The Trial of Starshine Beach

[willie870307]

This is my custom level,The Trial of Starshine Beach.

Screenshots:

Spoiler: show

Download Link:https://www.mediafire.com/?a68m6aog6cprh69

Hope you like it!

[Zant]

Looks decent, but i recommend you to use the SMB3 wooden bridge instead the SMB2 one in the first screenie.
Also, that SMW sign kinda stands out too much, maybe using the SMB3 recolored version from LegendTony's SMB3 reclor pack would solve the problem?

[bossedit8]

Playthrough Made:



Original Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7DwgiLAcgA

[Imaynotbehere4long]

My review of The Trial of Starshine Beach:

Wow, this was a really neat level! You honestly surprised me by having both a custom intro and outro for your level. The level itself isn't too bad, either; it's mostly an underwater stage with a few sections on land for some variety. Some of the NPCs will even be replaced after giving a long speech so that they only say the basics afterward. Also, although fighting an Iggy Koopa underwater is unique, it only makes the fight easier.

Unfortunately, your level has some flaws. For starters, there's a really pointless area at the bottom-left of section 4 where you have a key wall with the key just a few blocks away from it (plus, the part before that had some needless backtracking to unlock its key wall). After that is a section where invisible walls push the player forward and he/she has to swim up and down to avoid Jelectros. That section was annoying since the player can't see the walls, but it was manageable. However, after that section, there's yet another section where the player has to do the same thing, but the walls are much closer together, and I actually got killed the instant I warped there the second time because of some glitch with the layers. I'd say that this section is the hardest part of the level simply because the walls are invisible and so close together, which makes it difficult for the player to be able to judge what to do at first. Plus, at the end of that section, there's a sign that the player has to read (while still being moved by the invisible walls) in order to continue; if the player misses the sign, he/she is dead. On top of this, if the player does die here, he/she will have to sit though the intro and the NPCs' dialogue again. As much as I enjoy custom intros, it gets annoying having to watch it for the third time without being able to skip it. I recommend combining both sections (removing the warp between the two), making the section they're combined in only one screen (tall and wide), removing the invisible walls, and putting the blocks and Jelectros on a layer and have them move instead of the invisible walls. You can just have an event stop the layer's movement once it reaches the end instead of making the player read a random sign.

Moving on: I think everyone here knows what a midpoint is, so the sign that explains this is completely pointless. After the midpoint, the player needs to find four hints in order to progress, and it's here where the second biggest problem of the level becomes apparent: the backtracking (the biggest problem is the unfairly made Jelectro sections). The player will have to go back and forth through multiple sections in order to get the hints, and once all of the enemies have been defeated in these sections, it gets pretty boring. Heck, section 12 doesn't have any enemies at all! Even after the player gets all of the hints and all of the coins in the Treasure Chamber, he/she has to backtrack to where Clampy is to "give" it the coins, then backtrack again to the Toad to finally get the star. To top it all off, the reward for collecting all of the dragon coins is a Kuribo's Shoe, which is practically useless since the majority of the level is underwater and the majority of warps have "Allow NPC" set to "No," meaning you can't bring the shoe up a pipe at the top of an underwater section. Also, Clampy has 1x1 pixels.

In conclusion:

I wanted to like this level, I really did, but the flaws are too great to ignore, especially that second Jelectro section. I say that this deserves a...5.9/10.

[FanofSMBX]

A 5.9? Was that on purpose to make it "Average"? I'm sorry, but if it was my level I'd be steamed.

[Zeldamaster12]

Maybe he just thought it didn't quite cut Pretty Good, but it still had potential to make it very close to it, but not quite.

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Believe me, FanofSMBX, I was seriously debating on whether or not I should put this in Pretty Good or not, but what killed the score in the end was the buggy and overall unintuitive second Jelectro section. If it weren't for that, this would have easily gotten at least a 7.