Mysterious Scaffolding [Re-Review]

[MacheTheFerret]

I made another level! This one's really supposed to be more Nintendo esque, using only graphics and music you'd probably see/hear in SMB3.
At the same time, It's also nonlinear, with a few secrets ("secrets"), and a World 7 (Pipe World) kind of theme connecting it all together.
It's a bit of a puzzle, requiring you to go all across the map in search of [redacted due to spoilers].
Screen:

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kg8t0w5ck50pj ... g.zip?dl=0

[MacheTheFerret]

Sorry for the double post, but I'm really getting tired of not getting ANY feedback whatsoever on my levels, while other levels are flocked to by judges and other users. How does a level thread have 50+ views and no criticism?

[Emral]

You've sure experienced something which never happened to anyone else! I am going to write a review for this level tomorrow.

The area shown the screenshot looks rather crude and thrown together.

[Superiorstar]

I don't get feedback all the time and look at my levels, most of the serious ones are in pretty good.
just wait for it, or just put it in the name.

[MacheTheFerret]

Someone kindly informed me that I could've just PMed a level judge, now I feel silly. I'm sorry for that little outburst.

[Emral]

Alright time to write this review.

Reviews - -ring Enjl!

First off I have to clearly note that this level is not non-linear. It is a maze which requires you to do certain tasks in a loosely specific order, in order to lower a wall at the beginning of the level. There are no secrets. There are no split paths. It's just a large wooden structure.

Now, I have to give you kudos for making a nice-looking wooden structure only using vanilla SMB3 graphics (+ the beams). I really like the look of it all and it really gives off this "mysterious" vibe hinted at in the level name. I am sceptical about the lamps, but I'm gonna let it pass since if you hadn't added them some bastards would complain about a lack of background objects, which is total bullshit. Now, where do I go on...

ah right! The puzzle. The main gameplay aspect you present is a pretty straightforward puzzle which requires the player to hit a few invisible blocks and check out a few suspicious pipes. It's mostly walking back and forth while finding vine blocks or building bridges. This in itself can become rather frustrating after a short amount of time if the player, say, didn't find a random invisible vine block needed to uncover another vine block, but that's not all, for I shall go on mentioning the biggest issue I've had with this level:

Airborne NPCs.

Now, what's so bad about them? Two things. Firstly, most areas are rather cramped in this level, and normally I'd forgive that, as the theme you were going for supports having some cramped areas, but not if there are jumping koopas and goombas EVERYWHERE! And if that wasn't enough, here's the second thing: There are invisible blocks everywhere! No matter where you go, no matter what you seek, chances are you'll always find an invisible block. More often than not you find them because a jumping koopa BUMPED ITS HEAD ON THE BLOCK AND MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO PREDICT ITS MOVEMENT. Then death happens. Shall it be known that my ramble about this is now over and this sure is a huge drawback. I'll go on about NPC and coin placement now...

...which were amateur level. You placed a ton of enemies in this level, way more than 8 leaves (from which I only found 6 when looking in the editor after beating the level) can support in the first few tries and more often than not I found myself losing them in unfair moments e.g. 5 flying enemies trying to kill me, a paratroopa hitting an invisible block, etc... Turn it down a bit! This is overkill! Not every pipe needs a piranha, not every cliff needs a red koopa, bob-omb or jumping enemy! Especially if your bob-omb generator kills them anyways.

Coins just felt lazily placed and in far too large amounts. I don't have a lot to say here. It feels like going completely overboard while trying to go for a SMB3 look.

Before I go to the end of this review and will finally point out some good things this level did, I shall adress another flat out poor design decision: You can get a boot in this level by going an extra mile (or flying up to it if you managed to get a leaf), but you have to drop it after defeating Boom-Boom to pick up the P-Switch. I would've rather seen you hand out a Tanooki Suit to support the player on these last stretches before finishing the level, as the boot makes the otherwise cool and intuitive boss fight way too easy.

Alright, overall, you partially hit what you were aiming for. It certainly had a SMB3 vibe to it and unfair World 7 difficulty made by adding a ton of NPCs, but aside from that the design was rather poor and looking for how to advance in the level could grow frustrating quickly.

Pros:
- Intuitive bossfight
- The level looks super cool, I like the atmosphere

Cons:
- Too many cooks enemies and coins in relation to the powerups provided in a spread manner across the level
- Potentially tons of backtracking, one wrong step can send you back or kill you
- Please cut down on the amount of invisible blocks, especially near jumping NPCs

Overall:

4/10

While I was able to find a bit of joy in figuring out the puzzle and advancing in the level, most of the fun was destroyed due to rather unforgiving and non-player friendly design.

[MacheTheFerret]

Alright time to write this review.

