Joined by a Toad and a Rex, Mario must journey across the Mushroom Kingdom to save the princess from King Koopa and his subordinate Kamek.
Content
Jump, climb, and fly through ninethree multi-segmented levels!
Save Toads throughout your journey to be rewarded with power stars, with fifteenseven stars total!
Featuring a level-to-level format (levels connected by warps), Super Mario: Spiral is a(n) infinite and existentialshort and sweet episode with a one of a kindclassic Mario feel!
Music
All music in this episode is from the NieR series of games, which include NieR Replicant and NieR Automata. Some remixes of NieR music are also present, all of which were created by the YouTube channel TPR for their Rebirth + Despair album!
This episode was made on SMBX2.
If you ever have any issues with the episode, please let me know below so that appropriate changes can be made in future updates...
- Cleaned up some of the dialogue text for Toadsworth and Rex (but mostly Rex), hopefully improving the overall writing.
- All levels in A and B routes: Added a second checkpoint.
- Mushroom Plains 1 and 2: Fixed the faulty event that allowed the Kamek arena to be skipped.
- Misty Mountain 2: Added more fire flower blocks in the cave segment to reduce back tracking.
- All Koopa Keep levels: Added lava in under Bowser's bridge to ensure his demise... Also set Bowser to "doesn't move".
- Koopa Keep 3: Made the level backtrack-able from the checkpoint in order to gain the power star without restarting.
- Koopa Keep 3: Made the Toad harder to miss to lessen the need to backtrack at all.
- Koopa Keep 3 and 4: Peach now has a new look! Custom GFX made by Martijn, and recommended by AppleTheTomato
While stars are saved once collected, level progress may not be saved unless the player dies and then selects "save & continue" from the world map.
This is the first SMBX episode I have ever completely finished and then published. It is far from the first episode I have worked on, however. There has been many cancelled projects over the past 7 years that I have messed around with on this engine. Admittedly, I wasn't very smart with how I handled making episodes back when I was in middle school and early high school, but I have learned a whole heck of a lot since then. This is my first published episode and I vow that it won't be my last. Please critique me about any issues you may have with my content, so I may improve upon it in those future episodes. Thank you to everyone who decides to play Super Mario: Spiral, I hope you enjoy!
Last edited by Mystery Man Bro on Mon Dec 19, 2022 11:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Saw this in the SMBX Discord (Hi, it's Apple lol), and wanted to give it a shot. Before I give my overall thoughts, here's some notes on things that were cool and things that weren't:
- The "leaf timeline" used said leaf pretty well. I especially liked the mtn level's usage of it, like breaking the bricks to get higher or flying from one
section to another to get higher.
- Probably should put a checkpoint before the Kamek fight(s). In fact, this needs more checkpoints in general (The flying / fire on ice bridge part of the
mtn comes to mind).
- You can skip the Kamek fight(s), and so I did. Tho, the one time I actually played the Kamek fight, it was kinda buggy.
- The room transitions are a bit weird sometimes. You may wanna look into rooms.lua
- The red coin thing was neat, but that boo can really screw you over.
- The castle level is neat. Really liked the combination of past level elements.
- Bowser was super anticlimatic. Like, I was helping the Toad right before his area, and Bowser was just jumping and spitballing right there. Kinda weird.
- HOLY CRAP I wasn't expecting a "twice twice." Going through the levels again via a "fire timeline" was super cool. Speaking of which, the usage of the
fire flower, like the leaf, was pretty well used.
- I would put more powerup blocks around. An area in particular that could benefit greatly from that is the cave part of the mtn. It was super annoying
to have to backtrack if I lost my flower to some random bat.
- The story is pretty decent. Gaps I missed through one "timeline" were filled in the next. I actually kinda cared for the characters, which rarely happens
to me in SMBX episodes.
- I can see where the Kamek platforms would troll people, so some indicators may help.
- You can actually skip the final Kamek fight if you get his magic to fly up. Then, you can spinjump on it to reach Peach and progress.
- You can still hear Bowser after he falls. Is there a floor underneath the screen?
- Peach's GFX are inconsistent across her playable and NPC. I would either change the playable to these: viewtopic.php?t=21374
Or change the NPC. The usage of Peach is really cool, tho.
- I couldn't backtrack for what I'd assume is the 15th Star, died to reset progress, but because I got the checkpoint, I was softlocked.
Quit the game to hopefully try the Peach level again, and was sent back to "fire timeline" Koopa Keep.
- Bit weird that when you talk to Peach before the final Kamek fight, it's Kamek talking. I figured Peach would at least say SOMETHING lol.
- I died in the Peach part before the checkpoint, and got stuck in the black room before her part. I had to switch to Mario, and then upon hitting her
block, I got back to the level. I'd change that, either via lua or some other tricky shenanigans.
