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The intro is a cutscene with giant lettering. Grass is used as a period or apostrophe, but "Bowser castle" is incorrect; it should be "Bowser's castle" instead, and you should probably put a grass clump at the end of "herself" to finish the sentence. Another thing, too, why is the time going down in a cutscene? Why are you allowed to die in a cutscene? "The last happy day in princess life" is completely Engrish - it should say "the last happy day in the princess's life."
The first submap has a lot of very straight cliffs. There are tons of castles here too.
The second submap is much better-designed, but the ground tiles with black backgrounds don't work out well because the lightning exposes the fact that they aren't the transparent color and you get really blocky, gross lightning. What you did with that big hill is pretty cool though... so much neater than seeing all these perfectly round, cylindrical hills.
The third submap is just one big mass of red inside a cloud blanket.
Bowser Castle puts you right in between two spikes at the start. I enter the door right behind me, get a free 1up, and find glitched Thwimps. The room to the right says "THE MAIN DOOR HAVE SOME PASSABLE BLOCKS." backwards... 'Have' should say 'has'. The room to the left is Peach's room and has a really crude 'waterbed' and a green leaf that makes you throw fire. Anyways, the hint in the third room felt really useful because I never thought to look for a secret passage. From there, you can get the P-switch and clear the rest of the path to the exit. Admitably, while the concept was good and kind of reminds me of how Peach kept trying to escape from Bowser in Paper Mario, the level design was pretty bad and the way the graphics were used (namely the tile floor being stacked rather than extended in parts) didn't help this. The blue castle background was pretty awful.
Peach's Secret Base gives you waaaaaay too much at this stage in the game and isn't even a real secret.
Observatory is a really random level with very few moments that are worth it. It has Magikoopa, tons of falling spikes which start falling just off camera (cheap!) and a lot of everything in the beginning and end. The whole middle is empty, mindless jumping from platform to platform. Again, poor design.
Crystal Tower is another translucent level with a very repetitive background and no concept which to speak of. It's just enemy after enemy on top of platform until you jump onto the next platform, and some of the graphical swaps are weird, like replacing a football with the flower part of the Volcano Lotus. It uses the Thwomp boss at the end.
Mushroom Kingdom has yet more Engrish. "Why everyone don't are in their houses?" Uh. "Why isn't anyone home?" would be a much better way of saying this. The red huts are full of free powerups. One hut is really long, flat, and full of enemies... then you get outside and experience jump-over-everything syndrome. Things get weird as you see Wiggler turned into Spinies with a flame on the leader's head and a roof on the ground and a bed on a block of sand above it. After that, the level goes very flat and spams enemies.
Mario's Pad is a ghost house with a long trail of coins for... no apparent reason. Shame, because they're usually good for leading paths that form via P-switch and are totally up to you to guide in the right place. Next room over, you see a P-switch and there's invisible ground around it. Problem with this setup is you have a fall to death before the P-switch. It'd be a better idea to place coins above safe ground and one above the P-switch and let the switches handle the rest of the 'safe areas' rather than leaving the whole thing blind where you can die unfairly. Also, use different color coins to signify different block behaviors.
Story has some cutscenes with more atrocious English.
House of Mysteries has a design flaw where there's a lot of area you can explore along the bottom only to reach a dead end, and from that point on, enemies you can't see will rain down on top of you. Secure your Lakitus or get rid of that bottom path beyond the vine entirely. The Pix boss was annoying because it kept spawning shells I didn't need for a LONG time to defeat the boss.
Doll House has a huge ceiling of turn blocks you have to fly through and then the level turns to rotating platforms mixed in with the cliched styles of platforms. There's actually some thought put into this level, although it looks more like Satori Komeiji's level. Also seriously? Fighting Pix AGAIN?
Special Castle is nothing but a repetitive P-switch and turn block wall level... you do the same thing three times, hit a few more switches, and boom, finished.
Mirage Tower is yet another translucent level. I have really bad sprite tile memory problems in one room and it took me a few seconds to see that I was carrying an item, because I could only see it when I turned. I realize the name is "Mirage Tower" but it's kind of weird to have cutoff floating decorations. I liked that jumping directly under the moon would block it off with a music note block. The level design did nothing that other levels in this hack didn't already do, and it didn't do it any better. Defeating all the Koopas at the end was neat, but at the same time, completely out of place in this hack.
Alice's Tower is a ghost house with a Fishin' Boo who is used annoyingly, which is a good thing, because that's exactly what he's meant to do. The landscaping in the first room is horrible: mindless slopes, which I forgot to mention also look just like this in Mario's Pad. The moon respawns every time you enter the level. The second room is very pink and has a lot of cutoff clouds for the ground. The Lakitus with their bodies sticking out of the bottom of the logs look ridiculous. Alice is a Mouser redrawn. Her hitbox is bigger than her sprite. She has a Lakitu throwing stuff at you.
