Originally posted by KDeee
In general, your hack was difficult, especially in the second world sometimes it was fair, sometimes it wasn't and sometimes it was just tedious. The time limit was a nice twist, but sometimes it just forced me to rush and be unable to dodge stuff. I liked how you added a tutorial at the beginning of the hack though.
Most of your secret exits required backtracking and item babysitting which is frowned upon, it was well done in underground 4 because I had to take an alternate path to go back, but the rest were very tedious, especially in underground 3 where I had to do the whole thing again (although the fake lava was nice) and underground 5 where it's impossible to go down without getting hurt if you want to make it on time.
Your levels didn't feel flat, empty or repetitive for the most part except
here (flat),
here (empty),
here again (boo ceiling is not very threatening most of the time, even if the screenshot doesn't suggest that),
here and
here (repetitive),
here (empty again). Also, the beginning of Grass 3 and underground 1 were just running and jumping. The beginning of grass secret 1 was just flying/walljumping with the leaf and grass secret 2 was just a muncher run, which even if you included a few walljumps, most of it was running and jumping,
unless you are big Mario
Some common issues were: slowdows, I didn't screenshot every single one, but
here are some examples.
This also happened a lot in your levels, slopes should always be places next to tile 100, and never on a vertical ledge or a solid block. Some levels like
this and
this would benefit from vertical scrolling.
Regarding the difficulty, it's fine as long as it's fair, here are some examples where it wasn't:
blind jumps,
here too (it's hard to guess where I have to land if I don't know),
same here, and
this only applies when backtracking because I can't see the lava bellow. You also had
Low ceilings.
More specific unfair issues,
here I died a lot, you can't see the lava from above and the very steep slope doesn't give you enough space to react. I had to get
here before it was revealed by the scrolling screen; otherwise I would get killed by the raising lava. Giving me a powerup
here was a dick move considering Big Mario will have a hard time getting there, although it wouldn't be that much of a problem if it wasn't because I have to get the skull raft.
This segment wasn't unfair but it did give me a hard time and so did the next one, mostly because of the Venus plants take more time to go back to their pipes, although I'm not that good with walljumps anyway and I was able to do it without getting hurt so don’t mind me too much on this one.
Here I can't get past the chuck without getting hurt (or running out of time) unless have a cape or a flower, same
here.
This room wasn't unfair, but it was tedious because of the time running out, you should add another clock, same goes for the underground 1 level.
This almost made me quit, it's really hard to build up the speed having two podoboos in the way, and even if I do I can still fall in the lava.
Other issues:
here the A coin was placed in a subscreen boundary, also the second part of that level was quite hard and having to repeat the first part all the time was annoying since it was just running and jumping, you should either scrap it or place a midpoint there.
What's up with that venus? I loved that level, btw
and what's with these spikes?. And in some of your levels, the background started flashing out of the nowhere.
Despite all this, I thought this was really fun to play (the only levels I didn't like were underground 5 and the first room of castle 2), and it can become a very solid hack if you fix these issues.
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Sorry if I wasn't able to test much today, I had to deal with some issues this morning and KDeee's hack took me more time than I expected. I'll try to get more requests done tomorrow.