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Every level I've made for an LDC (both SM63 and LL) has been inspired by and/or referenced Cave Story in some way. Some levels are more obvious than others.
Also, my levels always use alternate music from works that influenced them.
I can go into further detail about certain levels if anyone actually cares. But nobody does.

I dunno, your levels are pretty good.

KABOOM wrote:I can go into further detail about certain levels if anyone actually cares. But nobody does.

I'm a bit late but I actually do care. I also liked reading the other posts. I'm interested.

Ohey this is interesting. Gonna do this only with my modern levels, since my older ones didn't have some sort of inspiration for me to make:

Shallow Water Ruins: After replaying a heck lot of Super Metroid, I just remembered why I loved the Metroid series: The exploration. So I made a level where the player could do what he wanted in any order.

Exploring the Unknown: Yup, more Metroid.

Freezestone: I suddenly imagined a Super Mario Galaxy esque level. A 3D environment actually, so thought it would be cool to make it 2D. About the story, I guess I was playing too much Twilight Princess.

Red Sun Fortress: I imagined how awesome a fire fortress level would be in a Donkey Kong Returns/Tropical Freeze game would be. But since there's no way I could design in DK, I made it for SM63.

Sandworm Domain: "Hey, what if I make a level all based around worms and it's in a desert?", plus, a pretty heavy NSMB influence.

Cosmic Gardens: Listening to this. Also, the story I yet have to add is pretty much based on my feelings as of now.

Quite honestly? My levels didn't really have a backbone. I would sit in the designer and play around with tiles, see what landscape looked good, what didn't. I almost never had an idea set in stone, and I was always debating. What if I use this decoration for this? No, that won't fit. What if I turn it this way? Oh, there's not a tile to work with that.

It was mainly working with abstract concepts, really. Spontaneous, random, out of the blue levels.

Surviving The End ~ I guess I sticked to the 2012 idea by making a level where different natural disasters happened in the same spot. And just like in the movie, the goal is a safe haven where people can survive the apocalypse. I still remember MoD asking why couldn't they just feed the Shine Sprite to the world...

Mt. Danger ~ I don't... know. I guess I was inspired by all challenging platformer stuff I had seen so far. I did my best to make it somewhat fair though.

Out of this World ~ Title inspired by an old game called Another World. I tried to make the place as alien as I could back then, by... using Cave tiles.

This is War ~ Inspired by the song by Thirty Seconds to Mars. I understood the "Musical Moods" theme of that LDC as making a level so that the player can do actions in time with the music. This level was unique that way compared to the other levels, but the fact that it was rushed made it lose points. Not to mention people missed the point that the level's boss WAS supposed to be easy. Because you would kill him in time with the music. At least MoD-senpai noticed

Mushroom's Edge ~ Mirror's Edge. 'nuff said.

Totally Cool ~ Inspired by the snow levels from Crash Bandicoot 2, as well as other snow levels from other games.

Sky Islands ~ I just tried to make something as fast as possible in an hour.

Hall of the Editor ~ Brought to you by two minds who were involved in the whole Raymond Wars/Neverending Story incident. I don't think there's much left ot say about it... besides the fact that the plot was Xero's idea. For the most part I just helped him continue working. This is more his level than it is mine.

The Fire Field ~ Inspired by the F-Zero song. It's probably one of my best levels so far. I'm proud of it.

Urban Climb ~ I always wanted to make a sequel to Mushroom's Edge. A series. I never got around to it though. But I still wanted to make another parkour level...

Windy Plains ~ It was just supposed to be a grassland with a few windmills. I dunno.

Messenger of Kingdoms ~ This is mostly Frozen, to be honest. FrozenFire came up with the plot. I just... rushed the platforming...

You can check out my levels from my sig. All of them are there, except for Messenger of Kingdoms. I might add it later.

Edit: Ascent is missing too... I lost the code >_< Anyway that level was inspired by Dust: An Elysian Tail.