The Path to Heaven starts out with a star run and then you have to confront a few homing bullets and Sparkies/Hotheads on solitary blocks connected to ropes. Then, you fight a giant Goomba while being attacked by three homing bullets. Frustrating level, but more original than anything else in this hack so far.
The Scarlet Clouds has a blind jump if you scale the clouds near the beginning because you can't see what's below you; the only way to know you're going to reach ground safely is to backtrack, which is a waste of time considering how much safe ground there is on the far right... it also does not make sense for the grass part of the wafer ground to be solid like a cement block when the rest of the platform is passable. Other than that, the platforming was a little better, and the new enemies are refreshing... but the level is still lacking in any solid identity through design.
Scarlet Secret Area is a graphical revamp of Top Secret Area with one set of blocks shifted over one tile.
Scarlet Fields felt like a really short extension of The Scarlet Clouds. Graphically and conceptually, they were the same level.
Guard Tower was actually a pretty cool level with the flying platform, though the level being as short as it was made it feel underdeveloped. YOU couldn't hurt the boss yourself; you had to lure her into the middle so shells would spawn on top of her until she died. And, that was the last level of the game.
Overall, this was a messy and unenjoyable hack. There were probably only two levels I'd say were fun at all and they came too late in the demo. A lot of the levels felt too much like they were the same, and a lot of levels had no concept, just a lot of platforms with enemies thrown about thoughtlessly. The hand-drawn graphics look incredibly crude and clash with the higher-quality stuff, and some of the ExGFX rips are poorly assembled in the levels. The hack's title and description are deceptive: this hack is a crossover Touhou fanfiction after the first level, and in poor English that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense. A lot of the cutscenes used massive, chunky text, and not a lot of graphical presentation to illustrate the story. Words were hyphenated at places not between syllables. If you're going to make a hack in English, get a proofreader who is fluent in English.
Difficulty: Normal
+1 to:
Wakana
Snowshoe (fantastic review btw)
SuperAgentYoshi
Duffwin (another great review)
Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!
Quote
The title screen is a few clouds against a black background with a blue wood border. "Peach Castle Escape" is written out in large letters diagonally from the center left, and is covered up but not eaten by menu text.File Name: Peach Castle Escape
Submitted: 2014.07.14 ~ 23:42:58 by AnOtakuGamer
Claimed: 2014.07.16 ~ 01:05:24 by Counterfeit
Rating: 0.0
Authors: AnOtakuGamer
Demo: Yes
Featured: No
Length: 17 exit(s)
Difficulty: Normal
Description: Peach is bored of wait Mario came to save her.
So she will escape from the castle by herself.
Tags: custom bosses, custom character, custom gfx
Download: Download - 222.81 KiB
18 downloads
Submitted: 2014.07.14 ~ 23:42:58 by AnOtakuGamer
Claimed: 2014.07.16 ~ 01:05:24 by Counterfeit
Rating: 0.0
Authors: AnOtakuGamer
Demo: Yes
Featured: No
Length: 17 exit(s)
Difficulty: Normal
Description: Peach is bored of wait Mario came to save her.
So she will escape from the castle by herself.
Tags: custom bosses, custom character, custom gfx
Download: Download - 222.81 KiB
18 downloads
The intro is a cutscene with giant lettering. Grass is used as a period or apostrophe, but "Bowser castle" is incorrect; it should be "Bowser's castle" instead, and you should probably put a grass clump at the end of "herself" to finish the sentence. Another thing, too, why is the time going down in a cutscene? Why are you allowed to die in a cutscene? "The last happy day in princess life" is completely Engrish - it should say "the last happy day in the princess's life."
The first submap has a lot of very straight cliffs. There are tons of castles here too.
The second submap is much better-designed, but the ground tiles with black backgrounds don't work out well because the lightning exposes the fact that they aren't the transparent color and you get really blocky, gross lightning. What you did with that big hill is pretty cool though... so much neater than seeing all these perfectly round, cylindrical hills.
The third submap is just one big mass of red inside a cloud blanket.
Bowser Castle puts you right in between two spikes at the start. I enter the door right behind me, get a free 1up, and find glitched Thwimps. The room to the right says "THE MAIN DOOR HAVE SOME PASSABLE BLOCKS." backwards... 'Have' should say 'has'. The room to the left is Peach's room and has a really crude 'waterbed' and a green leaf that makes you throw fire. Anyways, the hint in the third room felt really useful because I never thought to look for a secret passage.
It's in the ceiling. Look for bricks that aren't placed evenly.
Peach's Secret Base gives you waaaaaay too much at this stage in the game and isn't even a real secret.
Observatory is a really random level with very few moments that are worth it. It has Magikoopa, tons of falling spikes which start falling just off camera (cheap!) and a lot of everything in the beginning and end. The whole middle is empty, mindless jumping from platform to platform. Again, poor design.
