raocow's talkhaus

Fahren- "What?! A Town?!?! A town ain't an actual level silly, this is blasphemy!" Too bad, I'm putting it in anyway! Shameless copy-paste time:

Fahren is probably hands down my favorite town in the game. I loved some of the ways you actually found the furbas like following the Ninji to get to the wackytown room (kinda disappointed raocow didn't actually show that off), and figuring out you need to break the bridge in order to lure the shy guys away from the door. All of the furbas I found due to my own curiosity and desire to explore making it feel a lot more fun. I also found the layout of the town rather interesting which further helped my drive to explore. More towns and sidequests need to be like this instead of sidequests being all "hey can ya beat up 5 random blurbablurbadons for me kthxbai". I also really liked the atmosphere and the relation to the plot, and the house that gave you free onions because Marisa-Demo is my favorite Demo.

Johnson McCain and the Communists- Pretty solid level and pretty difficult for world 4, though not frustratingly so. I thought the rising and falling structure in the second half was pretty neat, and I liked the level's relation to the plot of the world.
Swimming in the Rain- Pretty neat, albeit simple gimmick, along with pretty nice music and atmosphere. The only thing that really gave me trouble was that I kept forgetting that the purple mushrooms weren't solid, maybe that part could be improved by making them a bit darker so they don't stand out as much, though it's probably partially my fault as well.
Rainy Day- Once again, liked the atmosphere, thought the invisible platform gimmick was pretty neat with the rain giving you an indication of where the blocks are, and had a pretty solid boss which was pretty difficult, but not overly so.

It's kind of an easy-ish level, I guess, mostly because I don't think I can make actually long and hard ones. Which I'm sure is fine especially after that Science battle. It's kind of based on giving each screen its own obstacle, though maybe it ended up being all over the place for it.

The "woodland creatures" part in the sign is a reference to Kirby 3. Credits to someone in the testing group for the "potato receptacle". (The ceiling in the entry room is blocked, by the way.)

Like Edge of the Night, every custom graphic is completely original. At one point the mechanical eyes (glad raocow liked them!) were Exchikkes from Copy Kitty and so was the music, but I later changed them because having such an half-assed reference to that game didn't feel "right" (these would've been the sprites, in case anyone cares). Kind of like that one Pokémon-themed SMW hack with random Homestuck/My Little Dinosaur references. Speaking of Homestuck, the original music I used, before the Copy Kitty ones, was Inner Depths from the fan-made SBURB OST.

I ultimately settled for Challenge Chiptune from A2MT when it was included in the base game, mostly beacuse it fit nicely and I didn't want to waste further space with custom music (seriously, give the default music some credit, it's really nice).

Main changes from older versions:
- the part with the tofu blocks and the Thwomps originally required spin-jumping over Eeries, which I changed to make the level beatable by every character. Same for the raft ride area. About the tofu blocks, while they look kind of out of place I didn't want to replace them due to them having a very specific behaviour which could lead to unfair deaths if their graphics were changed with no explanation. Plus laziness and running out of ideas.
- the part with the net was a twisting Rinka corridor, though not a really frustrating one if just rushing. The net is also the reason why mounts are filtered out
- the Copy Kitty version had a boss room with six or so big boos (Magna Exchikkes) that had to be taken down using a propeller gun. Which might have been fine now that I think about it?

Parc du Debonair- Wow, this is different. Science looks like a much more fair, intuitive boss now. The appearing spikes are totally new, and that arrow wasn't always there. The fight itself is heavily improved, though I do think that the non-custom graphics are really boring and uninspired. Surely something more than a flat expanse of wood and the SMB3 Forest background could have led to the first sibling fight, right?

Crazed Circuitry- Here's a level that looks really cool. I love the circuitry aesthetic. Challenge Chiptune fits well as a song, but I might have chosen something else simply because it get's used so often in recent Talkhaus levels. Gameplay here mostly comes down to standard platforming shenanigans with Thwomps, Boos and Bullet Bills, but that's not really a bad thing. The level is set up well with it, and the super-square land layout looks great in this tileset.

Fun Times at the Laundromat- This is one of the most imaginative ways this could have been handled as a level, so bravo for that. The inside of a washing machine is surprisingly pretty. Everything looks really nice here, honestly. I like the multiple paths one can take (including the intended method for getting the key that raocow just missed entirely several times,) as they help diversify the level and make reaching the end twice for both exits more fun. I don't know why there wasn't a midpoint, though. There's no real reason for that. Overall another neat level.

Parc du Debonair (vs Science

Round 1

) (Septentrion_Pleiades & Voltgloss): Wow, what a way to ramp up the difficulty with a (possible) first sibling fight! And of course, because SepPlei's involved, it's a danmaku fight against Science. While you're dodging shots and attempting to get up and hit him, he's also trying to psyche you out by cruising at near lightspeed so that you can't reliably hit him until he slows down. At least he's not being too spammy with the shots, otherwise this would be a complete asshole of an awakening. I'm glad it got toned down since the beta.

Crazed Circuitry (Menshay): I really like the aesthetics of this level; it all looks like the innards of a cyber-security system, complete with quarantine drones and neon garbage-dump lava. That said, it's quite a challenging run because there's plenty of obstacles to navigate (more so for the RaoCoins). Still, it's a neat package since I can imagine Demo as an elite hacker raiding the firmware and servers for leek data, dodging the security measures and whatnot. Kinda like Copy Kitty, except with very different goals.

Fun Times at the Laundromat (Axon): Now this level is pretty nifty. Sure, it is a minor challenge to find the key to the secret exit (unless you're raocow and you exploit seemingly inocuous design decisions), and there are some tight spots here and there (especially against the king duck on the road the the intra-laundromat). Yet the wonder of seeing an entire world within something as unremarkable as a clothes washer--and the pathways you can take early on--really sold this level to me. It also helped that this level had quite the sense of humor; besides the laundromat-in-a-laundromat and Luigi's presence, there's also that incident with a certain alchemical substance that happens while you're exploring WasherWorld. Better hope the manager remembers to put up signs warning against such antics in the future!

Favorite: This was a close one between Rainy Day and Swimming in the Rain. I'm gonna give it to Rainy Day due to the fact SitR fell a little on the short side.
Least Favorite: World 4 is probably the most solid, consistent world in the game, so it's really hard to find a level I didn't like. Gonna abstain on this one.