1 - blue A neat short level. I like the relatively strong focus on the various firebars and the roto disc, it's interesting to see them in the context of an air ship. That said, the level itself overall ended up feeling a little weak. There wasn't much variation or mixups in the patterns, with it only really getting as complicated as a few off-set rotodiscs. I would've liked to see more interaction between the various stage elements. I would've also liked to see a bit more variety within sprites. I usually like to see a strong focus on specific sprites, but these are more level hazards than actual enemies, and having some of the generic sprites like koopas and goombas to interact with at least would've been nice. Maybe something to play with the airship theme a bit more? A lot of the setups ended up feeling really similar, especially any of the ones involving multiple swinging firebars. It left me with a feeling of wanting more. More level, more enemies, more things. Aesthetic-wise it was solid. The blue was a little bright, but nothing really too bad. It was cohesive enough. Design - 27/60 Creativity - 5/30 Aesthetics - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 - bayoen!!!! Underground plants and line-guides? Yes please. This was a nice exploration of the flying koopa types. I liked some of the setups on the line-guides with the yellow koopas. I kinda wish there was a bit more though. You used the new colors, but didn't really explore the old ones, or the setups you could do with them. I also felt like there could've been a bit more done with the blue koopas, and the on/off block setups were all fairly simple. A couple times, the line guided platforms got away from me and when they returned they had awkwardly lined up with the fuzzies. Line guides are really finnicky, and if your platforms go off screen they sometimes just don't come back. It feels like there's a good spark of a level here that could use a little cleanup. I would've liked to see some more creativity in the on/off block setups, maybe even see them interacting with the line guide sections a bit. I really adored the aesthetics. I'm loving the CGA colors and the inverted shading with the transparency. It almost gives it this like, strange, anti-vaporwave aesthetic. Design - 35/60 Creativity - 16/30 Aesthetics - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3 - Kirov This was a pretty fun exploration of the Propeller suit powerup. It wasn't quite as frustrating as I tend to find this style of level, though I did find myself wishing there was some more... plain platforming in it? I usually find gauntlets like this leaving me wanting a bit of regular mario to break up the challenges but that didn't really detract from this level. The firebars play nicely with the line guided saw blades though I would've liked to see some more enemy variety. That plays into my want for some more "normal mario" inbetween the propeller sections I guess. Although the challenges ended up feeling pretty distinct they really blend together in afterthought except the one with the spinies... The one after the goal sphere too with the fast wooden platforms I suppose. Overall it was strong but I wonder if some "downtime" sections or more variety would stop it from blurring together a bit. Aesthetically I would've liked to see a bit more mixing up. It worked, but felt a little "plain airship" if that makes sense. Design - 53/60 Creativity - 27/30 Aesthetics - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4 - Agony This one felt a little bit long in the tooth to me. It almost didn't need that spike falling, or second underground section. I did appreciate the second midpoint though! I was super worried when I spawned back in the red water room, ahaha. I liked most of the level besides that. It felt very tense going between the swinging ball n' chains. Even the boss fight ended up feeling super tense, you managed to capture the feeling without making it super overbearing or frustrating... Usually. For whatever reason I really struggled to jump out of the waterfall in the swimming area, and there was some pretty low spike ceilings I found it hard to get through without taking a hit. I think with a bit more enemy variety and a bit more care in the length/spike placement it would feel stronger to me. I too enjoyed cherry kool-aid when I was a child. The level aesthetics worked very well, though a bit early for HLDC. I like bright colors, but I feel the more washed-out aesthetic of the castle worked very well for its theming. Design - 36/60 Creativity - 17/30 Aesthetics - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5 - B This level felt, for lack of a better term, a little bit odd. The super ball didn't feel especially useful, as there was a lack of ceilings to bounce them down towards the nippers. It was a little bit short, and the upper area didn't feel especially strong to me. I think it could've been cut to focus more on the lower path, which felt a little bit stronger. It's pretty easy to kill the paratroopas you're supposed to jump on and I ended up spinjumping across the nippers to make it across the gap. I think it could've really strongly benefitted from a re-focus down onto the individual elements of the level. It feels as if they're each placed in one-by-one rather than playing off of eachother. The visuals were pretty straightforward. SMB3 wood tileset but green. it works, but I would've liked to see some more variation of some kind. (I know we're not really judging the music, so this is off the record here, but the song you picked was a really short loop for stage music imo.) Design: - 22/60 Creativity: - 5/30 Aesthetics - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 - Volcano This level started out okay, but I felt like the layer 2 section in the back half honestly wasn't that great. It felt almost as if the level lost its focus a bit, going from tense platforming on swinging platforms to waiting around for layer 2 to line up the way you wanted. The low ceiling at the very end of the section is also pretty frustrating. Even spinjumping I repeatedly ended up dying to it. It just kinda feels like there was a real shift there that ultimately didn't pan out super well gameplay-wise. I also couldn't really tell that the damage blocks were supposed to damage me, they kinda just look like red popcorn. I think you really should've stuck a bit longer with what you were doing in the open section. I did like the aesthetics though. I've always been a fan of dark recolors of the cave tileset. Design: - 35/60 Creativity: - 15/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 - Beach For a place called Bubble Beach it was a bit surprising that there weren't any bubbles in the second half. The introduction of the hurt blocks (I guess they're supposed to be like Jelectros?) was also a little odd. They show up for all of one screen, and aren't particularly threatening in the way they're set up. It feels like you added some of these things as an afterthought rather than consciously designing the level around them, the bubbles especially. I really would've liked to see some more interaction between them and the other aspects of the level. Aesthetically, it was okay. The palette on the foreground tiles could've been tuned to look a bit more "sand" and less "yellow rock". I always like translucent water. I'm not quite sure why it was gone in the second half though, I didn't see anything that would necessitate using layer 3 to force layer 2 back to the BG. Design: - 20/60 Creativity: - 5/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 - Crushed I'm... really not sure what to say about this one. It's pretty clearly a kaizo level, and I'm not especially great at Mario to begin with. I spent an entire judging session on this one and I don't even think I got halfway through the level. I don't really think I'd be a fair judge of it because I don't know what makes a "good" kaizo level to begin with. From what I did play, and gleaned through lunar magic, there doesn't seem to be any of the custom sprites. It's really, -really- hard for me to put any words to the design as I'm typing this. There's a -lot- I could say as someone who plays primarily regular mario levels, but that hardly applies to kaizo levels. Take for instance, the setup with the cement platforms and thwomps early in the second part where you have to zig-zag through. It felt -really- inconsistent to me. I know there's absolutely a consistent way to approach that setup, but half the time the upper thwomp just wouldn't fall, and every now and then it felt like the one above the screen-scroll pipe would fall early. I'm just really unable to put forth anything I feel will be useful feedback to this. I'll score it as I would a normal level, but that's all I can do. Aesthetically though, I have some commentary. The first part stood out to me as looking not quite as good as the second... The palettes themselves were fine, but the contrast was really lacking. the dark foreground on dark background made it sometimes hard to parse where the floor was, when I wasn't looking at the candy corn spikes (Those were kinda rad tbh, I like that color). The second part looked a lot better though. I liked the background built from the ludwig castle walls and ghost house windows, and the colors stood apart much better. I would've liked to see more of the included graphics, but the SMM2 ghost house lantern was a nice enough nod I suppose. Design: - 10/60 Creativity: - 10/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9 - Infernal I'm not particularly sure about most of the setups in this one. It was mostly kinda-straightforward atheltic platforming on small platforms. The level had me unsure if it wanted me to rush through, or wait for the platforms to line up. I got punished once or twice waiting to jump, which made me rush ahead, only to -have- to wait for the carrot platforms to line up favorably. It really felt like overall the level didn't quite know what it wanted to be. You probably should've focused more heavily on the 32x32 moving blocks, and maybe making them interact with eachother. They, along with the directional lifts, felt quite underutilized. Actually, most of the custom assets did. The fire chucks and fire swoopers almost felt tacked on, since they weren't really used in a way that highlighted their differences (and there was even normal swoopers in the level!). Aesthetically it was alright. I would've liked to see a bit more playing with the tilesets, but the palette was pleasing enough. Design: - 25/60 Creativity: - 7/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 - Butt Hoo boy. This one felt to me like it basically ended up throwing away all the goodwill it had built up in the first half when I got to the second. The first half was, all things considered, pretty fun. The challenges were set up fairly well, and for the most part they were pretty intuitive. There was one where it was impossible to go back to get a new bubble flower, but otherwise I had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately, the second half really didn't feel nearly as good. A tense autoscroller, sure, but ultimately I think every single objective being do-or-die really hurts the overall design. Especially the last one. I found it incredibly frustrating to have to get exactly -1- bubble past that saw to make it through. It was easy to get a couple by, but that would always hit it twice, and it was made much worse by being at the very end. If you fail, you have to go through the entire autoscroller, listening to that bounce noise, over and over again. I ended up skipping out on the moon challenge at the end after a few failed attempts because of it. The colors were nice, there wasn't much variance in the foreground otherwise. I would've liked to see some tileset mixing. Design: - 35/60 Creativity: - 20/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 - Time This was kinda interesting. I like the attempt at properly signing "Past/Future poles" in a Sonic CD style time travel gimmick, but overall I think it ultimately didn't work for the level. Visually, the time periods are -so- different from eachother I found it much less like I was travelling between eras in one level, and more like I was travelling to different levels entirely. There wasn't much connection between the three gameplay-wise either. I felt eternally lost like I was missing something, with the only real link between the three times being the doors and the powerups/blocks they can destroy. I would've liked to see more use of some of the supplied sprites, and I think designing the level to be more familiar between the three (especially the future) would've helped facilitating it. Maybe make it more like that planet in Milky Way Wishes where you swap seasons to get past road blocks that were still visible on your screen. Aesthetically it was pretty good! I liked the tile mixing, and the colors in general, but in the future set I had trouble telling what was solid and what wasn't. You could've used some better contrast, putting the pipes on a palette that let you get rid of the white and put the platforms on a slightly brighter palette. Design: - 26/60 Creativity: - 17/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 - Banana This level was kinda odd. It ended up feeling more like 3 really small levels jammed together more than one cohesive experience. I guess it was all yellow? It's just really disjointed and I feel like only one section, the climbing section, used the included assets particularly well. The intro and ending lava areas felt more "standard" castle I guess, and the setups weren't super interesting to me. The climbing section I really liked though. There were a couple things I noticed, a big one being the first reset pipe marked with an arrow sign? Made it seem like progress. Other than that I felt like you used the cat suit very well in this area. I actually felt cornered a couple times, despite how good it is at destroying enemies, since I was often ambushed in the air. I just really wish it was -longer-. The whole level ends up feeling kinda short because the interesting part is so short, despite it being an average length-ish stage. The level was yellow I suppose. It was very vanilla in its aesthetics. I would've liked to see a bit more from the supplied assets. Design: - 24/60 Creativity: - 19/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 - Green I enjoyed this one! This was a cute level with a -very- "Mario" feel. The big thing I really noticed though was the sleeping bombs. They never felt like they were ever much of a threat with how they were placed beyond the first one, I was always a safe distance away. A few of the other setups also felt pretty safe, for lack of a better term. The goomba towers aren't particularly threatening on their own, and when the nearby enemies are all stuff like koopas or single goombas they're -really- easy to dispatch. I think the fire flowers also weren't a great choice. There wasn't anything