times I would not be able to pick up throw blocks when one was already persisting on-screen. When there's too many sprites on screen it can prevent being able to quickly pick up throw blocks (and in some cases if you have enough things loaded, prevent picking up throw blocks entirely until some sprites are killed). Thankfully that isn't the case in this level, though there were quite a few times I came across in the first half where I would try to run under as Big Mario and was literally unable to grab the top throw block due to the other one I had just thrown not breaking yet. This level was rather creative, I thought the touches involving the grinders trapped by turn blocks above (if you jump too high you make things more difficult) & turn blocks below (if you spinjump you can make things more difficult) were pretty neatly done. However, running through the throw block walls really did do this level in a bit, it felt hard to control and was a lot less satisfying than just dodging around the grinders. The midway was also awkwardly generous, giving the player effectively 3 powerups the first time they come across it (and guaranteeing the player a cape every time they spawn). --------------------------------------- Entry: 53 - Kusrry Level Design: 5/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 11/50 You spelled both "Frustrating" & "Opponents" wrong. And oh boy, that is by far the least of issues this level has. This is an overlong mess of sections that has absolutely no idea when it should end, with incredibly unclear obstacles (such as the falling spike balls in the third section, and that the player should know to go on top of the snakes in a section absolutely not indicated to the player whatsoever. I genuinely shuddered remembering this level had a secret exit, as obviously cramming six sections each with their own gimmicks into this level wasn't quite enough to begin with. If you had wanted to save this level, it would have worked a lot better were it just the first mole section, midpoint, then the secret exit mole section (although the secret exit is fairly tedious, and the Banzai Bill seems like a giant "fuck you" to the player if they don't forsee things exactly, since I was not able to go underneath due to when it spawned and instead just got lucky spinjumping it out of existence. The area with the falling spike balls is by far the worst designed area, there is no indication where they are going to fall and they fall at weird floaty angles, and is overall incredibly poorly designed. You can pseudo-softlock yourself in the vine section if you fall down to the right down where the vine is and fall all the way to the bottom, since you can't jump high enough to get hit by the muncher (this forces you to wait out the time). This, compared to every other problem this level has (most of its problems are just in its sheer existence), is paltry, however. The last two sections were just exhausting as hell, and dying in these sections made you redo the past two sections. Each area had it's own unique and creative idea relative to it's interlinked gimmick, but the execution of these sections and the cramming of all these sections together created a terribly exhausting level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 54 - Luansilva12 Level Design: 5/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 9/50 Man those jumps, they sure were athletic. This is a very amateurish effort with next to no substance. The line guide segment in the beginning was virtually empty, expecting the player to jump on an amazing flying hammer bro right after is kind of a hilarious spike in difficulty (although just taking the shell you clearly wanted the player to use to get the coins and killing the flying bro is way simpler), and then the two coins in the jump right after do not actually take into account how the player even moves when they jump. Entering a pipe from a note block is also awkward to do, and I'd generally advise against it. The level also just kind of abruptly ends before it really even goes anywhere. --------------------------------------- Entry: 55 - MarioFan22 Level Design: 10/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 21/50 This level feels rather long to be a slow autoscroller, and the lack of a midpoint means this level can feel like forever if you die late on. I had an easy time dying, between platforms under me going off-screen because I jumped on them too early and getting sniped by saws since I was pushed to the far right of the screen a lot of the time due to jumping on platforms too early. This level felt rather cramped as well at times, and I personally feel many of this levels problem could've been eliminated were the autoscroll removed & a midpoint added. This level was a hard level to judge, as talking with the other two judges they had such vastly different experiences. But the fact that this level is so easily breakable with this kind of playstyle I think brings my experience with it down quite a bit. --------------------------------------- Entry: 56 - Galaer Level Design: 3/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 2/10 Total: 2/50 This level is halfway to being something creative. You have the roots of ideas, but