Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Tip for Judging: Do you REALLY think that some of these levels should have been in the trash can?

Bossedit8 - 8.50
Love this athletic styled SMW sky and castle level... and I like how I can be at the area like this one right here: http://i.imgur.com/F6A5CHG.png Anyway going further on with lineriders that are a bit tough to deal with but that's for the first time. It's pretty narrow though with those spike pillars with 2 lineriders at the top and bottom. Enemy placements were mostly ok but sometimes is a bit too much and other times, you have to jump on them in order to survive over spikes and such. Oh and forgot to mention, only one propeller block for you... what if the second player wants to go through aswell. I know at the recent days that these levels is mostly focused on one player because we rarely even play the games with 2 players via reallife friends or so... but that's probably just me right there. I do like the variety that this level has with just one propeller block that you have throughout the level. Pretty cool level.

Wraith Adamknight - 2.28
So this is probably the most Super Mario World Central-esk level I have ever seen in SMBX. However, this is a vanilla contest, not a difficulty contest. Your ideas were not too shabby, placing clouds in the walls and switching from a mountainous area to a castle, but I am not convinced with your design choices. You clearly only wanted to make a difficult level, which severely hurt your score. Had the difficulty been fair, I would actually award you points for being the “odd one out” in terms of design, but you required too much from the player way too quickly. Even raocow, who does SMW hacks for a living, would probably have a lot of trouble in this level. I recommend focusing more on the level instead of its difficulty next time.

Zipper - 7.80
The level name is telling the truth, I like that. Anyway this is a cute little level I guess, makes sure you learn all of the propeller block's mechanics thoroughly. Starts off dead simple, but gets really complicated with tricky jumps against wooden stakes, banzai bills, trying to micromanage 2 moving platforms while being assaulted from all sides with koopas and buzzsaws. The outside castle area was a nice way to end things, too bad it was so sho-
That's a midpoint.
That was only half the level.
What the ****.
Oh well, I'm sure it can't be too long now, the difficulty curve went pretty far already....
...still going.....yep. Kill me.
I hope I managed to convey the feelings I had pretty well. The idea is GREAT, giving the player a gimmicky item and finding ways to work with it. The execution is very nice too, you constantly provided new things as to not bore the player. The main issue is, if I'm not being bored, I'm being extremely tense, because I'm small Mario about to spin jump on 6 koopas and a Thwomp, and the last checkpoint was approximately 4 minutes away(I'm a careful person, don't judge me :<). You can cut this level by two, and it'll be much better, easing the player quickly and then challenging them quickly, with an appropriate pause inbetween. So yeah, do that please.

Chad - 9.00
This is pretty legitimately impressive. You really went above and beyond to explore what types of challenging, but also fair interactions can be had with propeller block movements. Those are probably among the smoothest behaviors in SMBX, which really allowed a lot of potential shown here to unfold. More propeller variety is demonstrated here than even most custom-based SMBX levels I've seen, and also features a nice return of the rare spiky descent type of section. A lot of visual depth is offered here too, and really creates a detailed atmosphere out of mainly SMW grass, clouds, and pipes while still keeping it pretty straightforward. However, it runs on a bit long and has a pretty noticeable shortage of powerups for the difficulty and length given. I think the level could have survived pretty well if it was cut in half, but the amount that's here is still relatively sane. I like the parallel line platforms in the first half too, but I didn't care much for the wooden spike part, due to lack of proper judgment on where you want the platforms to be when you jump and not knowing what's on the other side.

ElTipsta - 6.50
This is an evil level, but the atmosphere is great! This level revolves around the usage of propeller blocks and this is designed to I'd love for a level with these kind of gimmmciks to be remade with custom graphics and music, the idea is great! It does get freakishly difficult though, but at least there are enough powerups in most areas to compensate for this. The bits where you have to jump on the Paratroopas is perhaps a bit too hard though.