really interesting to play around with compared to the custom powerups, even if the towers themselves were fireball immune. It mostly just ended up being a plant-frying device. If this was tightened up a bit with some sharper challenges I think it could've been excellent. Visually I loved the palette. I would've liked to see some more done with the foreground tiles but I think your color choices and the background worked very well. I definitely caught that Mario vibe you were going for. Design: - 40/60 Creativity: - 15/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 - Off This was a pretty easy experience. The idea of on-off blocks marked in some way as safe or not is good I feel, but the execution here could've used some work. I would've liked to see some more sprites in the level besides the one koopa. While the hard mode selection was a neat idea, one of the jumps really punishes you for being big after the midpoint more than anything. Definitely keep an eye on those low ceilings when testing if you're going to have big mario in your level. I really would've liked to see more setups than jumping from on-off block to on-off block more than anything. The blue in the background is bright, and the color ramps are a bit weird. I liked the birds, but would've liked to see some more variety, especially from the included graphics. Design: - 7/60 Creativity: - 9/30 Aesthetics: - 3/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 - Woodblock That was a pretty straightforward level to me. I liked the blue flying koopas usage here, they were always in the way but never really overbearing about it. I really enjoyed the autoscroll section too. It was surprisingly tense despite it being relatively short and, well, an autoscroller. That said, it felt a little simple overall. It didn't use an absolute ton of the supplied resources, and well focus is a good thing I would've definitely liked to see some more variety. The part before the autoscroller was a little simple too. I liked the aesthetics, but I feel like the colors or tiles could've been mixed up a bit more. Design: - 38/60 Creativity: - 18/30 Aesthetics - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 - Slick This level really frustrated me with how it was set up. I wasn't especially a fan of how dangerous any of the mushrooms were to get, and it felt kinda grinding to have to do a stressful mini section before each elevator section. I think the ice physics didn't really help in that regard, since it made Mario feel just off enough to make some of the trickier jumps a repeated problem, especially in the non-elevator sections. It really felt like you had two ideas here and they were pushing against eachother. The setups with the climbing grate doors, and the elevator sections. The only thing really holding the entire level together were the bowling balls and the flying saws, and the latter was only in the back half of the level. Maybe focusing a bit more on one or the other would've helped make it feel a bit more tied together. I liked chasing the bowling ball part the best I think and I definitely would've liked to see a bit more of that, maybe instead of the avoid the saws part by the midpoint, though that could've potentially left the level feeling a bit too "vanilla" for the contest. Aesthetically it could've mixed it up a bit more. A different foreground to go with the background maybe, or some mixed tilesets. Design: - 35/60 Creativity: - 20/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 - Fairy For being rushed this wasn't too bad. I really like the idea you had here, thin tight autoscrolling athletic is a neat level idea, and for the most part I think you executed it pretty well. There was only a couple parts where the rocket boots kinda felt a bit clunky to use in the first half, where you had to fly low under an obstacle, and I found myself struggling with landing those consistently. A problem with the powerup is that a couple frames of downwards momentum can make a huge difference, a lot like Yoshi's flutter jump in YI. The second half is where I can kinda feel that time crunch, and I ran into a bunch of issues. Beyond the usual troubles with fast scroll the level gets quite a bit trickier and there's some technical stuff towards the end. Past missing the star since it has the same limitations of two on screen at once and a couple times I'd get to the end and miss a boot and whoops there goes the star. This definitely could've used some extra time polishing it up, and you could've ended up with something really excellent if you had the time. Visually it was really nice. I liked your palette work and the blocked out thin-widescreen look was really interesting. It was a bit restricted for actual gameplay, but it worked well. I think you could've maybe done a bit more with the background or tile mixing, but overall I really liked it. Design: - 36/60 Creativity: - 27/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 - M's K While this level is pretty creative with its use of the punchers, I honestly feel like the idea of a hard single-room puzzle isn't a great fit for a level design contest like this. It's really difficult to give a fair score to something like this when approaching it from the idea of scoring a regular level. The concept behind the puzzle was really creative, but I found it pretty stressful getting up and down and weaving through the blocks, and I ended up having a really tough time with it. The fact you have to go up and back down makes it way tighter than I felt it needed to be. I think, at least for the contest, it would've been better to build a level around the gimmick instead of a puzzle like that. Aesthetically, it was vanilla smw with some transparency. The colors were a bit... stark, and you could've fixed the lava tiles. Design: - 12/60 Creativity: - 26/30 Aesthetics: - 4/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 - Valley This was a straightforward little level. It didn't really make me think or challenge me much with the usage of the supplied sprites. That made it feel very... Vanilla-ish for lack of a better term. The swinging rotodisks were interesting, but could've been placed in areas were they were actually threatening, and the pipe cannons felt kinda like they were added on as an afterthought. It wasn't really bad, but it could've been a lot more interesting in my opinion. Aesthetically it was okay. The background in the underground area could've used a layer 3 layer behind it, and I would've liked to see a bit more decoration overall. Design: - 25/60 Creativity: - 10/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 - Rains This one was pretty interesting, though I ended up liking the second half more than the first half. I especially liked the section with the high speed rotating platform riding along the spike tunnel, that felt almost like something out of Yoshi's island. I think the first half would've felt a bit stronger if it wasn't relying so much on the platforms that kinda... fall apart with the punchers. It was odd how only one section gave you a reset when you fell, whereas the rest of the level just killed you. The 3-up challenge was interesting, but felt kinda... like, ultra extra jank would be the best way to describe it? I had fun but it didn't feel the greatest, if that makes sense. I would've liked to see a bit more use of supplied graphics, but I liked the palette work and the background. It felt very desert. Design: - 46/60 Creativity: - 27/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 - Deep The placement of things felt incredibly random, and they weren't very hard to avoid either. It was just kinda... a 300 second autoscroller where I avoided a thing or two. It didn't really use any of the supplied pieces either. I get the idea behind the level but the execution could've been a bit better. Underwater autoscrollers are really tough because they're either slow or it's hard to keep up with the camera. Design: - 4/60 Creativity: - 0/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 - Ninji I feel like this could've been executed a lot better. The first half, while it felt intentional, the player can pretty easily just skip over the majority of the actual level design. The houses are really the only obstacle you have and you can just... go over them all. What was inbetween felt kinda repetitive. The same plant/ninji/turn block stacks repeated throughout the level. To add to this, there was a lot of places I felt like I got screwed over -super- hard for getting hit, and I'm surprised you just placed powerups instead of using the powerup spawners. This was worse in the second half, with the cat suit being absolutely necessary to progress, and being big necessary to break the blocks, I managed to get myself to a point where I -had- to die multiple times, and time out at least once. The climbing areas it felt particularly easy to slip off the... climbing things on the wall too. This, paired with the length of the level, made it really draining to actually play. Aesthetically I liked the colors, but I wasn't a big fan of the chonky background wood everywhere. I'm surprised you didn't dig into the supplied tilesets for wood at all. Design: - 20/60 Creativity: - 15/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 - Rotation This level was really fun to me. I had a blast with the various rotating platforms and the setups, especially in the first half. The platforming was really tight and I liked your usage of the various obstacles with circular movement alongside. Unfortunately, the second half didn't feel nearly as tight, maybe due to the higher powerup density. The setups didn't quite feel as strong, almost as if you ran out of steam a little bit. A big problem though, all the global exanimations were messed up. This caused some problems in the level, notably I couldn't tell what direction the one-way walls were facing at a glance. This pulled it down just a little bit more. Otherwise it was really good. The level looked really nice besides the aforementioned issue with the exanimations. That pushed it back a lot, it was jarring seeing jumbled pixel squares in the middle of an otherwise pleasant sky level. Design: - 44/60 Creativity: - 25/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 - Valley This felt kinda... Weird almost? Like the level didn't really have an identity. It started out almost like a regular Mario level, then there was a one-way maze, then some romhacky Mario cave and then some more one-way shenanigans? It didn't feel particularly consistent to me and that wasn't helped by constantly just cycling through the powerups. The custom sprites were oddly spread out and with none of them getting focus either their placement ended up feeling kinda haphazard. I feel like the level could've been served way better by focusing on a much smaller amount of elements overall. Length was also a bit of a concern, I was starting to get close to running out of time at the end there. Asthetically it worked alright enough. I think it could've used some -more- variety, honestly. Design: - 24/60 Creativity: - 10/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 - Go'n This is a cute level that uses its main gimmick, the boomerang flower, pretty well! The setups were fun and I liked the consistency with the boomerang bros through the level. The other enemies all proved to be a bit of a challenge to hit with the boomerang, making the setups fun to try and play with positioning and throw speed to try and hit the right angles. The fact that only the wood blocks blocked the actual boomerang was a nice touch too. Unfortunately, it felt hampered by what I felt was a really short time limit. The level's dragon coins and even its overall design seem to be encouraging you to explore a bit but the time limit felt super tight for that. I think you could've easily and comfortably extended the timer just a little bit to help with that. I ended the level with 23 smw seconds left and I never particularly felt like I was being slow. I feel like there could've been some more mixing with the tilesets and palette work, but it was neat enough. I liked the sorta... girder-ey cave areas. Design: - 40/60 Creativity: - 24/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 - Volcano I really liked this one. The use of the Terraria rocket-boot powerup was really well done here. Most of the obstacles are well placed that if you approach it with a bit of thought it's pretty clean to get through. The escalation to an almost athletic level in the back half was interesting, it made it way more tense than the slow methodic navigation in the first half. Imagine my surprise when I got through the door at the end for just a dragon coin lol, I was expecting a moon or something. A couple things to point out though. A few of the firebars in the first half can just... catch you as you're flying across from offscreen. I got myself most of the time with a quick turnaround but I think they're a bit of a problem. Especially the long ones. On that topic, a lot of the reset doors in the first half don't seem particularly useful, since you can either make it through after getting hit without the boot or if you do get hit you just die. The difficulty did spike pretty hard on the back half, it wasn't too difficult but the level ended up feeling a little disjointed... Kinda like two different levels with the same design ideas just from different worlds, if that makes sense. Visually I loved it. The colors are really nice and I like the subtle tileset mixing. I would've -maybe- liked to see some more of the newer tilesets but it was really well done overall. Design: - 45/60 Creativity: - 26/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 - Mondo local man spends an hour trying to learn how to control mario's vertical momentum I can't honestly rate a kaizo level like this super fairly under the context of a regular design contest, because it honestly just feels crushingly hard to me. I really, -really- like the use of the munchers as warp blocks for a quick retry though. That was an awesome use of them that, honestly, I wouldn't have thought of before playing this. I only got a couple screens in because I was having a really hard time getting consistent setups off the fish, and the 2nd green rex wasn't playing nice, so I gave the level a glance in Lunar Magic to see what I missed. It looks like it remains pretty consistent throughout, mixing up the enemy variety a bit in the second half but the relative feel of carefully controlling your air momentum stays the same. Again all I can really comment about the gameplay is that it was way too hard for me, but certainly was good use of the supplied resources. Visually though it definitely could've used some work. I get when building specific setups it can be hard to make 'em pretty but your levels don't have to be a cement block maze. It didn't look -bad- or anything, since y'know vanilla palettes, but it would've been nice to see some foreground tiles. Design: - 8/60 Creativity: - 