this level tanks hard with the attempted execution of these ideas. There is cutoff everywhere, the palette choice is horrendous, there are visual glitches with the dolphins, there are issues with sprites not spawning (for example, the platforms needed to cross over the muncher area did not spawn for me at all, forcing me to take the hit across the munchers to even progress). There are some semblance of rather creative ideas, but this creativity does not extend to actually doing much tangible with said ideas. It's overlong, you have what could be interesting parts interspersed with note block spam or other trite setups. The secret exit is just a bog to go through, and the entire experience is just... baffling, to say the least. --------------------------------------- Entry: 57 - ThalesMangaka Level Design: 8/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 7/10 Total: 12/50 This level is way too over-decorated. There's too much design going on, 99% of which is useless to the actual composition of the level itself. Which, perhaps, may be just a mask for the fact that this level doesn't have a lot going on in terms of gameplay. None of the rotating platforms in the first room serve any purpose, as every area they're in can be easily maneuvered without using them, the second room is just the same fuzzy on question blocks & one tile jumps with vines underneath setups for 6 screens, and then another slab of level without any midpoint whatsoever. Why you chose not to use a midpoint is beyond me ・usually levels in Super Mario World that didn't use a midpoint were single room things, or something like Bowser's Castle. This could've used one and it would've done the level no harm whatsoever. This level just ultimately struggles to develop anything interesting to play, and is more just a collection of vine spam and over-aesthetics. --------------------------------------- Entry: 58 - a hick Level Design: 11/30 Creativity: 8/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 18/50 The sprites seem a bit haphazardly placed - not terribly so, but the rocks seem to be placed wherever with little effort into whether they would actually serve any remote threat, and rather rude digging chucks who can snipe you with rocks from far above if you take the lower path. The actual ground composition is pretty messy, and the midpoint feels slightly lopsided in the amount that comes before it compared to what comes after. The midway spawning position is rather uncomfortable as well - you shouldn't really spawn the player right next to an enemy, even if said enemy only moves vertically, the fact that you spawn the player in the sky means they're pretty likely to move when they spawn (and pretty likely to accidentally run into the chuck or jump on it instantly.) --------------------------------------- Entry: 59 - Wakana Level Design: 13/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 23/50 The first half of this level feels pretty evidently like filler before the real "meat" of your level - the castle. The first chuck setup is pretty neat, but there isn't really anything else in this first half that stands out compared to the second half, although there isn't a ton that stands out in the second half. I did like how you chose to use the underground sprite set in a castle, and I did like how you made the bats actually kind of dangerous in how they were positioned underwater. The second half though, beyond some cute bat usage, is rather empty and short. And, while I did kind of enjoy the connecting link of using chucks to run through turn blocks, this level kind of strays from that into unfocused territory at many times, nor does it really develop these setups any further than just a few similar settings. --------------------------------------- Entry: 60 - homerscout Level Design: DQ/30 Creativity: DQ/20 Polish: DQ/10 Total: DQ/50 This level isn't possible to beat, as the autoscrolling section ends with the player getting the midpoint & dying. If you go into the pipe, it leads to a castle area that just loops back to the midpoint area. Make sure to test your stuff in the future. --------------------------------------- Entry: 61 - LOLIPOP1136 Level Design: DQ/30 Creativity: DQ/20 Polish: DQ/10 Total: DQ/50 This very very very clearly goes against the rules of this contest, as the entire level is built around unintended layer 2 scrolling. Next time you enter a contest make sure to clearly read the rules. --------------------------------------- Entry: 62 - Minimay Level Design: 3/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 4/10 Total: 7/50 (9 without -2 penalty) I can't help but feel like this level was completely untested. It's plagued by an absolutely silly amount of slowdown due to your incessant sprite-spam, the first half has 3 different versions of itself (one with raising tides, one without any water, and one where everything is water). These versions are only accessible in the first half, but none of them are useful for anything worthwhile in this level since the second half is available right at the first midpoint. You have midpoints in each of these sublevels as well, but none of them actually do anything since you can only have one midpoint. The first area, the ice