VLDC9 - vanilla level design contest 9

[zagesaw]

Wow 2 joke levels. One done in a funny creative way and another done in a lazy way.

I can't tell if Indivisibility was meant to be a joke level or not. It's a level with absolute no focus or direction, but knowing the author, that seems like that was the intention of the level.

Edit: Apparently it was meant to be a serious level, but still it's a huge unfocused mess.

Even if Streamside was a poorly designed level, in terms of blind jumps and such, I still love what the level sets out to do. It is a joke level done right. I did not expect a Twitch Chat simulator as a level in a vanilla contest. Loved it.

[FrozenQuills]

Indivisibility is indeed a mess; I still don't understand the whole yoshi thing at the beginning and it's very unfocused. Eternity's score I agree is way too high despite him being the most generous judge.

Meanwhile Streamside is hilarious, even if it's "blind drops the level". I laughed pretty hard at the doritos joke.

[Grounder]

clown fiesta

[Nimono]

For the record regarding my score: I thought the idea was HILARIOUS, but we were judging gameplay, and it played HORRIBLY. Heck, take out the music and suddenly a lot of the text makes no sense, especially in the second half!

Then you have to beat the level twice for both exits.

NO...

[Mata Hari]

I didn't even know Mario World could do digitized speech

[Stink Terios]

By the way, the Yoshi puzzle:you have to collect enough coins, then throw the galoomba so it gets eaten, then throw the shells and carefully touch them to knock them into the yoshi without actually jumping up the platform.

It's a mess.

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

Indivisibility is just a mess. I don't like it. At least Radicola had some interesting elements going on. This has... nothing. Eternity was right to place this level in the pits...

Streamside... I just want to say one thing. Show Carl Sagan (the Mario master on youtube, not the astrophysicist of the same name) this level. It's a bit flawed, but it has a beautiful concept. I kind of want to see what he'll make for raocow, if he has this knowledge. I'm pretty sure it will involve moles, trolls, and Brainpower. And a significantly less garbage twitch chat. Maybe on that last one.

[Sugar]

Streamside... I just want to say one thing. Show Carl Sagan (the Mario master on youtube, not the astrophysicist of the same name) this level. It's a bit flawed, but it has a beautiful concept. I kind of want to see what he'll make for raocow, if he has this knowledge. I'm pretty sure it will involve moles, trolls, and Brainpower. And a significantly less garbage twitch chat. Maybe on that last one.

Can you, like, put letters in Super Mario Maker?

[Mikkofier]

I was wondering when we'd see "Why isn't this in Garbage Shame World?" levels.

[Koopster]

94th: INDIVISIBILITY by switchpalacecorner

Nimono
DESIGN: 3/30
CREATIVITY: 5/20
AESTHETICS: 4/10
TOTAL: 12/60
...Strange level. Not much to it, and it's impossible to Game Over on it after the midpoint due to the 2 free, easy-to-get lives. Overall the level is kinda boring and quite easy...

ninja boy
DESIGN: 13/30
CREATIVITY: 12/20
AESTHETICS: 5/10
TOTAL: 30/60
The secret exit though easy to tell where it is was a unique challenge at least figuring out how to get the chucks to run far enough to get to the pipe.

Eternity
DESIGN: 18/30
CREATIVITY: 15/20
AESTHETICS: 6/10
TOTAL: 39/60
This one had some fairly unusual obstacles, but it was pretty fun to play through regardless. Aesthetically it doesn't do much, but design-wise it's a pretty well made level. The secret exit was fairly simple to get, though - mauybe a bit too clear when compared to everything else.

Koopster
DESIGN: 6/30
CREATIVITY: 8/20
AESTHETICS: 4/10
TOTAL: 18/60
I like the way the secret exit is hidden, but that's about it! This level is really odd, it's not consistent at all in what it wants to do and feels like a lot of sections shoved in with no sense of progression whatsoever. :c The difficulty is also all over the place, with that saw hop being a reaaallly huge and awkward spike in difficulty.

88th: SREAMSIDE by Medic

Nimono
DESIGN: 1/30
CREATIVITY: 8/20
AESTHETICS: 5/10
TOTAL: 14/60
Funny theme, but that's all it has going for it. The level design really isn't that fun at all, even after you learn the paths to take. All the humor is in the fact that it's simulating a stream chat.

ninja boy
DESIGN: 13/30
CREATIVITY: 20/20
AESTHETICS: 8/10
TOTAL: 41/60
Well this sure was interesting and pretty sure it had references to grandad but I'm not 100% sure.

