27th Level Designer Contest

[~Yuri]

Wait, I won again? Yay! I'm Really happy this time, since I was expecting only a ribbon because of how I had to rush to do this level. I was even going to do it longer, but my time was really short to do it.

Anyway, I was actually expecting MoD to win this LDC, his level was my favorite.

EDIT: btw Harmless, you already got a score higher than 15. Remember Darkwater Haven? You got a 15.22 score with it.

[~MP3 Amplifier~]

Oh yeah btw, my individual score for JJJ was actually 15.75, not 15.5, meaning JJJ is overall 14/20 but that doesn't make any difference to the placings. Sorry to add to the confusion. :3
I'll just leave my judgings here:

Judgings for the 27th LDC: show

1018peter:
with Torrent Dungeon – Floodgate Maze

Fun – 8/10. Even though you named this one of the easiest levels you made, I was still finding myself quite stuck sometimes in the puzzles. Part of it wasn’t helped by the confusion of the background tiles and the actual tiles you could stand on. But also the whole concept of the sponges was really smart, but still quite tricky to get your head around. I thought it was really clever though, you had some great ideas, and I definitely would not have been disappointed if it was a little bit longer as well, or if we had just one more puzzle room. That would have been the perfect length. Either way, congratulations, this was fun.

Graphics – 4/5. I definitely love the tile combinations, like most of your other levels that’s the strongest point of your graphics. However, things like water cut-off, water overlapping etc, were not pretty at all. I accept that they were probably unavoidable due to the obstacles and gameplay you wanted to use in this level, but nonetheless it still could have looked a lot neater. Overall I was impressed, though.

Other – 3/5.

-0.25 – At the beginning, if you were to go left into the water out of pure curiosity, due to how shallow it was, it was near impossible to return back to the platform.
+0.5 – Just the sponge idea deserves this, it was pretty great tbh.
-0.25 – Unfortunately, I managed to cheat in the sponge room. There are a few tiles near the beginning of the transition, if you don’t use the first pipe, you can head straight up to the one you need to get to just by running and jumping onto a brick, then jumping onto the sponge directly above it. I’m pretty sure it was a cheat, but even if it wasn’t and you were supposed to do that I still want to keep the point deduction because it was not very comfortable at all for the player. But yes, it is possible.

Overall – 15/20.

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Yurimaster:
with Thermal Temple

Fun – 9/10. While there wasn’t that much the prologue, I did find it fun, especially going into the houses and reading the conversations with the penguins. It also just felt nice to be able to explore the rooftops as well as the ground, so good work. I also had a surprising amount of fun in the second level smashing through all the ice bricks and I loved the concept of the heatstone, melting ice into water. That luring the fish challenge is ingenious as well. Even though it turned out to be pretty pointless because there were no blue coins to regain my health afterwards (no idea if that was the level’s fault or the designer’s fault), it was still really unique and I really appreciated the effort put into it. There were still a few downfalls in regards to gameplay, bugs really, that I will probably deduct points for specifically in the Other section. I had tons of fun though and this was really impressive, so well done. It seems like you are the master of making water fun (as water is not very fun in SM63).

Graphics – 5/5. The graphics were absolute perfection this time round. Sure there were still little mishaps and accidental flaws here and there, but they were so tiny I can forgive them. Everything else was just so beautiful that you easily redeemed yourself for the tiny mistakes. Congratulations!

Other – 2.5/5.

-0.25 – Unfortunately, in the temple, in the second challenge you can spin attack beside the breakable brick blocking the switch, meaning you can avoid the whole collecting the metal cap challenge.
-0.5 – Sometimes, the intentional health loss was really frustrating and risky because there would be times where coins disappeared and we’d by default lose the challenge. I’m not deducting the points for coin loss I should make that very clear, as that’s not something you can control. But having us lose that much health in one turn was a bit unnecessary and could have been easily avoided.
+0.25 – However, I did think the concepts used here, such as the heatstone and fish challenge, deserve a little bit extra in a place other than the fun section, as I thought they were really smart.

Overall – 16.5/20.

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Triple J:
with Aquatic Beach

Fun – 7.5/10. I will be honest- the fun isn’t going to be that high because many of the challenges felt impossible. While I really enjoyed this at times and found the gameplay rather thrilling, there were still times where I got easily frustrated. For example, the quickly rotating block and thwomp at the beginning; if it was just a quick rotating block with a slow thwomp, or a fast thwomp with a slow rotating block, that would have been more satisfactory. But because you used fast rotation and a fast thwomp, there was rarely enough time to find your balance on it, let alone survive getting squashed. It was just unnecessarily frustrating. While there were other flaws and things I disliked, such as how fast those green platforms against the wall were going, and the amount of singular falling logs you had to triple jump from, I did notice this time that you kept the frustrating nature of the platforming to a minimum if you could, which was very refreshing. I did like the mini blosses in the second transition and I thought it was good that we were able to return back to the start if we failed that section, even if I thought tipping logs weren’t the ideal choice of obstacle to take us back to the top. The second level was mostly okay, but I had many problems with the water + the lag. This made tagging onto my platforms and trying to reach high logs with metal cap really hard. You’ve got to be easier on the player because it wasn’t enjoyable, just annoying at this point. However, I am overall impressed. While the challenges were sometimes over-stretched a bit too much causing them to lag, I think the ideas you had were brilliant and a massive improvement. I can only hope the hard work will pay off for you this time.