sublevel, is pretty horrible. It's an unfun cluster of a million bubble cheep cheeps, hopping flames that act weirdly underwater since they float to the surface (a penalty), & annoying hopping fish that all work together to create one miserable package. Oh, did I mention the slowdown? It also has a ton of slowdown due to the amount of cheep cheeps you have on-screen. The version of this without the water is a joke since you can cape fly over everything, and the version of this sublevel with pure water is incredibly easy to traverse, although both these sublevels are rather useless anyways. The second half is overlong and rather poorly put together. It's just a mess of ugly floating water surrounded by line guides (your attempts at cutoff prevention aren't gonna save this from getting nuked in the polish department), & hard to predict flying cheep cheeps that intersect with these floating tiles. This would be an interesting concept were it done justice, but here it just seems spammed wherever with enemies strewn about & very annoying ice covered conveyor ropes, this time capped off with line guide ends (which doesn't look good). Overall a bizarrely created level that has little good to say about it. Penalty: Hopping Flames used as underwater enemies float up to the surface of water, which is unintended behavior. --------------------------------------- Entry: 63 - Celestial Seraph Level Design: 8/30 Creativity: 9/20 Polish: 8/10 Total: 12/50 (15 without -3 penalty) This level looks pretty bad visually. The cuts in the landmasses usually don't look very good, and it just makes your level look excessively busy. The first jump over the Lava Lotus under the bridge is pretty awkward, as you can't jump through the bridges from under. This level doesn't use P-Switches very well, as they're just slightly out of the way things to get through basic brown block walls. The cheep cheeps in the water in the first half are not a threat whatsoever sans the one at the surface, and it's weird how deep this water goes despite it housing nothing whatsoever. The second half seems messily put together, with a "puzzle" that just consist of throwing a shell into a block literally 2 tiles away, where the player can get ambushed by a football chuck like 5 feet away. Having another chuck right behind this one really gives the player little breathing room. The vertical falling section is pretty annoying as well. I feel like it's a players first instinct to go towards coins, not go away from them. You should have placed the coins leading the player to safe zones. Either way vertical falling sections are rarely fun, and this is just a fairly tight section with annoying coin guides and a rock section that the player has no time to parse properly at all with how fast they fall. I feel like there's no real connecting string throughout this level to make it a consistent experience, and is mostly just unrelated areas with two uninteresting P-Switch sections. On top of all of this, the secret exit looks impossible to get, as there is a screen exit for it but no doors or pipes that actually lead to it. Penalty: Using Z-Ordering to hide things behind other things (in this case, a door behind a dragon coin). --------------------------------------- Entry: 64 - Everest Level Design: 19/30 Creativity: 10/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 29/50 This is a fairly quaint level, although the lack of a midpoint is odd given that its length certainly would justify the usage of one. The three spinies in a row near the beginning is a pretty easy obstacle as you have the high ground, and is a bit less interesting of an obstacle than most the others in this level. When you use Pipe Lakitus, you should always remember to put a place for the spinies to walk off and die, otherwise you can get slowdown if the Lakitus keep throwing more and more spinies. The ending of this level feels a bit sloppy as well, everything from screen 0F onward feels like a drop in quality compared to what comes prior. The koopa jumps just feel like extending the length of the level, and they have really nothing to do with anything else in this level. Had you had koopa jumping earlier or something, perhaps it would've been better, but in a level primarily focused around Pipe Lakitu's and Cheep Cheeps this part feels out of place. The Pipe Lakitu after this is poorly positioned, as you can easily accidentally run into the side of it due to how far it is from the other pipe you stand on. Everything following this is rather lifeless, and it seems you forgot what made the earlier sections somewhat interesting. The secret exit is pretty clever, but I wish you included the key back there or elaborated on it somewhat. Having to go in later into the level to retrieve the key from a poorly designed cave sublevel that requires the player to make a jump off of the chuck while it's jumping, and then backtrack is a bit silly. You should've just had it be available at the beginning and then elaborated it into a very short sublevel that played around with the Pipe Lakitu, or made a sublevel with Cloud Lakitu, or something more interesting than just backtracking. --------------------------------------- Entry: 65 - mkwstar Level Design: 