Guide to Making Good Traditional Levels

[Prismarine]

(NOTE: What i say is merely recommended and not forced. You can do whatever you want! Also i know this advice might not fit in other level types so im talking about the run of the mill traditional levels, the ones you see in SMW, NSMB, SMBW...
and yes, this also means that i could probably get some things wrong)

here is my guide in making good traditional levels in terms of about 5 years of experience making SMBX levels for myself or for the public. (This guide is also very suitable for Super Mario Maker 1 + 2, so i guess this guide is the most versatile thing ill probably make )

First, think about what you want to make in a traditional level. Maybe make a forest level on fire? Or a landscape filled with pipes and goombas in sunset? There's alot of themes in the Mario Franchise; heck probably even more for other games so really its like which type of brand you want to pick in a convenient store. Once you figured out which theme you want to use, make the level focus on some sort of gimmick/enemy/mechanic.

if you're focusing on gimmicks, then you should first introduce the gimmick in a safe environment at the first part of the level. Lets say we use rotary lifts in a sewer level. we first introduce the gimmick on a pretty much harmless place and maybe some goombas and koopas or enemies could be there but its not enough for the player to die not unless somebody has a IQ equivalent of a potato.

if the level is focused on a enemy, then i suggest placing them in a place thats visible to the player and out of reach so it dosent harm the player at the first part of the level.

After that, you can make whats fun for you and probably fun for others when playing the level. But lets continue on with the sewer level example:
So after that, the level has a short "rest area" with a bunch of goombas and koopas and question mark blocks and bricks, something plain and simple. This can be in-between gimmick sections. After that, we want to include more of the gimmicks, aka Rotary lifts. we don't want to make the level much more harder yet, we want the level to scale a bit more difficult and difficult till the checkpoint. Think of it like two parts of the level.

Now checkpoints are supposed to be in areas that let you take a break; we don't want any threats coming near the checkpoint that could possibly kill the player while they're afk: The player will come back just to see that they're in the world map now and they don't know what happened.

After the checkpoint, The Second part finally comes into play; it should be a bit more harder than the first part. I also like putting a mini challenge or a boss fight at the end of the level to feel like the player acomplished something. I hope this guide helped you TwT

[Emral]

If you don't mind, I'll piggyback this thread to give some of my own advice! This is based on The Conquest and how I tried to capture the feeling of The Invasion 2, as well as sometimes Super Mario Bros., 2, 3 and World.
I'll use levels from The Conquest as examples when talking about some of these things.

• Traditional levels are something I like to call player-directed gameplay. As opposed to designer-directed gameplay, where there is one way to beat them: the way the designer intended. The paradox here is that in player-directed gameplay, the designer still builds intended ways to beat the level, but they also build ways that seem unintentional, and encourage players to play the level in the way the player enjoys the most. Obstacles have multiple approaches, and curiousity is rewarded with skips and bonuses.

• Nintendo is very inconsistent when it comes to a level's continuity. If you encounter a warp, it usually indicates a major shift in the level. This can be related to what the level has done so far (a subtle change in how stage elements are used) or completely change the level (this happens VERY frequently in Super Mario World, where gimmicks are only really focused on per SUBlevel (section)). This type of unpredictability can be very charming when applied sporadically. In The Conquest, the cave levels "Deep Drainways" and, to a lesser extent, "Molten Hole of the Mole" do this. "Grassy Grass Grasslands" in The Invasion 2 is another example with its athletic intermission.

• In traditional levels, gimmicks rarely require a player's full attention. The design is loose, and parts of levels can be skipped with skillful gameplay or use of powerups. This still happens in Mario Wonder, even, where the level "Cruising with Linking Lifts", a platform autoscroller with a unique gimmick, can just be entirely skipped with running jumps. I recommend testing traditional levels in ways in which you TRY to skip parts, and then adjust these skips to be just possible enough for players to be able to discover them and feel cool.

• Bonuses like hidden blocks with 1-ups, minigame cloud, hidden item containers on high ledges, hidden p-switch doors, vines into bonus areas and other such nuggets that really aren't worth all that much are great ways to reward the player for being curious. Jumping to ledges that are suspiciously empty, trying to find a powerup in front of a boss door by jumping next to the wall because old Mario games hide powerups there... these instincts can and should be rewarded. It's fun for players to think "what if...?" and then try a thing and the designer figuratively applauds their efforts. Place these items and smile at the thought of players going out of their way to find them.

• Traditional levels tend to end up having usually rather flat terrain. Generally, it's common to keep the ground in the lower third of the screen to frame the action well for high jumps, flight, and to leave room for semisolids and sizables to let the player get higher. This isn't true for all traditional levels, it's just a trend I've observed.

• Be wacky with block patterns! Everyone knows the classic block structures from SMB 1-1, but have you ever played other Mario games and looked at how they place ?-Blocks, Brick blocks and so forth? 3-block and 4-block clusters are a very very small portion of the arrangements you will find. Don't be afraid to experiment.

• On the topic of ?-blocks: Those, bricks, pipes and semisolids are commonly found as a way to spice up the terrain. Since the terrain can end up a bit flat, pipes and bricks can be used as ledges or stairs. ?-Block clusters can coerce players to stand still for a moment, and semisolids allow for more versatile enemy placement in otherwise flat levels. In The Conquest, "Desert Level (with a twist)" and "Are you grinning, sun?" are levels where I made a lot of use of ledges to try and make the terrain of otherwise very flat levels interesting.

• Level length is highly variable, but leans short. My rule of thumb for SMBX is that ~8 screens is a good length for half a level, but it also depends on the density of those screens - how many obstacles the player has to overcome and how closely they are placed together.

• When it comes to deciding how to design a traditional level, my advice differs a bit from the OP. For The Conquest, I had two approaches:
  • I had a list of every SMBX mechanic I wanted to touch on throughout the episode, so I would sometimes just pick out one, like scuttlebug, and try to find out which world it would be found in (forest) and then design around that (the level Spiden (Spider Den)). Since it's a spider cave I also added hoopsters and vines and fences and made them look like spiderwebs, so it's very spiders themed! In fact, you could say the first half ended up being about fences, and the second about vines coming out of blocks. The spiders are just the residents.
  • Another way I design is to come up with the name first and then figure out what goes on in that level. This is how you get "Hochous Mesa", "Finally, a real water level", "Electric Green" and a ton of other levels from that episode.

• Lastly: If designing for an episode, remember that you can reuse stuff. SMB3 uses rotary lifts in like 3-4 levels. SMW has a ton of levels with line guides. What matters more than the central gimmick is having the level stand out through its COMBINATION of level elements. When I designed lineguide levels for The Conquest, I tried reinforcing that by giving the lineguides different shapes for each level. Circles in one, rectangles in another. Diamonds in a third, back-and-forth, etc. Lean into what feels right for the level's vibe, and if you have more ideas for something, consider making another level for later in the game! It becomes a nice callback.

There's a lot more I could write but this post is already really long. If you read all of this post and are like "that's interesting, I wanna know more", then I encourage you to pick up and play any Mario game and analyze the levels critically. How do they place their blocks? How do their ideas progress as the level goes along? Where are secrets placed? Are the ideas used elsewhere in the game? If so, how are they different the second time around?