Bossedit8 - 7.00
Well, this was an Island discovery. Forest... then a cave with castle enviorement. I do like it's design as of how you go through the areas and such but later on I love how you warn the player multiple times with the signs "Be careful!" because once you touch the area with coins on the floor it goes into the lava. Also I love how this level only has 4 dragon coins, not 5 like the usuals. At the halfway point, there's a noteblock that's attached to the blue switchplatform and then after one obstacle you get to the boss... which is a creepy looking face. Also hi lag because of too many objects in this level and multiple sparkies. This guy has multiple forms and I do like the concept of it... but it's really weird. After that boss, star for you.

Wraith Adamknight - 7.14
I loved this level, including its incredibly ugly but creative boss. However, I do not like the fact you kept shoving these signs down my throat telling me what is happening. On top of this, I don’t really like the usage of the bonus room’s tileset on top of such unfitting music for the level. Overall good concepts, but I just have a lot of minor issues here and there.

Zipper - 7.10
Pretty interesting...Going through a grassland, cave and a castle in VERY quick succession feels a little weird, but I'll cope with it. I sadly don't have much to say about this level. It does what it does well, but it doesn't try to stand out too much. Still, different obstacles were used, and the propeller block was fun for the ~15 seconds it existed. The yellow > blue jump at the final area was EXTREMELY annoying, either remove the buzzsaw or make the blue platform's path longer. As for the boss, oh my god that is the silliest looking thing, I love it. Its attacks were actually pretty fair, perhaps even TOO easy? (Don't buff it up with rinkas though, anything but rinkas). I especially loved the final phase(why do the platforms turn, though?), it's a mad climb with snifits threatening you. It might be silly looking, but this is easily one of the more creative vanilla bosses I've seen.

Chad - 6.00
All right, this was rather cool. I like the transition from scenic forest to tricky cave along with the incorporation of castle tiles, as well as the amount of detail put into each tileset arrangement. The use of moving layers and the propeller block spices things up a bit, with a boss that's pretty clever and unusual while easy to grasp. Other than that, the level gets by pretty well on fairly normal progression, but it's performed with really solid design. However, I do think the warning for sinking lava platforms could have been a bit less vague and sudden, but it's still not too hard to get past.

ElTipsta - 7.50
This level is really well deisgned, I like the transition into the cave area, which was a nice touch. There were no real issues with the main design that I noted, except it was hard to tell what castle pieces acted like Thwomps and which didn't. I like the boss, which is made out of the extr graphics, even a health bar which is really neat. Props for making it work within the limitations you had, although I did get lag at times.

Bossedit8 - 8.750
You gotta love beach levels. This level was actually pretty cool with variety of design going on. Overworld with different tilesets, underwater, shipareas and then back to overworld again. I for sure like this level as of how it goes. There are areas that you either can skip a bit or you can go above the ceiling in the underwater area it's useless to do it but oh well. It's weird how a lot of areas are block off by tiles offscreen but not all of it. Also we have flying bloopers with a cyan yoshi that can turn them into ice blocks but while holding the blooper, the water area that's attached to the blooper is still there... not that it's too bad or something you can't do against it, it's just looks weird how you still can swim in air as of wher ethe blooper was last before yoshi has him in his mouth. Later on, a ship randomly going down in water... at least you hear an explosion while it's sinking. After that, a switch on the next section, makes a ship appear... pretty cool I must say. After that the level ends with a star. Oh and about the last section, there's a green cheep cheep trying to attack you while coming out of the pipe... if you're not reacting on that guy fast enough you get hit. There are certain areas where you can glitch stuff like skip a bit of the level as I mentioned before and other times, glitch through the bridge to get to unreachable places but those don't serve too much purpose anyway if you do that. Still, very nice level ya got there.

Wraith Adamknight - 5.57
Very interesting level, which is really strange coming from me. This level was one hell of a clash-fest, yet it works surprisingly enough. I liked the concept of colliding four separate games’ worth of assets into one level, but your decision to make a water level killed the pacing of the level. Work on your level’s pacing and make the level a lot easier, because there was a lot of obstacle spam in this level.