2/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 4/10 Total: 0/50 Hey it's this years' Variety Path. Okay, not quite, but this level is still an abhorrid thematic mess of various areas, all with no relation to each other, all plastered together with no regards to how bloated the actual level becomes. The first section is short and lacking in any real identity - perhaps the only theme this level's individual parts really have going for it. The area where you have to avoid Thwomps by jumping over them on a net, and then going back by spinjumping on them is a cool obstacle... too bad its use is just for a powerup. The second room is when I realized that this was going to be a downhill experience, as you just vomit the player into a cave for no apparent reason and have them ride a rather boring Skull Raft ride for a few screens. There is a lot less going on in this section as opposed to the first, and it has an empty Message Box on top of everything. The vertical ghost section is by far my least favorite section, and I think it goes to show how either little playtesting there was in this level, or how little interest you had into polishing this level. The layer 3 status bar can show up in the bg due to the layer 3 scrolling settings you have, the layer 2 spike walls go behind the foreground wood pillars (thereby obscuring them), and the timing on some of the vine areas, especially the last one, is ludicrously tight. Also I noticed the eeries were rarely an issue, and half the time they didn't even seem to spawn. The section following this is by far the most filler-y section of this level, being an incredibly drab autoscroller with literally only two obstacles (a chuck and a few koopas clustered together respectively) before it ends. What point was there for this room at all? It has a grassland theme as well, were you just trying to cover all your bases? And, of course, this level just had to have a secret exit. The secret exit is one of the worst I've played, the room preceding it seems untested into oblivion (invisible sprites, glitched P-Balloon graphics, a general lack of fun), and even getting through this you get thrown into the Midway point zone with no indication that you're expected to return back through the pipe to get to the secret exit. In the future please seek out playtesters for your levels, as I feel you have a lot to learn still on how to make a fun experience. --------------------------------------- Entry: 66 - Eevee Level Design: 22/30 Creativity: 15/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 37/50 It's pretty neat to see a winter level in the nature of this contest given how they barely exist in the original Super Mario World. On top of this, it's also lovely that said winter level you've made here doesn't have slippery physics. The setup with the Lava Lotus & the two Green koopas isn't a very good setup, as you easily can get ambushed by the koopas who kind of just come into existence on-screen. You shouldn't use two Lava Lotuses on screen at the same time, as often they will not be able to both shoot out 4 flames, and it looks pretty silly (plus makes one of them rather ineffective). I liked how you put blocks underneath the Sumo Brothers, as this allowed them to be easily killable while remaining a threat. I wish you consistently did the same for the Lava Lotuses though, where you often used slopes near them in the second half to kill them easily, and while you can use the multitude of shells to kill some of them, some others are rather unkillable. One of the only major iffy parts about this level are the Pitching chucks, which really add nothing other than being a nuisance to deal with. Other than some annoyances regarding Pitching chucks this level is pretty good! --------------------------------------- Entry: 67 - Sixcorby Level Design: 26/30 Creativity: 19/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 45/50 Comments: For the most part this is a very strong level with a really creative gimmick. I really have no complaints about the first room. The second room, however, I liked significantly less. The Porcupuffer is weird to predict in mid-air, as its weird floaty physics are hard to jump around with how it scrolls on the screen often. While this segment was very clever and creative in its idea, in execution it's by far the weakest part of this level. That aside I genuinely had little complaints about this level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 68 - GbreezeSunset Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 31/50 To be rather blunt, this was probably one of the least fun I've had playing an OLDC stage. I'm not a big fan of puzzle levels, but I do see how this is fairly well put together. I hope I can still review this with some justice, as I did feel as a puzzle level this had some flaws still. The gimmick is rather creative, albeit a tad slow since you have to wait in the first two obstacles (more-so in the first than the second). The fact that the music resets every time you reset is a small error, but one that does become rather annoying the more you restart over and over. The Rex obstacle feels a bit clunky compared to the other obstacles in this first half, as I'm expecting you want to get hit