Gameplay: (7.5/10)
Man, and I thought Shroom had a lot going on in such a tiny space. I'm gonna be honest, this was a little overwhelming, lawl. Pathways and puzzles alike were claustrophobic, and there were a handful of odd squish glitches that resulted in Mario flying into the room above (crushed between floating platforms and solid blocks in the blue room) or just flat out dying (crushed sideways by blocks/rotating platforms in the yellow and red rooms, respectively)... unfortunately, unlike Shroom's, yours has at least an entire order of magnitude more going on. This is good and bad. The bad, as I'm sure you can guess, is that replaying takes a lot of time... and beyond the first playthrough (unless you're secret hunting- which we'll cover in Other) it's a bit of a slog to input the correct sequence of actions to get back to where you were. The good, however, was that your challenges were incredibly varied and I had a lot of fun with not only each individual room, but each individual segment within a room. It was far more fun than I was expecting from the first impression the cluttered designer overview gives, and I'm super happy about that. :p
Graphics: (4/5)
As I hinted above, this level feels very messy, heh. Unfortunately, it's sometimes hard to see how to progress as a result of that (wooden platforms blend right in with the red room, and water can be a little hard to see in the blue, for instance), but once you get past the jarring first impression, the compact and cluttered decoration feels very much like what I'd expect from a bustling theme park. I particularly liked the use of bullies as spikes, perfectly implies "slightly comical but also painful". I think it's fitting.
Other: (4.5/5)
+0.5, energetic alternate music definitely helped with the overwhelming aspects, lawl.
+1, I can't tell if I'm just a sucker for easter eggs/replayability, but I really enjoyed your secrets, and the achievements you listed in the main post. Gave me something to search for while replaying after a death, and would no doubt give even the best player something to return for. The +1 here is also why your Gameplay score is slightly lower than I would normally give.
Overall: (16/20)
I'll admit it, my first impression was bad and I should feel bad. I've probably changed this score three times now because of it, but I think now it's at a point where it does your level justice. Very neat concept, and well executed given the constraints of 25quared, but damn would I love to see a larger version where everything could fit comfortably. Nice job.
Posted: April 9th, 2016, 9:58 am
Maybe I will try doing more stuff.
