Super Mario Bros. X Forums

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You used the wrong word here, as I am clearly demonstrating by this screenshot: say "above" instead of "underneath."

Wait, is it "Skypop" or "Sky Pop?" Make up your mind!

So yeah, I thought this whole en medias res part was kinda cool. It even has a death effect appear, almost as though you really died:

Anyway--wait, you actually killled me??? You do realize that you just broke the most principle rule of game design, right? The player and the designer have a trust, and that is that the designer won't force the player to be killed. Yes, SMBX starts the player with 3 lives, and yes, it's easy to gain more than the one life lost throughout the episode, but it's also entirely possible to be killed normally in that level, and the only difference between that and getting to the end of this level is that my death gets rubbed in my face since I had no control over whether it happened or not.

And to top it all off, it wasn't even en medias res. Oh well.

Hey, you know what would be much appreciated right about now? A cut-scene that shows us what's happening instead of an exposition dump. I don't even care if it's an incredibly basic cut-scene like the one in Super Mario Enigmatic, just something besides walls of text. Show, don't tell. No excuses; you're a veteran member, you should know how to make a cut-scene in SMBX. If you're concerned about the "5 hours" thing, which I'm not even sure why you put that in there in the first place, you could have a montage showing the different areas that Luigi went (but we don't get to go to for some reason) and say it took 5 hours at the end. Also, you forgot a period, here:

One final thing: this is the warp to World 1, shown in the editor. During game-play, no music plays during this part. Can you find out what key aspect of this lvl file is missing?

That's right, you forgot the Player 1 start point. Without that, the music won't play during game-play for some reason. I'm surprised nobody else has caught this. This is an issue that has been known since The Invasion 2; how did you not catch this?

Although it's more of a nitpick than a complaint, you shouldn't put ceiling pipes in your level if they don't lead anywhere or don't signify the presence of a Piranha plant. Ceiling pipes shouldn't be used as decoration because the player could waste time trying to reach it only to be disappointed when there's nothing there. Remove all ceiling pipes that are like this; nothing of value will be lost.

Another annoying thing is that these dolphin buddies are Podobo sprite-swaps, meaning that each time they land back in the water, they make the lava sound effect. Just have them sprite-swap one of the unused fishes instead; it would get rid of the annoying lava sound effect they make after each jump--ooh, I have a better idea: have them sprite-swap an unused paratroopa (set to jump) and put an invisible npc with playerblock=0 and npcblocktop=1 under them; this would fix the sound effect annoyance and even be closer to their AI in SMW.

Another nitpick: when I got here, I assumed I could swim under the blocks, but not only was there no block to prevent me from going, there also wasn't any water there, so I fell to my death. Either block this part off or add water there.

This would be a nice area to put a secret, like a 1up or something.

Another nitpick: don't put holes in the ceiling if they don't indicate secrets. The way this part is designed made me think that I could swim over the left wall into a new area, but that wasn't the case. On top of that, there is one ceiling you can swim over, and it leads to the end of the level. I know this is the first world, but that's a bit overkill, don't you think?

Something I found odd was that, in various levels, there's a solitary blue coin that is relatively well hidden or guarded. However, collecting this coin does nothing except add 5 coins to your coin total. I just found it odd as to why you would do this; it's not like a dragon coin, which is worth 1/5th of a 1up, but rather, it's only worth 1/20th of a 1up (and there aren't even 20 in the level), so why?

Another nitpick: the platform should be on top of the sphere at the height of its rotation, not below it.

Also, it looked like these blocks were solid at first. This is the kind of thing you should have a sign tell the player.

I didn't even need the springboard to get up here.

Seriously, though, what's the point of using an alternate-color coin if it's not an event trigger or anything? Well, at least it's not an empty area like the last screenshot.

Okay, I have two issues to point out here: 1) why have the same graphic sprite-swap two different AIs? It's confusing. 2) The water in that background doesn't flow properly. It starts out as smooth animation, but instantly jumps back to its starting point after the fourth frame. Like SME before it, choppier animation would be better, as long as the distance it flows is equal for each frame.

