Castle of Oddities

[ChromaNyan]

...I never know when to quit, do I?

contents: show

25 levels split into 5 worlds
25 achievements to collect, requiring mastery of the 25 levels
Frog switch escape sequences to conclude every level (or sometimes to begin a level)
Other inhabitants of the castle willing to share tips and other things
A few castle secrets
Way too much pizza tower music

This is a score attack oriented episode featuring Wario (the Master of Disaster Wario Movement Tetrapack Wario, not the base SMBX2 Wario). What I mean by "score attack" is that reaching the end of a level is not the main goal. Wario is unable to die (though getting hurt will cost you points), with the exception of the frog switch and the challenge stages (marked with red boss doors). If you solely go for the bare minimum of collecting a level's star, you will find most levels to be very boring and easy. Each level has an achievement which can be unlocked by reaching a target score. This requires complete mastery of the stage, collecting everything there is to collect and not getting hit once. Are you up to the challenge?

obligatory images: show

download

[deice]

having finished getting all of the achievements i'd like to give my thoughts on this episode.
overall it was quite a fun and charming experience. most of the levels present interesting and creative ideas and execute them nicely (though not always to their full potential unfortunately - most of the levels could've been a little longer) and the way the optimal escape routes are structured is neat and never grows stale throughout the episode. i will say that the highlights are when the pizza tower inspirations are more abstract than not (cryonic tower and tantrunt town for example) but it's not like there was really any level i could point to while playing and call it a "low point". great work overall!

however, i do have two complaints:
- wario: now i don't expect episode creators to be able to fix lua bugs in every library they import, and while this wario is a bit clunky fundamentally it doesn't usually get in the way of the experience. however there are a few instances where i think the levels could've been designed around his quirks better, mostly to do with rolling and the spring transformation (putting a sign that says "slopes will softlock you" instead of just not having a slope at that one part is an interesting decision)
- aesthetics: i understand function over form, but i really don't think it would've hurt to put at least a few background objects in some of the levels. there isn't even a need for copious custom graphics or complex decorations like you'd see in a vanilla contest, i just think as-is the levels feel pretty barren which is unfortunate.

all in all cool episode very nice, i had fun getting all the big points