"The whole level takes place at the SMB2 theme which is rare to find because most of the newer levels are just SMB3 or SMW." —bossedit8 "This level combined so many SMB2 and creative elements together to make an amazing level." —Quill "There was a great variety of sections in the level, ranging from inside the castle, on the side of the castle, and inside the castle." —SuperMario7
Hello! I am Valtteri and this is my contest level. I don't know why I'm only posting it now. It got second place and I'm really happy about it! I put a lot of effort into it and I'm very satisfied with its placement.
Anyways, it's Wart's castle with tons of gimmicks packed into it. I took the brick tile that was used in the final level in the NES version of SMB2 and gave it a 16-bit look. I also recolored several NPCs to have the colors they had in the NES version. As for the gimmicks, there are go-through slopes, the Rocket from SMB2, the Subspace and many other cool things from SMB2 and also Super Mario Advance. The judges praised the level for its design and appearance. I hope you enjoy it, too. :)
The Golden Palace... has a lot of good ideas, but the big issue is that it tries to make a huge, epic level in something not built to make huge, epic levels. That doesn't mean it's not a remarkable feat - the design and attention to its Super Mario Bros. 2 inspiration and the aesthetics themselves are breathtaking and nothing short of amazing, but the main reason I just couldn't quite get into this level was because of the length. Namely, it's far too long for an engine that only allots a single checkpoint, and death comes easily and can be an immense blow to morale when you realize that those fifteen minutes you've spent trying to reach the checkpoint are all for naught.
For a point of reference, look at Super Mario Bros. 2's official final level - it's long, sprawling, and difficult, as this level aspires to be. But, Super Mario Bros. 2 had the added bonus of very frequent checkpoints. If you died, you would just start off at the beginning of the room, and it'd cost you maybe thirty seconds. Here, I'd argue that this level is even more tricky (albeit, in very nice ways. I don't think I ever came across a single instance where I thought the difficulty in this level was necessarily unfair), BUT, because of how long the level is, a death will almost always be extremely punishing due to all the enormous amounts of backtracking you'll have to do to get back to where you were before. That almost makes what is otherwise a beautiful level either completely unplayable, or so frustrating by the time it's beaten that one is likely to forget most of the good in the level.
I know how the SMBX community tends to place standards, though, and I've noticed how 99% of the time, it values aesthetics and non-linearity over the practicality of the gameplay itself, so I can see why this was made as it was. But, there are better ways of doing it. Don't ignore what you cannot change. The SMBX engine will always only allow the use of a single checkpoint, so you've got to work with the engine you're given, not the engine you want. Next time, rather than make an enormous gauntlet, I'd suggest breaking it up. Add more, shorter branches so that the time it takes to make it to the checkpoint is considerably cut - usually five-ish minutes is a good time to shoot for that gives a lot of level while still making death just the right amount of punishing. Alternatively, you also might consider making the tough decision of cutting stuff out. That's probably one of the hardest decisions to make as a designer, but, done right, it can make things shorter and more digestible without detracting so much from what makes it enjoyable.
That said, this is a brilliant and elegant level in terms of almost everything, but it just needs to be a bit more condensed.
Thanks for your review, Graham. I understand your concern. I kind of tried to make the level easy to lower the risk of having to replay a lot, but obviously it's still fairly possible to die and lose a lot of progress. Right now I have no intention to shorten the level but I'll refrain from making long levels like this in the future as I acknowledge the problem very well and you're by no means the only one complaining about it.
The player starts in a section with the SMB2 cloud background and a tileset made from the SMB2 grass sizable (Valtteri!). The large slopes look really weird. The music used is the SMB2 overworld theme. There's that weird bird door guy in the far left, I'm going to suppose it's where you came from. You can stand on him and look really weird because it looks like your character is flying. The bird dude is sitting on the side of a wall made of a SMB2 tower (or is it a castle? idk) tileset with an Ace Coin on top of it. I guess you can get there peacefully if you're Luigi, but I'm using Mario so I'll have to find another way. Guess what, there's a pink Shy Guy (Valtteri!) standing on a sizable farther away! If you're not dumb, you might have deduced what you're supposed to do to get that Ace Coin. Just grab the Shy Guy and throw it at the bird guy so you can stand on it and jump to the top of the wall and take the Ace Coin. To the left of the pink Shy Guy's sizable there's another sizable (right above the initial spawn point) with some grass you pull stuff from and two cherries. You can pull a heart-shaped vegetable (Valtteri!) and a normal weaponized vegetable.