I'll add the inspirations for the other levels I missed out in my first post because I think I remember most if not all of them:
(and I kinda wanna archive them so I never forget )

• Search the Night in 7 continents (13th LDC)- I've always been a bit obsessed with geography and countries and world maps, I mean, this kinda beta tested what Journey to the Arctic aimed to finish in a way.
• Hanging Gardens of Babylon (15th LDC)- I came up with this purely for the theme, I remember thinking "Earth & Sky, hmm..." and the idea of doing a really beautiful, cultural garden was appealing. Not that it really looked as good as I wanted it to.
• Underground Temple (16th LDC)- I just followed the theme here, I listened to my music choice and my instinct was to make a deep, dark cave. It was originally going to be an underground lake, but after realising this was a site meme here, I changed it at last minute.
• The Rainbow Nightmare (discontinued duel against SMIC)- This was nowhere near as good as planned but back then my ideas far outweighed my level designing abilities. But the rainbow sequence in Luigi's Escape was a sort of remake of this. Basically I just liked the title and the concept, because I've always been a bit of a fan of irony. (also I've always had an interest in dreams, too)
• The Halloween Silver Stars (HLDC 2011 mini-LDC)- This wasn't inspired by anything in particular, just my own interest to make a halloween level with a puzzling/confusing silver star hunt. Which is probably why it wasn't very good. Some of the rooms were very inspired by the original SM63 Boo's Mansion though, some of them are quite obvious references looking back on it.
• The Haunted Shipwreck (HLDC 2012 mini-LDC)- I knew I was limited by the template Volkove was making, but I really wanted to do a shipwreck level for a while because I wanted to do something with loads of moving blocks and cool platforming, and this was almost a perfect concept for that.
• Athena Goddess of War (1st 25quared mini-LDC)- I knew that Universitas and JTTA had succeeded because I played to my strengths and interests, I had another sort of interest in Greek Gods (not as much though) and for this reason I just wanted to do a small, cinematic level based around it.
• Easter (2nd 25quared mini-LDC)- It was around Easter time when this mini LDC was posted up, and I figured that was the one theme that I'd never really seen be used before in a level, so I just went for it and made the least serious thing ever (I was making this deliberately as a funny level from the second I started).
• SMW Mini-Remake Series (just a portal series)- I just fancied the idea of making an exact replica of another Mario game.
• Eternity City (incomplete for 28th LDC)- This was going to be Sonata For A Minor, a collab between me and MK. But we both just were quite busy so never got round to finishing it. I started designing the city while it still looked possible that we would finish and because I loved the design so much (I feel like it's easily my best urban graphic design), I didn't wanna put that work to waste so I made it into just a platformer. The original story was gonna be 3 levels, representing three different moods and movements of an apocalyptic story of the same developing city. Instead I just tried to represent this by changing the environment.
• The Secret Meadow (most recent 29th LDC)- As you all should know by now, this was totally inspired by TP. I realised in the original I never truly explained Lilly's childhood, when the dreams actually started. And I desperately wanted to return to level designing with something that would mean a lot to me and others. So this level was there as a prequel to basically show you the first vivid dream that Lilly ever had after her parents died.

My 7th LDC and 18th LDC entrants were both inspired from Chrono Cross. In particular, there was an area called Fortress of Ancient Dragons, which had a few simply puzzle mechanics and was very mazelike. I believe you had to activate a series of switches to open up the next segment of the dungeon, but unfortunately I could only mimic that in the end of Omniquet because I didn't want to make an especially large level. In The Ruined Castle (and really that whole early time period), I tried to capture the grandiose setting more than anything. Thus, the giant bullet bill room and the tall collapsing towers.

Seasonease (and any level with Galaxy at the end) has obvious inspiration from Super Mario Galaxy(which I still want to make a series about eventually), but I think I also had LoZ: Oracle of Seasons in my head.

As far as I can tell, everything else was pretty much me getting a random idea and going with it. For Exterresta, I wanted to see what other blocks I could mesh the background with and tried the green bricks. Blizzid Canyon was originally a level I wanted to make using LL, but I gave up on that shortly. Tesoro Luminoso was literally me wanting to test out seabed foliage. Mostly the sea anenomes using cave spores and rocks. etc. etc. etc.

Kimonio wrote:Quite honestly? My levels didn't really have a backbone. I would sit in the designer and play around with tiles, see what landscape looked good, what didn't. I almost never had an idea set in stone, and I was always debating. What if I use this decoration for this? No, that won't fit. What if I turn it this way? Oh, there's not a tile to work with that.

It was mainly working with abstract concepts, really. Spontaneous, random, out of the blue levels.

This is precisely what I do, to the point where it's actually scary how much this describes my designing :p

Karyete wrote:

Kimonio wrote:Quite honestly? My levels didn't really have a backbone. I would sit in the designer and play around with tiles, see what landscape looked good, what didn't. I almost never had an idea set in stone, and I was always debating. What if I use this decoration for this? No, that won't fit. What if I turn it this way? Oh, there's not a tile to work with that.

It was mainly working with abstract concepts, really. Spontaneous, random, out of the blue levels.

This is precisely what I do, to the point where it's actually scary how much this describes my designing :p

yup, same

if something I make on accident looks cool I incorporate it anyway because why not