Sunset Fields

[Flying Brick]

I decided to expand on the design of one of my earliest levels, and this is the result; a level themed after DKC Returns' amazing sunset levels!
Screens:

Spoiler: show

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/6nbnv ... Fields.zip

[JupiHornet]

UNOFFICIAL REVIEW of SUNSET FIELDS by FLYING BRICK

This level is a bit different from the others. This is a silhouette level, and in these kinds of levels design and atmosphere kind of influence each other, so only one score will be given.

Overall 6/10 (Pretty Good)
The first thing I noticed is that only the Mario playable is a slihouette. So if you wanna do 2 player (but who does that anyway) you're out of luck. The sizables are all black, so when they are stacked upon each other it is awkward to climb up them. Fix this by giving them some kind of outline. Going through floors was a neat idea, but it was a bit hard to tell where to go at times, especially in the 2nd section. The level was a decent length, but the halfway point was placed too early. It's really only about 30% of the way through your level. The only kinds of enemies in this level were Goombas and Koopas, as well as Piranha Plants. This feels very lazy overall and made this level a bit boring. The double Piranha Plants looked a bit weird as well. Despite all this, the level was unique and somewhat enjoyable, so it is above average, but not by much. Solid level overall.

[underFlo]

Sunset Fields by Flying Brick - Review


Looks and Atmosphere

This level had a nice graphical style going, and I relly liked the stlye of most enmies like the Koopas or Piranhas or the Playable itself (there's no custom Luigi playable though, which is strange seeing as you even made a Luigi stating point), but the Goombas looked really weird imo. The background really fit the level, but I feel like you could've made parts of the level look a bit more interesting. The double piranhas also look kinda weird, I don't exactly see the point in these.
The music was gorgeous and fit the theme perfectly.
So, Looks and Atmosphere gets a

7/10


Gameplay and Design

The design was really decent, you showed off the gimmick first, and then made gradually harder challenges executing the gimmick.
Some of the secrets were well hidden, but you hid a 1-Up in the same kind of place (the edge of a Sizable) twice, and the jumps where Sizables overlapped each other were kinda strange, but the Red Koopas did give a hint as to how wide the platforms where. At parts it wasn't made clear how high your room for jumoing was which could kinda screw you over,a nd it wasn't all that obvious where you had to go at the start of Section 3. There are a few boring sections, like the one in Section 1 where you have to do the same jumps over two block wide Sizables with occasional Red Koopas a handful of times. But the design was really decent for the most part.

7/10


Verdict

The level was really well-made, but a few flaws prevent it from being perfect.

7/10

Moved to Pretty Good

[Eternity]

Also reviewing it.

Review - Sunset Fields

This might need some work. It had some potential design-wise, but the whole silhouette gimmick kinda ruined it. While it has some decent design, for the most part the level is very confusing, due to some of the decorations and the sizables. There were some secrets hidden in interesting ways using the gimmick, but other than that it felt very awkward to play through and not very visually appealing as well.

I understand you tried to make it clear where the enemies and the player are by recoloring them, but the recolors felt random and not very good looking for the most part. Plus, you might have went with different decorations there - silhouette levels need more varied aesthetics to make it not look boring, and the generic hills don't look very interesting when they're completely black, and obscure a lot of the solid ground (such as the slopes for the most part). I also felt the white sticked out a bit too much when used on some of the objects, specially when it's used together with black. Not sure on what you could replace it with, though.

Might also say that, ignoring the aesthetics, the level feels boring and generic - there aren't any interesting gimmicks gameplay-wise, and the only enemies used are the Koopas, Goombas and Piranha Plants (which are seen as more "global" enemies). Some work to make it stand out more on the design part would be appreciated, as there's not much unique to it other than the aesthetics, and even that could be done better.

Overall: 5/10

(not an official review of course, but might as well throw in my opinion)