by it while it falls while you spinjump? It felt like a rather silly obstacle, and I also clipped through the Rex more than once to somehow break both the turn block and bounce up without taking a hit. I'm not really a fan of forced hits in level design to begin with, it feels like a rather kaizo- like mentality to implement, but I suppose in these kinds of half puzzle half platforming levels it's more of a legitimate strategy. This level also feels like it has a lot of dead space between each obstacle, more-so than you actually would comfortably need. The second area's first three obstacles are pretty interesting, but I thought the Blarrg was a pretty weak obstacle that was annoying to get hit by with how easily you could accidentally spinjump off it. The Blarrg also oddly disappears due to where you positioned it, which is a knock to the polish score. Again, these kinds of obstacles that require the player to get hit feel all kinds of awkward to actually perform, especially in these kind of weird tight spaces where it's hard to maneuver the player to properly get hit. I wasn't able to figure out how to do the rip van fish puzzle (not sure if this is on my incompetence to solve puzzles or perhaps its just a poor setup), so I'm guessing my janky solution of double grabbing two P-Switches, resetting in, P-Switching one coin wall open, P-switching another to get down into the hole, getting hit by the rip van fish, then P-Switch jumping out of said hole was not the intended solution, was it? Your midpoint feels hilariously lopsided though, given that it comes before these past two sections, the latter of which is actually fairly long. Again, I feel this vertical segment has a lot of unnecessary dead space for the player to traverse, and could've been cut down and made a lot more concise while keeping all of the obstacles. Overall an interesting idea, but the level felt rather slowly paced due to a lot of dead space between setups (and it's length being a tad long), and some of the actual setups (such as the Blarrg and the Rex) were rather weak. --------------------------------------- Entry: 69 - HammerGuy Level Design: 24/30 Creativity: 16/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 39/50 This is a pretty creative take on a Layer 2 smash castle, and is rather strongly put together. However, I find it rather odd and wonky that you can fall through the moving hole, but you can't jump back out of it. It's a hard situation though, you could've changed them to ropes but that would cause some graphical issues with how the ropes are only 8x8 thick and the holes are a full 16. Either way it felt pretty weird. There is some graphical glitchery in your section with three boo Lasers, primarily with many of the boos not spawning (so the laser ends up only being comprised of like 3 boos). There's also some issues with the holes despawning in this section, since you have four clustered together. The boss fight would have benefitted strongly from not having a ceiling. Since it's out of sight for the player, my first instinct was to jump over the hole, however that just led to me bumping my head into a ceiling I couldn't see and falling straight into the lava. This is a pretty cheap tactic, so you should've either lowered bridge area or just removed the ceiling entirely. --------------------------------------- Entry: 70 - Heraga Level Design: 21/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 33/50 Comments: This is a pretty neat and simple autoscroller that doesn't overstay it's welcome, but it's a bit inconsistent in its difficulty sometimes. Primarily, forcing the player to spinjump on the saws in some areas feels a lot more uncomfortable than the other dodging areas you've set up which coax the player to avoid the saws. The springboard is pretty awkward given how high it launches Mario up vs how high Mario actually needs to go up (which looks like one block higher than he can jump). It would've been better to have used a Note Block here and raised things up a bit more. You used the Yellow Switch blocks rather poorly here though, with them being required to go through obstacles without having to rely on spinjumping on the saws. They should be used to either widen the area you can jump on, or even as an additional powerup later in the level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 71 - Steven Level Design: 3/30 Creativity: 4/20 Polish: 4/10 Total: 1/50 Comments: This is a painfully repetitive level with seemingly no effort put into polishing it to be presentable whatsoever. You're instantly greeted with stacked munchers, a coin overtop of a bounce block (which causes a glitch where the coin turns into an invisible solid block), and then exhausts itself into hell with a recurring Mega Mole P-Switch section. This section is repeated six times, and each time it's just as miserable as the last. You use bouncing footballs with broken Rex Head graphics, the second Amazing Flying Hammer Bro didn't spawn so it was just his platform, and the last area is just a nuisance of having to wait through two P-Switch timers before you can get to the goal. Line guides atop the water also look pretty bad, but this level certainly doesn't excel in the visuals to begin