Reviews - -ring Enjl!

First off I have to clearly note that this level is not non-linear. It is a maze which requires you to do certain tasks in a loosely specific order, in order to lower a wall at the beginning of the level. There are no secrets. There are no split paths. It's just a large wooden structure.

Now, I have to give you kudos for making a nice-looking wooden structure only using vanilla SMB3 graphics (+ the beams). I really like the look of it all and it really gives off this "mysterious" vibe hinted at in the level name. I am sceptical about the lamps, but I'm gonna let it pass since if you hadn't added them some bastards would complain about a lack of background objects, which is total bullshit. Now, where do I go on...

ah right! The puzzle. The main gameplay aspect you present is a pretty straightforward puzzle which requires the player to hit a few invisible blocks and check out a few suspicious pipes. It's mostly walking back and forth while finding vine blocks or building bridges. This in itself can become rather frustrating after a short amount of time if the player, say, didn't find a random invisible vine block needed to uncover another vine block, but that's not all, for I shall go on mentioning the biggest issue I've had with this level:

Airborne NPCs.

Now, what's so bad about them? Two things. Firstly, most areas are rather cramped in this level, and normally I'd forgive that, as the theme you were going for supports having some cramped areas, but not if there are jumping koopas and goombas EVERYWHERE! And if that wasn't enough, here's the second thing: There are invisible blocks everywhere! No matter where you go, no matter what you seek, chances are you'll always find an invisible block. More often than not you find them because a jumping koopa BUMPED ITS HEAD ON THE BLOCK AND MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO PREDICT ITS MOVEMENT. Then death happens. Shall it be known that my ramble about this is now over and this sure is a huge drawback. I'll go on about NPC and coin placement now...

...which were amateur level. You placed a ton of enemies in this level, way more than 8 leaves (from which I only found 6 when looking in the editor after beating the level) can support in the first few tries and more often than not I found myself losing them in unfair moments e.g. 5 flying enemies trying to kill me, a paratroopa hitting an invisible block, etc... Turn it down a bit! This is overkill! Not every pipe needs a piranha, not every cliff needs a red koopa, bob-omb or jumping enemy! Especially if your bob-omb generator kills them anyways.

Coins just felt lazily placed and in far too large amounts. I don't have a lot to say here. It feels like going completely overboard while trying to go for a SMB3 look.

Before I go to the end of this review and will finally point out some good things this level did, I shall adress another flat out poor design decision: You can get a boot in this level by going an extra mile (or flying up to it if you managed to get a leaf), but you have to drop it after defeating Boom-Boom to pick up the P-Switch. I would've rather seen you hand out a Tanooki Suit to support the player on these last stretches before finishing the level, as the boot makes the otherwise cool and intuitive boss fight way too easy.

Alright, overall, you partially hit what you were aiming for. It certainly had a SMB3 vibe to it and unfair World 7 difficulty made by adding a ton of NPCs, but aside from that the design was rather poor and looking for how to advance in the level could grow frustrating quickly.

Pros:
- Intuitive bossfight
- The level looks super cool, I like the atmosphere

Cons:
- Too many cooks enemies and coins in relation to the powerups provided in a spread manner across the level
- Potentially tons of backtracking, one wrong step can send you back or kill you
- Please cut down on the amount of invisible blocks, especially near jumping NPCs

Overall:

4/10

While I was able to find a bit of joy in figuring out the puzzle and advancing in the level, most of the fun was destroyed due to rather unforgiving and non-player friendly design.

I think most of the problem comes from the fact that, when the creator of a level playtests their own level, they alter it based on their own skill level, and not accommodating to the majority of players who would play their level. Basically, I made it harder for myself because I thought it was too easy, without taking into account that other people would have an even greater challenge because they don't know where every block and pipe is when they first play the level.
To discuss fixing the issues with the level, I can definitely say I can fix the invisible blocks issue by removing most of them altogether, only leaving ones that aren't required to hit or aren't in the way of the player (hidden 1-up blocks). The backtracking issue is a little trickier, but I think I could potentially fix the problem with sign posts (not that that would help much), and giving the warp pipes that the player can use different colors (so they can know where the hell they're going). I might need some other way of doing this, do you have any suggestions?
The trickiest fix is spreading out the enemies, coins, and powerups. That particular complaint is a flaw that most, if not all of my levels have, (besides the playtesting thing mentioned above) and I don't know how to fix it and train myself to not do it again. Any ideas?
I agree with the review mostly, but I kinda feel the numerical score was a wee bit too harsh. That could just be me though. Thanks for the review!

[Emral]

I think most of the problem comes from the fact that, when the creator of a level playtests their own level, they alter it based on their own skill level, and not accommodating to the majority of players who would play their level. Basically, I made it harder for myself because I thought it was too easy, without taking into account that other people would have an even greater challenge because they don't know where every block and pipe is when they first play the level.