Let's go farther! There's the first hole of the level right here, with a tower/castle tileset forming a three-block height stairway to the bottomless pit. In the next platform there's two Bob-ombs you can just jump through and let fall in the bottomless pit. There's also a downside slope that's connected really weirdly to the other grass tiles. Advancing, there's a cherry, a tower/castle stairway, a Tweeter and a green Snifit (Valtteri!) on top of a tower/castle two-block height stairway that leads to another bottomless pit and some sizables. This part was fun: there's some SMB2 styled SMW black Ninjis (Valtteri!) running through the sizables, leading to larger sizables. There's a tall sizable above another sizable (fuck how many sizables are there) with a green Snifit standing on it, and you need a running start to get up on it (which was a bit annoying). Going further on the sizables I pull a POW block from some grass (that makes no sense but this is mario) and throw it on a Tweeter's head. This specific sizable has a lot of Tweeter that look like they're on a straight line: it's like Valtteri just felt like putting a straight line of just Tweeters on a sizable were enough. It's not really bad, but complaining is fun! Anyway, it looks like we're climbing a mountain. There's a lot of sizables on top of sizables that are on top of other sizables now. The largest sizable around has only two Shy Guys on it: Valtteri needed to put some enemies here so it didn't feel empty. This is the biggest problem on making a mountain out of a bunch of sizables. There's some smaller sizables and a vine. Going up we meet some Snifits standing on clouds and get to the end of the vine. From there we jump on a cloud with a pink Shy Guy on them, and then into a cloud with a black Ninji on it. Now, above this Ninji's cloud is a cloud with a Tweeter on it. To get to that cloud you need a running start before you jump. This isn't a problem when you're Luigi but for a Mario player this is annoying. After the Tweeter cloud we jump down onto a pink Snifit (Valtteri!) cloud that has a bridge glued to its right side leading to THE GOLDEN PALACE. The door has a really nice frog block on top of it edited from the SMB2 Bob-omb block. Also, you'd think there's something on top of THE GOLDEN PALACE but there isn't. Don't worry.
We enter the palace...
Some white light is covering Mario and it's one of those horrible transparent SMBX graphics. There's a Bob-omb going right at you, and in the left side there's a mushroom block wall with some dark SMB2 breakable bricks. The bricks can't be broken. Oooooh! Secrets! Going ahead there's another Bob-omb and a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt pushes you to the left and it leads to a small platform with a vase above it. The vase is a Bob-omb warp. The small platform is just a bridge between the conveyor belt that pushes you left and the conveyor belt that pushes you to the right. After this conveyor belt there's a bottomless pit and you have to jump into another conveyor belt (also pushing you to the right). There's some Shy Guys here, and spike pits with SMB2-flower-guys-that-spit-fire standing on them. After the spike pits there's a really weird stairway that looks really good when you climb down it, but you're supposed to be climbing up and the player climbs it just on the stance sprite and really slowly (Valtteri!). I know I'm bad at explaining it, but hey, I just gave you a (shitty) reason to play the level!
Going up that nightmare stairway leads you to some cross-shaped platform with spark guys (idk who they are) moving around. The last cross has some large slopes and THE NIGHTMARE STAIRWAY in it, housing a black Ninji and a green Snifit. Then there's some small platform with pink Shy Guys and green Snifits leading to a chain with a ladybug climbing it. After climbing the chain, you have to jump into a zero-shaped platform (the percentage of testing Valtteri must have gone through to make THE NIGHTMARE STAIRWAY work) with a pink Shy Guy and a pink Snifit. Inside there's a Tweeter you will never kill. Then there's a wall separating two parts of THE GOLDEN PALACE with a door that connects the two. There is no purpose for the door other than look cool. There's a mushroom block wall blocking (lol) the way to a door, and going further there's some spark guy platforms above a spike pit. Then there's a pink Snifit platform above another platform with an Ace Coin. It's not really hard to take the Ace Coin, but if you're not paying attention you'll fall into the spike pit. After that you go into another platform (housing a black Ninji) and slide down into THE GOLDEN PALACE, with a pink Shy Guy platform, and further down, mushroom block bridges. But it turns out the mushroom blocks replace the shiny blue SMB3 bricks! What a plot twist!
