Pesky Puzzle Pyramid by Waddle Derp - Review
Looks and Atmosphere
This level felt kinda bland to be honest, torches, spiderwebs, cacti and clouds were about all the BGOs you used. Also, you should either change the SMW Hit Block and Turn Block to the SMB3 Hit Block and Brick Block, since as it is right now, a SMB3 Special Block truns into a SMW SMB3 Recolored Hit Block when hit, which is kinda weird.
In the corners there's cutoff.
The Snifits felt kinda out-of-place with all the SMB3 enemies since their size and everything is completely different. Also, there was a whole bunch of custom GFX in the level folder, but a whole lot of it went unused. It might make some computers lag.
The Rinka Sprite-Swaps were really hard to see in combination with the dark blue background, you should probably make them thicker and the colors a little brighter.
Aside from that, you got the theme really well. It looked like you were in Pyramid, and I liked the recolors for the darker pyramid.
And now the music. Honestly, I can't judge this objectively because nPaper Mario freakin' Sticker Star. Yes. Nah, but seriously, it fit really well, only thing is that you used older versions (as can be seen by the walking noises in the beginning of the inside Pyramid theme).
Here are direct game rips.
So, Looks and Atmosphere gets a
6.25/10
Design and Gameplay
Hmm... I wasn't too bought on it. Most of the traps almost always kill you the first time through, and if you fall down on the second-to-last pit on Section 4, there's no way to kill yourself. I'm generally not too fond on the idea of not having the munchers everywhere on the ground, since sometimes the player thinks he found a secret but actually is now trapped and has to restart. I didn't really like how you had to replay the whole level after collecting a star, you could've just made all of them except the one w/o boss SMW so the player can continue after killing a boss. I thought the Bowser Jr. boss to be to easy and the Kamek boss to be too hard. There were three Rinkas and the Snifit shot bullets, and you had to kill him twice. Maybe make it only two rinkas. I still haven't understood what made the block to darken the things again appear,a dn the trap room with the Dry Bones generators was unfair, especially since, after the red coin appears in the other tomb room, my first thought was that it had to do with the trap room. It was especially annoying to redo everything after getting killed on a boss, since most of the fun comes from figuring out the puzzle. That's one thing that bugged me. Normally, puzzle levels aren't too hard and in some you can't even die. That's because, as I said, the fun in a puzzle level has a different source then fun in a normal level, and you kinda mixed both kinds of levels together, and imo it didn't really work out. I died so often at the Kamek battle, that after the 5th death I just put the yellow Switch block right in the beginning so I didn't have to redo all of this. Either have it so one part is puzzle and one part is action and both are seperated by a midway point, an don't mix them around as you did, especially regarding the traps. On one of my first attempts, I was near the end of figuring out, and died in a trap. That just feels stupid. The Snifits at the top of section 4 also felt a little unfairly placed. And if you think about it, the puzzles were just mindlessly running around and doing all kinds of stuff, hoping something does something, and sometimes you didn't even knwo you even did something.
So, Design and Gameplay gets a
4.25/10
Verdict
While the puzzles in itself weren't that bad, it was sometimes unclear what of what you did did what now, and it ha dsome unfair enemy placmements and traps, which made me die and have to redo the whole thing, aswell as a boss that's too hard imo.
That's why my final verdict for this is
4.92/10
Moved to Average