Zipper - 6.70
Very solid level. It involves a beach section, an underwater section and a cave(well it's a ship but who cares), and they blend together really well, due to how you set up the transitions. The overworld areas are nice, they actually catch the feeling of a ship attack. The amount of bullet bills aren't overwhelming, and you can always go underwater for split paths or just plain safety. The underwater area....I could honestly live without. Very slow and not too engaging. The Dragon Coin tied to the blooper was genius, though. The ship area was nice, albeit the Yoshi gimmick felt a little....eh....forced? I mean it was just "Now you walk but with a Yoshi". Since it's a Blue Yoshi, perhaps a projectile shooting oriented gimmick would be nice. Other than that, its platforming was solid, with the rising crates and fish attacks and whatnot. The end areas were....more of the same, so I'm not complaining. A moving ship would've been cute though.

Chad - 7.50
A very pretty level! For the tools you had to work with, you did an excellent job at creating tropical harbor/sunken ship scenarios. The layout is superb the whole way through, enemies are nicely arranged, difficulty and length are moderate, and you do well at alternating between land and water. The challenge is pretty traditional, but it does a ton of good with effective placements, presentation, and logical variety of hazards.

ElTipsta - 7.00
I like the usage of graphics in the overworld sections and the section follwoing that is nice too. However things start to go wrong in the airship sections. Surely it should be underwater and have water physics? And why the overpowered Yoshi? The green one wold be fine. The first Cheep Cheep in section 6 - remove it. That is bad design. The player may not be asble to react in time to that. Aside from those things, good job.

Bossedit8 - 9.00
For a level that's grassland based... turns into a castle quickly at the end of the first section. I definitely like it as of what you did with the whole level. Having a choice between either the one or the other and they have differency going on is a nice thing to have. Would be funny if one uses the one door while the other the other door (2 players separately going through other doors) hehehe... anyway it was pretty cool nonetheless. Boss... is a Toad... with moving things to avoid and such. Very interesting but each time you defeat one of the forms you have to be careful not to fall in the pits below... but oh well. I find some of the stuff quite neat but also on some cases hard to avoid by playing through the first time... once you learn it it isn't that difficult to do. It was a nice boss though.

Wraith Adamknight - 8.85
simply put, I loved this level. I won’t go into details since I will end up rambling. However, there is are two big issues with this level. For one, the boss doesn’t activate if you enter the section with time stopped. Lastly, the boss itself was cute and clever, but it is incredibly time consuming. I suggest increasing its speed to reduce the time necessary to deal with it on multiple runs.

Zipper - 3.90
you LIED TO ME
Anyway, this is sort of a "challenge room" styled level. Sadly, it doesn't work very well. The Piranha Gun room is an absolute wreck, as you have NO way of knowing which blocks are unbreakable, and that leaves the player in a pinch when jumping is the LAST thing on their mind. The Billy Gun room was way more tolerable, as it made obvious what you can and can't break.
I'm actually a fan of the Character Block room. I had no idea those blocks could be used for that purpose, and your challenge room did a great job explaining it while still expecting me to put effort into it. The P-Switch room was pretty cute, but it was stupidly short. And I'm saying this in more ways than one. It was so short that if I ran to the boss door when the time was still frozen, the cutscene didn't trigger. You might want to find a workaround for that.
Speaking of the boss, it was acceptable I guess. The first phase was really slow, but the second and third phases were really fun. The Piranha Gun was thankfully much more forgiving, as jumping is no longer punished. However, you get only ONE chance to hit the boss for each phase, and if you miss you're out of luck. I don't think punishing the player this harshly for a mistimed jump is a good plan. Also, to skip the dialogue box for the final phase, I need to let go of Run. That means I have to throw the Piranha Gun. Guess what happens if that falls into a pit? Yeah.