Graphics – 4.75/5. The graphics were ALMOST perfect and I was extremely impressed with them. I wanted to give a 5/5, it’s just there were times where it felt quite repetitive, empty, especially in places where we were tile hopping; there could have been a lot more to interest us and make the view worthwhile. Having said that though, I was seriously happy with them most of the time. So yeah.

Other – 3.25/5.

Note – Why are there two start points at the beginning of the first level..? Not taking off points for it, just curious.
-0.5 – The lag throughout certain parts of both levels wasn’t severe, but still quite irritating at times and definitely got in the way gameplay-wise.
+0.75 – I love the endings of both levels, the ‘to be continued’ ending of the first and the massive shiny explosion ending of the last. Nice work.

Overall – 15.75/20.

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Supershroom:
with Mario and the Orb Of Morph

Fun – 7.75/10. Most of the time throughout playing this series, I was actually pleasantly surprised. Some of the gameplay was inconvenient and uncomfortable, whereas some of it was really comfortable to play on. I think it was quite fun and light-hearted to search the house at the very beginning of the first level, even if there wasn’t much point to it as the doors you needed were right in front of you, I still fairly enjoyed it. A lot of the fun came from exploring the underwater ship too, I didn’t pay too much attention to the story to be fair, but I didn’t really need to- the gameplay made up for it. In the first part of the ship you go to collect the invisibility in the second level, I quite liked, mainly because of the big swishing platforms and the laser beams. The bullets got a little annoying as they were either really fast or really slow, there could have been a bit more balance there. But overall it was nice. The second room however…well, I pointed out the main problem in the Other section. Not just that was a problem though, I discovered that we might as well have not even used the metal cap for the first part as we were stripped of it by the time we reach the green platforms anyway. One of the green platforms too, I think the last one, needed the acceleration calming down, it was a bit too harsh as even if I landed on it I’d just fall right off again. That massively long drop was…meh. While it was fairly relaxing to give my hands a rest, it was a bit too big; the drop could have been reduced a lot and still be likely to produce the same effect. It would have been nice if there was a better view on the way down as well. I personally loved the boat challenge through the hot water; I actually had a ton of fun with that, even if the obstacles weren’t ideal for the player. I hated the bullet underwater challenge in the third level, it was so laggy for me, and there were far too many bullets, it was just so frustrating, and yet the rest of the green room was fun. Just that one bit should have been toned down a little tbh. However I really was impressed with the gameplay in the blue room, it feels like a lot of effort went into it and I did find it most of the time enjoyable- maybe except for the massive drop in the second transition again, but yeah. I also enjoyed the rooms afterwards, even if it was annoying at times. Overall, the gameplay in this series is actually quite extraordinary and you have some great ideas. However, the execution wasn’t always brilliant. Sometimes the challenges dragged way too far, meaning that it was quite easy to get bored or get the mindset of “what, this isn’t the last transition?”, which is unfortunately negative. I think the other problem is, you’ve been very quantity-driven this series. Yeah it’s always great when there are lots of things to play around with, but try not to overdo it. The quality could have been greatly improved in areas and I’m wondering whether or not you could have achieved a massive improvement depending on how much time you spent making the levels as big as they possibly could be.

Graphics – 3.75/5. I thought the graphics were quite up and down in this series. In the house for example, and the separated rooms, I think there could have been more variety with items instead of repeated layouts in each room. It wasn’t too interesting and the tiling looked a bit messy as well. However, the décor in and out of the jungle has been nice. In fact, I’d go as far as to say décor was your strongest area, as the tiling ranged a lot for me. The dots in the jungle tiles were in a very diagonal and/or linear pattern…and didn’t look too appealing for me personally. They should be scattered a bit more as that would be more natural. I also saw untidy cave/desert tile mixing at the end of the prologue underneath the ship which wasn’t pretty either. Another big problem was, in the second level, you used the mansion tiles that allowed items to show up above it, meaning we could see the water cut-off a lot of the time. I did think though, that the graphics made a definite improvement the further we progress through the levels. The shine flower for example, I really thought that was pretty, although there was still water cut-off for the waterfall etc so it still wasn’t perfect. In the third level, the tile combinations really picked up and looked far nicer, however when we reach the section in the blue room where we could get stuck on the staircase, that should have been a different colour or different tile really so we were aware it was ‘unsafe territory’, even without having to read the sign. Overall, the graphics tended to get better and better at the series went on, which is quite sweet as we can see the progression of your skills. Most of the time, the graphics were actually pretty great, it was just you were let down by a few things like messy tiling or things like certain tiling and items that were a bit too systematic to be considered a natural environment. If you work on this though, the advice I’ve given here then I think you could do incredibly well in the future.

