Dev Commentary Time! This Is One Of The First Levels I Made For Retrush, And Featured In The Very First

dev commentary time! this is one of the first levels i made for Retrush, and featured in the very first demo nine years ago. pretty much everyone has cited this stage as a favorite since day 1! so it's only had very minimal changes over the years.

this level was made before wrap-around vertical levels existed in Mari0, but it kind of mimics the effect with portals. i considered making it a proper wrap-around stage just before release, but the level has too much asymmetry – and honestly, i think it's better that way!

as far as symmetry goes, i love the big setpiece at the end, where you're going straight up but there's so much to look at along the sides as the pipes zig-zag around. definitely a highlight of my early levels! younger me wasn't too bad at this whole "level design" thing…

possibly the biggest update was changing some of the platforms to be more readable; it can be hard to tell the difference between the thin, jump-through bridges and the thick, solid bridges. players would get confused which way to go when there were multiple waterfalls… so i changed some of the thick bridges to pipes instead, which makes the intended path much more obvious.

i forgot to change this one though, and a few players tried to go up the wrong side here. oops! luckily, there's more than enough time for the player to course correct.

before there were stars in retrush, most levels had mushrooms and fire flowers; this is a level where the mushrooms felt especially superfluous, so stars make it feel more cohesive. besides, the timer keeps counting down during the power-up animation!

to round off today's commentary, here's a weird version discrepancy: i had to move some of the checkpoints around, because older versions of Mari0 handled checkpoints better than the latest version, due to a case of convergent evolution that's too complicated to explain here.

long story short, in new versions of Mari0, two checkpoints cannot be on the same vertical column. so i had to puzzle out which checkpoints should move to which columns! one checkpoint in particular was tossed clear to the other side (left is old, right is new)

anyway i love this level to bits and i'm happy everyone else seems to as well! it's equal parts abstract and grounded, open and directed, busy and readable. definitely one of the best levels from early in development, and a big motivator for me to finish the whole pack 💙

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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?

Pineapple Pipeline (2-2) | Retrush

Swim up the waterfalls to the top of this filtration plant! Watch your ascent, as there's plenty of enemies overhead. The open-air layout hides speedy shortcuts and strategies in plain sight...