And the same goes for this waterfall, too (the one in the top-left):

So, why is this water in front of the blocks and tiles, but behind Luigi? A simple foreground=1 should fix this

Also, there's absolutely no indication that this isn't solid until it's too late (admittedly, falling in the water won't kill you, but it's really annoying).

Also: spawn issues. You should use background images here (or foreground images should you take my previous advice), especially since these NPCs don't represent the flowing water.

Seriously, you shouldn't have random holes in the ceiling. It's just like the ceiling pipes: they don't add anything to the level's atmosphere and only exist to trick the player into thinking there's a secret there. Nothing of value will be lost from removing them.

Also, there's a black line at the bottom of these crystal graphics. Even if they were part of the original graphic, they don't look good and should be removed.

Remember what I said about holes in the ceiling? The same goes for holes in the walls:

Wait, there's nothing up HERE? Seriously?? You even had the blocks there and everything!

This is another place that looked suspicious, but that's all it was.

One more thing: you shouldn't split the boss's dialogue into two parts; I accidentally skipped the previous text box because I thought the boss fight was about to happen (rather than more dialogue).

Also, the boss can be annoying sometimes because, since I can't spin-jump out of the water nor can I attack him directly, I'm forced to wait for him to move away from the ? switch. But lo, 'twas merely foreshadowing for what's to come.

This level's name is a lie. It only feels like it's long because the custom song used is 26 seconds long. Let that sink in for a moment: a 26 second loop repeated throughout a level that takes at least a few MINUTES to complete (and that's if the player doesn't die or dawdle). Also, "Untitled"? Really? You, a veteran member, should know that a level's custom song is just as important to it as it's custom graphics, so cite your songs (even if your citation would be "it came from this ROM-hack," even though that may not be it's game of origin, you should still say so).

Speaking of that level, why does it start off like this:

But then instantly set the section like this, and that's just weird. Another weird thing is the background: although it is admirable that you sprite-swapped one of the parallax backgrounds, you did it incorrectly. You see, the Mystic Cave background was made to represent a cave. You know, with a ceiling and all? Therefore, the layers near the top as well as the bottom of the background scroll faster than the middle layers. By having swapped the Mystic Cave background, the dunes at the top (aka the ones that should be furthest away) actually scroll by faster than the ones below it (aka the ones that should be closer to the player). What I'm saying is you should have removed the top layers of dunes or sprite-swapped background2-56 instead (it's also parallax).

This part was quite cruel. Earlier in the level, you had a brick stack similar to the one in this screenshot (shown in the screenshot proceeding this one), but you clearly showed that there was ground below it. At first, I didn't realize I had to continue breaking those bricks to get down there, so I thought that I was supposed to jump down here instead. To prevent this misunderstanding, you should move the brick stack and the general area around it to a lower position so that the player can see that the screen stopped scrolling down and that the pit below the brick stack is a pit of death.


Most of my previous complaints can be thought of as nitpicks, but I'm sure we can all agree that this is a legitimate design flaw in the episode. You see that Bob-omb? When I first saw that Bob-omb NPC (not that specific one, but one earlier in the level), I thought "Wow, what a neat SMW Bob-omb sprite-swap!" But no, it's an SMB2 Bob-omb sprite-swap! What's worse is that there isn't even a sign to warn about this difference. I was carrying a Koopa shell and thought I could just kill it by running into it and remain unscathed, but instead I got injured by the explosion. The graphic is representative of an SMW Bob-omb, so that's what people will think it is. Either use the original SMB2 Bob-omb graphic or use a sprite-swap that isn't so confusing! You shouldn't sacrifice intuitive interactions for the sake of avoiding graphics clash (at least I assume that's what you were doing, because why else would you do this??).