Other – 2.5/5.

-0.75 – There was an awful amount of lag throughout the level. I think you should have split a few of the rooms up with level transitions as that’s probably why.
-0.25 – Maybe it’s just me…but I really dislike the whole checkpoint system of “move the starting position here if you die”. As soon as you give instructions to move the starting position, that encourages people to cheat. I mean there’s always the option to move it anyway and cheat but this is like actually encouraging it, which isn’t a good thing.
-0.25 – There are also minimal instructions that tell you that the sand in the second level is going to be deadly. You walk onto it, expecting to be safe, and you’re not. There should be a clearer warning of some sort.
+0.75 – I will give a hat tip to the amount of effort you put into the blosses in the final level and even though it dragged on, it’s clear you’ve intended to show us what you’re made of and the end result turned out to be very grand.

Overall – 14/20.

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MessengerOfDreams:
with Echoes of Time

Fun – 8.5/10. This was certainly an interesting journey and series. The prologue, while being a bit big to actually consider it a prologue, had a lot of good features about it. A few of the highlights for me in this level was the magma rock and the metal cap challenge with the upside down water. That’s another thing I liked- the concept of the 4 different types of water, I thought that was really interesting. I also had a lot of fun identifying which parts of the level shared similarities with past ones, i.e. the temple really did have a ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ sort of feel about it. I also enjoyed the dialogue a lot (entering the quarters for Miss Akiva made me laugh). What I wasn’t too keen on was that there was still a significant lack of gameplay. We went through stages of full gameplay then stages of full story and scenery. I can understand that it may start to balance out more as the next levels continue, but yeah, I felt the first level lacked that crucial balance. Onto the second, I got this great sense of exploration when I was going through the temple. I thought that was wonderful, as you really do start to feel like the explorer. A few flaws I want to pick out- I didn’t really like that in the bullet section to the right of the temple, you could get easily squashed if you were standing under those orange blocks. I also thought, you could have made that voice clearer from Miss Akiva in the signs. Once or twice I noticed you accidentally put her dialogue in italics as well so it was hard sometimes to keep up with who was speaking. By the end of the second level I had chosen to do Level 3B first, because I wanted to know what was in store if I’d become a “God”. But of course I played 3A as well, and gosh that is a wonderful ending. So it’s basically a sequel of Dark, then? While it wasn’t as top notch as Dark was, I’m still massively impressed and of course the story is what makes it so special. I’m glad the gameplay and story eventually came to a good balance after entering the temple. Overall, this was really a great series and experience to play, well done.

Graphics – 4.5/5. The graphics were most of the time wonderful. Sometimes, and I know you’ll probably dislike me saying this, but the temple felt empty still with the minimal décor. I’d honestly have loved to see some beautiful plantation patterns or something. But the tiling was of course very pretty in its own right. The best part of the graphics was probably, you guessed it, the oceans in the sky. I did think the décor was fairly empty at the beginning but I’m glad you made up for it. Overall, it’s not your best graphical work, but it’s still marvellous.

Other – 3/5.

-0.5 – Unfortunately, the first level (prologue) did take 2 flash player signs to load for me.
+0.25 – Thought the concept of having different types of water was smart.
-0.25 – The signs sometimes were buried into the ground a bit too much to read them, you’d sometimes have to walk past them a few times or ground pound to get them to work, and sometimes they still wouldn’t.
-0.25 – There was a bug in the furnace room, where after you get the silver star, if you accidentally hit the top flame and a green platform at the same time it could push you right out of level bounds or through to the next transition.
+0.75 – The fact this was a continuation of Dark was really great, and I loved the story. Seems like you’ve done a continuation of Destinations and now a continuation of Dark; I’m interested to see what story ideas you’d have in mind next.

Overall – 16/20.

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KABOOM:
with Cheep Cheep Canal

Fun – 8/10. I really did enjoy this level a lot. While it was only small and pretty simple, there were still some nice gameplay concepts used and you surprisingly made water a fun item, which is very hard to do indeed. I did think at times, it was a bit too simple. For example, the metal cap breakable brick part- I mean, there was no challenge for us to collect the metal cap, and it was just there. So it didn’t feel like there was a lot of effort involved in the creation of the level, but at the same time I did like the water platform section at the very end, I thought even though it was fairly easy, I still thought the concept of the challenge was interesting. Overall, it was very simple, but not disappointing at all.

Graphics – 4.25/5. The graphics were pretty nice actually, particularly the tile combinations. It didn’t always look too nice because even though the décor and items looked good, there were times where there was like a diagonal ceiling against a diagonal floor that didn’t run exactly parallel and looked quite untidy I’m afraid to say. Most of the time though, it looked really nice, so good job.

Other – 3/5.

