Dev Commentary Time! Saltine Sewer Was Originally Going To Be Called Salty Sanctum, And, Uh, Ew. I'm

dev commentary time! Saltine Sewer was originally going to be called Salty Sanctum, and, uh, ew. i'm glad i changed that

it was definitely not the 2nd level added to Retrush – closer to the 6th or 7th. but it was early enough that i was experimenting with "new" Mari0 mechanics…

you ever wonder what those green "graffiti" brick designs in the background were all about? in the original drafts, they were foreground tiles! enemies would peek out from behind the walls and you'd have to use your intuition to determine where everything was at.

the foreground tiles were only scrapped as late as this year! one of my playtesters asked if the concept really added anything to the level, and after taking a long, hard look at it... i decided it doesn't add anything after all. it's just a mild inconvenience.

many of the old "foreground" and new "graffiti" designs are quite different, since they accomplish very different goals! the foreground tiles were meant to obscure, so i took the opposite approach with the graffiti, laying out paths and highlighting enemy placements.

did you notice the arrows pointing at hidden blocks with stars? ⭐ the blocks were always there, but retooling the design was a great opportunity to highlight the level's secrets!

unrelated, the tutorial text that pops up saying "hold down" to disable gel is a complex feat of engineering... first off is that it purposefully sets up new players to get stuck, with a goomba that resets your jump height and a key that's just out of reach.

after that, time spent bouncing in and out of the region trigger accumulates on a "leaky bucket" timer, which isn't a feature native to Mari0! usually the game's timers reset on toggle, so it was kind of a jerry-rigged operation. the result works surprisingly well for what it is!

finally, here's a deep cut: i found old drafts of the level from 2015-2016 (!), featuring a VERY early version of the tall stairs that was a bouncy spring pit instead. pretty sure i changed this soon after, cause it doesn't fit the theme at all and it's pretty awkward to play!

Saltine Sewer (1-2) | Retrush #Mari0

This vertical passage is hardly a straightforward drop - the narrow, winding corridors leave little room to navigate around the enemies on patrol. But it's a great level to get the hang of using the portal gun to zip around!

dev commentary time! Oregano Oak has a storied history that resulted in it being one of the very last levels ever built for Retrush. in fact, the stage as we know it didn't exist before this year!

back when Retrush was just 12 levels – worlds 1 through 3 – i had a little sketch in the 4-1 slot, effectively a bit of level concept art built out of tiles. it was a mineshaft inspired by Wario's Gold Mine, making good use of SMB1's varied set of brown and orange palettes!

i loved the concept but i wanted to keep Retrush properly scoped to 12 levels, so i had no place to add it into the mappack.

...but as we all know, "keeping it properly scoped" sure lasted long! so when i expanded Retrush to add a fourth world, this concept was on the shortlist.

at the same time that i expanded it, i also decided that Retrush should have four vertical levels – one per world. i had two already, Saltine Sewer and Pineapple Pipeline, so i needed two more. i decided to pick the mineshaft for this, and named it Quinoa Quarry!

...eagle eyed readers may have noticed by this point that Oregano Oak is not a mineshaft, not a vertical level, and not called Quinoa Quarry. what gives?

for starters, i kind of shot myself in the foot before getting out of the starting gate. the mineshaft concept i had was very horizontal, and trying to adapt it to a vertical passage was next to impossible. the structures i tried to add to it were pretty repetitive and boring.

the concept was tweaked to use the SMB1 ground tiles with alternating palettes for a faux 3D effect, which looks REALLY cool and i wish i could've made it work. the remix's palette was already decided – a green, mossy variation – and it would've been called… Oregano Overgrowth.

Oregano Overgrowth was more inspired by the mossy walkways of Hollow Knight's Greenpath, but i never got far enough with the base level to do any actual concepting with the remix, so this mostly exists in my memory. (the screenshot above is a recreation!)

instead, i got sick of slamming my head against the wall, and decided to pivot to another old concept i had sitting around from an unrelated project (shown here). this is where Oregano Oak and Nougat Nimbus were born... though i was still trying to make it a vertical level!