This is why you're putting it up for it to be reviewed. Feedback is the best way to improve.

The backtracking issue is a little trickier, but I think I could potentially fix the problem with sign posts (not that that would help much), and giving the warp pipes that the player can use different colors (so they can know where the hell they're going). I might need some other way of doing this, do you have any suggestions?

Colouring the warp pipes is a step into the right direction, yeah. In addition to that you can provide shortcuts to near the beginning of the level (with yet another colour of pipes) near spots which are common spots where the player might have forgotten a part. One which comes to mind is the vine near the top of the wooden structure (inside).

The trickiest fix is spreading out the enemies, coins, and powerups. That particular complaint is a flaw that most, if not all of my levels have, (besides the playtesting thing mentioned above) and I don't know how to fix it and train myself to not do it again. Any ideas?

Generally I'd now point towards other people's levels and tell you to watch what they do and imitate it, but I'm gonna try to bring some general guidelines to the table:

• most of the time (not always) coins come in packs of three or four and they're in line of a jump or in a formation which shows the player how he can advance
• except for bonus coins which might take up fancier formations, longer lines, etc etc (like what you did on top of the structure, but maybe remove 2 columns on each side and 1 line on top)
• areas should rarely have more than 12 coins on screen at once (unless ?-blocks or bonus areas are involved) (my personal tip, I don't know how legit this is)

• make sure jumping enemies don't hit their head against the ceiling
• keep homing enemies to a minimum. The player shouldn't be able to be chased by two at once
• if you have 5 or more enemies on screen (unless the player forcefully brings enemies together to acheive this) (piranha plants count half) it can be considered overkill

For powerups, try playing the level after applying some balance changes and put them in regular intervals. This is difficult for maze levels, where you might aswell measure the distance between each powerup and place as many as you need according to your test of the level.

I agree with the review mostly, but I kinda feel the numerical score was a wee bit too harsh. That could just be me though. Thanks for the review!

I put a big emphasis on gameplay in my scores. It might've come over too harsh because of that. People nowadays only care about dem schmexy graphics.

[MacheTheFerret]

LE GASP!

Out of sheer boredom, I decided to revisit this old level of mine. Remember when I made levels? Yea, neither do I. I changed a few things, based on Enjl's old review and some of my new experiences and knowledge.

Changelog:

Added:
-Dotted outline BGOs behind every single invisible block, so that they are less random and are only hard to find if you aren't paying attention
-New secret Tanooki Suit somewhere in the level
-There's now a Toad at the very end of the level that explains the mystery of the scaffolding (it's about time too)

Removed:
-Removed all chasing enemies, all bob-ombs (including the pointless generator), and a few other enemies
-Removed a few coins
-Removed a completely pointless warp

Changed:
-Changed the colors on most, if not all the pipes so that players have a clear sense of direction
-All invisible noteblocks are now invisible question mark blocks
-Changed the secret boot into a Tanooki Suit, as per request
-Changed all text to be much less vague
-Other minor changes


New download link (it's updated in the main post too): Spaalone Babuguscooties

---

Hopefully I can get a re-review in order sometime.

[PixelPest]

Official Re-Review of Mysterious Scaffolding

Level Design and Gameplay (weighed 85%): 5.6/10
This level was very fun to play, for the first five minutes anyway. It became a little bit too long with backtracking through the same sections over and over again. It was enjoyable to play though and felt good to finish. There were some issues with design though. Coin placement needs a lot of work. There was an inconsistent spreading of coins throughout the level--large clumps of coins in places and then full screens where no coins were to be seen. The way they were placed was also a little too messy and random. NPC placement could use some work as well, since it was often unchallenging and random like the coins. The boss battle was quite difficult but had a unique layout that was interesting to play. After the boss battle, when the block stairway appears, I'd recommend placing the blocks with a two-block gap in between, as the player can get stuck on the wrong side during their first try and waste a bunch of time. I also didn't like the fact that the blocks that appeared were question blocks. It didn't really make sense and made the level look really amateur. Overall, it was fun to play for the most part, the design of it overall wasn't great.

Graphics and Music (weighed 15%): 6.3/10
The level looked kind of messy with the choice to use the SMB3 wood blocks as the main structural block. The other graphics for the pipes didn't really add much to the level, but the hidden block BGO was a lifesaver in this level.
The vanilla music fit fine throughout this level.

Overall: 5.705/10 (Average)
- fun puzzle level, it just dragged on a bit too long and involved too much backtracking
- random and unintuitive coin and NPC placement
- SMB3 wood blocks were unappealing
- unique structure for a classic Boom Boom boss battle