Developer Commentary - Tumblr Posts

dev commentary time! this being the first level i ever made for retrush, you'd probably think it comes with the most changes of all. not so! it's mostly only had minor edits and tweaks in the last nine years. here's a comparison between the very first demo in 2014 and the final:

that said, there's three changes that are major enough to be worth mentioning! first off is that it was originally named Gelatin Grasses, which is a much more abstract name than the final. very kirby inspired, in case the "food/place" level names weren't obvious enough!

the second major change was this last section before the stairs – the old version was a flat plain dotted with enemies. it wasn't a case of novice level design, it had actual roots in the flat, enemy-covered levels of SMB1 (like 3-2)... but still, it was really boring!

the new section that replaces it was an attempt to make use of the available space for something more dynamic and freeform. it's a little more cramped than i wanted it to be, but i think i did a pretty good job giving the player the freedom to find their own route!

last up is the star shards! these didn't exist at all before last year. in the older versions of the game that Retrush started out in, something as complex as star shards were completely unthinkable! so these were "just" coins...

...coins with a twist, that is! these five coins were connected to region triggers, and when all five were collected, it would play a little sound, like in the NSMB games!

pretty neat, eh? long before star shards were even a thought, these little flourishes were always in the cards.

i could wax on about how the very oldest versions of Retrush had mushrooms and even 1-ups instead of stars... but we'll have more time to go over the meta stuff later, and this is plenty about this level for now. see you tomorrow!

Gelato Grasslands (1-1) | Retrush

Welcome back to familiar plains of bricks and pipes! This is a great place to get reacquainted with SMB1's physics and sense of momentum. With well-timed jumps, you can clear even the tallest pipes at full speed!

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! 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! 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~

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! 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! 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!

dev commentary time, and this one's gonna be pretty in depth, so strap in!

Almond Aquarium's original name was Buttermilk Base, in the same vein as Buoy Base Galaxy (which is this level's music choice). but the level known as Buttermilk Base... was some bullshit!

when i returned to working on Retrush in 2021, Buttermilk Base was a standout case of, god, how do i fix this?? do i just need to redo it from scratch???

nah, it just needed lots of TLC. i was somehow able to retain and remix most of what was already there... in other words, this level makes a great case study for "how to salvage some garbage!"

let's start simple: Buttermilk Base had no fish in the whole level??? even though it would've absolutely been possible to add in older versions of Mari0. i just didn't think of it? i guess??

instead, most of the underwater sections were focused around normal enemies that move and fall slower in the water ("water-enemies"). like goombas. and spinies... for some reason.

so, for thematic and gameplay purposes, i added cheep cheeps to the water tanks instead.

the old water-enemy placements were really strange, like a stack of goombas tall enough to reach the ceiling, or a spiny that slowly falls into the exit hatch. replacing these with fish was pretty simple, i just needed to make sure the timing added a similar level of pressure.

a lot of the above-water level design has very tight corridors that operate as funnels between the more open water tanks. in Buttermilk Base, these tight corridors were filled with... paratroopas that bounce around erratically. what???

you were expected to either slip under these by running at full speed, or use the portal gun to sneak around them.

remember: this was before stars!! this level had mushrooms in it instead – you only got one extra hit and it made you too tall to slip underneath!!!

in one especially egregious case, this split path of TINY passages had two paratroopas – one where you could slip underneath, and one where you couldn't. the only indication of which was which, was a single coin on the top or bottom.

like come on, this is set up for failure!

what i did here to fix it was remix the intent – the top path is supposed to be "easier," and the bottom path requires a confident jump. so the new top path is free of enemies, and the bottom path has three goombas to bounce across, which takes a little precision. much better!

all of the other random paratroopas were similarly remixed by asking "what is the point of this nonsense? what is it trying to test?" and creating a new challenge within the same layout that tests the same thing more fairly. this makes the above-ground sections much more fun!

the above-ground also had some wacky moving platforms that felt super out of place and just served to annoy the player. i'm really not sure what i was thinking with these…?