with. Your bonus room also contains a 1-up that causes the player to die if they try and get it (unless you're big and drill stomp out of it). Overall this is a rather messy tedious level that almost seemed like it could have been creative had you not repeated the exact same thing 500 times. --------------------------------------- Entry: 72 - SwagAssMustafa Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 28/50 Comments: Ice Cream Glacier is a rather straight forward and uneventful level that, while using the unique Dino-Rhinos, doesn't actually do a ton with them. The palette used for the Dino-Rhinos are pretty bad, but seeing as it's a palette in the game already it's not the biggest deal. I liked how you used the munchers in the ground to cause the Dino-Torchs to jump. The sublevel has a rather useless amount of Dolphins, as you don't really need any of them to progress anywhere seeing as you can very easily just move right and jump through the water. The slopes on screen 0D feel like more of a nuisance than anything, and are rather unnecessary. --------------------------------------- Entry: 73 - MalusAmigo Level Design: 17/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 28/50 This level is rather fine for the most part, sans the kind of lousy execution of the boo Rings that just result in the player having to twiddle their thumbs and wait for them to pass nearly every time they're used, sometimes having to wait more than once. Right from the beginning the player is forced to wait, which you should generally avoid doing if you can help it. Gimmicks that involve the players just biding time and waiting for them to actually progress are red flags, and frankly not terribly fun to actually play. The rule of thumb is the player should never feel like they could fast forward to speed something up and be in no danger whatsoever, because every single boo Ring setup you have here can easily be fast forwarded to skip the wait with no repercussions. The random Piranha setup kinda asks more questions than it really answers in what little it brings to this level. The boo Blocks were unimportant to this levels dynamic, and replacing them with cement blocks probably wouldn't have changed anything. --------------------------------------- Entry: 74 - CondorTalon Level Design: 1/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 8/50 This is a very very very poorly put together level that is infuriating on nearly every single front. It's way too overlong, where you go through four full rooms before you even get the first midpoint. The first room is a mess, having your second obstacle be two Ball & Chains with a fire spitting Bowser Statue is a bad setup as it becomes a cluttered situation of a million things going on at once. Pretty much every single obstacle in this castle section is way too claustrophobic with too much going on to be terribly comfortable. The underground section, albeit annoying in the random theme change, is actually somewhat salvageable. I liked the multi-path thing in the beginning, but it didn't take you long to devolve back into the incredibly tight grinder jumps in the top area. The Thwomp and Platform section is really bad though, it's completely unclear to the player what they need to do on the first try and they're more than likely just going to get their head caved in by a Thwomp. These jumps feel way too tight and awkward to have to deal with, plus having Falling Platforms underneath makes this section way too chaotic. Of course, this leading to one tile jumps right after is a great progression of assery. We do all this, and・ The incredibly fun gimmick you thought of doing after all of this though, is, well, its something. 滴ey, let's make the player just redo those first two sections again! Also let's not give them a midpoint here because fuck them・is a real great gimmick, and is probably my biggest problem with this level. While these two sections may be ever slightly easier due to the removal of the lava, this is still way too much to be reasonable. This level is just a harsh execution in tedium with little regards to the player whatsoever. The midpoint is hilariously lopsided, well, it would be hilarious if it wasn't absolutely miserable trying to get to here. This layer 2 sinks area is probably the worst room in this level, as it's way too claustrophobic with grinders in really annoying spots, and a recurring element of forcing the player into a small space with grinders flying right into them. This was one of the worst experiences I've had in the context of this contest. --------------------------------------- Entry: 75 - NGB Level Design: 19/30 Creativity: 11/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 30/50 Fishin・boo is a very hard sprite to use well, due to how annoying it moves its fire. For the most part it's used rather well here as something to dissuade the player from going up high, but the two places later on in the level that involve the player jumping up to move around are a bit more annoying as they put the player right in the warpath of the Fishin・boo. The theme of this level is rather cute though, and you managed to break up the monotony of flat land with houses fairly decently with the gaps and platforming