Oh, and to top it off, you have actual SMW Bob-ombs in the level as well. Maybe you could have started off with SMW Bob-ombs, then had a sign indicating and warning about the difference between the two types? Also, the Chargin' Chuck's effect is incorrect.

Valtteri wrote:Stop. Stop with the unclimbable SMB2 vines. IT'S NO FUN.

I didn't really have any problems with the third level (except that if the TNT Bullies are hit by the Raccoon Tail, their effect is incorrect, but I couldn't get a screenshot of that). However, I did find it odd that you put a warp with "Allow NPC" set to "No" at the very end. It gives the impression that you didn't want players to take the Podobo Shoe outside of that level, but as you can see, that is an ineffective method because the player will get the shoe back after the level is complete. The "Allow NPC" setting on warps is like the castles in SMW: You don't get to keep what you're riding, but only for the duration of the level.

Here's another spot where you could have put a secret: It's a dark area at the same height as a door, so I thought that there would be a secret if I pushed up there, but it was just decoration. I should probably stop pointing these things out, because these things would take up most of my review.

That's not true! Your hammers can't spit out fireballs!

There's no switch! At least, not at first. What amazing thing do I have to do in order to get the switch to appear? Did you say "Stomp on the Chomp?" Congratulations, you just got damaged! I did that and lost my Podobo shoe.

So, what actually has to be done for the switch to appear? You have to wait. Now, I don't know if you know this, but waiting is not game-play. In fact, it's quite the opposite of game-play; you see, playing a game is fun, but waiting is boring. I don't know why, but waiting seems to be key to beating most of your bosses. Take the World 2 main boss for example:

Crap, let me try this again. Take the World 2 main boss for example:

For this boss fight, the switch is in the middle of the screen, just above the platform I'm using as a ceiling (it moves back and forth). As you can see, hitting the switch causes bombs to rain down from the sky, killing the Super Koopas. It sounds cool in theory, but the bomb-rain is slow, and will often miss when there are only a couple left onscreen. On top of this, the alternative of going-up-there-and-killing-them-yourself isn't a viable option because when the current layer is killed, the next layer appears instantly, which will kill the player most of the time. Once again, the only option is to hit the switch and wait.

Moving on...to the mid-boss of World 3. A similar waiting mechanic is employed by making the player wait for the lightning bolts:

However, at least the player has a little control over the situation because Waluigi can be knocked into the bolts, so things are beginning to look up. Let's see how the World 3 main boss is like--oh no...

This boss has to be the worst waiting offender of all (so far, I haven't finished the episode for reasons I'll state later): not only does the player have to wait for the Lakitu that drops lightning bolts to appear, the player also has to get lucky enough for one of the bolts to fall on top of Wario and damage him. Luckily, I had a hammer suit, so I was able to break the boss and get it over with quickly. I'll bring up the obviously buggy lightning bolts later.

But first, the mid-boss of World 4: I was fooled into thinking it was an actual boss fight at first, but no, you literally just have to wait while avoiding the occasional projectile until Wario and Waluigi run away. This doesn't even count as a boss fight!


World 4 doesn't have a main boss, World 5 doesn't have any bosses, and World 6...I'll get to that later. So, yeah. In conclusion: while it is admirable that you tried to do something different for your boss fights, they suck.

What's the point of this pipe...

if all it does is lead up here? I can get here normally, as you can see.

I also have a nitpick about your world map: for all dot-levels except these two, you have the path connect to them normally. All I ask for is consistency, though I do think it looks weird with the path being cut-off like that. I recommend either removing the grey border or making the dot-levels' icons squares (not the blinking yellow/red part, but the tan border).

All right, three things: 1) remove the "do" from this message, 2) not everyone is playing on a keyboard, so the alt. jump button may not be mapped to the A key, and 3) you do NOT need to be in the air to ride the rainbow shell, so remove that part of your message entirely. If you were trying to warn about the player not getting enough speed by running uphill, then say so.

