Koopster
DESIGN: 16/50
CREATIVITY: 16/30
AESTHETICS: 16/20
TOTAL SCORE: 48/100
Very long (especially the first half) while not having much at all going for it in the design department - it's just a lot of enemies thrown around for the most part. Most of the first half is very boring and stretchy, but it picks up right before the midpoint which made me have to redo it over and over many, many times. I didn't enjoy the "surprise skull box" gimmick in the slightest, they're basically projectile chucks but unpredictable (or sky ambushes!), and the footballs are already bad enough on their own. Feels like it tries to be "non-linear" but it's really just zigzaggy, which visually I think you pulled off well (although solidity of things can be super unintuitive at times!), but it didn't help very much to make the level interesting to play. Doesn't help that it isn't focused on anything. Some rooms are super out of place - like the P-switch room (although the descent for the dragon coin is nice), the green room and also the final room. Not the first level that I feel tried to tell me a story but I didn't get it... oh well.
Also I'm not sure about this secret exit... the koopa tip is really subtle. And it doesn't add a lot to the level ultimately.
lolyoshi
DESIGN: 12/50
CREATIVITY: 12/30
AESTHETICS: 12/20
TOTAL SCORE: 36/100
I have problems big time with conveyance, where I was supposed to go, what's solid and not, etc.
This really does not work in Mario.
Noivern
DESIGN: 12/50
CREATIVITY: 24/30
AESTHETICS: 6/20
TOTAL SCORE: 42/100
The aesethetics are phenomenal, except for one tiny little problem: I can't tell what's supposed to be solid. For some reason, yellow, blue gray, and dark blue (against a black background) tiles are used interchangeably as solid wall and floor tiles, and the dark blue boxes are all solid even though they look like background decoration. The same is true of the skull and crossbone boxes, which all house different threats that can't be told apart from a glance. Comboed with a large amount of sprite spam, it makes for a level that is creative, but falls way short of it's potential. I couldn't find the secret at all.
Sinc-X
DESIGN: 3/50
CREATIVITY: 12/30
AESTHETICS: 8/20
TOTAL SCORE: 23/100
I was hopeful at the start of this one that it would be good, from first impressions, but it certainly did not deliver. It very quickly turns into a cramped and extremely cluttered disaster with next to no sense of direction, often with way too many unpredictable projectiles from all directions. It's an absolute chore to get through, and it's made even worse by the fact that the palettes/tiles are bad enough to the point where it becomes difficult to distinguish what's solid, what the doors are, etc, and the sprite replacements are just completely stupid.
Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 12/50
CREATIVITY: 13/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 38/100
This level's kind of a bizarre mess. There's all sorts of doors, but few of them lead anywhere, and there's nothing to particularly indicate which ones are enterable and which are not. You'd expect that giant red door to be of some significance, but it might as well be a giant red fish, as it's quite irrelevant. There's lots of paths as well, but most of them lead to nothing of any real significance, maybe a dragon coin. The latter part of the level throws in a bunch of baseball/football/falling bullet "generators", which really don't work to its advantage, especially the ones on the ceiling, which can be a bit difficult to see. Perhaps the level's most baffling feature, though, it that for all its maze-like paths, the secret exit is actually accessed by hitting an unmarked fake wall on the second screen with a shell. That's certainly an...interesting decision. And by "interesting" I mean "dumb".
Æsthetically, there are some interesting things going on, but much like the design, it's a bit of a jumble. It's hard to tell which partitions are solid and which are not, and the functionality of things in general tends to be unclear (like the three styles of doors, all of which may or may not be enterable). The Roy Troopas are sort of bizarre, and don't entirely make sense. I find the Goomba Boney Beetle replacement actually sort of compelling, but its randomly transforming in to a Spiny at times is similarly strange.
Oddly, I did kind of like the P-switch drop where coins transform in to blocks, possibly slowing your descent as you try to reach the bottom in time to get the dragon coin. Kind of an interesting twist on how P-swtich races usually work.
+ Kind of a distinctive (if messy) visual style
+ Reverse P-switch race pretty neat
- Main path a weird, messy maze
- Secret "path" kinda dumb and obscure
Other: I'm sure someone out there was probably saying to themselves, "You know what vanilla SMW was lacking? Rinkas." Well, here you go.