Willhart - The Kingdom of Pokeys Difficulty - 8/20 Familiarity - 7/10 Distinction - 8/10 Creativity - 8/10 Total - 31/50 This was a neat little puzzler of a level. The platforming itself is relatively simple and the steps required to get through ultimately aren't especially dfficult to figure out either, but trying to focus on the platforming and the Pokeys at the same time can get a bit tricky, particularly in the second half with the Pokey Time. I do wish more had been done with the Pokey-based platforming in the first half, and the controls for Pokey Time could stand to have been indicated in-level in SOME capacity, but overall I enjoyed this one. (Also I appreciate your approach to including the curious horizontal wrap of the source while also requiring the player to do the actual level for both stars, but I did ultimately find a way to cheese the other star too. I feel a little bad.) Pixelpest - Well of Course You're Invisible; Mario Wasn't In Kingdom Hearts! Difficulty - 8/20 Familiarity - 1/10 Distinction - 0/10 Creativity - 3/10 Total - 12/50 You didn't so much remix the original level as you did just take a couple graphics from its folder and make your own level honestly. The only things making its source identifiable are a couple of sprite swaps and exactly three Chain Chomps - none of the actual level design is recognisable as having any root in the original, and you disregarded every one of the its wide assortment of interesting gimmicks - Link spinjumping, the Gradius section, the second star being just 'go back in and talk to the dude' - in favor of your own. Overall I'm overwhelmingly disappointed in the sheer amount of opportunity you squandered. As for the level itself, it'd be a decidedly okay kaizo level without the invisibility - which I suspect is how you tested it - but being unable to see yourself just makes the timings for every jump needlessly obnoxious to learn. On top of that, the first section of the second half is downright atrocious about conveyance - there is absolutely no indication that a shell's going to appear until you've already jumped over it and died, nor is there any warning that the blocks you are to land on disappear - and the boss is just a complete mess. I appreciate what you were going for with the aiming Snifits serving to show you where you are, and it actually is fairly clever and creative, but the Chain Chomps make going anywhere away from the middle of the screen a fool's errand anyway - when they don't just immediately kill you on entering the room, that is. 7NameSam - Close Enough Difficulty - 16/20 Familiarity - 5/10 Distinction - 8/10 Creativity - 6/10 Total - 35/50 WOW this was fun! Brutally difficult and without a midpoint, but short enough to get away with it as far as I'm concerned. And actually looking back at the original's layout there are indeed some recognisable structures here from its first section, albeit a bit abstractly in some cases. Good job overall! (As a side note, I remembered the original level having at least three sections to it so I spent the majority of my time on this level deathly afraid that it followed suit. I was kinda torn between relief and disappointment on finding out it was over after one section. :P) NightSparrow - Trial By RNG DQ Full disclosure: I didn't beat this level. About 150 deaths into trying it was pointed out to me that NightSparrow made the original "Wow! Spiny Plant Goombas!" and I was just not having nearly enough fun to make powering through worth it for a level that'd be getting DQ'd anyway. Like, I'm sorry, but this is just not a good level at all. The Goomba room mostly consists of waiting around, the plant room is spammy nonsense with several layers of jank added on, and admittedly that's as far as I got - my breaking point was when I took a hit on both sides of the pipe from the green switch because I had the audacity to get there while big - but the second half looked just as unpleasant. For what it's worth though, the section right after the midpoint made me laugh - I'm glad I never actually got there and tried to play it, but it looks silly. MECHDRAGON777 - No Hiding Place in Bullet Heave Difficulty - 0/20 Familiarity - 3/10 Distinction - 5/10 Creativity - 2/10 Total - 10/50 I mean, you've got branching paths, a moving-floor SMB3 Bowser fight, the monochrome gimmick and the big switch that breaks everything like the original, so you've got that going for you I guess? But the branching paths are presented in a much less interesting way; the Bowser fight, while interesting in concept, is much less engaging now that the best strategy is to just stand around for a minute or so in no danger then try to bait him into the hole; and the color gimmick is largely underutilized, to the point it feels like it's just there to be able to say "hello I remixed No Disguise From That Double Vision." Instead you inserted a number of other entirely disjointed gimmicks, very few of which have anything to do with the overarching black-and-white thing. One of the branching paths is an auto-run room; another is a mirrored-section invisible platform gimmick except this time the controls are reversed and there's a rising spike floor. Now the big switch reverses your controls too for some reason. You basically just threw as many gimmicks as you could think of at your source level and hoped something stuck, it seems like. And the actual level design itself is somehow even MORE questionable. The last jump of the first section looks possible but FAR too finicky to pull off, the super shortcut in the second section doesn't look