At first, I thought this was going to be a super basic SMBX episode, but I was super surprised by the "twice twice" or, as the story puts it, spiral concept.
It was so cool to see the levels I had just played changed in new ways. Like I've already said, the story is pretty decent, and I was constently wondering
what was going to happen. I'll admit, all the bugs soggied the playthrough, but I still had fun. I'd give it an even 5/10 right now. Lots of good elements
mixed with some kinda nasty bugs and inconvenient setups.
I'm hoping you'll make an update to this, as this was pretty good, but had quite a few issues, so I'd love to play it again when some stuff is fixed.
Have a great day!
Saw this in the SMBX Discord (Hi, it's Apple lol), and wanted to give it a shot. Before I give my overall thoughts, here's some notes on things that were cool and things that weren't:
- The "leaf timeline" used said leaf pretty well. I especially liked the mtn level's usage of it, like breaking the bricks to get higher or flying from one
section to another to get higher.
- Probably should put a checkpoint before the Kamek fight(s). In fact, this needs more checkpoints in general (The flying / fire on ice bridge part of the
mtn comes to mind).
- You can skip the Kamek fight(s), and so I did. Tho, the one time I actually played the Kamek fight, it was kinda buggy.
- The room transitions are a bit weird sometimes. You may wanna look into rooms.lua
- The red coin thing was neat, but that boo can really screw you over.
- The castle level is neat. Really liked the combination of past level elements.
- Bowser was super anticlimatic. Like, I was helping the Toad right before his area, and Bowser was just jumping and spitballing right there. Kinda weird.
- HOLY CRAP I wasn't expecting a "twice twice." Going through the levels again via a "fire timeline" was super cool. Speaking of which, the usage of the
fire flower, like the leaf, was pretty well used.
- I would put more powerup blocks around. An area in particular that could benefit greatly from that is the cave part of the mtn. It was super annoying
to have to backtrack if I lost my flower to some random bat.
- The story is pretty decent. Gaps I missed through one "timeline" were filled in the next. I actually kinda cared for the characters, which rarely happens
to me in SMBX episodes.
- I can see where the Kamek platforms would troll people, so some indicators may help.
- You can actually skip the final Kamek fight if you get his magic to fly up. Then, you can spinjump on it to reach Peach and progress.
- You can still hear Bowser after he falls. Is there a floor underneath the screen?
- Peach's GFX are inconsistent across her playable and NPC. I would either change the playable to these: viewtopic.php?t=21374
Or change the NPC. The usage of Peach is really cool, tho.
- I couldn't backtrack for what I'd assume is the 15th Star, died to reset progress, but because I got the checkpoint, I was softlocked.
Quit the game to hopefully try the Peach level again, and was sent back to "fire timeline" Koopa Keep.
- Bit weird that when you talk to Peach before the final Kamek fight, it's Kamek talking. I figured Peach would at least say SOMETHING lol.
- I died in the Peach part before the checkpoint, and got stuck in the black room before her part. I had to switch to Mario, and then upon hitting her
block, I got back to the level. I'd change that, either via lua or some other tricky shenanigans.
At first, I thought this was going to be a super basic SMBX episode, but I was super surprised by the "twice twice" or, as the story puts it, spiral concept.
It was so cool to see the levels I had just played changed in new ways. Like I've already said, the story is pretty decent, and I was constently wondering
what was going to happen. I'll admit, all the bugs soggied the playthrough, but I still had fun. I'd give it an even 5/10 right now. Lots of good elements
mixed with some kinda nasty bugs and inconvenient setups.
I'm hoping you'll make an update to this, as this was pretty good, but had quite a few issues, so I'd love to play it again when some stuff is fixed.
Have a great day!
Also, extra thoughts I just had to possibly reduce episode size:
- Use Audacity to see if you can loop the music in any way. If not, saving them as oggs on 0 (at least for me) keeps the quality and massively reduces the
filesize. You can look at this video to see how to possibly loop the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX8VVqejaZc
- Convert any GIFs to PNGs using the GIF2PNG converted in the editor. Then, I'd reccomend Caesium Image Compressor to condense the image size (which
keeps the quality) even further.
- This may be a pain, but so that you don't have to make copies of each level, why not make copies of the level IN the level? You can easily do that in X2
by cloning sections of a level to another section in that level. You can even copy a section from one level to another. Tie all the warps together right,
and voila! Multiple levels in one.
- The episode actually had 2 checkpoints per level (this can be seen in one of the screenshots). I limited it to one checkpoint since I was having problems with events starting early (might have just been from "restart last level on death" being checked) and remembered that having more than one checkpoint used to mess with levels on previous SMBX versions. If this is not the case on SMBX2 then this will be an easy fix to just add the checkpoints back.
