Dev Commentary Time! Did You Know Retrush Was Originally Planned To Have Just Twelve Levels? Dijon Dunes

dev commentary time! did you know Retrush was originally planned to have just twelve levels? Dijon Dunes was not in the original plan, making it one of the last few main levels i worked on – and i think it shows how much i learned over time, cause it has great speedrun flow!

after i came up with the idea for remixes of the original 12 levels, i saw a vision in my head of a desert level whose remix is an underwater trench… and it was just TOO cool of an idea to pass up!

so i came up with a few more levels to pad out one more world, which of course means remixes for each one… and that's the story of how i overscoped this entire mappack from 12 levels to 32. oops!!!

and because it was made relatively late(ish), like 2017… that unfortunately means there's not really any cut content or beta layouts to show here.

instead, let's talk about why there's no slopes. isn't it a little weird that all the sandy dunes are squared off?

without getting too deep into the weeds, Mari0's collision system was not built to handle slopes, and every attempt at adding them over the years has been EXTREMELY hacky and unstable. retrush has no slopes because there were never any good slopes in the engine to begin with.

the versions of Mari0 i used technically had those hacky slopes, but they weren't worth using!… until a month or two ago, when Mari0: AE finally solved the problem and made great, robust slopes. a little too late for me to change the entire layout to add them, you know? ^^;

but! i remade Dijon Dunes in Super Mario Maker 2 when the game first came out as a test of its editor, and when i did, i added slopes. it's a neat alternate universe take on what could have been!

Dijon Dunes (1-3) | Retrush

This one's a technical, tricky trek across the desert and its ruins. The enemies here have a bone to pick with you – but if you get the drop on them first, the bounce will carry you over the sandy steps!

dev commentary time! i think Toffee Tracks is the worst looking of the main levels, even after several art passes for design and readability... ah well, can't fault myself for my ambition! there's just no good tiles for train cars in the SMB1 tileset.

two major readability fixes were the doors and the windowsills, both of which still aren't perfect… the doors were going to have a foreground effect that made it too hard to see if they were locked, and even now people frequently mistake the windowsills for window dressing.

the wheels are probably my least favorite animated tile in the game, a weird combination of the castle door and flagpole top from SMB1. that's not to say they're *bad,* but i definitely wanted to give these a second pass... and never had time ^^;

a major source of cut content is that the train cars were intended to have graffiti of Mario sprites! ultimately, this was never fully implemented – i had already copied over the remix, and it would be too tedious to manually update both sets of train cars with matching graffiti.

why did the graffiti come in so late? i was having trouble finding a place to add a star around here, and the best i could come up with was a hidden piece of star graffiti under the windowsill. so i decided to justify it by adding graffiti everywhere else too!

early versions of Mari0 didn't have a "background" tile layer, so if i wanted to put a ? block in that train car, it'd look kinda weird (see below). that's why all the other blocks in the level are in the windows!

long story short, i couldn't find a good place for the block without changing the train car's existing layout, hence the graffiti idea. but the graffiti was too much of an undertaking, so the whole thing got scrapped...

and in the end, i forgot to put a star there at all! WHOOPS

finally, there's this section – i don't think i conveyed very well that the key on the right is in fact intended to be a fake. it's a different color than the door, but that takes time to realize... too much time when you're in a hurry and have only seen keys in one other level!

the fake key launches you to the other side, with intent to minimize confusion and time lost... but i think it just made players more confused!

i wish i'd put the fake key on the left – it still wouldn't have been clear that it's a fake, but it'd have been less confusing.

Toffee Tracks is a weird level with a lot of regrets, but i still think it plays decently well, especially after the Portal switches were replaced with keys. it's at least a lot more dynamic that way, and has some neat shortcuts! not the worst, but it definitely shows its age.

Toffee Tracks (2-1) | Retrush

A race to the caboose! Find the right keys to get in and out of each train car. Once you find the key, use portals to skip the trek back to the door! Just don't disturb the passengers along the way...

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!

Dijon Dunes (1-3) | Retrush

This one's a technical, tricky trek across the desert and its ruins. The enemies here have a bone to pick with you – but if you get the drop on them first, the bounce will carry you over the sandy steps!

Nectarine Nocturne (1-4) | Retrush

Neon lights and gel-powered flights combine for a level that's almost as fun to watch as it is to play! The gels take time to master, but the shortcuts they create are super satisfying to pull off~

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?