-0.25 – There was quite a bit of lag in the first transitions, thankfully this calmed down as the level progressed though.
+0.25 – I liked the challenges/platforming you had to use to get to the 1-ups.

Overall – 15.25/20.

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Nwolf:
with Waterfire Cave

Fun – 7/10. While it wasn’t the most impressive thing you’ve made, I still had a fair amount of fun playing it. It wasn’t amazing but I did like that it was easy enough to actually complete, lol. I got to enjoy the level in quite a peaceful way so it wasn’t actually that bad in my opinion. However, some of the platforming techniques were very repetitive, and quite average. There was nothing very special about it, meaning that even though I fairly enjoyed it, it wasn’t technically that great. The bit I enjoyed the most was the red coin maze at the end of the level, which was my favourite part graphics-wise and fun-wise.

Graphics – 3.5/5. It was very empty, there was a big lack of décor and unfortunately, like you did mention, the tiling at one point was showing cut-off on screen. I did however like the graphics in the last section; if the whole level had looked like that then you would have a much higher score. Other than that, there was nothing seriously wrong with it, I just think it could have been improved and better care could have been taken.

Other – 3.25/5.

+0.25 – I really liked that the water didn’t show any cut-off or straight edges, you managed to keep it ‘wavy’ all the way round even on the square shaped water sections, which I thought was a nice addition.

Overall – 13.75/20.

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Thefiredragoon:
with Mario’s Journey 2-1: Aqua Temple

Fun – 3/10. Okay…this wasn’t the most fun I’ve had, got to be honest. It was very simplistic, way too simplistic for my liking. Not only do I dislike navigating through big water spaces, particularly with metal cap, it’s even worse when there’s lag and really uninteresting surroundings. So this was probably my worst nightmare in some ways. :S While I felt satisfaction every time I collected a red coin, it still was not all that enjoyable. It was quite boring to be honest, a lot more effort could have been put in, for example there was actually no platforming whatsoever, just tiling. Sorry if this seems harsh but hopefully you can learn from this.

Graphics – 2/5. The graphics were really not interesting…while there was no cut-off; you couldn’t have possibly done that anyway with a level made up of nothing but brick tiles. There was no décor either, so it was just extremely plain in my opinion, and I’m not sure how this looks like a temple at all. A bit below average really.

Other – 2.75/5.

-0.25 – While you used the 50x30 space well, it still felt very tight, especially at the starting point and collecting the shine sprite.

Overall – 7.75/20.

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Harmless:
with Darkwater Caverns

Fun – 8.25/10. So this level was relatively fun. But there were some problems with it- for example, the pipe to the Hover FLUDD wasn’t obvious to find, in fact I didn’t find it at all until I went into editing mode to find it. Meaning sometimes I’d go down somewhere to get to a sign and get a red coin, and I wouldn’t be able to get back out again. That’s another thing- the red coins, when I first played the level through I realised the shine sprite was inactive, even though every time I went to read a sign I didn’t collect a red coin. It’s because the red coin was a bit too high for Mario to reach if he was just walking over to the sign. So the first playthrough, I didn’t realise there were any red coins to collect anyway. So yeah, that was a bit frustrating. Other than that though, I had a surprising amount of fun, and for such a small level I got a lot of good feeling about the level, such as exploration, quality over quantity etc. It was a nice effort and one of your better levels for sure, so well done.

Graphics – 4.25/5. Most of the time, the graphics were near top notch. I mean, you got the décor almost spot on, and the tiling almost spot on. The only parts that were a bit iffy were, sometimes, you used parts of the cave tiling that was a bit risky, and actually counted as cut-off in my eyes. For example, you used a cave ceiling corner randomly sticking out of an area of the cave ceiling, and a cave invert corner that wasn’t attached to a wall so it looked quite messy as there was cut-off on one side. The time where the décor wasn’t spot on was where, there were places where plants were grouped together in masses that looked beautiful (almost a bit too much) then other places of the cave where it was seriously empty. It needed to be spread out a bit more, needed a bit more balance. Other than that though, I really appreciated the effort.

Other – 3.25/5.

-0.25 – There was a bit of lag in the main transition and the loading bothered me when I had to keep going back and forth between them, but I understand you probably wanted to keep the size so I’m not going to deduct anymore than this.
-0.25 – The disabled warp pipe was a bit misleading, I had no idea you could run through it at first, so I was quite stuck for a while.
+0.75 – I liked that you collected the coins through reading the signs, it had an even more exploration feel about it, because you weren’t searching for coins- you were searching for journal entries. If I’m honest, this was the thing I loved the most about this level.

Overall – 15.75/20.

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Overall Placings:

1st – Yurimaster (16.5).
2nd – MessengerOfDreams (16).
3rd – Harmless, Triple J (15.75).
4th – KABOOM (15.25).
5th – 1018peter (15).
6th – Supershroom (14).
7th – Nwolf (13.75). (Sorry :3)
8th – Thefiredragoon (7.75).