Eternity
DESIGN: 5/30
CREATIVITY: 5/20
AESTHETICS: 2/10
TOTAL: 12/60
Score given because this at least has some gameplay (finally), and nice memes

OTHER: still better than epic nothing

Koopster
DESIGN: 20/30
CREATIVITY: 20/20
AESTHETICS: 7/10
TOTAL: 47/60
nice meme! but this was pretty difficult. Some jumps were really tight and sometimes it was hard to predict where to land! Also, even for the sake of a joke replaying the level for a secret exit is pretty bad, even if it's rather short and becomes easier after you learn it.

switchpalacecorner is responsible for A Vanilla Level or whatever-was-it-called in VLDC8 (the second-to-last place cutoff level). I guess this was his honest attempt at doing... something.
I didn't even know about that lakitu room, oops. This level was way too many paths (you missed a cave path under that "muncher pit" too)

I regret my score for Medic's level a lot. I mean I liked it so eh. It's still really bad design wise for a variety of reasons. 20? Really?
Also I know Medic so this was another obvious author for me

I think nobody mentioned this clearly yet: the silence before the wacky sounds in the Touhou song in the second half was a FUCK YOU scream, but SomeGuy was pissed about it and Medic spent two hours hex editing that sample out of the ROM (AddmusicK is unusable unless the ROM gets ported over, which explains some missing songs having just been replaced).
It was more because of me, I admit - we wouldn't have cared about it, but I was somewhat concerned about what other communities might think about us had we just ignored his complaint and left the audible profanity in, so I asked Medic to do it. I'm still not sure if it was worth the hassle because literally only SomeGuy complained about it so far. Heck, some people were even sad about the removal.

[Mata Hari]

It'd be nice to be able to choose on the ROM itself if you wanna play the censored or uncensored version, but... that'd be even more work.

I think it's for the best that it was censored for raocow's video but I don't think it should be censored for everybody.

Also if there was a GRAND DAD reference in that level I missed it completely WOW

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

Can you, like, put letters in Super Mario Maker?

Not as solid platforms like that level, but you can (awkwardly) spell words with blocks. I think you'll need either SMW or SMBX to make a level like this.

Also, there was a Grand Dad reference in there?

[Money]

There was a Mario head "emote" that had the distinctive GRAND DAD palette

[Voltgloss]

At the beginning of the second half of Streamside, is it possible to bypass the one awkward jump by running under the pipe and dropping down the left side at the last moment? (As Small Mario of course.)

[Sugar]

There is a hidden GRAND DAD reference on overworld, if somebody is into that. It requires using emulator tools to see, however.

[10204307]

To get the Yoshi in the first level, you just need to throw a bunch of shells and Goombas at it. You might need to feed it the 1-up to get enough food, I'm not entirely sure. Also, for the dragon coin past the goal, you can just use the green springy spring to jump over it.

Also worth mentioning that there's a sort of "top secret area" located in a pipe at the bottom of the line guide maze, which contains a Yoshi, a roulette block, and a bunch of 1-ups.

[ztarwuff]

Out of interest, how come raocow didn't get the first Dragon Coin in Indivisibility by latching onto the vine from the right?

[nathanisbored]

if i remember correctly when i played switch's level, he told me he intentionally left multiple solutions to certain obstacles (like the first dragon coin, you can either do a tricky jump, or solve the yoshi puzzle. for the 2nd dragon coin, you can either use the hammer bro platform, or climb the vine, etc). I think he said being able to farm coins from the multicoin blocks was also intentional, but not required (i think there were exactly 30 coins in that area, if you were efficient with the multicoin blocks), and yeah you can toss enemies at him and then feed him the 1up to make him grow. He also wanted there to be several routes through the level, and i think the reason there was more than 5 dragon coins was so that none would be missed if you took a different route. the original game had a few levels with more than 5 DCs as well.

I played it like a year ago so i dont remember much. Still not a great level, but it mainly just contrasts with the levels around it quite a lot.

[S.N.N.]

IIRC, the top row of the forest has some of the worst levels in the contest. I distinctly remember the start and the end of this world being neat (Midnight Arbor, tomorrow's castle), but the middle section being .. well, not, as we've seen.

Curious to see which world is done next.

[zagesaw]

I honestly didn't think Forest World was anywhere near as bad as it was last year. Last year we had Goal Hunt, Seaside Course and Fez 2. None of these levels are anywhere remotely as frustrating as those VLDC8 forest levels. Hogwarts and Streamside have issues but are still really creative.

[Leet]

twitch chat, the result of giving chatroom functionality to people who don't actually know that you can put information in a chatroom instead of just choosing one of the approved stock memes

i didn't get any of the """"jokes"""" because i love myself

that said, it's outright lying to give this a low creativity score. the concept here is, for better or for worse, unique

[ft029]

The secret exit though easy to tell where it is was a unique challenge at least figuring out how to get the chucks to run far enough to get to the pipe.

At some point English grammar just gives up.

[Leet]

he's ninja boy not punctuation boy. you don't need commas if you are busy learning how to be invisible

[Sebby19]

I think nobody mentioned this clearly yet: the silence before the wacky sounds in the Touhou song in the second half was a FUCK YOU scream, but SomeGuy was pissed about it and Medic spent two hours hex editing that sample out of the ROM (AddmusicK is unusable unless the ROM gets ported over, which explains some missing songs having just been replaced).
It was more because of me, I admit - we wouldn't have cared about it, but I was somewhat concerned about what other communities might think about us had we just ignored his complaint and left the audible profanity in, so I asked Medic to do it. I'm still not sure if it was worth the hassle because literally only SomeGuy complained about it so far. Heck, some people were even sad about the removal.

I appreciate the effort made. Glad to know I didn't have to hear that.

[Lockirby2]

The first level was probably the most boring level to play through IMO. Riding the platform around is such a slog. I didn't figure out to use the Charlies to break through the gray blocks; I threw the Goomba at them to get through instead.

The second level was certainly unique. It was worth playing for sure, but still deserves the low position it got.