22/30 Aesthetics: - 4/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 - Shenandoah Wow. This level was incredible! This was a really creative use of the 2-powerup limit of the powerup patch. I didn't even realize vine heads counted for that too. Really cool. The setups were all crisp as hell too. Everything just felt kinda right, and the level flowed very well. Due to the somewhat loose nature of the platforming, I never felt that feeling of "boy i miss regular mario" I get while playing levels like this. All the little puzzle setups felt like they were almost pulled clean out of a nice athletic Mario level. I'm a really big fan of the use of the various swinging and rotating platforms. The palette of pieces you made feels... just about right. Maaaaybe you could've fit in the ones that rotate and stop, but otherwise there was enough variance while still feeling cohesive. Well done. Visually it wowed me. Excellent use of the resources, and I love the palette work. I'm stealing that brown palette for the rotating cement platforms I'm sorry. It's very pretty. Design: - 53/60 Creativity: - 27/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 - Surfing This level's gimmick was rad. Really creative use of the punchers here to push sprites, and nice use of the kill blocks on the bottom row of the screen to prevent the player from being punched around too. Most of the setups were pretty straightforward, but I think something holding this level back a little bit is how inconsistent some of them felt. In particular, the part with the juggling goombas, where they stream up and you have to bounce off one. If I hesitated a little too long they'd desync a bit and it became way harder to time a jump. The back half, while really innovative, kinda ended up feeling the same. It was consistent, but I had a really hard time controlling mario. You effectively turned the cloud platforms into the jumping dolphin wave. I still had a lot of fun and the level was overall super neat, but I think those little frustrations bog it down a bit. The aesthetics were nice. I really liked the palette work, but I would've loved to see some tileset mixing and use of the graphics supplied. Design: - 42/60 Creativity: - 26/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 - Island I like the idea of using a penguin suit to fight the waves, but this level could use a lot more work towards that. The layer 3 moves with the camera, so unless you fall to the very bottom of the level you'll never actually interact with it. The sprites were spread out very far and didn't end up feeling very cohesive. It didn't really feel like you had a solid idea for the level overall. Maybe if you built something a bit more athletic, forcing the player to weave through stacked goombas and falling pokey bits it could've held together a bit better. Visually there was some problems. The layer 3 was hidden behind layer 1, so you couldn't see it. There was a lot of cutoff, and some misarranged tiles in the background. Design: - 7/60 Creativity: - 5/30 Aesthetics: - 4/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 - Melon This level was an interesting exploration of the puncher sprite. I really liked some of the setups in the first half, the podoboo and p-speed ones really stand out to me. I think the second half of the level was a little bit rougher though. The punishment for failure frequently ended up going from "taking a hit" to death due to the reliance on the cloud powerup, and especially towards the end there was an extended section where there were no replacement powerups offered. I think you could've done some tricks with screen scroll pipes or reset doors or even teleport blocks to cover this up a bit more elegantly. It just feels like kinda an odd difficulty ramp from the rest of the level, if that makes sense. I really liked the colors here and the subtle layer 3 clouds. The level looks really nice, and you used the supplied resources well, even if I would've liked to maybe see some play with more than just the grassland/rocks set. Design: - 40/60 Creativity: - 25/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 - Preposterous This level just really didn't... stop. It didn't give me any real chance to just pause and catch my breath. I get that it's supposed to be an athletic level but it made it end up feeling really overbearing instead. The high difficulty paired with the short reaction time to approaching obstacles almost gave it a bit of a "gotcha" feeling too. I kept dying only to make it one screen further the next time as I progressed through the level. That's kind of the problem with having to deal with things falling on you in general in SMW, they fall quick so you don't have much time to react. I don't really mean to sound too negative though, I think you were pretty close to something here, it was just a little bit too much. Visually I think you could've mixed up the foreground a bit, or at least changed the color of the SMW logs and it would've helped. I liked the palette for the background though. Design: - 36/60 Creativity: - 22/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 - Jumpopolis This was, I feel, waaay too difficult. Especially with the two autoscrolling sections. It almost felt to me like the midpoint should've been immediately after the first pipe instead of before the second. The platforming was incredibly tight, and sitting through the entire autoscroller every time you missed the shell or hit the on/off block (which was a lot, by the way. I ended up skipping the mushroom to make it past that) makes the level feel way more punishing than I feel you intended. The fact that after the midpoint there's literally 0 safe ground to stand on and collect your thoughts makes it even harsher. The ideas weren't bad, but it really needed to be toned down. Something to keep in mind is that your player isn't going to know the timing to make a safe jump in an autoscroller like you do, it's the "you know your own level better" problem but really exaggerated. Visually it was okay. I would've liked to see more variation in the foreground tiles used. Design: - 24/60 Creativity: - 18/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 - Bubgle I think this level had some really creative ideas, and I can say it's the only variable scroll layer 2 level I've played where it didn't make me want to tear my hair out, but I just think there's too much -level- here. I managed to time out without spending an especially long amount of time on any of the obstacles, and after a while some of the individual puzzles kinda started to blend together. I feel like you could've cut out a decent chunk, and shortened the level, and it would've been -way- stronger. The 600 second time limit being too tight really hurts it in my opinion. Aesthetics-wise it's a vanilla forest. I would've liked to see even a custom palette or something here. Design: - 32/60 Creativity: - 26/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 - Chainsaws There wasn't really much to this one unfortunately. It was pretty short, and the obstacles weren't super engaging and ended up kinda repetitive. For a level named Fire and Chainsaws the fire wasn't really all there, just some firebars blocking some gaps. It ended up feeling a little bit unfocused since the majority of the obstacles are really straightforward to get through. I think you could've done a bit better if you really focused down on the interaction between the firebar (and some other fire-focused sprites) and line-guided