The top mushroom block bridge has a normal red Shy Guy on it.
The second mushroom block bridge has a red Snifit on it.
The third mushroom block bridge has a giant red Shy Guy on it.
The bottom mushroom block bridge has a Tweeter on it.
After going down, you face some enemies and reach a spike pit. There's a flaming flower dude on the spike pit, and you have to jump over it while avoiding flaming flower dude's fireballs to escape to safer ground where there's another flaming flower dude. Going further there's a conveyor belt above another spike pit with a black Ninji. The conveyor belt pushes you left, but the black Ninji barely feels it because he's hyperactive and jumping all the time. There's another conveyor belt with a black Ninji on it, this time the belt pushes you to the right. Then there's a taller conveyor belt with a pink Snifit pushing you left, a conveyor belt with a pink Shy Guy pushing you right, and a conveyor belt with a green Snifit pushing you left. Then there's some blocks and a NIGHTMARE STAIRWAY. Thankfully you don't have to take THE NIGHTMARE STAIRWAY. There's a door on the left, but there's also a door on the right. Which one do you take?
The door on the right takes you to a fun section. It takes place outside. There's a mushroom on the far right, but it's inside a bubble. There's a Tweeter and a green Snifit on the ground, and a vine that takes you to the clouds with a giant pink Shy Guy, a normal pink Shy Guy, a green Snifit, a ladybug, a pink Snifit, another green Snifit and a flaming flower dude along the way. It takes five blows to burst the bubble so you can take the mushroom. Keep climbing up and you'll find a door that takes to another area of THE GOLDEN PALACE. In this area, there's a lot of bottomless pits and disconnected platforms. The first platform has a vase warping Bob-ombs. The second platform is a spark guy platform. After that there's a conveyor belt pushing you to the right and some Bob-ombs. Above this conveyor belt is a platform with a wall of giant mushroom blocks standing on a conveyor belt, but this conveyor belt is turned off! What you have to do is go to the far right of the area and hit a blue question mark block to turn the conveyor belt on and move the mushroom blocks out of the way. Then you'll face a really big vase that warps giant red Shy Guys. Then there's a door leading you to another area, with lots of turn on/off conveyor belts and giant mushroom blocks and BLAH. Somewhere you'll find a potion that leads to Subspace (Valtteri!), and Subspace looks FUCKING HORRIBLE because Valtteri had to simulate the Subspace effect by putting transparent BGOs all over. It also lags a fucking lot because the BGOs are all over (Valtteri!). Now, before you enter Subspace, there's some dark mushroom blocks blocking your path in the bottom of the section. When you enter Subspace, these dark blocks are gone! Ooooh! So that's what the dark blocks are about! We enter the small hole with the dark blocks and meet a fire-spitting Birdo (the fire took me by surprise because the ugly BGOs make Birdo black). There's two mushroom blocks in front of an Ace Coin. We use the mushroom blocks to kill Birdo and grab the Ace Coin. Birdo's death makes the ceiling explode, letting us jump at a blue ? block to turn some conveyor belts on and move those fucking giant mushroom blocks.
Getting back to our Mario dimension, the mushroom blocks get out of the way and we can enter a door. The door takes us outside with a green Snifit greeting us on a cloud. After throwing the Snifit at a bottomless pit, we climb some vines and there's some ladybugs coming down, and up, and whatever, Valtteri thinks everyone can do crazy stunts to dodge ladybugs. Going up we grab some grass from the ground and pull a ROCKET from under the ground. Mario! The ROCKET takes us to the roof, where a Tweeter and a black Ninji await us. Turns out there's a lot of roofs (WHAT THE FUCK?), each with their own sets of lots of enemies of the same species (notice something here?). We get back inside, grab a heart, and Ace Coin and avoid some spark guys. Then we climb up a chain and are greeted to two paths: left and right.