between. The biggest issue in this otherwise rather quaint level is still the Fishin・boo though. --------------------------------------- Entry: 76 - KDeee Level Design: 16/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 22/50 This level had a rather scary as hell first impression, from the name of the level and the first screen. However, while not the most amazing level, it also wasn't nearly as bad as I had anticipated it would have been from a spike spam hell level. For the most part the actual actions here are rather simple and give the player a bit of space to work with. The first area feels rather awkward, going from the first set of 3 rotating platforms to the singular one just has the player kind of running head first into the wall into the right hoping they'll fall through the platform and land underneath, which doesn't really take any skill. The amalgam of spikes make this level rather visually distracting as well, combined with the cluttered foreground stones. Most of the setups here aren't terribly hard, you die once or twice and then move on, but there is little really of any deep interest here as well. Like this level is almost a bit uninspired, with rather simple platforming just made harder by the abundance of a million spikes in every which direction. --------------------------------------- Entry: 77 - Tob Level Design: 19/30 Creativity: 9/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 26/50 (27 without -1 penalty) The design in this level is rather odd, and you have a lot of sprite issues near the last half of the level (sprites graphics disappearing, such as the koopa disappearing when the rotating platforms came onto screen, or the falling platform despawning when the chain platform thing came on-screen). The obstacles here were rather awkward, and you could go over quite a few obstacles since you didn't raise the walls up very high (for example, the two fuzzies area you can jump over, as well as the piranha obstacle in the yellow pipe right after). The use of the conveyor ropes seem rather arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, and their use with the muncher and cloud is rather pointless and unrelated to really any other idea present in this level. Having the amazing flying hammer bro platforms push the player into blocks isn't very good to do either, as it can phase the player through the ground or through the platform and looks and feels rather wonky. Using the spotlight blocks as sprite only blocks is also unintended behavior, and the visuals of this level are a bit clustered at times with the wooden logs. Penalty: Using the red spotlight blocks as sprite only blocks. --------------------------------------- Entry: 78 - Quantix Level Design: 22/30 Creativity: 14/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 35/50 This level feels a bit unbalanced, both creatively and literally in terms of the first half compared to the second half. I enjoy the obstacles in the first half, specifically the usage of the flying koopas. However, hitting bouncing chucks from underneath with note blocks can be pretty annoying, as it can take a few tries depending on the chucks light bouncing. This first section goes on for about 2-3 screens longer than it needs to, and doing something else with the pokeys would've been more interesting. The second section is a bit less creative than the first, but the first few obstacles feel pretty fun enough. Past this though the note block spam, being all animated blocks, becomes a bit of a visual overload when its used to cover most the screen. This area feels a bit more chaotic than everything else, and then the level just kinda abruptly ends soon after. With a bit more thought put into this level and some more work into balancing this could've been a great level. --------------------------------------- Entry: 79 - Lazy Level Design: 18/30 Creativity: 17/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 32/50 (35 without -3 penalty) While this level may be incredibly creative in its setups and the gimmick of the level in theory, in execution this is an actually an exhausting gimmick that focuses on precision platforming with ice physics vomited on top. I can see the person who made this has a good eye for level design - visually the setups were very creative and very inspired, but the actual tangible experience of playing through this level, between the ice physics on tight platforming (avoiding koopas in a small area, crawling around in moving platform areas), and the tedium of the goal tape walk whenever you mess up combined with how long the experience felt with all of these combined was just a total slog. Honestly the only part in this I actually enjoyed was the part with the star and avoiding the koopa - it was actually rather satisfying to engage in. The rest of this level though・ ehhh, you should've avoided using ice physics or only had ice physics in subrooms that would benefit from having it (the sliding area is the only area that benefits from ice physics from my memory.) I can see how parts of it are made well, but as an actual experience I found it rather lacking. Penalty: Dying during the death walk & using the goals as obstacles, while creativity, is unintended behavior. Requiring