EDIT: Oh ♥♥♥♥, no I was the one who miscalc'd. Sorrryyyyy.

[MessengerOfDreams]

Totals so far:

Firedragon: 7.75/20
Nwolf: 12/20
Supershroom: 13.25/20
Amp: 15.5/20
KABOOM: 15.75/20
1018peter: 16.25/20
Harmless: 16.75
Triple J: 17/20



MP3 Amplifier

Fun: 7.5/10

I appreciate that, as advertised, this was a really cool, relaxing play. There weren’t really any difficult parts to the level, or very challenging at all. It does mean it’s not the most fun or exciting level but it’s one that I could easily pick up without an ordeal. Being that it’s a simplistic level it doesn’t have the wow factor that other levels that you’ve done, but it doesn’t need to; the platforming is still overall good, with some neat tricks up your sleeve especially at the metal cap part, the one tense part of the level.

The weakness in this level that does hold it back to me is all of the damn backtracking. I thought it was quaint at first, but then it really got annoying when it took up half the time. It’d be better if on the backtrack there was some challenge or platforming to do, but the gaming sections either branch off or are satellites to the main route, meaning that there’s no game whilst backtracking, leading to a lot of time wasted, especially if you happen to die.

Regardless, the idea was executed really well, and it’s a level I can easily pick up and go with.

Graphics: 4.5/5

I do think in some places it could either use a little more natural formation or decor, and some ideas just didn’t work out graphically (the rock lake, for example, and the geysers) but for the most part it’s a really beautiful level, with just the right touch of everything and only a few weak spots. Interesting tile work, lots of color, but not too saccharine.

Other: 3.5/5

+.5 I like how the poem is incorporated into it. It’s not overbearing but the design reflecting the lines is a nice, clever little touch.

+.5 While a bit stiff, I loved the giant butterfly at the end.

-.5 I am bugged at how it isn’t very clear that the last room on the left is a maze, and the coins are just put in one segment. Not knowing it, I took them all and drowned just before I reached surface. This is only a really big problem because of the goddamn backtracking and having to make sure I get every last damn coin all over again. So yeah, if you’re gonna have us oneshot all eight coins, then at least don’t give us a very easy chance of dying on the last coin.

Overall: 15.5/20

Yeah, like you said, I don’t see this winning. But if this is what you pull off on a lazy day, it’s a testament to your skill. Here’s hoping you don’t accidentally destroy the competition again! You have a Volkovian habit of winning by accident.
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Kaboom

Fun: 8.25/10

Cheep Cheeps. Lots of cheep cheeps. I’ll admit, the first room or two where it was just sort of basic swimming with a lot of cheep cheeps didn’t really get my hopes up; it dragged on and got kind of boring. Luckily, you turned it around by slowly building up steam as you went along. I liked the gates the cheep cheeps could leap through; simple, yet effective. The metal cap was used really well in the next part. There were a lot of neat little variations of the norm that I think worked to make the level interesting, where the earlier parts didn’t succeed. Regardless, I was entertained and impressed.

Graphics: 4.5/5

It’s clear you took a lot of care into nailing a specific style for the tiling, and it works for the most part. It’s well-organized and carries over well. My only complaint is that such a harsh and stern color scheme does get kind of dull after all the repetition of it; some color to break it up every now and again would have been nice. Regardless, it’s very intricate.

Other: 3/5

+.5 Although you’d have to be crazy to choose it, the one-up mission, and it being so difficult, is actually a nice touch to add to replayability.
-.5 There was some lag I feel could have been avoidable; the tile is often so thick that even when you can’t see it (including zoom-outs), it’s still there, and it slows the level down for something insignificant. I’d edge the tiles a little better to avoid the crawl; it’ll help a lot.

Total: 15.75/20

A really good little level. Slow to start, but still plays well.
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Nwolf

Fun: 7/10

I like some of what you did here, although I could definitely tell the level was rushed. The mechanics were nothing too special, but they worked. There were some moments that either got dull quickly (the maze) or were just outright frustrating (that one little moving block), but there was nothing exceptionally wrong. It just wasn’t up to the same standard as your past work.

Graphics: 2.25/5

I am less than impressed here, however. The maze looks pretty cool, and the tile scheme does have its highlights, but I don’t like how geometric and barren it is. The cave tiling looks sloppy in the background because of how it repeats the same block over and over or just generally is a messy blend. There’s even one instance where there’s not enough layer to even cover the above parts of the cave, meaning the cutoff is blatantly visible. Finally, the color scheme gets really dull and oppressive after awhile, although that’s more personal taste. It really needed some touchup here because it just didn’t work at all.

Other: 2.75/5

-.25 I get hiding red coins, but in a maze that gets tedious and boring after a few go-throughs, I wouldn’t get too cute with them; I was getting really aggravated after awhile.