Chad - 7.00
An impressively cinematic level, but also one that asks a bit much at times. Moving layers are put to great unique uses, and I like the implementation of choice rooms with different gimmicks that lead to the same areas of level at the end. The character block bug is neatly exploited for a challenge and the time switch is put to nice use as well. For having a lot of gimmicks, they do what they need to and don't overstay their welcome. However, I found the Billy Gun and Toothy sections to be a little much, because just hitting the wrong bricks at first can be really costly by itself and it should be obvious which ones can't be chewed through. The boss is clever and introduces great variety, but the window of opportunity for the first hit could stand to be wider and the Thwomps can be really hard to read. Still, pretty imaginative level, and it's a reasonable enough length that deaths are never super costly.

ElTipsta - 8.50
This is most definitely not a grass level! The fortress was really well made and takes advantages of some of the gimmicks that SMBX has, like the billy gun, which is an underused item in SMBX. It was also pretty creative too, like with the player blocks. There are a couple of issues with the boss though. Like if you miss your chance to jump up and do damage, you have to commit suicide. This should be signposted via coins IMO. Also, the Thwomp section is creative, but unfair. Just my two cents on a great level.

I just remembered ElTipsta put this in a review of one of the first tier levels but I forgot to include it with the review, so here it is now.
Have a vocaloid song while you read the rest of the reviews, guys. I'm a generous guy ^^

Bossedit8 - 8.50
This is an interesting concept going on. Complete grass in a castle. I really like it's design of it but for sure... putting those climbable vines at the top makes me climb it every time I hold down while jumping over a hole and such. Also there's one waterfall placement over a sizeable that looks like its solid at the top but it really isn't... and also a lot of enemies on your way as I speak about that. Later on, plant vs blocks section. Pretty cool. Next up, left and right areas with switches to press... not too bad. Then vertical section with level wrap... while one tile is a bit offplaced and then that's it for the level. I really like this level.

Wraith Adamknight - 8.57
I absolutely loved this level. Its atmosphere was really something else, using grass tile-sets combined with cave music to symbolize an enclosed space. However, the concept of this being a greenhouse isn’t really shown in the level itself, but represented by its name instead. So really, the name gives you the expectation and then the level delivers based off that impression. So, while I loved the level…you sorta fell short on the “greenhouse” part. Lastly, your level was beautiful and that is about it. I found the level to be incredibly linear, only really offering one direct path to take.

Zipper - 7.40
Oh my, I'm getting heavy Top Man vibes from this, I hope I'm not alone. Overall, this was a very solidly built level. I liked the usage of Pokeys as pseudo-walls that you had to shrink to proceed. Sizable blocks were utilized in a way that allowed you to traverse freely along different floors, which helped the level feel less cramped, despite only being one screen tall most of the time. Enemies were also easily killable with plenty of plants available on the ground. For the second area, I'm afraid the Piranha Gun was REALLY underutilized. It had no purpose to exist there other than to break those arbitrarily placed bricks and make the remaining 5 seconds of that section easier. Especially seeing how plants are a prevalent theme in this level, I'm sure there can be a way to improve upon this. The third area was a switch "hunt". Quotes used because well, it's just a matter of backtracking 2 short paths twice. This is the kind of split path I don't mind, as long as it's short enough to not bore the player. That was done correctly here. Both paths were slight boring in their own ways though. Not too much, but perhaps mixing pipes and pokeys for both sides would be better? The last room was a nice little vertical climb with not much to point out. The horizontal loop helped it flow well, and it was a solid challenge like the rest of the level. However, the second-to-last ladybug is absolute crap. You need to have some godly timing to not get hit. Please remove that.
Aaaaaanyway, I liked this plenty. Not too much to talk about, but it does what it does well, with a fitting and unique atmosphere to boot.