Here, for the second sentence, you need a comma after "can't" and you need to replace "the" with "them."

This level tile doesn't look good above the oil because of that tan border. You should have used the airship level tile instead because that would be better representative of the level as well.

I don't know why you do this. If I have a mushroom already, the ? block's power-up should not also be a mushroom. Not only that, but this mushroom is super-annoying to get because you have to jump on platforms off the right side of the screen, turn around and jump onto the platforms at the top-right, then jump down and finally get the mushroom. Just move the ? block down a unit.

This little area is also annoying. You'd think that, in order to get up there, you'd need to go up the pipe like this...

But no, that pipe isn't a warp. Instead, you have to jump over the pipes bordering that area. This is especially unintuitive because it appears that the pipes are going offscreen, thus blocking any attempt at jumping over. I say replace the pipes with wood blocks to make this more obvious.

After activating the ship-sinking switch, I went to go back, but soon found out that these platforms were out of sync, and I just had to (say it with me:) wait.

So, I just noticed that the X tape has an incorrect mask sprite, or maybe it's its normal sprite... *checks level file* oh, it's actually part of the door's sprite. How did you not catch that the area around the X tape was off-color?

Why is this pipe here if it doesn't lead anywhere? I'm holding down, so why am I not warping anywhere?

Your Swoopers blend in too well with the background and tile-set. Sure, you may be able to find it now that I told you it's there and that I have a still screenshot of it, but during game-play, when you don't know it's there and you're constantly moving, it will hit you, and it will be unfair.

During this pointless part, events take control of Luigi and force him to climb these vines for a couple of seconds. Why? Couldn't you just use these same section-setting events and let the player do the same?

Also, on the world map, you have the lava arranged in this checkered pattern. Why? You never arranged the water like that, and this only serves to emphasize the cutoff with the lava tiles (the yellow line at the top of each).

Finally, why are these foreground images? It just looks weird.

You saw that level in my last screenshot, Immense Igneous? Well, to my knowledge, that is the first level to contain a hammer suit. Now, let's backtrack aaaaaall the way to the first level:

Yes, that's right: if you want to access the secret exit in the first level, you have to keep playing until the third world, then backtrack. Now, let me tell you something: making the player backtrack, especially across the world map, is almost as bad as making the player wait. You see, if you make the player backtrack in a level, chances are it's going to be very annoying, but you could make excuses such as saying that certain pits would be more difficult to jump over when going the other way, or that you have Eeries facing the other direction for just such an occasion. There's even a slim chance that it could be very different, like that one level in MaGL X that used the NSMB forest background (and a recolor of said background for the backtracking section) with music from The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang. No, I don't remember what the level was called. HOWEVER, there's no excuse for making the player backtrack across the world map; that's just boring and you should know to avoid this.

Oh well, at least it appears that I have accessed a secret world for remembering the first level's secret and putting up with your backtracking. To begin, this first sentence is redundant in more ways than one: you needlessly repeat "powerups" and "now." Here are the different ways you can fix this sentence: 1) you could change "random" to "randomly" and get rid of the rest of the sentence after it, 2) remove "powerups from" and "from now on," 3) remove the first "now" and the second "powerups," and 4) remove "powerups from" and the first "now." YOU DECIDE. (I should probably stop pointing out grammatical errors as well; they're too numerous!)

The airship NPC pushed the springboard from its original position. Although I can still make it up there (and to the secret to the left) by using the Bullet Bill Cannon, you should still move the airship NPC further up or down to prevent this from happening.

Although the lightning bolts are kinda neat, they can be difficult to see against this bright background you have. You should only use them for levels that have a darker background. On top of this, you made them sprite-swap a deadweight NPC, which not only causes them to make an annoying "kur-thunk" sound effect, but they can also glitch in place, too. Look, this one is above the left ? block--

oh, wait, now it's above the ? block on the right--

oh--OH, now it's back under the left one again. I can't tell you how many times that bolt struck me because I didn't expect it to glitch out like that. Sprite-swap Wart's bubbles instead: they're less glitchy and less annoying. A veteran member such as yourself should know how to do this.