Overall: 12/20

Oof. Yeah, at least I know this was just a lazy day for you. Clearly you’re a good designer, and with some true effort this could have gone a lot better.
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Firedragon

Fun: 3.5/10

I get that you made for some effort with the maze and what have you, but it was actually quite bland. There wasn’t anything really unique about this, and it didn’t play super-well. I can’t say there was anything super-wrong with it, but I’ve played tons of levels that were more fun.

Graphics: 1.5/5

When I read Mario was going to explore something, I expected something that looked worth exploring, which this wasn’t. Obviously there wasn’t any cutoff and the construction of the maze wasn’t anything bad, but it was literally bricks and filler, nothing else, which is not interesting at all.

Other: 2.75

-.25 I get wanting to add a continuity to this level from your other levels (I did it too) but it still needs something to sustain it as a level if you’re gonna do a story. Mario being told to explore something by someone he considers a boss cannot sustain a level on its own, and I don’t want to absolutely have to play a past series to understand.

Overall: 7.75/20

For an early on work it isn’t bad, it just isn’t good either.
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Harmless

Fun: 8.5/10

I really enjoyed this. The exploration factor was well executed. I enjoyed just going through the cave to the point where even getting lost didn’t bug me. I loved the journal logs, I think the platforming was pretty good if not exceptional, and I think this level had a lot to offer. It did get a little weary at times backtracking, but not enough to seriously take away from the level.

Graphics: 4.75/5

I get that some of the cutoff might have had purpose but it did kind of bug me still. Regardless, it’s a wonderful-looking level that carries the story well. Your layouts were excellent, the decoration was just right, its dreary color scheme actually worked in its favor, and it all fit the mood really well.

Other: 3.5/5

+0 (via +.75 and -.75) On one hand, I loved the idea of hiding the FLUDDs and other things, for one to find. On the other, there was a severe lack of clarity to the level that made such things confusing; namely that I had to find all the Toad logs that acted as red coins, and that I absolutely needed FLUDD for one specific jump or else I’d be trapped.

+.5 I do like the idea of the ship logs in general, especially how they replaced the red coins with some strategic item setup.

Overall: 16.75/20

It’s a small level, but it works really well. I’m impressed!
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Triple J

Fun: 8/10

So. You’ve definitely improved. Sure, I’d appreciate it if you made the level more possible to be completed by human beings, and the extreme and often irritating excess in difficulty made it harder to enjoy, although not to the extent of past levels. I don’t really punish hard levels often but when I’m reloading and cheat-moving twenty times per level for often ♥♥♥♥ little reasons, it does take away from the fun.

However, it’s clear to see that you put a lot of effort into making this level work. Most of the time it does. There’s some creative platforming, you try new things, and you’ve shown a lot of evolution. I definitely had a blast playing through the parts that showed less contempt for the human cognition and think you did a lot right. The castle especially shone in a lot of areas, just in the general grand scale of it and the individual little challenges. Excellent work.

Graphics: 5/5

Absolutely perfect. Awesome color schemes, great attention to detail, wonderful personal style; it all worked so well. I’m actually jealous of how good you are at doing what you do.

Other: 4/5

+2: That is the mother of all side-quests. Really really awesome.
-.75: I feel like this didn’t really fit the theme except for specific areas. I’d reckon between the two levels only 25-35% actually in any way involved water, especially the first level, which had a single pond and some water to catch you if you fall, which doesn’t count. It does have some water challenge in it, so I’m not detracting more.
+.5 Those skybison thingies or whatever in Level 1 are amazingly rendered and tons of fun. That’s the kind of ♥♥♥♥ that will make Amp’s LDC card.
-.25 I do get what you did with the salvation pits, but uuuuugh having to spend a minute backtracking over the same pit of water with just some fish in it gets old after awhile.
-.25 I was confused by whether or not we had to get the red coins and got worried after awhile, only finding out at the end that they were a side-quest.
-.25 There was no reason for the trap-block-thingy happening when we fell into level 2, especially since I could get stuck by accident if I dove or something, meaning what was already a tricky-to-upload level would have to load again.

Overall: 17/20

Not perfect but still really well done. You’re definitely getting better. You could easily win with this, you ♥♥♥♥.
-----
1018peter

Fun: 9/10

It’s actually a nice little trinket. Simple concept, nice little puzzle that wasn’t super irritating or aggravating. I like how you implemented it, how smoothly it ran, and the nice balance of platforming and puzzle. There’s not much else to say, it worked well.

Graphics: 4.5/5

Good graphics. I felt the shine room was a little too messy, and sometimes there was a tad bit of item cutoff, but I loved the look overall, the tile schematic, and the design layout. Good work.

Other: 2.75/5
-.75: You can end up skipping parts of the level or in-general confusing the ♥♥♥♥ out of yourself because the breakable blocks don’t hinder you from going in the pipes. A biiiiig bug that I feel could easily have been fixed up.
-.5: You didn’t specify which way to go for the maze, leading to me being trapped somewhere else just after that for no reason. So totally shouldn’t have happened, a sign pointing you in the right direction or a way to fish oneself out isn’t that hard to do.
+1 Overall, the incorporation of the floodgates were practically flawless.