sprites, since they can sync up in some pretty interesting ways. I would've really liked to see some more of the supplied resources too. Aesthetically it was a purple castle. I feel like you could've included some of the supplied resources to spruce it up a bit. Design: - 18/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 - Intense This certainly lived up to the intense part of its name. I think, honestly, the difficulty was a bit much. It was especially tense for a level where getting hit once means failure, and this was exacerbated by the absolute jank of fast smashing layer 2. I liked the parts where you had to slip through the swinging firebars, even if the timing got aggressively tight in the second part. The rest of the level just wasn't doing it for me though. I ended up scrolling the screen to be able to deal with the banzai bills without them being in my way. I'll say though that the level changing on the second go through was neat, I always like to see that trick in levels due to the amount of planning that really has to go into it. Visually it could've used a bit more to really set it apart from that vanilla look. I would've gone a bit deeper into the SMB3 theming than just the wooden blocks, personally. Design: - 16/60 Creativity: - 26/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 - Waterworld Both the underwater sections here felt really.. sloggy to me. It took me grinding at them for a bit to get through each one, especially the second half. Other than "there is water" they didn't feel particularly cohesive with the purple part of the level either. The short athletic purple bits felt more interesting overall to me, with the chainsaw room feeling like it was borderline kaizo in design. It probably didn't really help that every section of the level focused on different sprites as well. It just felt kinda, scattered I guess? I would've liked to see more focus or at least the same pieces used throughout instead of like once and done The aesthetics were alright. The colors were a bit bright and there were some glitchy blocks in the first underwater section, and I would've liked to see more variation. Design: - 22/60 Creativity: - 16/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 - Two This level really frustrated me. With one section being basically "mario gets hit by enemies that are off-screen" and the other being an already tight maze that's flooded with enemies and a shoots-through walls magikoopa. Like I mentioned there was frequently an issue with getting hurt by enemies you can't see in the lighter section. There's plenty of enemies that fall on you from above without warning, and a couple times safe drops marked with coins -really- aren't all that safe. This gets compounded a bit in the second half, which really punishes big mario for even existing. There's lots of munchers and really tight squeezes between the thwimps. To push it over the edge a bit, it felt just kinda... too long overall. The fact the midpoint comes so late means you have to go through two large grueling sections without making much progress if you die, and I'm fairly sure most people if they don't would time out. The level really didn't need to be that long. The powerups felt kinda haphazard and randomly selected, and I feel like you could've used more of the custom sprites outside of the second section. More than the thwimps and magikoopa too, the thwimps feel more like obstacles than enemies, if that makes sense. Aesthetically the level was nice, I would've liked to see some proper tileset mixing, but the colors were nice. It gives off a very "SMBX level compilation" vibe to me for whatever reason, just without the exaggerated decoration usually involved. Design: - 20/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 - D e e p I had a fun time with this one! Found myself jamming along with the Necrodancer port as I went lol. Your use of the various grey platforms and the on-off switches felt pretty tight, there was enough time to scout out the first part of the obstacles but they were long enough chunks that they had that keep-you-on-your toes athletic feeling. The tricky little one where you had to flip the switch off and catch yourself with the grey platform again was really neat. I liked your use of the numberless math platforms in the second half too, they were a nice little addition and mixup to the overall flow of the level. The signposting for the surprise bills was pretty nice too. I did have a couple problems though. Since I died a couple times I managed to carry my mushroom through the level and a few of the jumps ended up feeling a little bit too tight as big Mario. There was also a little problem with the colors, I had a hard time seeing some of the blue off blocks for some reason. I think maybe you could've played with the palette a bit to make them clearer. Some of the on/off blocks also felt a bit rough to hit, notably the one on the line guided triple platform near the beginning, and the one at the very end. They probably could've been adjusted a bit. Besides the above mentioned problem, I liked your colour usage here. The only real problem I had was that it was mostly vanilla, aside from the Mario Maker ghosty fences. I think you could've used some of the SMB3 assets or maybe more Mario Maker tiles to elevate it a bit above that "VLDC" look. Design: - 40/60 Creativity: - 24/30 Aesthetics: - 8/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 - Shell Unfortunately, I am not super enough to get everything in the level. I did try to figure it out though. Something you have to be careful with with puzzles like this is how easily a player can just permanently mess up. I got myself into a situation where it took me a second or two to figure out how to get out of it and I was worried I'd have to reset. Something to look into in the future is a reset door or reset pipe. The player would still have to get all the coins and the moon in one run, those don't reset like sprites do. There was definitely some creativity in the actual puzzle setups, as they stumped me a bit but for the most part I figured them out... I -really- would've liked to have seen some of the extra sprites though. Visually you should really experiment with palettes and map16 a bit more. It's not too hard (probably my favorite part of putting together a level for a _LDC style contest honestly) and a good palette can -really- pull together a level visually even without some hardcore tileset mixing. Design: - 25/60 Creativity: - 16/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 - Fortified For lack of a better term this level felt really scatterbrained I guess. it felt like only a couple setups in the first half had much thought put into them, for the most part it was just enemies placed around, and it honestly didn't feel particularly tested. There was a lot of sprite slot issues, sprites not spawning due to other slots being taken up. The powerup placement was super weird. Two at the start and then two like, right at the very tail end, which didn't make a lot of sense to me. Really egregious was the midpoint entrance being placed so far back from the actual midpoint, it should've at the minimum been right before the pipe.. The setups in the second half were better, they at least had a consistent theme... But as a whole it felt rushed, I guess? Spinjumping off these horizontal saws kinda sucks due to how they track the player. They have a tendency to swing around you pretty quickly. The visuals could've really used some work. The