- It's kinda sick that you can just skip the Kamek fight, great find. I'm tempted to leave it in to make the game more speedrun-able if anyone ever felt like doing so. Although it would be better design-wise to fix that. Indicators would also be good QoL changes but I'd probably have to get a graphic for it. Was the plains level fight skip-able? The only way I can think to is due to the exit warp appearing early which is something that I would definitely fix and not sure how I missed.
- Bowser has no floor below the bridge also thought that was strange but assumed it was just how the NPC worked since I don't usually use Bowser.
- Many thanks for finding that Peach graphic! Should be pretty painless to implement that.
- The Peach segment was intended to be backtrack-able but I have discovered that one block being out of place prevented that so I've fixed it. EDIT: Just realized that I had flat out missed the warp on the door lol...
- Wasn't sure how big the episode file size was in comparison to the usual, so if it's a bit much I'll look into those methods. Converting the music would reduce the file size by like 20 MB alone.
Glad you liked the story and aspects of the level design, and hopefully once I get all of the bugs ironed out it will be a much better experience!
- The episode actually had 2 checkpoints per level (this can be seen in one of the screenshots). I limited it to one checkpoint since I was having problems with events starting early (might have just been from "restart last level on death" being checked) and remembered that having more than one checkpoint used to mess with levels on previous SMBX versions. If this is not the case on SMBX2 then this will be an easy fix to just add the checkpoints back.
- It's kinda sick that you can just skip the Kamek fight, great find. I'm tempted to leave it in to make the game more speedrun-able if anyone ever felt like doing so. Although it would be better design-wise to fix that. Indicators would also be good QoL changes but I'd probably have to get a graphic for it. Was the plains level fight skip-able? The only way I can think to is due to the exit warp appearing early which is something that I would definitely fix and not sure how I missed.
- Bowser has no floor below the bridge also thought that was strange but assumed it was just how the NPC worked since I don't usually use Bowser.
- Many thanks for finding that Peach graphic! Should be pretty painless to implement that.
- The Peach segment was intended to be backtrack-able but I have discovered that one block being out of place prevented that so I've fixed it. EDIT: Just realized that I had flat out missed the warp on the door lol...
- Wasn't sure how big the episode file size was in comparison to the usual, so if it's a bit much I'll look into those methods. Converting the music would reduce the file size by like 20 MB alone.
Glad you liked the story and aspects of the level design, and hopefully once I get all of the bugs ironed out it will be a much better experience!
- SMBX2 allows for way more checkpoints, I believe. So I would definately play around with that.
- Yes, you can skip the plains Kamek fight. And honestly, I WOULD leave in the final Kamek "spinjump on magic" skip. It wasn't too hard to do, but I doubt most people would think to do that.
- Maybe put lava below the Bowser fight? That's how it usually is setup.
Got a lot of quick fixes out today and now everything seems to be working as intended at least until more bugs or design oversights are found! Next update will take longer though since I'm going to start working on my next project as well as entering level contests. But I'll still come back to this episode to update it when needed for any future players who may stumble across it ^-^
Once again, thanks for all your help, Apple!
Detailed patch notes for everything changed are below the new download link in the main post.
Got a lot of quick fixes out today and now everything seems to be working as intended at least until more bugs or design oversights are found! Next update will take longer though since I'm going to start working on my next project as well as entering level contests. But I'll still come back to this episode to update it when needed for any future players who may stumble across it ^-^
Once again, thanks for all your help, Apple!
Detailed patch notes for everything changed are below the new download link in the main post.
Got a lot of quick fixes out today and now everything seems to be working as intended at least until more bugs or design oversights are found! Next update will take longer though since I'm going to start working on my next project as well as entering level contests. But I'll still come back to this episode to update it when needed for any future players who may stumble across it ^-^
Once again, thanks for all your help, Apple!
Detailed patch notes for everything changed are below the new download link in the main post.
Hooray! Definately gonna play again.
So, I just finished playing it again, and I got a few more things:
- The two Toads in this screenshot have the same dialogue after unlocking the ladder and saving the one Toad. You can probably do some event stuff to change them to different Toad NPCs with different dialogue:
- During the second Kamek fight, he tells you to remember spinjumping. 1: Why would he help me and 2: it isn't needed lol
- The projectiles from Hammer Bros and Kamek are still present after you win. You should be able to remove them by hiding "Spawned NPCs" in the event
If that doesn't work, try putting this in a luna.lua file inside those levels:
function onEvent(eventName)
for _,n in ipairs(NPC.get()) do
if eventName == "whateverTheEventNameIsCalled" and (n.id == 30 or n.id == 300) then
n:kill(HARM_TYPE_VANISH)
end
end
end
- During the haunted cave part, I never got that Toadsworth didn't trust Rex, so the whole "he double-crossed us!" thing didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, Rex came off more as "wow! this cave is cool and spooky!" and Toadsworth and Mario were just like "well, I guess he knows what he's doing." Then, Kamek pops in, we all get tricked, and Rex takes all the blame? I'd get it if Toadsworth was all "this guy is sus" but he isn't. He's just mad with him for no reason lol.
