Every Day I Get Closer To Finding My Voice...!

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 💙

Saltine Sewer (1-2) | Retrush

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! 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 💙

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...

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?

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! 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!