the player to die and taking advantage of where the player spawns from a midpoint is also unintended. --------------------------------------- Entry: 80 - Najeraldo Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 7/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 16/50 A level tied with no focus beyond a basic aesthetic connection. There are no recurring gameplay features nor ideas throughout this level, resulting in an incredibly inconsistent experience that seeks to just throw every single random different type of enemy it can, including using different sprite sets in all of the sublevels. Sprites are kind of evidently tossed wherever without a ton of thought into how things will actually play out, and as aforementioned there's such an unnecessarily wide variety of random enemies (you have green koopas, red koopas, hopping flames, spinies, jumping piranhas, bob-ombs, hopping green koopas, flying red koopas, charging chucks, and a blue shelless koopa that kicks a shell all in the span of 9 screens). The level design for the most part is rather bland, with some semblance of personality sprinkled through in the sublevels. The moving layer 2 lava in the cave was creative, and the forced torpedo ted spinjumping in the other cave was out of left field but much more interesting of an obstacle compared to everything else in this level. The secret exit didn't add much to this level other than another insipid experience in a bit of a drab composition. --------------------------------------- Entry: 81 - Rykon-V73 Level Design: 9/30 Creativity: 6/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 15/50 Incredibly unmemorable. Even the castles from the original Super Mario World had some unique flair, or some change of scenery in a sublevel or something, but this is just an exhaustingly straight forward unfocused romp with little to its name. The flying blocks obstacle was creative, and making something with those would have done you well, but as it stands currently this is just a blur in the span of time. --------------------------------------- Entry: 82 - ThePat545 Level Design: 22/30 Creativity: 16/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 38/50 A creative level marred by some oversights. It's a bit visually busy, but the first few obstacles are pretty neat actually. You presented a unique idea and executed It well initially. However, the turn block bridge + podoboo + wooden spike obstacle is atrociously timed, and I ended up taking a hit most times because there wasn't a safe area right after (instead you have a jump with a thwomp kind of uncomfortably close). The midpoint area is kind of an odd out of nowhere gimmick though, and the obstacles surrounding it are too close for comfort. The second half of this level is pretty neat though! A reasonable length and even though you switch up the enemies used, you still focused on utilizing the pea springs, a rather underused sprite. --------------------------------------- Entry: 83 - yoshi9429 Level Design: 16/30 Creativity: 12/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 28/50 This level feels very chaotically constructed. The first obstacle is pretty annoying, as I found trying to time my sliding with the koopas above was a pretty tight window. The eating blocks were rather creative, though the eating block wall on screen 7 is kind of a waiting game with nothing for the player to do. The winged koopas feel rather spammed for the most part, and seem to visibly be a way to just fill in space. The pea spring doesn't add anything on screen 10, and kinda just makes what could be a simple jump rather unnecessarily wonky. The secret exit sucks, though. Putting it right at the very end where it adds nothing is obvious padding. --------------------------------------- Entry: 84 - Hobz Level Design: 25/30 Creativity: 13/20 Polish: 10/10 Total: 38/50 A concise and focused effort that presents fun platforming from the beginning to the end. This level is simple enough yet feels very satisfying to avoid around the spinies, and the usage of the turn blocks underneath them in many setups gives a nice danger to them. The only setup I did not like in this level was the gray platform before the four falling spinies, since they're on turn blocks the players instinct would be to do a normal jump. This setup felt like a blatant trap, as opposed to the rest of the level which was very manageable with foresight. The level could've used a bit more creativity, or some other interesting setups, but as it stands it's a fun effort. --------------------------------------- Entry: 85 - Sockbat Replica Level Design: 24/30 Creativity: 13/20 Polish: 9/10 Total: 36/50 I didn't like how the grinders go behind the top 8x8s of the wooden bridges, mostly from a visual standpoint and an obscuring the grinders standpoint. That aside, this is a well crafted rompy athletic level that plays around with a sprite set other than just the usual mushroom set. It doesn't go overboard with castle sprites either, focusing solely on the grinders in tandem with the line guided platforms. The midpoint feels the slightest off-kilter, but only by a screen or so (the first half feels shorter than the second). --------------------------------------- h