Dev Commentary Time! Kolache Keep Was Originally Going To Be Called Ravioli Rampart And Stop Me If You've

dev commentary time! Kolache Keep was originally going to be called Ravioli Rampart – and stop me if you've heard this before, but this level was a LOT meaner under its original name. it needed lots of love to work into something that was fair to play!

the most obvious difference is that the animated tiles worked in completely unique ways – the original lava bridges would get hot over time and kill while they were flashing. compare the original opening section to the final, which are both teachable moments like Cinnamon Cavern!

(unrelated, you can also see in the gifs that the level featured spinies – the enemy choices were much meaner across the board, but they all got scaled back for the final.)

another major difference is that the old animated tiles were ONE cycle, whereas the new version uses two alternating cycles. in this middle section, for example, you were pretty much always forced to wait for the cycle at least once, even while speedrunning! much less forgiving…

changing the animated tiles to use an alternating cycle wasn't too hard – it uses the same timer as the single cycle, which means all the speedrun strats line up perfectly with the cycles from the old version. straightfoward to update and plays way better now!

one thing that was inadvertently made worse by the new animated tiles is this section with the locked door near the end. all of the old tiles were solid, meaning there was only one way through the room, to the switch, and back over to the door.

in the new version, the drop-through bridges add a new shortcut! …which people often think is the correct route on their first time through. oops! so i see a lot of people get confused about where to go here, even after i opened the room up and added coins to clarify the route.

either way, for the most part, the new animated tiles are a HUGE upgrade over the old ones for more than just the obvious – the old tiles were very touchy and killed the player over any little misstep. by comparison, the new tiles still kill the player… but only by falling in~

animated tiles aren't the only big change to the level – there were also some layout changes. like these, uh. what do i call those random floating tiles up there? i have no idea why i added them in the first place. so i gave them some context and added a bit of challenge to them!

there's also this setpiece, which was a stressful balancing act across a bunch of fire blasters. besides the way they were arranged to fire at the player on the lower steps, these were removed because i don't like making the player platform on one-tile-wide platforms over pits!

this was changed to tie into the level's gimmick more closely and rely more on good jump timing; the bridge alternates sides while a blaster fires over your head. still tense, but much safer, and way easier to speedrun!

honestly, the only remnants of how mean this level used to be are the fire blasters themselves, which fire quite fast and without proper warning! but even though i forgot to tone them back, there are so few of them left in the level that they don't ruin the experience.

so hopefully by now you have a good idea of how i go about polishing these levels! a lot of simple tweaks that feel big and make a big difference when the player actually gets to them… while preserving the flow of the original as much as possible~

Kolache Keep (3-4) | Retrush #Mari0

This classic castle features bridges that sink behind the lava on a timer, meaning less room to slip past the fire bars and other enemies. The cycles all line up for an impressive run, but the execution is extra tight!

new pre-stream archive! in which we discuss Retrush, ADHD meds, and getting out from the holding pattern that such a big project put me in…

i remember just enough about these levels that i can't contain my excitement. experimental blends of mario and portal elements. wildly inconsistent castles. WAY too many mazes. impossible to guess secret paths. levels so bad i buried them on purpose. an honest to god plot twist

y'all have NO idea what we're in for on friday it's gonna be magical. i'm going to be so nostalgic. i'm going to cringe into the stratosphere

FRIDAY'S FEATURE STREAM: come watch me replay my first ever Mari0 fangame, New Super Mario World! i haven't seen it in years, so i'll be live-reacting to all of my old levels – the good, the bad, and the VERY ugly. this is a one-of-a-kind stream that you don't want to miss!

New Super Mario World was the VERY FIRST time i got to make Mario levels, ever. before even Super Mario Maker! as we go through all 60 levels, you'll get to see where i got my start as a level designer while i reminisce on old memories and lessons learned. it's gonna be a good time~

the stream airs on Friday, June 2nd at 7pm central time (UTC-5)! you can view the time in your time zone or add it to your calendar from my Twitch schedule: https://www.twitch.tv/skysometric/schedule?segmentID=a1a31b05-4ed2-41c3-b998-504f22509537

you can also follow me here or on Twitch to get notified when i go live: https://www.twitch.tv/skysometric

new stream archive! in which we get lost in both sidequests AND main quests, eventually finding our way to the wind element! spent a lot of time with my head in the clouds, ehehe~

dev commentary time! Earl-Grey Electricity was originally going to be named Espresso Electricity until I realized that the "Espresso" name works better for the train remix. plus, Earl-Grey Electrici-Tea is a much punnier name~

like many of the original 12 levels, this one was originally going to be a lot meaner, but in this case some of it approaches damn near sadism – it was one of the last few levels, after all, and i wanted to really test the player. too hard.

for starters, the original level didn't have any indication of where the portals were; they were pretty much all in the same spots in the original, but with no way to tell where to go. thank goodness one of my playtesters brought this up!

the level had spinies in some pretty mean configurations, either placed in transitions where you couldn't see, or literally leaping out of the maze to ambush the player. pretty gnarly! most of them were either replaced with goombas with updated timing, or just removed outright.

but worst of all? this section in the middle with the SLAM DUNK had no supporting platforms underneath. you were expected to jump on the edges of portals to get across, literally jumping across platforms that are a single pixel wide!!

this recontextualizes the SLAM DUNK text itself: it was to laugh at you for dropping in the middle and falling to your death. how rude!!!

even when i added platforms underneath to catch your fall… at first, they were falling platforms, which means you had to be quick. stand there for even a split second too long and the platform falls too far to jump out of the hoop. still recoverable, but still WAY too mean.

the cherry on top of this messy sundae is that the maze after the hoops was an overly complex disaster of engineering that i had to map out on paper to build. each portal goes somewhere completely random, and the obtuse solution is to JUMP out of one of the portals. why???

the straightforward replacement – which i'm really proud of for being just the right level of headscratcher – was actually made for the remix at first, and backported to the original level when i realized that, god, this is WAY better than that wacky maze.

to wrap things up i have two pieces of cut content – one is this sketch of a spring-focused level structure! i'm pretty sure i sketched this one day when i got stuck about halfway through the level, and then… i forgot about it by the time i resumed working on the level. lmao

the other is this ANCIENT gif from before the level bg was locked down… at the very beginning of the level with the split path, this bullet bill was intended to fly around in the unused grid cells. sadly it was removed because it was too easy for the bill to escape its loop!

Earl-Grey Electricity (4-2) | Retrush

This storm-driven power plant is a maze of portals and platforms aplenty, making the routes hard to follow and the shortcuts even harder to spot. Running this level takes a keen eye and solid execution!

Kolache Keep (3-4) | Retrush #Mari0

This classic castle features bridges that sink behind the lava on a timer, meaning less room to slip past the fire bars and other enemies. The cycles all line up for an impressive run, but the execution is extra tight!