Chad - 5.50
Interesting concept. The layout is rather complex and natural-looking and does a nice job of facilitating the hazard interactions, but it's also excessively narrow much of the time. This is especially difficult around Pokeys, even more so in terms of the ones with buggy slope behaviors or large populations of them. Sizables are put to practical and decorative use, and the inclusion of Toothy is nice but brief. The switch room is thankfully not too time-consuming, but each one could have been given a return warp. The level wrap is nicely implemented, but this is also where the crampedness of the level is at its worst, especially in regards to the last two ladybugs. Overall, you've got a nice unique theme here and decent design, but the execution of some things could stand to be improved. There's also a waterfall edge very early in the level that presents itself as being connected to a sizable surface (around the Pokey crowd), but isn't actually solid and had me fall unexpectedly into non-water, so that was unfortunate.

ElTipsta - 8.50
I really like this atmosphere, and it was well excecuted, with a good variety of enemies from each game present. The water should really be swimmable, and switch blocks were a disappointing inclusion. The plant gun section was neat though.

Bossedit8 - 8.75
One weird joke based level. You start up at someone's house, saying that the toilet is flooded but once you reach to that point there's a donut block on it that is talkable. Then a giant vanilla based rinka appeared and then you get to the main level, as the title suggests. Level design is pretty cool and it also includes multiple SMW stars aswell and they aren't too tricky to find except maybe the last one where you have to go over the castle to the far left of it to get to a completly new section as of where the star is. Also I find your talkable NPCs quite unique. Most of them contain jokes and infos of the level itself and such. During the level, be aware of the giant vanilla rinka shooting regular rinkas at you. There's one spot that even lagged the game a bit for whatever reason. At the water section, collect all the red coins in order to advance further. At the castle, midway, rinkas circling around at the roto-disk balls and then the boss. It's a little bit difficult to grab the flamethrowers since it's on a 1 block area next as of where you fall off. Boss itself was quite nice. After you defeat the giant vanilla rinka that has mother brain inside it you get the star.

Wraith Adamknight - 6.20
See this is a joke level done correctly. I don’t really have anything else to say other than this level was actually difficulty. I would recommend lowing the amount of sheer NPC spam.

Zipper - 6.70
Rinkas, oh no...Well okay I'm exaggerating, this level was really solidly built. It's got the Mario Galaxy feeling down correctly, providing you with small islands that you travel through, while having a focus on verticality. Not very hard, but still somewhat challenging, as pits and slopes....don't really have a loving relationship. Still! It was fair, is what I'm saying.
The underwater section was actually cute. It was a simple item hunt in a enclosed space(Still reminds me of Galaxy, good job on that), with rinkas being mixed in with corals. I honestly expected one of them to start shooting rinkas(You should've totally done that). The following vertical cave was good too, and it felt more challenging if you were carrying the key.
The pre-boss tower was dumb. The spinning rinka machines are a nice idea, but they're VERY aggravating to avoid in a closed space. It feels like it's just an excuse to remove your power-ups "fairly".
Honestly, the worst part of this was the antagonist itself, the Ultimate Vanilla Rinka. All of her appearances were either stupid memes, or cheap shots. Her first attack in the first area just nailed the shot perfectly, and cost me some time. I didn't know I was supposed to expect her. Her appearance before the tower just made me pull back vigorously fast out of fear from what might pop out. And the boss battle was...well, it's basically the "generic mother brain with rinkas and a gun" boss formula that I'm not a big fan of. Thankfully it lasts like 10 seconds and I can move on.
Yeah, that's about it. Ironically, the main focus of the level is the only part I have a problem with.

Chad - 7.00
Well this was a silly little idea, but quite fun. I like how well both the theme and design show Galaxy inspiration, as it's made up of floating islands but with plenty of detail applied to both the construction and placements of obstacles. The progression does a nice job of taking you in all directions, the underwater section's nicely made with an enjoyable focus on collecting red coins, and it has a cool transition coming out of it. However, the humor of the level tends to come at the cost of the gameplay value of things that come with it. Probably the intent, but pretty much every Rinka-based thing was excessive to some extent, and it's a bit less hilarious when a huge onslaught of them kills you while you're far away from both the start and the midpoint. Same applies to Vanilla Rinka who, even with the visual intent, is still a large group of lava blocks and you do have to deal with that at the end. Underwater enemies were also a bit too numerous, especially Bloopers. Otherwise this was a fun little adventure. It just didn't need to be spammy when it tried to be funny.

