For people with unfinished episodes, did you ever release them? If so, how?

[ElTipsta]

Asking primarily for myself, but also for others too. A lot of people worked on episodes, including some fantastic-looking ones, that they couldn't finish because of life. There's so many cool SMBX episodes that are now lost media, where only screenshots exist online (although the SMBX preservation initiative is absolutely incredible).

I've been thinking about this personally, because I'd like to release my latest project into an episode, While i have backed it up it'd be a shame to let it go to waste. But i also don't want to release everything as is, because its unfinished, but i doubt i'll ever be able to finish it the way i originally planned. There's almost no bosses done, for example.

What would you do if you were an episode creator in this situation? As a player, would you play an unfinished episode if it meant you could experience levels you really want to play?

As a side note, I'm really glad SMBX is still thriving in 2025 with new features. It's easily the best Mario fangame ever released.

[Lotica]

Unfortunately with the circumstances behind my project, I deleted all the files for the second episode, which I deeply regret. There were some interesting gimmicks I was trying to do with that thing.

I kind of find unfinished projects interesting depending on the context as to why it was not finished. Halo 2's development cycle helped with that feeling. It feels like you can try to imagine what the creator was thinking and how they could have achieved their goals, if there were any.

If I felt like I reached my limit with a project but I didn't want to let it go to waste, then I think it would be appropriate to release it to the public. In some cases, that has led to the community picking up the pieces. Take for instance the leaked Duke Nukem Forever 2001 E3 build. A group of fans are taking that build and making it into something expansive. It's kind of crazy what people will do.

[Prismarine]

I have a lot of unused and unfinished episodes, and luckily i uploaded a few of them before deciding to scrap them (which takes 3 hours for me after launch to discard) and the longest thriving episode i could ever had with overall good reception was The Shinesprite Altar. I scrapped the episode during World 2 development because it was way to simmilar to Reign Of The Gatekeepers and SM the Ancient Stars. Its just so grueling to develop a project you poured love and effort to just trash.

I hope to finish a project soon...

[Alagirez]

I remember worked on a certain big project back in 2016, but I ended up cancelling it due to both external and internal factors.

[Squishy Rex]

I have released a couple of my older unfinished projects from around the 2012 era, but I specifically just tagged them as either a demo or unfinished. If for whatever reason someone wanted to check those out at least they know it’s an incomplete product.

[PdizzleParker]

I did start making an episode way back in 2018. It was way too ambitious and I was just 12-13 at the time, so I only ended up making all of world 1 and half of world 2 and releasing that. It was going to have like 10 worlds but none of them were very interesting concept-wise, the levels were all too short with only a few of them being any good, I was using 38a which I ended up really not liking as I used it more, and I was pretty much just winging it with no real plan (also turns out said release has a completely broken world map, so that's fun).

I do feel like I could make something much better nowadays since I have a bit more experience and inspiration, but I've been very busy lately so I don't know if I'll ever get around to actually finishing anything. Time will tell, I suppose.