Dev Commentary Time! Oregano Oak Has A Storied History That Resulted In It Being One Of The Very Last

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! 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...

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?

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! Nectarine Nocturne was also not in the original 12-level plan for Retrush. in fact, both it and Dijon Dunes were made to expand World 1 for a better learning curve and difficulty pacing! now that i've seen people play it, i think that was a smart move.

god, though, i REALLY struggled to make this level work. this was one of the slowest levels to put together – it was only about halfway done when i tabled Retrush in 2019 to start working full time, and coming back to it in 2022 was no easier.

i didn't scrap even a single platform because it was already hard enough to come up with ideas… i stuck by every decision and made it work somehow, even if the original execution started out awkward. editing existing levels is much easier than making new terrain from scratch…!

the final result plays beautifully, though, and i get excited anytime someone goes for the speed tech on their first try. it's a really fun and accessible level in that regard, especially as a follow up to the rest of the first world – i'm proud of myself for seeing it through!

this section is kind of a Mari0 signature of mine – the way the platforms get lower and lower as the blue gel keeps you bouncing high in the air. i've put it in like three mappacks at this point, and frankly, it hasn't gotten old ✨

one last thing! i struggled a bit with the art design on this level. in my attempts to make this level look sufficiently lively, i bounced around a couple of ideas that never saw the light of… er, night. like this ferris wheel background!

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~