- How is the player supposed to know that there's going to be a Hammer Bro right here:
-The two Toads in this screenshot have the same dialogue after unlocking the ladder and saving the one Toad. You can probably do some event stuff to change them to different Toad NPCs with different dialogue
- During the second Kamek fight, he tells you to remember spinjumping. 1: Why would he help me and 2: it isn't needed lol
These are fair QoL changes, the second one especially since that dialogue is kinda awkward. You have to spin jump their shells or fire ball the koopas in order to progress the fight. Most SMBXers are already gonna know that, but if you don't it could be a helpful hint though. I'll have to think on it.
- The projectiles from Hammer Bros and Kamek are still present after you win. You should be able to remove them by hiding "Spawned NPCs" in the event
If that doesn't work, try putting this in a luna.lua file inside those levels:
function onEvent(eventName)
for _,n in ipairs(NPC.get()) do
if eventName == "whateverTheEventNameIsCalled" and (n.id == 30 or n.id == 300) then
n:kill(HARM_TYPE_VANISH)
end
end
end
Another good QoL change that can hopefully be patched up with just tweaking the events. I am a level designer first and foremost, and have hardly any coding experience, so the LunaLua is much appreciated in case it's needed!
- During the haunted cave part, I never got that Toadsworth didn't trust Rex, so the whole "he double-crossed us!" thing didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, Rex came off more as "wow! this cave is cool and spooky!" and Toadsworth and Mario were just like "well, I guess he knows what he's doing." Then, Kamek pops in, we all get tricked, and Rex takes all the blame? I'd get it if Toadsworth was all "this guy is sus" but he isn't. He's just mad with him for no reason lol.
- How is the player supposed to know that there's going to be a Hammer Bro right here:
There is one text box where Toadsworth kinda says that, and there's the detail that Rex was lured by Kamek if that helps:
That's still a completely fair criticism though since that cave section is a bit bloated narratively. There is another Toadsworth text box where he comments on saving the Toads in the level, so perhaps that could be swapped for more dialogue about distrusting Rex.
That hammer bro was meant to teach shooting fire balls through clear pipes but it is unfairly placed so it can be moved.
As I said, the next update won't come out for a while, but I'll implement these changes when it does! Gonna give the episode some time to simmer while I work on my next episode so that there'll hopefully be more reviews so I can see different perspectives and come back with one big update of fixes.
You have to spin jump their shells or fire ball the koopas in order to progress the fight. Most SMBXers are already gonna know that, but if you don't it could be a helpful hint though. I'll have to think on it.
Ah, that's why spinjumping is needed! I did that during the fight and I didn't put it together. My bad.
There is one text box where Toadsworth kinda says that, and there's the detail that Rex was lured by Kamek if that helps:
That's still a completely fair criticism though since that cave section is a bit bloated narratively. There is another Toadsworth text box where he comments on saving the Toads in the level, so perhaps that could be swapped for more dialogue about distrusting Rex.
I took the too eager thing as just that: Rex is too eager. Too excited to explore, possibly at the risk of himself and...I guess Mario and Toadsworth? Bit of a stretch. And for the "voice in his head," yeah, I guess that kinda makes sense. But these feel too "hint-y" if that makes sense, while Toadsworth reaction is very clear. Like, if I was talking with someone, and I mentioned I like books, and I liked wizards, and then that someone was like "Holy crap, you like Harry Potter?!" I could see where they'd think that, but it 1: may not be true and 2: would be a heck of a stretch. There would need to be more indicators in the conversation for that person's reaction to feel more justified. Like, maybe I mention that I read through a series of books with 7 titles, and that I saw the movie adaptation of that series, and found it weird that they split the final book into two movies. That may not make much sense lol. IDK, maybe Toadsworth is just a master detective. Didn't get that from him, but what do I know.
As I said, the next update won't come out for a while, but I'll implement these changes when it does! Gonna give the episode some time to simmer while I work on my next episode so that there'll hopefully be more reviews so I can see different perspectives and come back with one big update of fixes.
Take your time! And a second episode? I'll be looking forward to that.
Mario, NieR music and this sort of story are not a trio of things i ever expected to see together, but i very much enjoyed it
short and sweet, really challenging platforming, it's god damn NieR music so of course that part is perfect, it's a good episode
