Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Hii and welcome to the my level thread! I'll share some fabulous levels here and would be happy about any comments or critique too.

Block Smash

Screenshots:

Let's break the 4th wall

Screenshots:

Falling Again

Screenshots:

Hope you like it ;o

I haven't played through all of block smash yet, but I've gotten halfway through the fifth room so far and I'd like to comment on what I've played at this point.

This level presents an interesting concept, but it doesn't really do a lot of interesting things with it and after a while it gets downright frustrating with how much it expects the player to wait. Wait to backtrack to the next section since you now have the right color ball. Wait to aaaaaall the way back to the previous section since you accidentally changed into the wrong color ball. Wait for you to get back to where you were because you died close to getting all the blocks smashed. There's lots of annoying design choices like this, and paired with the fact that per-room checkpoints don't actually save once you exit the level, it makes going through the entire level a massive chore rather than a fun experience.

The aesthetic felt similar to flash games of old, the one that's freshest off the top of my head being "world's hardest game". However, I'd rather play that game than this level, since the rooms in that flash game were small and concise, allowing quick iteration times if you fudged up rather than two whole minutes just to get where you were. A part of me thinks that this level wanted to be something other than a typical flash game though, since there was the purple wooden blocks, the mountain, and the remixed SM64 file select music. None of these elements seemed to form a single theme from what I understand, though, so it kinda feels lackluster. As well as that, the theme didn't transition at all from room to room? You don't have to make each room its own theme, but something like every 3 rooms having different visuals and music would make the level much less repetitive.

I'm not gonna rate this level anything since I haven't beaten it yet, but I just want to say that I found the innovation rather intriguing, but the concept had a lack of foundation on all ends, from design to execution to aesthetic.

Thanks a lot for playing, and for that review. Your complaints matches with someone else suggestion I got, that said "the sections should be single screens, instead of having pseudo-exploration". I made these big sections because I've been using another game-making engine for the longest time, and in that one you couldn't have a room bigger than the screen (ala Zelda 1, or VVVVV). So the big rooms you can make in SMBX just fascinated me too much. I had a hunch that this would be a problem, so I made sure to never have a super hard challenge at the end of a level at least.

The theme stays the same throughout the whole level. I guess I did go for flash-game like aesthetics.

and paired with the fact that per-room checkpoints don't actually save once you exit the level

I've explained in the first post how you can instantly skip a section, in case you wanna take a break from level and get back to where you were.

Inspirited wrote:Thanks a lot for playing, and for that review. Your complaints matches with someone else suggestion I got, that said "the sections should be single screens, instead of having pseudo-exploration". I made these big sections because I've been using another game-making engine for the longest time, and in that one you couldn't have a room bigger than the screen (ala Zelda 1, or VVVVV). So the big rooms you can make in SMBX just fascinated me too much. I had a hunch that this would be a problem, so I made sure to never have a super hard challenge at the end of a level at least.

The rooms don't necessarily have to be single screens, or even shrunken down that much at all, depending on what fix you make. There are two in particular I can think of:

1. Re-make each room so that the completion time is one minute, tops.
2. Add checkpoints between parts of rooms. Each room can typically be broken down into distinct chunks, which I'll highlight in the second room:

Personally I would add a midpoint at the third part, so that the player doesn't have to do a ton of backtracking if they died at that point.

The theme stays the same throughout the whole level.

This probably wasn't the best of ideas then, for such a long level. Even Enjl's SCC level, which doesn't take nearly as much time as yours, changed its music halfway through to keep the feel of the level fresh. I'd recommend changing your entire aesthetic if you choose to do so, however, since it's only made up of three things anyway.

I've explained in the first post how you can instantly skip a section, in case you wanna take a break from level and get back to where you were.

This is true, but you also said:

(this is considered cheating and gets you no points).

Implying this method isn't intended to be used.

If you need help with preserving checkpoints when the player exits the level, I'll gladly contribute to that.

About the blocks with a black skull on them. Did you get inspiration from the AVGN game?

diego corp wrote:viewtopic.php?f=89&t=19698&p=297510&hilit=tempo#p297510

please dont double post and advertise

xDestroy wrote:

diego corp wrote:viewtopic.php?f=89&t=19698&p=297510&hilit=tempo#p297510

please dont double post and advertise

wat im not advertising xDestroy

diego corp wrote:

xDestroy wrote:

diego corp wrote:viewtopic.php?f=89&t=19698&p=297510&hilit=tempo#p297510

please dont double post and advertise

wat im not advertising xDestroy

You literally posted a link to your level which has nothing to do with Inspirited's thread so the logical conclusion is that you are advertising your content

PixelPest wrote:

diego corp wrote:

xDestroy wrote: please dont double post and advertise

wat im not advertising xDestroy

You literally posted a link to your level which has nothing to do with xDestroy's thread so the logical conclusion is that you are advertising your content

its not my thread...

xDestroy wrote:

PixelPest wrote:

diego corp wrote: wat im not advertising xDestroy

You literally posted a link to your level which has nothing to do with xDestroy's thread so the logical conclusion is that you are advertising your content

its not my thread...

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

diego corp, you need to calm down, and read the forum rules. Don't make useless double posts, and stop advertising your merch in other peoples topics.

Added a new level called "Let's break the 4th wall" to the first post!

About that new level, I do love a puzzle level!

New level called "Falling Again" in the first post!

Came here to say I enjoyed Let's break the 4th wall and gave it a high score. I also want to ask why you used smwcam.lua for it. I might try Falling Again later.

Radiance wrote:Came here to say I enjoyed Let's break the 4th wall and gave it a high score. I also want to ask why you used smwcam.lua for it. I might try Falling Again later.

Thanks! My thinking to using smwcam was that it would be easier to click on things with the cursor when the camera moves as little as possible.