In the left side we can get an Ace Coin by climbing a chain and going to a platform in the right. Getting back to the chain we climb up some more and reach a lot of conveyor belts with spark guys. They lead us to some slope platforms (some with THE NIGHTMARE STAIRWAY) that go down back into ground level and to a locked door. Oooh! Don't jump into the locked door. Instead, go to the far right and climb down the chain. You'll fight a black Birdo (Valtteri!) that gives you a key when dead. If you go near the key, a Phanto in the room starts shining and then chases you. There's a door that takes you back to where you were, so you can just take the key and open the door.
The door takes us to a room with a bird door guy with his door-mouth open, a mushroom trapped in a bubble and some veggies. When going inside the door-mouth, we end up in the other side of the wall, and there's a larger room with a crystal ball. The crystal ball doesn't end the level, you're supposed to grab it so you can fight bird door guy! That's why there's a vase spawning mushroom blocks. When you kill bird door guy, the level doesn't end. No, you have to endure more because this is a long Valtteri level! Instead a door appears leading you to laggy Subspace. When in Subspace, two doors appear.
The left door takes you outside, and then you can get out of Subspace. There's a pillar separating our platform from the rest of the level, but two doors uniting the two parts. Entering the door, we go down a REALLY FUCKING LONG pipe and it goes all the way down to... the beginning of the level! The humanity of it all!
The right door takes you to the first room of THE GOLDEN PALACE, but in Subspace version! We finally break those bricks, but there's a pillar instead of mushroom blocks.
You thought the left door was meaningless, didn't you? But it makes things easier after what we did on the right door (if Valtteri made us go all the way back, I'd seriously stop writing this review and go straight to a 0 rating). Back to the beginning, we go all the way to the first room of THE GOLDEN PALACE and go through that hidden door. There's a heart and we go a medium-long way to THE GREAT WART. You know the drill here. Take veggies, throw at Wart's open mouth, blah. After we kill him, a door appears and it takes us to a room with a closed vase. It opens and reveals a star. End of level! Finally.
In General...
This is a long level, but not as long as everyone makes it look like. I didn't explore the level. I didn't go through all passages, all the paths, collected every cherry, maybe I'll do that next time. But I can form an opinion from this first run. The level isn't too hard, but it's not too easy either. Valtteri intended for this to play like a level that could have been in SMB2, and he succeeded. It really feels like it belongs in SMB2 (if it doesn't don't blame me because i never played smb2), with all the features Valtteri put here like Subspace, the rocket and bird door guy. But it's not a perfect level.
First, the enemy placement is pretty pattern driven. There's a lot of platforms with groups of a single enemy species moving on a line, or just a single enemy in a platform. This is understandable in the first section's mountain because of how the sizables had to get larger and larger but that's not an excuse. Also, the dark BGOs in Subspace look really ugly and they lag a lot (I thought Subspace was underwater when Mario started moving slowly). It would be easier to replace all blocks with pitch black stuff. That's all I can complain about.
Overall Rating: 7/10 stars
Above average, but still not perfect. Valtteri's Golden Palace is a good level, and it will keep you coming back to know everything the level has to offer.
Kinda late, but I played this and I have a few complaints.
Mario looks weird standing on the bird statuette at the beginning. You should replace the bird statuette block with a BGO and add invisible slope blocks to fix the hitbox.
Somewhere in the castle exterior is a snifit standing on a pillar. Throwing another snifit at the cloud on which the first snifit is standing produces a glitch where the snifit is stuck inside the cloud.
Alternate world which is accessed via the potion looks awful.
Other than that, the level is terrific. I wouldn't be as harsh as BMV to give you a 7/10, so I'll give you a 9/10 for the amount of detail put in this level. Good work!
Let me start off by saying this: THIS LEVEL IS AMAZING.
*Ahem* anyhoo...
Design- Simply amazing. Perfect. This level completely captures the feeling of SMB2, especially the last level from SMB2, with the use of the conveyor belts, to climbing up to the castle, Birdo fight, and use of the shadow realm! I was HIGHLY impressed that you were able to accomplish SO much with the limits of the SMBx level editor. You really thought outside of the box and made SMB2 events possible that aren't exactly in the level editor's capability such as the fight with the door, the excellent use of the shadow realm, mushrooms being in bubbles, THE CHASING MASK and THE ROCKET! The castle itself was a nice puzzle with having to alter the regular world or get by by going into the shadow realm, and hitting switch blocks to change conveyor belt directions, also an unexpected backtrack? :O! You even ended the level with a classic final boss fight with Wart. Simply epic. I just love how you used several gimmicks I've never seen used before by anyone else. Two TINY complaints was the extremely sloped steps at some points, because Mario just sort of slips up them at 0.001635 MPH, and I did not find a checkpoint, unless something else I missed served as a checkpoint, seeing as I surprisingly didn't die once whilst playing this lengthy ass level. I did hear the sound effect go off at one point. Maybe it was invisible?
