Postby PixelPest » Thu Sep 10, 2015 4:52 pm
My Review of Galoomba Plains:
Level Design: 2.5/10 (Weighed 70%)
This actually wasn’t too bad for a first level, but it does have a handful of issues. It was quite short (like most first levels are) and had a bit too much variety. The castle section unique but way too short, and could be skipped (by jumping over the top if you are playing Luigi) and contained way too much variation of NPCs, making it look a little bit messy. You also made a common mistake of using the wrong type of lava. In a castle area that doesn’t contain skull rafts, you should be using the SMW bubbling lava instead. Going back to the first section, it was okay, but after the castle section didn’t have any sizables and looked a little bit barren. Throughout the overland section, there was a also little NPC variety. Placement of ?-blocks was also inconsistent. The first grouping was fine at three blocks above the ground, but the almost all of the blocks thereafter were two blocks from the ground; in most cases, make three blocks off the ground the minimum height of any special blocks. Coins also shouldn’t be placed on the ground in most cases and often look better at minimum three blocks off the ground. Try adding 5 dragon coins as well to spice up the level. There were some spots such as the water area in the first section that could have had a bit more to them. Placing some cheep-cheeps in the water along with a dragon coin could make that look a lot better. The underwater section also needed some background objects and maybe a few NPCs, as it was also very bland.
Graphics/Music: 4.0 /10 (Weighed 30%)
The graphics and music were both vanilla, so there’s not much I can say about that. There was very little to no cutoff and no clash in all sections of the level, but the lack of variety in BGOs and sizables made the level very bland. It’s pretty tough to create a high quality overworld level using SMW vanilla graphics only.
Overall: 2.95/10