Oregano Oak was going to be more like ascending a big tree, with large branches to climb into and around, as well as the bushy platforms we're familiar with today. Nougat Nimbus was intended to go the *other* way, starting at the top of a thunderhead and working your way down.

this concept, too, was short-lived, as i couldn't come up with structures that were satisfying to climb in both directions. once again, i had painted myself into a corner.

and that's about when i paused working on Retrush in 2019. with nothing concrete, just failed attempts.

i came back to the mappack in 2021, mostly porting Retrush to a later version of Mari0 (which was an involved process), and then spent 2022 preparing to release the second demo (when i got sick for a while). finally we arrive at 2023, and Oregano Oak is still just a concept.

it felt like i no longer had the time or energy to throw together level geometry like i once did... i stared at the level's blank canvas trying to make *anything* work, and coming up woefully short.

this was the level that really made me question whether i should cut Retrush back down to three worlds. this one, and some of the underbaked levels mentioned previously... it seemed like it would be too much work to bring them all up to par.

"i wish i just had something to start with," i said to myself. "just a little bit of level geometry to build on. i wish younger me had left *something* to work with."

as a matter of fact... i did. and when i realized, i went rushing to open an especially old version of Mari0.

did you know the creators of Mari0 attended Gamescom for several years? they had playable versions of Mari0, Not Tetris, and more on the convention floor. Mari0 was set up as a "time trials" demo with ghosts of other players and a unique speedrunning level!

one year the developers asked the community to make a speedrunning level for them to take to Gamescom. being knee-deep in Retrush, i jumped at the chance! iirc, i was the only person to finish... because i already had material to work with.

the level i submitted was called Reprise, and it was a "best-hits" mash-up from several levels of Retrush with some connective tissue. the developers had some great feedback for it, some of which made it back into Retrush itself!

returning to Oregano Oak, i was very interested in how deep this "connective tissue" ran, and if i could use any of it in a new level. i hit the jackpot: a completely unique middle section based around classic athletic-style mushroom platforming. exactly what i was looking for!

i copied over as much of that old work as i could, which ended up covering about a third of the level – but the momentum and excitement carried me to complete the rest of the level extremely quickly. Oregano Oak went from 0 to 100 in just two days!

it wasn't the vertical level i dreamed of, but making it a horizontal level and reusing my old work helped me Actually Make The Level instead of feeling stuck forever and removing it from the pack. symmetry and planning is nice, but sometimes you just gotta get the work done!

the end result is one of my favorite levels in the whole thing, with a unique speedrun flow that really shows how much i've improved over the years!

Oregano Oak is the epitome of Retrush's development cycle – it may have taken nine years, but it's way better for having taken its time.

Oregano Oak (3-3) | Retrush

A classic athletic style level with a fresh coat of paint! The flying enemies provide lots of opportunities for bouncing to shortcuts on higher platforms... and with good timing, some of the falling enemies do too!

dev commentary time! easily one of the best-named levels in the whole pack, Fillet Fjords was another level that i nailed the layout of on my first try, meaning it really only got minor edits over the years. but there's a few meta things to talk about...

probably the biggest layout change was fixing an oversight – the player could get stuck falling in the water in some places, so i added some extra ledges. nothing revolutionary!

the water itself is one of my favorite series of animated tiles in the game, replicating the wavy effect often used on the genesis. all of these tiles were hand-edited to achieve that authentic look!

if you look closely at the edges of the tiles, you'll see the effect stops at the 16x16 tile boundary – this was an intentional decision, because having it bleed too far would mean dozens of extraneous animated tiles for every single edge case. besides, this looks plenty good!