You shouldn't use actual Bullet Bill Cannons to indicate projectile generators because it makes timing super annoying. I'd see a cannon and I'd think "oh, it's just an ordinary Bullet Bill Cannon," go to jump over it after seeing a Bullet Bill get shot out, and promptly get shot in the face by a projectile generator. You should swap an ordinary block to look like a projectile generator (but not a Bullet Bill Cannon, because that would be confusing) and then decide whether you want each of these kinds of obstacles to be a Bullet Bill Cannon or a projectile generator.

The mask sprite for the rightmost block on the lower-center row of wood blocks is incorrect.

The mask sprite for the 32x128 slopes is also slightly incorrect; the black outline shouldn't connect like shown in the screenshot; rather, it should stop at the same X coordinate as the colored graphic just below it stops (I hope that made sense).

Also: OH MAN, CUT-OFF!

Something weird about your Elite Koopas is that the shell of the green ones doesn't function like a normal shell. Oh man, I just figured it out: the green ones are Galoomba sprite swaps, aren't they?

All though it's not as bad as your bosses, it's still annoying that I have to *ahem* wait for this line rider. This isn't a fluke; it happens each time. You should make the platform go left instead of right.

The biggest problem I have with your Elite Koopas are the ones that have two-part patterns. At first, this was just annoying because, even though I could kill the first phase, the second phase would appear soon afterward, as shown:

However, in the level after this one, there are flying ones that start off slow, then switch NPCs to speed up. This made me angry because there was one part where I had to jump in between two of those five-flames NPCs, and I was throwing hammers as I was jumping over. Needless to say, I killed one of the Elite Koopas like that, or at least I thought I did. I don't remember if I was focusing on a different enemy or if I was preparing to jump over the second five-flames NPC, but what I remember vividly was the Elite Koopa literally coming out of nowhere and damaging me. A simple fix for this would be to have a background image or something showing the Koopa leaning back, as though it's charging it's speed or something, appear if the first phase is killed, but the second phase hasn't appeared yet.

Moving on: You mean a Raccoon Leaf, right? Why would you force the player to backtrack just for a Raccoon Leaf? Just provide one in the level and have the sign say something like "you need this to beat the level, so don't lose it."

Another thing: the level's midpoint is just there to troll players; there's no way to cross this gap without a Raccoon Leaf, the level doesn't provide one close enough to the midway point, and going to a different level to get one will undo the progress gained in this level. Also, when I first encountered those clouds, I didn't know that they were indicators for lightning bolt generators. You should have a sign warning about that. One more thing: I thought those coins indicated an invisible platform I could jump on, but I fell to my death instead. You should change how the coins are arranged.

Pro-tip: You don't have to do that; you can keep the button held down and you'll float either way.

It's annoying to have to sit through this text each time I die just so I can continue the level. You should make it optional by putting it on a sign or something.

I wasn't expecting this giant wall to appear when I first played the level, so when i went to go back, I somehow ended up going up slightly, and when I was hit, the Skypop kept moving even though I was still, and I ended up falling to my death. I suggest you remove that hammer-bro sprite-swap, or move it to the other side of the wall.

OH, NOT THIS CRAP AGAIN!!!

So, yeah, after all of that time, the intro really was supposed to be en medias res after all, as proven by this text box:

However, the intro exposition dump made it seem like the intro took place before the episode. Go back and read it yourself if you don't believe me; you don't even have to start a new game, it's in my first spoiler. All you had to do was word the intro differently: you could have said something like "While unconscious, Luigi dreamed of all the poor level design choices he had to sit through in order to make it this far." but no, you had to word it as though it was a linear story progression, then pull this out of nowhere. So, yeah, to add to your growing list of failures, you can't even do en medias res properly.