ElTipsta - 9.50
This level is really impressive. It's basically a vanilla Beach Bowl crossed with Rinkas. It's really ncie, the layers and events work well, there is lots of nonlinearity and the dialogue is funny. The boss was also great too, though it was easy to die if you weren't careful. I actually thought the Vanilla Rinka was CGFX till I realised the red bits were lava. The only real flaw I'd give is remove the Rinka spawners in the penultimate section, it's hard to avoid them without taking damage.

Bossedit8 - 8.50
Weird choice of level name for an average castle level. I like the level a lot as of how the design and enemy placement goes. Nothing really was wrong in terms of difficulty but at that one section with level wrap, there's one area that isn't perfectly aligned to the other side as of where the free 1UP is (top left to top right... block placements is off by one block too high). At the end of that section there are multiple pipes and a dry bone but that dry bone is a bit hard to avoid because of the ceiling... also I like the podoboos attaching to the platform but if you kill 'em the platform won't move anymore. Moving on, spike pillars (skewers)! Pretty cool. This shows variety of this level including platforms and enemies. At the end, your star is there that you can easily fall off from the platform at the right side with enough momentum involved.

Wraith Adamknight - 9.42 (Wraith's Favorite)
This is probably the best juxtapose level I have ever seen. Using Ghost House atmosphere but using Dungeon-based gimmicks and design was just amazing. I won’t go off on a ramble so I will instead only note the flaws. For one, this level gives you one powerup and no midpoint. This is really cruel even for such a short level. Lastly, the level is just so god damn short. You had a lot of potential and wasted it.
Overall, I loved what the level offered. My favorite part is the fact the giant spikes have a sound tied to the event. So throughout 70% of the level you are constantly hearing this event take place, but never see it. This was great suspense build up and only added to the atmosphere. So, great work.

Zipper - 6.80
Ah, using ghost house tilesets in a castle setting. That's definitely a sight for sore eyes, seeing how it blends together so well. The brown and grays really complement the castle tilesets and backgrounds. BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LEVEL
The obstacles overall were pretty predictable: lava, thwomps, rotating discs, dry bones. I do like how you didn't shy away from using boos, it adds a sense of urgency to whatever you're doing, however small it may be. The horizontal looping area was pretty nice, though a few obstacles were too close to the "warp point" for comfort. A few goombas come to mind. Nothing else notable to say about it. The third area's crushers were fast enough to not be boring, but their sounds resonate through the WHOLE level, so having to navigate with a THWUMP sound every ~5 seconds got really bothersome after a while. And then it....ends.
Well, I didn't get much to say about this level. Other than the horizontal loop area, everything felt like it just came by and went. If the gimmicks used were heavier, I'd have understood the short length, as they might've been less forgiving, but simple crushers and Bowser statues by themselves really don't require THAT much input from the player to get through. I was enjoying my experience, I just found myself left wanting for more.

Chad - 7.50
I like the unique style this level has. It makes clever use of many different castle hazards and facilitates that with a good layout. The difficulty is handled pretty well and spaces obstacles apart intelligently, then throws in some smart level wrap usage in the second half. The spike crushers are simple, but work pretty well, although you can just duck beneath the corners. There's no checkpoint, but the length is comfortably short to the point where it virtually doesn't need one. There are a couple of troublesome Goombas in the wrapping area and the level could have used more than two powerups, but for what's offered, this is quite good.

ElTipsta - 8.00
This is an excellent fortress level, made using a combination of SMB3 graphics and the SMW ghost house and lava tilesets. It's great. The level wrap section was a neat idea, though a couple of NPC placements near the wraps could be improved a bit. The piston section was nice too. It was over a bit too soon. I would have liked to have seen more. Also, no checkpoint.

