My Unofficial Review of (updated) Woody Sub-Crunchy Apple:
Design/Gameplay: 8.9/10 (weighed 70%)
This level combined fun and non-linear gameplay, with great NPC placement, and some interesting gimmicks to create an amazing gameplay experience. Even though it was long, it never seemed to get boring, as more new gimmicks and NPCs were added throughout the level. I liked the concept of not being able to kill the fire piranhas, but how you kept it reasonable and enjoyable with their placement. The introduction of different gimmicks, such as the platforms that could be moved to another place when a switch was hit, were introduced nicely as well. It was great how they weren't overused and created an interesting but not painstakingly hard challenge. The disappearing/appearing brick path idea was interesting, but I think it would be best if it was either introduced in smaller bits eariler on or removed completely, as I found it didn't fit the level really well with the main moving platform/switch gimmick(s) and it was very short and highly concentrated into one area. On a side note, one of the moving platforms was also floating in mid-air until the player jumped onto it, which didn't look great. Moving it down onto the wire by turning off auto-align would make it look a lot better. There were a few NPCs that should have been used maybe a few times more such as the Chasing Chucks and the Big Bill, because like the disappearing/appearing block gimmick, they just weren't used enough to make it look good. Overall though, I enjoyed playing the level and was hooked the whole time. It doesn't much replay value though, because even though it was fun, there weren't any hidden areas or dragon coins to collect, as well as the fact that the route to the 1-up was not very challenging.
Graphics/Music: 8.6/10 (weighed 30%)
The music seemed to really fit now in the level, although it should have some kind of variation between the light and dark forest areas, just because it gets a little annoying by the end since the level is really long. The variety of BGO graphics in this level was great and they were placed quite nicely as well. The wood tileset was quite nice and the pipes, although sometimes a little bright, were overall quite fitting. There weren't any graphics that really stood out to me as not fitting in. There was one part however (in screenshot below), where if the player fell down, they could find a floating goomba and make Mario look as if he is floating if either of them walk from one side of the lower sizable to the other, due to the other sizable appearing infront of the earlier seen one. You could easily fix that by creating a few new objects, one of the top left corner, one of the middle, etc. using blocks such as block-168 and block-289. Overall the graphics fit the level nicely with a few small issues and the music could be changed throughout the dark and light sections, although the tileset and variety of background objects was very good.
Overall: 8.81/10
The high end of
"Pretty Good" but in my opinion could easily get into the lower end of
"The Best".