palette was dark and dull, making it hard to see and not very interesting. Enemy palettes were changed but only some of them, and none of the supplied graphics were used. Design: - 20/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 4/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 - Bro's I hate to use this word but honestly the best way to describe this level is probably "Rompy." There's a lot of pretty flat terrain that's mostly devoid of enemies. There's a lot of points I noticed where some things could've been put to intercept the player, often slopes or platforms just left... empty. The enemies that -were- there didn't feel particularly thought out. Even if you're going for a more Nintendo-ish feel you should put thought into your setups. Even with just the colors of koopas and goombas you can do a lot with a small setup of platforms and slopes. The only enemies that really felt like they played off the level design at all were the hammer bros, and one boomerang bro. The hammer bros out of necessity for how they work, and there was a single boomerang bro with a low ceiling that made it particularly hard to avoid by just jumping over. More stuff like that could've helped. Visually it was alright. I liked the bright palette but you didn't play much with the tilesets at all. There was also a couple priority issues with powerups/mario/jumping piranhas and the layer 2 background that probably could've been avoided. It would've been neat if you used some of the airship tiles as wooden supports in the main level to sorta tie things together. Design: - 32/60 Creativity: - 14/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 - Fishlantis This level was wayyyy too open. For almost the entirety of the first section you can just swim right without really having to think or adjust your course until the spiky dudes swarm. This is even without the frog suit, as I ended up going through the level again without it in case that was the problem. It's pretty easy to get by without even waking up most of the rip van fish. Maybe the level could've worked a bit better if you had a chargin' chuck wake the boys up? I dunno. I think fundamentally the problem is the player really doesn't need to alter their course much, something a bit more twisty and maze-like probably would've worked a lot better. The second section was neat, but it was pretty much a scripted section like Sonic games tend to have. With the frog suit it's pretty easy to just mash away from the porcupuffer and it has no hope of catching up. The little pillars were cute and I liked the usage of the Mario Maker tiles to spruce up the vanilla tiles. I think the palette could've used a little bit of work to clean it up though. Some of the Mario Maker tiles look a little odd. I think it's the dark blue outline? Design: - 22/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 - Spherical This level was alright. I liked how you stuck with the bubble theme and played with the various bubble sprites included and already in the game, but it ended up feeling a little flat to me. There wasn't a ton of interesting setups with the different bubbles, the one that really sticks out was the alternating bouncy-and-not bubbles. This made the level feel a little bit eclectic. The new things were introduced a bit quickly for it to feel like a natural evolution on the theming, if that makes sense. The second part really exacerbated this, as it shifted gears entirely and I felt lost the theme a bit. Maybe that's what made me feel like the level wasn't super sure where it was going. The switch from quick platforming to a box pushing puzzle was really odd to me. I really liked the usage of the mario maker sky set here, but the level had some visual issues. The palette was mostly nice but there was some weird things, like the light outline on the midway points to denote what variety of bubble you were jumping on, and the odd background in the second part. It could've been cleaned up a bit. Design: - 34/60 Creativity: - 22/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 - Temple This level was pretty fun. I love how you reskinned the resources to blend them into the level better, it made them feel like a much more natural addition than something out of place. It was a nice creative twist to the on-off blocks and hiding the pipes with exanimation triggers. The setups were all fairly well thought out, and the progression through the level was pretty good. Both the paths off the split are pretty fun, and the way the lava-based sprites just keep getting in your way in the rising lava room is pretty neat. The biggest issue I had with this level was that for all the neat touches there were a couple places where visual clarity was off. The biggest of which was the donut blocks, I didn't trigger the "safe" ones so I missed the ones over lava and fell in once or twice. They're catchable if you're looking for them but they caught me more than they probably should've. Visually it was great. I really liked the aesthetic you put together, and other than the aforementioned clarity issues the reskinning worked really well for the level. Design: - 51/60 Creativity: - 24/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 - Annoying This just isn't particularly fun. I know I'm not a kaizo player to begin with, but even from that standpoint this level doesn't seem very interesting, or very appropriate for a contest like this. If you're going to submit something this difficult to a non-kaizo level design contest it should really be short and punchy, it needs to wow to outpace the frustration built up from repeatedly dying over and over again. The fact that even the midpoint is so far into the level really hurts it, and it basically just amounts to making it frustrating for a player to sit down and try and actually play the level without savestates. I ended up putting this one down to be honest. It's hard to judge a kaizo level on the merits of traditional level design, but I couldn't complete this one. Visually it's just the vanilla green palette. nothing has been changed and honestly there could've been -some- effort put into here. Design: - 5/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 - Island 2 Yep, that sure is a 106 edit. You just kinda... put the punchers everywhere. Even approaching from the angle of a blatant edit being okay, there just wasn't any real thought put into it. Make sure you actually make the levels you're submitting to contests. Design: - 1/60 Creativity: - 1/30 Aesthetics: - 5/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 - Glacies This was a cute nintendo-esque level. I always appreciate someone taking the time to try and make ice physics work. It did have a couple pretty notable issues though. One was the time limit, it was surprisingly tight on the first playthrough. I think you could've just bumped it up 100 seconds and been fine. A bit bigger was the sprite selection and usage. It unfortunately wasn't super creative and there really wasn't any included resources that impacted the design a ton outside of like, a fire nipper and a blue parakoopa. I think you really could've done some more focus around the included sprites and blocks and built some challenges into the level around it. The ones there almost felt a little bit like an afterthought, if that makes sense. Visually I adored it. The small SMAS inclusions into the vanilla graphics were super effective in highlighting that sunny, slightly snowy winter feeling. The palette was really nice and cheery