Bossedit8 - 9.25
This ghost house is super neat! "You thought you're gonna get a power up from a block!" Well, guess again. Anyway this level was pretty neat. Love what you did with the whole attaching layers and such as of how they work and I do like the indications aswell. Attach to layers... some of them can be a bit glitchy depends as of what you're doing. Then after the door, explosions... overworld with things that makes you less scary which is actually funny as of how they change like that. Later on, castle enviorement with a poison mushroom at a hard to reach area... thanks! Then Bowser! Ok drop me into the ghostly underground area and then have a beach aswell. Love the tricky situations that this level has. Also hi boss of this level that's cleverly designed while dodging red coins. At the end there's your gate I mean star.

Wraith Adamknight - 8.28
This level was just adorable. It is clearly designed by someone who knows what they are doing, but didn’t really care much for giving an actual effort. I praise this level’s creativity however, as it showed a few layer attachment gimmicks that even I don’t know about. So, overall…pretty damn good level.
This is what I consider a good joke level. A level that cant itself seriously, but actually tried to do something with itself.

Zipper - 8.10
Goddamnit. I can't believe I'm saying this, but you got me EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. Even when I thought I could figure something out by looking at obvious tells, something else managed to SOMEHOW blindside me. A job well done. This is the sort of "unexpected" I like: One that keeps the player's attention WITHOUT punishing them for not being over-prepared.
Even from the start, the level tells you that you shouldn't trust ANYTHING, not even yourself. Throughout all the areas, moving layers were used very cleverly: As blockades, as pulley, as simple obstacles...Tying layers to enemies was done really well too. An example of this would be the SMB2 treebug in the beach area. I don't know why, but that stuck with me the most.
The boss was actually creative. Needing various objects tied to a generator to actually attack the boss, instead of being spoonfed your artillery was very smart. It sort of became a bumrush when Big Boo appeared, but it didn't overstay its welcome
My favourite gimmick has to be the dropping Phantos, however. Using something harmful (falling platforms) as a means to progress is very fun if done correctly, and it sure was done right here.
However, there were occasional situations where not knowing something will happen WOULD get you killed. The biggest offenders of this are the pillar Thwomp in the ghost house area, where you can't see it coming at all, and the wood block in the castle area. Sure, it has Phantos signalling danger, but it still gives the player VERY little time to react, and the fact that it's the CEILING that lowers makes it a very precise jump. Also, the thwomp secret is stupid and possibly risky, as not knowing WHEN exactly to enter it can get you killed.
Don't let this get to you however. These are pretty minor issues, and everything ELSE was executed so well that I still had a grand time. Just make some tricks more generous in timing, and make your secrets...slightly less aggravating and you're golden.

Chad - 6.50
A pretty unique level, I'll give it that much. It's overflowing with creativity in ways to manipulate the presentation and trick the player's expectations, as well as exploring plenty of original Attach-to-Layer usage. Pretty impressive gimmicks, which are accompanied by some solid design to boot, and the level does well at feeling like ghostly tinkering even in all the different themes and transitions. Some of it felt excessively trollish however, like the first Thwomp being an instant-death crush hazard, fighting SMB1 Bowser while most likely small due to limited powerups (only to learn the axe isn't reachable anyway), the descent afterwards that's too sudden to react to, and that earthquake room which was unnecessary and obnoxious. A lot happens very suddenly and can be rather difficult in a level with no midpoint. The battle also didn't need as many phases and enemies as it did, but it's still a cleverly unusual level that performs well overall. It does require some patience, though.

ElTipsta - 8.25
This is pretty good. I like the usage of SMB3/SMW sections and it was genuinely fun to play. The layer attachments is a neat idea, and hopefully designers will use it in their own levels. The boss was neat too, but the final phase can get very hard. I would remove the Boo gnerators, personally. The only tihng I didn't like was the cave section's exit, please don't troll the player by killing them. It's very easy to go that way at first, especially if the exit was as hidden as it was (it should have been marked by the way, or at least revealed/hinted in a hidden area).