Moving on--wait, Warp to World 6?? This secret was only so I could skip a couple of worlds?? This has to be the most unworthy secret in any SMBX episode. I'm going back to play the levels I missed. *goes to World 3 warp in Obscure Brume* Oh, I can't even start from where I left off; instead, I have to work my way backwards. Whatever, I guess that

Christian07 wrote:Play it normal is too mainstream.

At first, I thought these wood NPCs were just background objects until they started cracking. You should change the sprite a bit to make it less confusing.

The fireballs still have the Super Metroid explosion effect when killed. You should also make the Chomps killable, because it's really annoying not being able to kill something that looks like a Chomp.

Don't do this. I didn't realize that you had a lava-corner there at first, and when I did, the Skull Raft NPCs pushed me into it and killed me. You shouldn't use lava corners for Skull Raft rides because of this bug.

This is something that bothers me: why do you feel the need to put flashing !s above where Podobos are? It's fairly obvious that they're there because, as soon as they appear onscreen, they jump out of the lava, warning you of their presence. On top of this, there are some, like the Podobo on the left (the one on the right has one, but I took the screenshot at the wrong time), that don't have their own flashing !s. All I ask for is consistency.

Um, I think you used the wrong path tile, here:

Please, be consistent! You had another level (in World 4) that had floating cubes of water; use that instead so that the waterfalls may remain background images.

You shouldn't make invisible blocks that aren't indicated a necessity to reach power-ups. At least add some coins there to make it more apparent.

I hit a time-stop switch, and now I have to wait for the water to rise to continue. Ugh...you should warn the player about these kinds of things.

In fact, I feel like you could improve the entire section to prevent all of this waiting. Maybe you could have the water rise and lower quicker?

Well, I can tell you've been working on this for a long time. Not because of the level quality, but because your custom blocks aren't compatible with 1.3.0.1's tiles:

Okay, seriously, you gave Podobos a flashing !, but you didn't give them to the lightning bolts? They're the ones that needed them, not only because of the bright tree background, but because this is a vertically scrolling section! The player has to go up, but the lightning bolts travel down; this alone makes it difficult to avoid the lightning bolts, and the bright tree only makes this needlessly harder.

Oh, cool! I found a star--wait a minute...

There's nothing on the world map to indicate the star's presence! Perhaps this is something for post-game content and I just got lucky and found it early...

Also, there's a Toad House in World 2 that requires 1 star to enter. My reward for collecting a star? A door that requires three stars! This is basically telling the player "Congratulations on finding a star, now go get two more if you want an actual reward!" Just make the one-star door a regular door; that way, the player knows to collect three stars before returning. It's not like there's anything after the door that's worth getting the star for.

This is a flat-out lie; if you even attempt to go "relatively fast," the lily-pads will be too far underwater to stand on, and you will get damaged.

When I first saw that, I thought "oh, it must be climbable," so I jumped at it and took a hit. You should use a graphic that is more obviously harmful, like brambles.

Again, why? No other Podobo in this level has a flashing !, and they didn't need one, so why this one?

Hooray for pointless warps! Just remove the floor there and let the player fall on top of the Skull Raft.

Oh, man. This title this is just sooo descriptive.

Okay, so why do you have this warp pipe (which, by the way, is surrounded by lava and can't be reached without the Podobo Shoe)...

lead right on top of a Podobo Shoe?

Well...that's one way to force the player to abandon the Podobo Shoe. This does make it seem a bit unfair, though, because the boos aren't all on-screen at first.

I noticed one of the fish had a dragon coin, but I didn't kill it. Instead, it was off-screened, and the dragon coin appeared anyway.

Two things: 1) you should tell the player this by a sign NPC, not by the Tanooki suit's death, and 2) the regular run button won't turn anyone into a statue. I'm beginning to think that you're not the pro you claim to be...

Man, all of this negativity! Your episode deserves all of it, but I thought I'd take the time to point out something I thought was clever: putting the SMB3 roulette in a Yoshi Egg sprite-swap.