too. Good job. Design: - 42/60 Creativity: - 12/30 Aesthetics: - 10/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 49 - Industries I got some real weird "fractured DKC" vibes from this level. Like you made a couple smaller DKC styled levels and jammed them together. The exterior, interior, and the bubble ride at the end were all different enough but flowed in the same way. I think you could've stood to pare it down a little bit. The outside sections in particular feel a little bit less focused than the interior and final section, especially since they don't use the bubbles like the other two do. The fact that all the trees had priority was a little bit annoying too. The interior used the non-bouncy bubbles pretty well, though for the most part they honestly could've just been replaced with brown platforms. Some of the little on-off tricks were neat and overall I enjoyed it. Little bit of clarity oddity, the "hot" blocks around the lava were so bright they looked like they would hurt me. I was expecting them to, actually, and was surprised when they didn't. The final exterior, with the bubble ride was probably the most fun part of the level. Having to manage the on-off blocks to not pop your bubbles was neat, and I kinda wish that more of the level used them or was based around that. Visually it was okay. The exterior palette was a bit bright and there was the clarity issue mentioned above. The interior looked nice enough, but I would've liked to see some more of the suplied tiles or some mixing on the foreground. Design: - 38/60 Creativity: - 18/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 - Urchins This was a pretty solid water level. You stuck to one solid theme pretty well, but I would've liked to see a little more variety with what was included. The ice flower was a nice touch (can kill the regular urchins, but not the big bois) but it still felt a little hyperfocused on one sprite. The level also didn't really seem to know how fast it wanted me to take it. The level was long, the time limit ended up being super tight, but being a water level focused around dodging urchins slow and cautious is really the way to play it. If you take it too fast, the fish become a non issue as they're mostly stuck flopping around removing them as a threat altogether. I think you could've gotten away with a little bit of a shorter level with a little more sprite variety, more enemies that require waiting like lotuses could've helped. I loved the visuals. The palette was really nice and you did a pretty good job using the supplied resources. The dark gloomy teal stood out well against the sprites and the background didn't muddle too much with the foreground. Design: - 40/60 Creativity: - 18/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 - Military For a puzzle level, the puzzles sure all seemed to be "just don't get hit." I didn't really have to think at all about what was going on. It was hit the P-switch, and continue without dropping my powerup. It wasn't super... engaging either, since the majority of the obstacles are just firebars, which you basically just wait to pass you. You have to be careful when making a puzzle level so that your puzzles end up engaging, because otherwise they might just become monotonous. The time limit was kinda huge too. I get it, you have a level that necessitates reset doors, but after the first room I made it through the whole level in a clear shot. Speaking of the first room, you have the level entrance set wrong. The level doesn't scroll with the player vertically when you do use the reset door. It's little things like that that can make levels seem a little rushed. Visually it was okay. You have a couple tiles that are running with the wrong palette and it's a little bit jarring. Make sure you're taking advantage of the ability to switch around blocks' palettes in map16 if you can't get an included palette to play nice with your decorations. The background in the interior section could've stood to be a bit darker, or a different hue to help it stand out a bit better. Design: - 31/60 Creativity: - 14/30 Aesthetics: - 6/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 52 - Shipp Interesting trick with the diagonal urchins, and sending them upwards through blocks they can't pass through otherwise, however this level felt really lopsided in a number of ways. The progression is a bit... weird, the urchin setups in the middle part are a lot more varied and interesting than the ones on either end of the level, and I feel like you could've brought that through to the crusher section. The midpoint was also really weirdly placed, I get you can't put it in the middle of the autoscroller, but maybe you could've rearranged the chunks of the level to facilitate it a bit more. The sprite variety was also a little... lacking? You tried to fit in the puncher with with fishspam but it ended up not really being super impactful to me. Overall I liked the level but it could've used a little more work to tune it up. Visually it was really nice. I loved the tileset you built and the palette you made for it, but I would've liked to see a background. I get you were doing layer tricks but it looked to me like Layer 3 should've been open to play around a bit more with. Design: - 39/60 Creativity: - 24/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53 - Glowing This was pretty solid, but I would've liked to see a little bit more... continuity through the level. Sprites end up being used and then dropped as if their job was done, never to be seen again. The only really solid theme through the level was the rocket boot which had its own problems. When you make a level that relies super hard on one power up, you need to make sure the player has access to it when it's necessary. There's a couple times where I got hit, went through a few obstacles, and couldn't continue forwards because I didn't have a rocket boot to keep going. You definitely had a solid base here, and a little bit more tuning could've pushed it a bit further. Visually I liked the colors you picked for the glowing effect, but I feel like the tileset could've used a bit more. You didn't use any of the supplied graphics, so it just kinda looked like a regular level to me. I had some clarity issues with the rope-bridge tile 1F0s, they looked solid and like I could run on them fine, maybe you could've replaced them with something that looked a bit less solid for Mario? Design: - 32/60 Creativity: - 17/30 Aesthetics: - 7/10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54 - Chomp T his was pretty solid. I think you used the chomp rock about as well it could actually be used within the confines of SMW, without the more defined slopes and physics YI offers. The spitting nippers worked well as a way to attack Mario while he's pushing the rock around, but once you got actually past them their raining fire down on you ended up a bit tricky. I think the only real problems I had with this level is that it was kinda short, and the sprite variety wasn't quite... all there? It focused well on the chomp rock, but it could've used some other enemies to build challenges around, there's only so much mowing down nippers and spinies can do. Some more dedicated platforming challenges inbetween rock sections might've helped. Visually it was nice. I like the tileset mixing and you did a good job with the background. The palettes worked well, and I could easily tell what was solid and what wasn't. Design: - 37/60 Creativity: - 22/30 Aesthetics: - 9/10