Total: 16.25/20

What fun! I like this little showcase.
---
Supershroom

Fun: 7.5/10

Okay.

So, there was a lot that worked about this level. I loved the challenges, and how you built them. It’s clear a lot of thought was put into this, and that you cared about making this level great. It showed, and played out a lot. I think that there were either unique or fun challenges all throughout, and I enjoyed them. However, I think length was a problem; most challenges went on too long to the point where they just got frustrating or underwhelming after awhile. It made for a really, really slow pace sometimes. Regardless, structurally a lot worked out.

Graphics: 4.25/5

Some of it felt really open and undeveloped like the airship, and it got too geometric at times in the cave, but overall, I think your structuring was really great.especially with the castle. It reminded me a lot of Hanmeus’ Castle, also by Star King (and Amp) from Mirror Island, yet still had enough to stand on its own. It’s just held back by a lot of sections that didn’t shine. And speaking of which…

Other: 1.5/5

...yeah this isn’t gonna be the fun section. There’s a loooooooooooooooooooooooong list of bugs that just bugged the ♥♥♥♥ out of me.

-.5 No reason to throw dialogue right after a switch (prologue castle) where there isn’t much time to go; most will waste just enough time to lose the block and have to restart that whole search. Also, you didn’t actually hide the switch, putting it behind the door you started on, making that entire section either a waste of time or pointless moment.
-.25 Some paths that go nowhere, and a general vaguely confusing sense of direction
-.5 Bad transitions in the ship, meaning that I went backwards through a section that turned out to be impossible on the right side.
-.75 There is a looooooot to be said about the absurd height of level 2. First off, it was only done for a SMW throwback and some other randomly useless large falls, and came at the cost of a loooooot of lag.
+.25 I did like that SMW throwback tho
+.25 That’s a really cool flower
-.25 I missed two signs falling through into the lake because of how the pipe was positioned.
-.25 The boat after the first part of the boat ride turned back waaaay too soon, forcing me to either wait again for it to return or to take damage. This repeats after the transition where it comes so fast I have to run into a flamethrower to get on it.
-.5 In such a colossal level, telling people to “place the start point here” is a really ♥♥♥♥ checkpoint system
-.5 Impossible to catch boat after the temple, it goes way too fast that even my best efforts to catch it don’t matter.
-.5 Faulty pipe in BOSS BATTLE
+.5 Loved the undersea monsters
+.5 Great alternate music scheme

Overall: 13.25/20

There was a lot in the design that was excellent, but just as much that was deeply, inherently flawed.
---
Yurimaster

Fun: 8.5/10

Okay, so. I love this level. It’s not perfect, because some of the challenges felt typical or dragged on (the ice segment for example), and there seemed to be much more non-gameplay than gameplay, which usually isn’t the best idea. However, I do love the exploration, I love the story, and I love the way you incorporated the ice/water situation. It made the experience very enjoyable.

Graphics: 5/5

Jesus Christ, perfect and flawless. The transition between the two rooms in every scenario is excellent enough to essentially make the graphics 5.5 here, which I’ll do by giving it an extra .5 in Other.

Other: 3.5/5
+.5 for the amazing rooms in both forms.
+.25 for the amazing fish puzzle, which was annoying enough to not make this higher but still one of the most creative ideas ever.
+.5 for giving me more feels than any level I’ve played in ages with the end. The story was fantastic.
-.75 because the exploration did get pretty confusing. Upon exiting doors I was often not given enough of a clue which way to go, leading to some backtracking that easily could have been avoided with just a color-coded arrow. This happened enough times to really bug me.

Overall: 17/20

Excellent level in such a short amount of time.
---

[Nwolf]

pssst mp3 that is a miscalc by you :3

[~MP3 Amplifier~]

I know yeah, I'm so embarrassed as I just realised. ;_;


And damn MoD, backtracking was the thing I was going to fix and thought at last minute "nah, they won't mind". Crappity-crap. But hey it worked out well in the end.

[MessengerOfDreams]

Psst N post your judging and maybe the other two

[Nwolf]

