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[FrazerJC]

Thanks for clicking on this thread... Yeah, that's a good thread start. It'll do!

I just thought I'd give a bit of a gentle nudge to a Chapter I just uploaded called "SMB In Short". It features 10 levels, spanning from Forest to Rapture. It's structure is

• Forest
• A Dark version of that Forest level
• Hospital
• Dark version
• Etc. Etc. Until Rapture Dark.

I'd highly appreciate it if you could give my Chapter a full playthrough and then come back here with feedback; What you liked, what you disliked as well as what you think I should do to improve in the future.

Thanks very much. I hope you enjoy the chapter :)


Pinch - Salt Factory Dark


Phantom - Rapture Dark

[SouperMeetBuoy]

At first I was going to comment on the difficulty ... not being difficult enough, until I realized you were going with the difficulty of the different chapters in the game as the levels progress which is a cool idea. All the levels look great aesthetically, really awesome work (I especially liked how the background & background tiles looked on the salt factory level). For some reason I couldn't ever beat the dark hospital with the fan situation at the end, and the hell ones I just hate those demon maws (or whatever they're called) so much, but beyond that I was really impressed.

[Maruhai]

I like the idea, not the levels.

[FrazerJC]

At first I was going to comment on the difficulty ... not being difficult enough, until I realized you were going with the difficulty of the different chapters in the game as the levels progress which is a cool idea. All the levels look great aesthetically, really awesome work (I especially liked how the background & background tiles looked on the salt factory level). For some reason I couldn't ever beat the dark hospital with the fan situation at the end, and the hell ones I just hate those demon maws (or whatever they're called) so much, but beyond that I was really impressed.

Thanks for playing :) Nice to know you like the idea! 
In terms of Hospital Dark, would you say that was a bit too difficult in terms of starting easy and getting harder throughout the chapter?
I've seen other levels were the looks of the levels are amazing, I thought mine were somewhat bland, so it's nice knowing that you thought they looked nice! Haha!

Thanks for the feedback. 

I like the idea, not the levels.

Any reason why? Any added feedback so I can actually improve? :)

[PsychedelicEyeball]

While I generally like the gameplay found in your levels for the most part, I thought that the levels didn't look as good as they could have been. The Hospital levels were the worst offenders to me, as you reused the same 2-3 tile graphics through the entire level, either for the back layer or the active layer. The Hell levels were the best looking levels of the bunch, even though it still used the same graphic with close to no variation on the outer side of the map in order to fill the empty space.

The concept of the chapter is interesting but could have been executed better. There's almost no difference at all in the architecture between the light/dark versions, most of the levels were exactly the same, but with a few added saws/shooters/insert obstacle here. With that said, Salt Factory and Hell deserve a honorable mention for actually switching things up a bit by changing the level more (or playing it in reverse). However, difficulty seemed kinda weird at points. I died quite many times on Light World Hell, yet I've beaten the Dark World counterpart in only 2 attempts, the latter level looked a lot easier to me.

Rapture was my least favorite part of the chapter; the background looked really boring (especially the ruined buildings in the distance, only putting one of those in the background makes it look kinda stupid) and the gameplay didn't really grab me. Grabbing falling keys from the sky has never been appealing to me, moreso considering that you have to fuck up the level once to figure that it'll happen. In the main game, you have a chance to see the key locked in before it actually falls, but in your level you can't see the key beforehand. Also, the end of the level was more challenging in the Light World version, avoiding rockets in a tight hallway usually is harder than avoiding zombie Meats in a really wide open area. Finally, the maggots are way too thin in the Dark World version and they blend into the wall too much, you have to make them more apparent to the player so that they don't run into the wall and wonder why they did die.

All in all, it's a pretty decent chapter. I did enjoy playing through it, although there is clearly room for improvement, notably in the visual department. Practice makes perfect!

[FrazerJC]

Thanks for the reply Psychedelic Eyeball! :)

I've always found the whole decorating thing quite hard, as you noticed. I tried, but clearly not hard enough. Should I make any more levels for SMW I'll see if I can do any better. A lot of the times I looked at official levels while making mine; I really started to admire how much effort Edmund put into the looks of the levels. They really are beautiful...

I, personally, found Hell Dark much harder than Hell Light, but everyone else found it to be the other way around. Do you think that's to do with the lava ball's new positioning at the start of Dark being easier to avoid?

Looking back at the Rapture levels, seems I did only put one building layer. Oops... I should probably pay more attention to the backgrounds... *sigh*

Anyway, thanks again for your detailed input. :)

[Maruhai]

I like the idea, not the levels.

Any reason why? Any added feedback so I can actually improve? :)

The gameplay is actually good, so that's not the problem, but it's pretty boring for the eyes, add more scenery.

[PsychedelicEyeball]

The fireballs in Dark Hell are way easier to avoid, I usually died all the time due to the fireballs in the normal version due to it bouncing on the platform and you having to go against its direction. In the Dark World version, the fireball usually just falls into the lava and you can easily get the key before it can shoot again.

Also, I found the hell maw shooter easier to bypass as well in the Dark Hell level, it's pretty easy to trick out; just stand next to the entrance of that long vertical shaft, wait for the thing to shoot at you, then jump out of its way and into the shaft, you'll have more than enough time to climb up before it shoots again.

And yeah, don't feel too bad about the looks of the levels, making good backgrounds require a lot of practice (even my levels aren't too great graphically). At least you should be happy that your gameplay works well, that's usually a tougher element to do well. Making good graphical design comes eventually.

[FrazerJC]

That's makes sense with the fireballs, actually.

Thanks for the input you two. :)