much like the paratroopas, their replacements were thoughtful remixes – like blue gel or waterfalls.

that said, there are also some tweaks to the base layout of the level. most of them expand the underwater sections – like opening up this middle section, which makes it more of an open letter to find your own path and collect the Star Shards!

even though they were mostly just "tweaks," reworking the underwater sections so thoroughly means there's a lost tile: these diagonal tiles that were used for trippy underwater transitions. i like them, they just didn't fit the layout anymore! they're recolors of the SMB2J hills.

the biggest layout change is the very end of the level, which got a complete rework. i can tell i was bored and running out of steam here, because the best i could come up with were some weaksauce "defeat all the enemies" rooms. boring!!

i don't remember what inspired the new ending section but i am SO proud of it: it's another open invitation to either quickly and confidently hop between the waterfalls, or take the safe slower path across the top. a significant improvement!

anyway, that's a lot of work to fix up one stage! in truth, when i returned to working on Retrush with a deadline, this level was potentially on the chopping block. i didn't know whether i would have the time or energy to do all this when there were plenty of levels left to make.

luckily i had plenty of time, and there were no cut levels... i actually finished all of what i just described in one single, frenzied evening! and i'm super proud of myself for bringing this level up to par with the rest of the stages. it really needed the love!

i got a few compliments like "wow these are actually good underwater Mario levels for a change!" which is a compliment of the highest order in its own right... but it also validates that all this work was worth it, and that Retrush is a better level pack for including it 💖

Almond Aquarium (2-4) | Retrush

This abandoned, run-down aquarium has been flooded with Cheep Cheeps and other scavengers. The portal gun can save LOTS of time swimming through the water tanks if you know where to use it!

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! Cinnamon Cavern was the second ever level made for Retrush. like, this was made immediately after Gelato Grasslands. did i get sick of babying the player and jump straight torturing them? who can say! adhd is a fickle beast.

this level has always been Weird. it's just a little too tight, a little too dangerous, a bit too unforgiving for a pack based around Going Fast. that plus being one of the oldest levels means it's gotten the most feedback, far and away.

players often start the level by saying "i didn't realize those magma tiles were deadly," which was fixed in two ways. first was to add enemies that walk into the magma and die – the "show, don't tell" approach. it may have been my first feedback-driven change in the whole pack!

the other was to make the magma tiles more red than orange, which was admittedly a very late change. the original orange was a minor edit of the coin block palette that i was pretty proud of… but the color contrast was too close to the surrounding cavern.

magma readability aside, the other most common feedback was simply "this level is too hard." it can be hard to pin down exactly what the problem is or how to solve it… doubly so when the theme of the level is at odds with the core mechanics of the mappack!

most of my efforts were spent widening some especially cramped parts of the cave, or moving some magma veins that were too easy to walk right into. but for the most part, i wanted to keep the level intact – i really think it has great speedrun flow once you get the hang of it!

this section in particular gets the most flak, probably because you have to double back across some admittedly tiny safe spots. the intent here was to use the ropes as a guide, hugging the walls they attach to so you fall directly on the safe spots.

the trouble is, that's way too much thinking under pressure! i don't think a single person realized that was the intent here.

…but i knew this would be the case, and i thought about flipping it so that you jump into the ropes by accident and discover the trick on your own.

it didn't work out, because it required rearranging everything around it to the point that the original speedrun flow was unrecognizable. even then, the flipped section was too boring, not at all challenging, and didn't even do anything with the trick once the player learned it.

so i reverted it back to the original and just left it alone, because i was out of ideas and running out of time. i had bigger fish to fry and this section was already done. whatever. mark it as a Known Shippable, as we say in the biz.