the water was originally just a safety catch for platforming, with no plans to build routes around it... but after i made the remix, i realized i could open up this little passage to skip a key! you can see it in the video, i was pretty lucky to get it first try~

speaking of keys, they were practically designed for this level and Toffee Tracks. the original layouts used Portal-style switches, which you have to aim at and press a dedicated Use button. it works fine with a mouse, but it's finnicky with controller… and annoying on mobile!

the way each key opens a matching colored door was next to impossible in older versions of Mari0… long story short, custom elements like this aren't made with code, they use built-in behaviors. over time, the list of behaviors has grown into… well, something resembling code!

even back in the day, i knew the Portal-style switches were pretty meh, but i couldn't find anything better in-engine to replace them with. blessedly, taking nine years to finish this actually resulted in huge improvements to the engine – and Retrush itself, as a result!

i think a lot about those nine years, and whether the end result was worth all that time, and whether Retrush would've been better off released in 2015 as twelve weirdly inconsistent levels with no remixes...

but the engine is better now, and the mechanics are better now, and my own level design skill is better too. Retrush is better for having waited, even if the waiting wasn't always for the best reasons.

Fillet Fjords (3-1) | Retrush #Mari0

A freezing, flooded furrow of fish! The tiered terrain tests your jump control, with water to back you up if you fall. There's more enemies than usual, but you've learned a lot so far – you can keep your cool, right?

every day i get closer to finding my voice...!

i used to have so much trouble talking – not just from being shy and timid, but a mental blockade of isolation and repression.

now that's slowly coming undone, and i'm so proud of myself!

i can carry conversations… hold my own in groups… encourage my fellow shy friends to speak up… follow discussions that i know nothing about… "circle back" on things i thought of earlier…

it's not perfect and human nature dictates it never will be, but i've come so far 💙

Cinnamon Cavern (3-2) | Retrush

Danger lurks in every crevice of this blistering cave! The sparse enemies are hardly a threat compared to the crisscrossed veins of molten magma – watch your feet as you hot-foot it to the flag!

dev commentary time! Watermelon Walls was another of the very earliest levels from the first demo nine years ago. but unlike Pineapple Pipeline, this one's had some substantial improvements over the years!

the most obvious change is the color palette, which tones down the red and adds a splash of green to fit the watermelon theming. i swear, you could barely even see Mario or the enemies in the old version...!

and speaking of colors, before this area was two-tone... the bricks were instead invisible, and you had to feel your way around with the portal gun. while spinies were piling up around you! how did i think this was okay!!

in fact, pretty much the entire second half of the level was similarly reworked. like, this jump required perfect precision JUST to get barely saved by the blue gel??? i like the new version much better, Thank You Very Much!

so between reworking so much of the nonsense and running out of steam getting that first demo out the door nine years ago... this level is weirdly short? i think that's fine, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

a lot of the level's mechanics are based around the consequences of slowing down. the lakitus have a long wind-up on throwing spinies, so they don't show up as much if you're running. the koopas here destroy the bridges, but only if you slow down and kick them.

remember how i said there used to be mushrooms and flowers in early versions of retrush? of all the early levels, i think the slower pace of this level's mechanics makes it uniquely suited to having power-ups.

which makes it weird that there were only, like, two mushrooms. instead, oddly, this level had more 1-ups in it than mushrooms?? even though the mappack has infinite lives???

…as it happens, infinite lives were a last minute decision for the first demo, and i didn't have time to remove all the 1-ups! you can tell i was in a rush… a RETrush [roll credits]

most of the 1-ups were buried in hidden blocks and random bricks that probably nobody ever found. several of them got converted to stars for the final release, and given a bit more visibility so they'd actually be of some use!

finally, i'd like to touch on the music choice - my partner @harmonyfriends picked this one out! i think it's a fantastic fit that i wouldn't have found otherwise. i just wish the stage wasn't so short, so you could hear more of the song...

Watermelon Walls (2-3) | Retrush

This rooftop run tests your confidence, with lots of quick tricks backed up by safer, slower strats for casual players. Just don't take it too slow, or the Lakitus will swarm the area with enemies!