possible with those Rinka generators right there, and the first jump of the auto-run room is a strong contender for the single most egregiously bad jump I've ever seen. Two of the three stars require taking different paths such that you reach the end with and without hitting the switch, but the final stretch is identical in both apart from whether or not you've hit the switch - there is absolutely no indication that they're actually two different sections leading to two different stars rather than being the same section with a background change and a reversal of controls. And why, why, why, why, WHY did you put in an extra star for getting 5 Dragon Coins? You're essentially asking the player to complete the vast majority of your fairly long kaizo level without dying, which is downright inexcusable on its own, and on top of that your level has at least one unavoidable midpoint, meaning any time you die going for the third star you have to leave, go to another level and come back to reset it. This is the kind of decision that entirely ruins otherwise decent levels - and that's exactly what happened here. SDAce - Crazy Chapel Difficulty - 6/20 Familiarity - 1/10 Distinction - 0/10 Creativity - 4/10 Total - 11/50 A solid level in its own right - albeit on the easy side for a kaizo contest - but it's lacking a lot of what made the original Bad Grip Ruins as memorable as it is. In fact basically the only things I see here from the original are the tileset, an edit of the background and its being an autoscroller. Katazuki - Pondering Lake Difficulty - 3/20 Familiarity - 0/10 Distinction - 0/10 Creativity - 3/10 Total - 6/50 Invisible mazes are one of those level ideas we don't see very often, but for good reason. A lot of this level basically came down to trial-and-error rather than necessitating any degree of skill. On the bright side though, it didn't overstay its welcome TOO much, and it was fairly cleverly-designed in some spots for what it was - the part in the first half where you have to despawn the Rexes to not get cornered later comes to mind. I also appreciate the bold decision to pick "Let's Think About Water and Rex" of all things for your level, and you DID make a nice meta use of the level name - I was indeed thinking about water and Rex by the end of it - but it's sort of related to the original in name alone; there wasn't much to work with, in fairness, but you didn't even use what little there was. Ness-Wednesday - Atohscoll I mean Autoscrool (TRFP pardoy) DQ Time for a bit of Behind-the-Scenes Insider Info - despite the rules VERY CLEARLY stating that entrants are supposed to make their .lvl file names their username, Ness-Wednesday here put his level name there instead. Despite them being EVEN MORE emphatic about how they are not to indicate their source level in the filename, or anywhere but a separate .txt expressly for that purpose, his .lvl filename also includes the phrase "TRFP pardoy [sic]" and he did not include a .txt file with his submission at all - he ONLY submitted his .lvl. When asked if he did in fact base his level on The Raging Flying Pokemon as his filename seemed to indicate, he responded that it was in actuality based not on a level from MaGL X or X2, but an upcoming chapter of his FANFICTION. So we DQed him. On to the actual level, it's... not hard. At all. A bit stressful to play, but only for fear of dying on such an easy level and being eternally shamed and disgraced. Any challenge that MIGHT have been there is neutered by the overabundance of powerups, to the point that it becomes little more than an exercise in tanking hits. Also I don't know how you managed to make this janky of autoscroll in a vanilla setting but it's remarkably gross. cheez8 - Fast Food Flight Difficulty - 14/20 Familiarity - 9/10 Distinction - 9/10 Creativity - 7/10 Total - 39/50 Can I just take a moment to point out just how much of the original geometry of Suddenly and Inadvertently Climb is still intact here? I'm genuinely amazed, this is pretty much exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for out of this contest. And on top of that it's legitimately difficult in a fun way - admittedly I got rather unreasonably frustrated at it, but I really have no good reason to have and even then it was fun enough that I didn't dread trying to replay it for a less vitriol-stained perspective. Fantastic job! ParmaJon - House of Kaizo Difficulty - 5/20 Familiarity - 7/10 Distinction - 8/10 Creativity - 5/10 Total - 25/50 You turned the axes invisible. The event you go into the freezer to trigger is triggered by one of those very invisible axes, in a location that's easy to miss and even easier to overlook. I don't think I need to explain why this is a VERY bad thing. The rest of the level was fun for the most part, albeit largely for the wrong reasons; most of the more fun rooms were fun by virtue of being breakable in entertaining and perhaps convoluted ways, with special mention going to the basement's two zips and a damage-boost. Septentrion Pleiades - What Has Science Wrought? Difficulty - 6/20 Familiarity - 2/10 Distinction - 3/10 Creativity - 5/10 Total - 16/50 I liked this level better when I thought getting the dragon coins was the objective rather than a way to unlock the midpoint. I came to like the jellyfish storm over time, but it's not at all indicated that you have to wait it out to progress and it's so absurdly long - fifty seconds, by Pyro's count - that it's not entirely clear that it even ENDS. Furthermore, having the other two challenges only unlock the midpoint AFTER the cloud makes