"but sky," i hear you say. "that section wasn't so bad! you're being too hard on yourself."

yeah, i hear you. but consider this:

you used the star to breeze past it, didn't you?

stars absolutely TRIVIALIZE Cinnamon Cavern. it goes from being one of the hardest levels to one of the easiest, with no middle ground. the stars are all in highly telegraphed, easy to reach locations, practically as a "yeah i know this level sucks, go ahead and skip it" option.

even back in the day, when the mappack had mushrooms instead of stars… i don't think they helped enough! being tall made the cavern feel even more tight than usual, not to mention you only get one extra hit in a level that's lined wall-to-wall with danger.

nothing short of a complete rework would have quelled the perfectionism that i admit i hold in my heart.

so it came as no shock that one playtester said it was their least favorite level,

and it came as a complete shock that one playtester said it was their FAVORITE level.

"this one was a good mix of challenge while being fair, mainly due to all the cheap death spots being changed compared to the [second demo]."

wha?? hello???

…well, okay, i'm glad you like it!

moments like this remind me that it's not always my job to polish everything i make to a squeaky clean sheen; some people will still find the diamonds hidden in the rough, no matter how rough i might think it is.

Cinnamon Cavern (3-2) | Retrush

Danger lurks in every crevice of this blistering cave! The sparse enemies are hardly a threat compared to the crisscrossed veins of molten magma – watch your feet as you hot-foot it to the flag!

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! 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!

dev commentary time! Blueberry Blizzard is the last of the four levels that i added after the original 12-level plan, and much like the other three, it has the least changes to show. i do have an early video though!

this video is from about halfway through making this level, and the layout was pretty much locked down already – outside of some minor tweaks like smoothing out the hill near the top. i hadn't yet nailed down the art, but it was still clearly inspired by Ice Climbers and Celeste.

anyway i'm going to use this as an excuse to be lazy about getting screenshots today, because there's not a lot to show – and the rest of this week will be PACKED with material. but i'll leave you with a fun technical tidbit!

you might remember that sometimes Mari0 has had weird version regressions between older and newer versions... well, vertical levels worked better in older versions of Mari0 as well. the new version's camera doesn't move until Mario is near the top of the screen!

upgrading this level to the new version created some major discrepancies for which enemies spawn when, as well as the portals that go into caves – the transition would scroll super slow and made it hard to react in time.

how did i solve this? well, i asked our community's resident technical expert WilliamFrog, who then proceeded to make a custom vertical camera implementation for me that matches the old version exactly...

AS A CUSTOM ENEMY.

if you remember the keys and doors example from Fillet Fjords, custom enemies have pre-set behaviors to hook into. they aren't code, and you can't just write a custom camera in Lua or whatever. besides, why would enemies ever need to control the camera? that's nonsense!

so how the frick did WilliamFrog do this? by using some dark magic called "cloning," which allowed him to copy some camera manipulation entities that usually can't move, and attach them to a custom enemy that follows Mario. the entities "nudge" the camera along as Mario moves!

cloning is not natively supported by the game, and frankly most of WilliamFrog's work with Mari0 is similarly dark magic or worse – the custom enemy system is completely broken in a way that allows all kinds of ridiculous nonsense, but still somehow doesn't have arbitrary code execution. i am in awe.

anyway i'd like to give a HUGE shoutout to WilliamFrog for getting this working for me! that made porting the level a straightforward process, so it plays just as well as it did back in older versions – if not better, because i could tweak the camera speeds to my liking 💖

Blueberry Blizzard (4-1) | Retrush

An icy mountain ascent with slim platforms and enemies flying overhead. Just one slip could cost dozens of precious seconds! The shortcuts here are very technically impressive... and very punishing if you miss.

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!

dev commentary time! in true adhd fashion, Vinegar Void is one of the first levels that i finished for Retrush. originally titled Venison Void, it was a major casualty of weird version regressions, where updating to later versions of Mari0 required huge structural reworks.

the level features lots of purple gel, which flips Mario's gravity until he touches the ground. early versions took this to the extreme, with walls and pipes covered in purple gel from top to bottom – turning simple structures into logistics and navigational puzzles!

unfortunately, later versions of Mari0 made purple gel on walls almost entirely un-viable, so i had to pivot to ceiling gel / upside-down only. surprisingly there wasn't *too* much wall gel, but i did have to substantially rework several sections of the level over this.