Crystal Tower is another translucent level with a very repetitive background and no concept which to speak of. It's just enemy after enemy on top of platform until you jump onto the next platform, and some of the graphical swaps are weird, like replacing a football with the flower part of the Volcano Lotus. It uses the Thwomp boss at the end.
Mushroom Kingdom has yet more Engrish. "Why everyone don't are in their houses?" Uh. "Why isn't anyone home?" would be a much better way of saying this. The red huts are full of free powerups. One hut is really long, flat, and full of enemies... then you get outside and experience jump-over-everything syndrome. Things get weird as you see Wiggler turned into Spinies with a flame on the leader's head and a roof on the ground and a bed on a block of sand above it. After that, the level goes very flat and spams enemies.
Mario's Pad is a ghost house with a long trail of coins for... no apparent reason. Shame, because they're usually good for leading paths that form via P-switch and are totally up to you to guide in the right place. Next room over, you see a P-switch and there's invisible ground around it. Problem with this setup is you have a fall to death before the P-switch. It'd be a better idea to place coins above safe ground and one above the P-switch and let the switches handle the rest of the 'safe areas' rather than leaving the whole thing blind where you can die unfairly. Also, use different color coins to signify different block behaviors.
Story has some cutscenes with more atrocious English.
House of Mysteries has a design flaw where there's a lot of area you can explore along the bottom only to reach a dead end, and from that point on, enemies you can't see will rain down on top of you. Secure your Lakitus or get rid of that bottom path beyond the vine entirely. The Pix boss was annoying because it kept spawning shells I didn't need for a LONG time to defeat the boss.
Doll House has a huge ceiling of turn blocks you have to fly through and then the level turns to rotating platforms mixed in with the cliched styles of platforms. There's actually some thought put into this level, although it looks more like Satori Komeiji's level. Also seriously? Fighting Pix AGAIN?
Special Castle is nothing but a repetitive P-switch and turn block wall level... you do the same thing three times, hit a few more switches, and boom, finished.
Mirage Tower is yet another translucent level. I have really bad sprite tile memory problems in one room and it took me a few seconds to see that I was carrying an item, because I could only see it when I turned. I realize the name is "Mirage Tower" but it's kind of weird to have cutoff floating decorations. I liked that jumping directly under the moon would block it off with a music note block. The level design did nothing that other levels in this hack didn't already do, and it didn't do it any better. Defeating all the Koopas at the end was neat, but at the same time, completely out of place in this hack.
Alice's Tower is a ghost house with a Fishin' Boo who is used annoyingly, which is a good thing, because that's exactly what he's meant to do. The landscaping in the first room is horrible: mindless slopes, which I forgot to mention also look just like this in Mario's Pad. The moon respawns every time you enter the level. The second room is very pink and has a lot of cutoff clouds for the ground. The Lakitus with their bodies sticking out of the bottom of the logs look ridiculous. Alice is a Mouser redrawn. Her hitbox is bigger than her sprite. She has a Lakitu throwing stuff at you.
The Path to Heaven starts out with a star run and then you have to confront a few homing bullets and Sparkies/Hotheads on solitary blocks connected to ropes. Then, you fight a giant Goomba while being attacked by three homing bullets. Frustrating level, but more original than anything else in this hack so far.
The Scarlet Clouds has a blind jump if you scale the clouds near the beginning because you can't see what's below you; the only way to know you're going to reach ground safely is to backtrack, which is a waste of time considering how much safe ground there is on the far right... it also does not make sense for the grass part of the wafer ground to be solid like a cement block when the rest of the platform is passable. Other than that, the platforming was a little better, and the new enemies are refreshing... but the level is still lacking in any solid identity through design.
Scarlet Secret Area is a graphical revamp of Top Secret Area with one set of blocks shifted over one tile.
Scarlet Fields felt like a really short extension of The Scarlet Clouds. Graphically and conceptually, they were the same level.
Guard Tower was actually a pretty cool level with the flying platform, though the level being as short as it was made it feel underdeveloped. YOU couldn't hurt the boss yourself; you had to lure her into the middle so shells would spawn on top of her until she died. And, that was the last level of the game.
Overall, this was a messy and unenjoyable hack. There were probably only two levels I'd say were fun at all and they came too late in the demo. A lot of the levels felt too much like they were the same, and a lot of levels had no concept, just a lot of platforms with enemies thrown about thoughtlessly. The hand-drawn graphics look incredibly crude and clash with the higher-quality stuff, and some of the ExGFX rips are poorly assembled in the levels. The hack's title and description are deceptive: this hack is a crossover Touhou fanfiction after the first level, and in poor English that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense. A lot of the cutscenes used massive, chunky text, and not a lot of graphical presentation to illustrate the story. Words were hyphenated at places not between syllables. If you're going to make a hack in English, get a proofreader who is fluent in English.
Difficulty: Normal
+1 to:
Wakana
Snowshoe (fantastic review btw)
SuperAgentYoshi
Duffwin (another great review)
Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!