it completely and utterly not worth it; the Rinka section's inconsistent by virtue of its RNG elements in the form of the shooters' slight variance in firing rates, the invisible block section is VERY easy to just randomly get killed in, and by the time you're consistent enough at the jelly cloud to make a serious attempt at getting the midpoint it's not really worth struggling with the inconsistency of the other two sections. The boss was neat though - fighting SMB3 Bowser while in the middle of a zip isn't something one often finds themself doing - but it was ultimately more stressful than actually difficult. Nerx - SQUAWK! Difficulty - 10/20 Familiarity - 5/10 Distinction - 3/10 Creativity - 4/10 Total - 22/50 Maaaaaan I was having a lot of fun with this one but then I just kinda was at the midpoint and then it just sort of ended a little after that. What's here is fairly tricky and fun, I just wish there were more of it. I also am reminded looking back at the original Swooper Castle that it's the one with the Batafire fight and now I'm sad that we didn't get a kaizo fire cat bat. ;-; Veruchai - Overgrowth Difficulty - 4/20 Familiarity - 9/10 Distinction - 10/10 Creativity - 3/10 Total - 26/50 I wasn't initially a fan of this level, it being mostly rather easy platforming and guessing which of the branching paths is the one that won't kill you for a fair portion of it, but then I went and looked at the original level afterward. I'm still not especially fond of this level from a gameplay standpoint, but I have to respect how you took the vast majority of the original level's geometry and made it feel like a completely different thing. Skulldug13 - The Depression of Swooper Kind Difficulty - 0/20 Familiarity - 7/10 Distinction - 2/10 Creativity - 3/10 Total - 12/20 I appreciate your use of obscure clipping glitches like the Yoshi jump at the beginning of the Mario path, but this is exactly why I said in the rules to explain any of the more obscure things you make use of in your level; I myself didn't know about that particular trick, and I ALMOST wrote off that entire half of the level as having been dummied out. That aside, this level, uh, isn't very good. It's very, VERY easy, and while it's nice to have a level all about clipping and zipping you really don't do much interesting with it at all, basically only just placing blocks around to make blatantly obvious setups in environments with next to no danger of failure barring attempting something dumb. A lot of the original level is recognisable, which is a plus for this contest, but at the same time a lot of the original level is 1-2 and you didn't really do anything interesting in that regard either. Furthermore, it's rather obvious that very little testing actually went into this level; there's constantly just "TEST" printed in the upper-left corner via lua, the text boxes have typoes, the message for the start of the Peach path comes up at the beginning and end of the P-switch effect... it's just a mess. Rumis - A New World, a Kaizo World Difficulty - 9/20 Familiarity - 5/10 Distinction - 7/10 Creativity - 6/10 Total - 27/50 Well you certainly took that one huge desert level in MaGL X2 in an interesting direction. I feel like the ending of this one is a callback to it but I don't remember much of anything about it except that it exists so it went entirely over my head. In any case, it's basically only recognisable by way of the one house you can enter for the boot, though that part does do a remarkable job of capturing the same sort of atmosphere as the original despite being an entirely different environment. As for the actual level design, it's fun, but not especially difficult for the most part. A lot of the challenges can be broken in some capacity - of particular note is the saw-bouncing section right after the Tanooki suit which you can fly around and keep the suit through - and since all the powerups are on generators it's fairly easy to tank through things at various points. I liked the puzzley feel of the boot section, but it ultimately didn't really go much of anywhere given the only thing you really had to work with was one red boot and the solution was to just go over some entirely unmarked lava under the spikes; it could've been a really cool thing had the solution been a bit more complex. Sturg - ULTRAVIOLE[n]T Difficulty - 19/20 Familiarity - 8/10 Distinction - 10/10 Creativity - 8/10 Total - 45/50 This level. This freaking level. It uses a surprising amount of the original level's geometry in some rather clever ways, but the level design itself just completely overshadows it for me. Like, I'm legitimately at a loss for words to describe it, this was an amazing experience. An amazing, nightmarishly painful experience. In the good way, of course. It's EASILY the hardest level in this contest - it just so happens to be the last one I played so I can say that - but in a consistently fun way throughout its fairly substantial length. It took literally an entire day to beat, but I've not felt as good at the end of a level as I did here in a LONG time, if ever. The ONLY gripes I have are that the bounce bubble things seem to maybe have a glitch where they'll throw you upward about twice as far as normally sometimes when you grab them with the down button, and at the time of this writing LunaLua has a bug that causes the game to crash after enough attempts - it affected me roughly every 180 deaths or so - but the former happened rarely enough as to not be TOO serious an issue for me personally and the latter would hardly be fair to hold against you.