I'll see how fast the others are with their judgings

Judgings: show

Mario and the Orb of Morth by Supershroom
Fun: 2.5/10 Prologue: Yeah.. I know, prologues aren't supposed to have that much of an fun aspect in them (some still do and they are great), but some parts of the level like the narrow vertical part where you had to go left/right/left/right all the time could've been shorter. The 8 red coin hunt was surprisingly fun though.
Part 1: And again, had a hard time enjoying this level. I first couldn't find the right way in the boat, then was confused that I didn't get out where I was supposed to after passing transition (see Other section), then there was that freefall part of which I couldn't figure out the purpose. Now the cave, the idea with the boats was kinda nice. They didn't look bad neither. But there were some unenjoyable parts again (flame tower right after passing transition giving no time to react, ending in forced damage). The twin temples looked nice, but they were boring. Especially since I didn't hurry enough so I had to wait for the big boats.
Part 2: The whole level seemed untested to me. Or you tried too hard to make it hard. There were way too many forced one-tile triple jumps, the boss fight was just annoying and lacked coins. I didn't even know what to do after destroying the force field blocks cause the pipe didn't work (and yes I know you mentioned it in the topic). After I fixed, it was annoying again.
Graphics: 3.5/5 The graphics could've rescued your score if there weren't so much boringly tiled sections, like the cave around the twin temples, the freefall part, the inside of the boat or the jungle tiles looking to edgy. Part 2 makes up for it a little bit
Other: 2.5/5 +0.25: No lag but a bit loading time
-0.25: Sadly I have to reduct more for the loading time in the last level cause it caused so many deaths
-0.25: In the Prologue it's possible to enter the door to the mountain without activating the switch block
-0.1: Small point reduction for using Yoshi's New Island OST
-0.5: Part 1: Pay more attention to tiling... the transition to the invisibility star is broken, if you go in too high you end up coming out in a spot higher than you should which ends in confusion (and shorter way to invisibility)
+0.1: Bit of kudos for the simple yet working boat design. The small ones.
+0.25: I've never seen that underwater shell challenge before so yay for that
Overall: 8.5/20

Echoes of Time by MessengerOfDreams
Fun: 7.75/10 I mostly enjoyed all levels, sadly pretty much every part has one section that wasn't made that well, which would be:
Part 1: The whole metal cap section with the narrow cave tiling was annoying to play cause you sometimes couldn't go on the rocks or somehow didn't fit through them.
Part 2: The floating platform part needed so many retries ;_;
Part 3A/3B: The vertical tower climbing part with the blocks pushing you out of the water and the flame towers on the other side was annoying cause hell I couldn't manage to get to the other side : D
Part 3A: The part where the bullets destroy the bridge seemed to be too hard compared to the rest cause of the platform that was 5 blocks higher and idk it was hard to get up there
Part 3B: Same part here, with the white blocks. There were some kinda unfair parts where it was almost impossible to pass them.
Graphics: 4.5/5 Really awesome graphics, though not as good as some other levels but still awesome. There were some weird looking spots inside the building in part 1 and the floating platform room was a bit empty, so slight point reductions for that.
Other: 4/5 +0.65: You know that I couldn't care less about stories so I'll just throw 0.65 at you without any comments~ (dat plot twist in 3B tho)
+0.1: Crash warning in part 1, short loading time in other parts and hardly any lag. I could swear this is the first time I don't reduce points for loading time : P
0: I am note sure if it's even mine but yay you mentioned Rainbow Road :3
+0.25: I love the temple
Overall: 16.25/20

The Water Butterfly by ~MP3 Amplifier~
Fun: 7.5/10 It was a nice level, yes. Not too challenging even though some parts were harder than I first expected. Not too special in terms of the challenges that are present but I guess that's still good.
Graphics: 4.75/5 Except some nitpicking issues like the half tile of lava not being covered by ground or the water fall being a little bit too long/not long enough the level looked real good.
Other: 3.75/5 +0.25: No lag or loading time
+0.5: Butterfly looked great
Overall: 16/20

Darkwater Caverns by Harmless
Fun: 4/10 The level was... not that fun. Except the single flame tower and the few platforms there wasn't really anything special except tile jumping and that wasn't very interesting. Additionally, in the hole for entry log #3 it seems to be impossible to get out without hover FLUDD which is not accessible obvious enough.
Graphics: 3.75/5 Tiling was kinda flat, decoration was okayish. The left transition looked a bit better somehow. Fits the story though!
Other: 3.75/5 +0.25: No lag or loading time
Overall: 11.5/20

[CedarBranch]

So, apparently I get a 2nd different LDC ribbon. 4th, now 5th.
I almost wish I got 2nd. :3

I guess... I, uh, apologize for the outburst. The heat of the wait had me using negativity to retain my reassurance(?) that I wouldn't get cocky. I tend to have "super-ego" thoughts throughout the day, but since LDCs are a real deal, I cannot expect to actual win 1st, so I make myself extremely modest, but - going far - it seems to result in negativity.



And I hope nobody saw that post I made earlier on this page. I deleted it because it was a "bad joke." I wouldn't actually want to do that; I was really heated.

[MessengerOfDreams]

This post by MessengerOfDreams was thumbed up by:

CedarBranch (September 7th, 2014, 11:02 am)

[Supershroom]

Well... ok, I'm rather frustrated. In fact, I was sure to get a ribbon. Harmless, I don't wanna see your judgings. No offense intented, but 5.25/20 is a brassiness compared with the other scores. And do you guys have so terribly bad computers? I've never had lag in any place except from the bullet bills in the green room.

Nonetheless, congrats Yuri. You did a great job and I guess you're the first one to win in spite of heavy technical problems.