the only remaining wall gel is in this tiny little U-turn, which is a small enough section that it doesn't fall apart and minimizes the chance of players running into issues.

before i show the other major section reworked for wall gel, let me mention another factor of the regression: old versions of Mari0 also let *enemies* climb all over wall gel, whereas enemies in new versions don't interact with any type of gel.

that's fine, because i didn't have any *normal* enemies climbing on purple gel...

one of Vinegar Void's many unique mechanics are these upside-down enemies with reversed gravity. this is a native feature of the enemies that has nothing to do with purple gel.

these "gravigoombas" (etc) were made by setting the gravity of the enemy to a negative number, tricking the game into reversing its gravity.

now, take a moment before scrolling, and guess what happens if you put THAT on purple gel.

—

—

—

—

You Get This.

so returning to the purple gel on walls, this middle section had pipes slathered in the stuff. and the only enemy in the whole section, was a single gravigoomba... bouncing all over the insides of the passages.

absolutely absurd nonsense. i hate it so much. i love it so much.

the section that replaces it is frankly less interesting, but taps a little of that original "navigation puzzle" intent with the gravity gel to get the player to think on their feet. not half bad for only being limited to two directions!

honestly, though, the level as a whole is probably better off after the conversion; limiting my options made me seriously consider how much purple gel i was using across the board, and limit it to the best interactions i could muster rather than just slathering it everywhere.

the last major change to the level is the vanishing tiles; the old versions used to blink in and out, which was hard to look at after a while. the new versions palette fade, which was an inspired choice, and fits the space theme quite nicely~

outside of this list, the vast majority of the level is the same as it was originally, which is super impressive for being one of the first levels completed. i feel like i balanced it really well, all things considered! a great penultimate challenge leading into the grand finale.

Vinegar Void (4-3) | Retrush

A true test of talent, this orbital station features gel that flips your gravity, giant laser cannons, and line after line of vanishing blocks. Altogether, it's an *incredibly* satisfying and impressive-looking run!

you've probably noticed the glitched out HUD by now – it just uses a custom foreground to display some static elements on top of the regular HUD. the effect covers up all but the last digit of the timer, dialing up the tension… as you never know how much time is truly left!

this would be a nightmare if the timer was ever too strict, but let's pull back the curtain here – every single section gives you the maximum 50 in-game seconds (20 real seconds). that's enough time that the player knows when they're going too slow, so timing over feels fair.

getting the checkpoints to look corrupted was also fun – i didn't want to give away that they're all set to 50, so i came up with six unique ways of representing the number. the simple ones to explain are hexadecimal, binary, and scientific notation (5x10¹).

the other three are more complicated, like "%)" are the symbols above 5 and 0 on the keyboard's number row.

there's also the number 1 50 times, which looks SO silly…

and my personal favorite, "settime(50)" except the number is obscured by one of the background tiles! hehehe~

one last thing to mention is the "game over" transition cutscene that starts with the glitched flagpole in Vinegar Void. it was super challenging to put together and uses a lot of shortcuts, so i'm amazed that the effect still shines through. i made the sfx myself in Famistudio!

the cutscene bridges the whole crescendo of World 4, building on the level-by-level ascent into space and crashing into the chaotic mayhem of the finale. it's the centerpiece of the main campaign, the wow factor, the one thing i most dreamed of seeing people's reactions to…

so imagine my horror when I ACCIDENTALLY BROKE IT FOR MY BETA TESTERS. they didn't realize there was supposed to be a cutscene at all, and it made me quite sad!!

luckily, that incident got me to make sure i had it fixed in time for the full release.

so i want to give a HUGE shoutout to @notquiteapex for having the best reaction to the cutscene that i could've ever hoped for… from confusion to shock to realization to laughter, everything i dared dream of. it was such a treat to see live 💖

to wrap things up, i have just two regrets about the stage itself… one is that people stub their toes on some rough edges, but this is the first time i've attempted to balance a level like this! the other is that i wish i could've used more corrupted tiles and sanity effects 😈

but i want to set aside those regrets, because i poured my heart and soul into this ambitious finale, and i am SO proud of myself for pulling through to the end. what an incredible way to cap off the main campaign of Retrush! i hope my first real game has a finale this good~