Scenery- Of course the scenery isn't much to be expected seeing as it's a SMB2 themed level, but to be honest, it was all done really really well, from inside and outside the castle. Not too much or to little! I also liked the big castle gates, and the look of the final room with the star.
Replay Value- I WOULD SO PLAY THIS LEVEL AGAIN. A level with so much non-linearism, gimmick, and creative thought is an A+ in replay value in my book. Just sayin'. This level was clearly 2nd place in Contest 6 for a reason.
Misc- I liked your choice of music, because it was all original soundtrack for the theme of the level. I even liked the end theme you threw into the mix! Great use of custom graphics and custom NPCs. Especially the custom NPC to make the shadow realm effect. I never would have thought to use an NPC as a background/foreground object like so. Again, amazing gimmick, and awesome classic feel. Complete reference to the last level in SMB2
PROS:
-Shadow realms
-Bubbled items
-Fighting the bird door thing was a great homage to SMB2
-The scary ass mask that chases you once you have the key
-ROCKET!!!~
-Boss fight
-Ending sequence
-Great transition from the ground, to the sky, to a castle
CONS:
-Slowed down game in shadow realm :/
-Sloped that Mario had trouble comprehending
Some images I felt were worth screenshotting and talking about.
I like the idea of these sloped, but I just wish they worked a little better. Also they make you slide really fast haha.
This just looked cool, and a nice touch in making an object appear completely round, because SMBx sort of lacks roundness.
Looked cool and all, but again with the really sloped steps :/
YES! THE BUBBLE!
YESSSS YESSS YESSSSSSS! THE ROCKET!!! I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THIS ACCOMPLISHED, BUT SERIOUSLY GREAT JOB. THIS WAS A BIG SELLING POINT.
This gimmick completely reminded me of the classic SMB2 trap with these guys going up and down. I always hated them, but cool to see you incorporated a classic feature in your level.
THE MASK! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU MANAGED TO GET THIS IN THE LEVEL. GREAT JOB!
UNEXPECTED! Well maybe not unexpected, due to how well the level was flowing with all of the added SMB2 gimmick, I was wondering when this was going to happen
Score: 10/10
This is literally the first time I've ever rated a level with a perfect score. To be honest, I'm completely against doing that because I never feel like any level is perfect (not even my own), but this level was just too great to not be recognized as so. Definitely moved to the best. congratulations Valtteri!
Thanks a lot, Kley, glad that you liked it! The Checkpoint was at the exit of the mini Hakwmouth right before the Hawkmouth boss. I was using vague Nintendo logic where the Checkpoint is a tiny version of the actual exit, but I realize that it's a bit complicated to figure out without any instructions. And I'm happy to hear that you appreciated the technical feats I put all around the level, a lot of work indeed went into them!
Valtteri wrote:Thanks a lot, Kley, glad that you liked it! The Checkpoint was at the exit of the mini Hakwmouth right before the Hawkmouth boss. I was using vague Nintendo logic where the Checkpoint is a tiny version of the actual exit, but I realize that it's a bit complicated to figure out without any instructions. And I'm happy to hear that you appreciated the technical feats I put all around the level, a lot of work indeed went into them!
Expanding on this, once you exit the pipe you'll hear the "wew" sound just like any other checkpoint.
Valtteri wrote:Thanks a lot, Kley, glad that you liked it! The Checkpoint was at the exit of the mini Hakwmouth right before the Hawkmouth boss. I was using vague Nintendo logic where the Checkpoint is a tiny version of the actual exit, but I realize that it's a bit complicated to figure out without any instructions. And I'm happy to hear that you appreciated the technical feats I put all around the level, a lot of work indeed went into them!
Expanding on this, once you exit the pipe you'll hear the "wew" sound just like any other checkpoint.
Yes. I did say I heard the checkpoint SFX at one point, but thanks for Spamming
congratulations Valtteri!
