Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Choco wrote:Overgrown
Unofficial Review by Choco[/size][/color]

Design/Gameplay - 5.5/10
Okay, so you made a nice grassland level. But the name of the level is "Overgrown". I do not see anything involving overgrown things here. It's a good level, but it does not adhere to the level name. Another thing I noticed that was missing is a gimmick. You have the... A Coins or whatever they're called, but that's about it. Now, this is one of the few levels that takes linearity, and kills it. Plenty of secrets and exploration, and MOST of them are well executed. Notice that I said MOST. There's one section that bugs me.

In this section, the player falls out of the pipe and onto the platform. I thought it was a death trap. Then I got that red coin, and the two sizeables just appear. But at that point, you have about a second to hop on one. But there are Koopas on both, which may be a death trap in itself. It is possible to easily not get the red coin. And for almost facing death TWICE, you get an A coin (seriously, what are those things called?)
Otherwise, this level is fun to play. But it is somewhat short, and very easy. And to top it all off, you give the player four powerups. As I said, this level is short. And easy. This is coming from someone who isn't that good with playing SMBX levels. I think you could remove one or two of the powerups, or hide them. Also, the section at the end completely forgets about the wood/grass theme. That one is just grass, and it feels kind of empty. The end of the second main section feels the same way. (I'm mainly talking about the emptiness, kind of forgets the wood though) It's an okay level, but it definitely has some room for improvement.

Graphics - 6/10
Okay, the graphics were similar to the level design. Mediocre. I found that the backgrounds are all over the place. Virtually each section has a different background. And the first and second sections are SMB2 backgrounds. This is a SMB3 level. Otherwise, the graphics were nice. I did not find that static on the Koopas that Miles Troopa mentioned. Mostly everything went together, but those spikes are an issue. They do not really fit with a level of this theme, and some of the positions of the spikes create major cutoff, like on the grass. You were able to stick to the SMB3 style you started with. (minus the background) Most things went together, but the waterfalls in Section 19 don't look like they belong there. It was decent overall.

Music - 5/10
You used 3 different tracks in a short level. One of them fits, the other one is giving me mixed feelings, and the third is... no. Just no. The SM3DW Main Menu theme was the okay one... somewhat. At the end of the level, it feels like the level that music should be for. But at the beginning, it just doesn't seem right. The athletic theme you used in two of the bonus sections is a little odd. I get a sky level feeling from that. But it's okay. Just okay. But in the other two bonus sections, you have a cave theme. In a forest. Look, I get what you were aiming for in those two sections. But it still doesn't fit. Sorry, but I have to give your music selections a 5/10.

Overall Score - 5.5/10
It's a decent level. But it has a lot of flaws. This score would plant your level in the Average section.

Turtwig wrote:Sorry for late reply, I couldn't get on the website for a while.
Anyway...

UNOFFICIAL REVIEW of OVERGROWN by MAN1234FK

This was quite a nice level! I enjoyed this a lot.

Design (9.9/10)
Ok, dude, you have managed to impress me here. For such an easy level, this one never got boring. The red coins are both easy AND hard to get at the same time, for it's easy to find them but hard to actually get them. However, some indication of how many red coins there are and what happens when you get them all would be nice, which is why you lose 0.1 points here.

Atmosphere (8/10)
The atmopshere was a bit...all over the place in this level. You start off in an SMB2 forest with SMB3 tiles. Alright, cool. Then when you get one of the Red Coins, you're in an SMB3 fortress. Then for another Red Coin you're in the sky. And the level ends in an SMB3 blocks background. Just...what? There is a lot of tile mixing and nice graphical recolors in this level, and a lot of effort clearly went into it.

Other Comments:
Dis moosik iz katchy :3

Overall 8.95/10 (Pretty Good)
This is FAR better than your last level. Keep it up, bro!

Imaynotbehere4long wrote:Honestly, I was a bit surprised by how good this level is. It's basically a winding linear level that has a few minor branching paths that each contain an Ace coin and a red coin. Plus, it's almost entirely made of vanilla graphics and only uses vanilla music, and what few custom graphics are used are basically recolored vanilla graphics. However, like Miles Troopa mentioned, the SMB3 sprite-swapped SMW Koopas are grainy, and to prevent this, save the image as a PNG and use an image converter to change the graphic to a GIF (I recommend http://www.coolutils.com/online/image-converter/ ). Admittedly, I didn't notice this until after I beat the level, but it's still something that should be fixed. Something else I noticed about the level is that there's no midpoint and only two power-ups (debugger says 3 but the third one doesn't count since it's invisible and not indicated, meaning the player will never find it), but the level is easy enough that this isn't a problem. Seriously, excluding Piranha Plants, most of the NPCs in this level are either Goombas or SMB3-styled Beach Koopas. Even the red coin hunt was really easy, but good job making it look difficult; the appearance of difficulty can give the player a greater sense of accomplishment when he/she gets each coin on his/her first try. My only complaint about the red coin hunt is that the fifth one is just laying out in the open, unguarded! It might as well not be there.

Summary:
GOOD:
-Most graphics look good.
-Music choice fits the level.
-Block placement is well done.

BAD:
-Grainy Koopas.
-Final red coin is just kinda there.
-Most NPCs are either Goombas, SMB3-styled Beach Koopas (might as well be other Goombas), and Piranha Plants (nonthreatening pipe-filler).

In conclusion: Although the level doesn't have much variety with NPCs, the overall level design is good enough that this doesn't hurt the score too much. In fact, if left as-is, this level would work perfectly as the first level in an episode. I'd say this deserves a...6.5/10.