Seriously, what is with your aversion to signs? I managed to catch this text the first time I made it here, but every time proceeding that, I accidentally hit the run button and cancelled the text immediately afterward. It's possible for a player to do this on his/her first try, so you should use a sign to avoid this.

So, I found out that the blue Hoopsters are Line Rider sprite-swaps when I saw that they didn't follow the vine's path exactly. Would they not turn at 90 degree angles? Surely they would...

Dang it, why do you have to have so many areas look like they contain secrets, but merely contain death? To fix this one, extend the harmful green-things further right to make a floor of harmful green things (above this area, obviously).

1st attempt:

2nd attempt--okay, you should put these blue Hoopsters further apart; that way, they won't be so close as to require being small to proceed.

Okay, so I thought that little gap in the wall indicated a secret, but I was wrong and ended up taking a hit. You should close off all of the small gaps in the walls to prevent this from happening.

Wait a minute. All of that work, and the 1-1 secret was required???????? Well, the level is a red dot on the world map, but this is still no excuse for forced backtracking.

This part was just unfair. I jumped down and expected to land on, you know, land, but instead I fell down a pit. You could have made it more obvious that the player has to ride the platform down by putting a coin trail under its center or something.

Also, that character change block was confusing. I thought the "F" meant "fast" at first, and I thought I had become Toad. It wasn't until I accidentally floated when I realized I was Peach. Pro tip: small Peach's hitbox doesn't change, even when sprite-swapped. You should swap it with Luigi's Super Mario All-Stars SMW sprites.

I thought that vine was climbable at first, but it wasn't. You should have a sign warn about this, or maybe you should introduce this graphic earlier where there's no chance of being killed.

The enemy is behind the tree, but I'm in front! Make up your mind!

These line platforms just appear in the general area that the ones at the bottom are now. This looks a bit weird; maybe add some blocks and nippers there? Also, this tree graphic could indicate a secret, but given my track record for secrets found vs. deaths gained from trying to reach nonexistent secrets, I'll let it be.

This would be a good example of how to safely introduce that vine graphic. Also, you don't seriously think anyone's going to try to jump between those nippers, right?

Crap, I accidentally threw my propeller block up there while trying to kill the hammer bro. sprite-swap that was up there. Now I can't get it down, and since the level is designed around keeping it, I'm forced to take a couple of hits along the way.

Something else I'd like to point out: the 2hp-Peach mask sprite is incorrect. Rather than the white being R=255, B=255, G=255, it is R=248, B=248, G=248, causing this distracting border to appear:

Also, you should give more of an indication as to where the lotus sprite-swaps are in this section.

THESE are the Podobos that need those flashing !s! Not only do they not give away their position as soon as they're on screen, like normal Podobos, they also jump just high enough to where they can damage the player. On top of this, the lava hides their position for most of their jump, so the player won't see where they are until it's too late.

Oh, so the Bullet Bills get wrap around, but not me? That's not fair.

This is...no. Just no. You already had two forced-backtracking segments, but this one takes the cake. Not only does it force me to backtrack to find a Toad player-change block, it doesn't even give any hint as to where I can possibly find a one. This is basically saying "Hey, thanks for getting this far in my episode, now good luck looking through the entirety of what you just went through again trying to find this one little thing that you missed, because I, the creator, am sure as heck not going to tell you squat!" As much nonsense as the required 1-1 secret was, at least it would be reasonable for the player to think to check the secret exit he/she had to pass up during the first forced-backtracking part, but for this, the only other red dot leads to that three-star door, and there's absolutely no indication of where I can find a third star. Secrets shouldn't be required in the first place, but if they are, you should at least hint as to where they are (example: for the first forced-backtracking part, you could have one of the Toads say something like "You should look somewhere OBSCURE." hinting that the player would need to go to the Obscure Brume). I'm done putting up with your nonsense.