Marshmallow Mash-Up (4-4) | Retrush

FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR. sprint to the finish line as the game itself corrupts around you in real time, smashing together data from every previous level into the ultimate test of confidence and finesse!

dev commentary time! as we start going through the remixes it's important to keep in mind how much of a technical marvel these have always been, both in old and new versions of the engine... in ways that frequently made it a headache to work with them.

current versions of the red coins are a fully custom object – collecting one does all of the work behind the scenes to adjust the timer, spawn the flashing time indicator, and count both how many and which ones have been collected. they can be collected in all the ways a regular coin can – such as being bumped from below – and they can also be "precollected" when restarting from a checkpoint. there's even dynamic red coins set up to fly around or fall in from the top of the screen!

new "single-object" red coin on the left, old hacky nonsense on the right.

suffice to say, all of that was practically impossible in old versions of Mari0. the old red coins were a much different beast; they were in fact regular coin tiles with a custom graphic and a region trigger attached to several stage entities that would adjust the timer and track collection. there was no way to make the coins move from their spot, and no way to "precollect" them from checkpoints – meaning no checkpoints in remixes AT ALL.

worse still, those old red coins were very challenging just to add to the level in the first place. let's say i placed one already and i wanted to move it later; there's no way to just "move" the coin and the entities attached, so i'd have to delete it completely and replace each component in the new location.

on top of that, the size of the coin's hitbox is less than one tile, and the region trigger couldn't be made that small in the editor... so when i was ready to "lock in" the red coins, i would open the level in a text editor and manually adjust the size of the region triggers. yes, really. (pictured on the right is how i got "bumping" the coins below the bricks to work – the region trigger extends below the brick!)

the little orange squares over the top of the red coin show the size of the region trigger. it's tiny.

anyway, you get the point by now. the old red coins were inflexible – hard to place, hard to replace, and hard to find good places for. but i was ambitious enough that i did all that work anyway... i finished HALF of the remixes in the old version! and Applesauce Autumn is probably the best of those early attempts, because it has the least changes of them all.

most of what i did to patch up this level (besides smooth out the enemies a bit) was add things that i wanted to do in the original but couldn't, like… pre-placed Koopa shells. can you believe something that simple was impossible in older versions of Mari0???

also pictured is a star that was removed due to being too hard to reach.

adding red coin bits was also a pretty major change – those weren't possible in old versions either. the old red coin location was just floating over these bricks, just out of reach for anything but a running jump. really mean for being the first remix!

there also wasn't a koopa shell here originally. i like how the shell bounces around after it's kicked, meaning the floor here is never truly safe~

finally there's the two coins between the pipes, which had their times adjusted. in the new version, both give 20 time. in the old version, the first gives 30... and the second gives 10, which was purposefully not enough time to reach the next coin.

no old version needed, the difference is just numbers.

why did i do this? i wanted the player to puzzle out why the first one was giving way too much time and the second wasn't giving enough, with the eventual solution being to grab the one on the right first and double back for the one on the left. i wanted the player to discover this early on in the remixes... because i intended to pull a similar stunt in several remixes!!

suffice to say this did NOT survive into the final release. it's purposefully obtuse, it adds nothing to the level, and it's impossible to tell this is happening on your first time through because the coins aren't marked.

a recurring theme throughout these remixes is going to be how much more mean they used to be, because when i first made the remixes, i did not intend for anyone but the most hardcore challengers to tackle them. these weren't supposed to be for casual players; that's what the main levels were for. besides, it's not like i could add checkpoints or anything...

well, thank god i eventually could, because that got me to rethink practically all of the remixes.

Applesauce Autumn (A-1) | Retrush

Welcome back to familiar plains of bricks and pipes... with a seasonal shift! This first Red Coin Remix is crawling with Spinies, all lined up for a good old shell combo. Just watch where you kick those things!

dev commentary time! this remix was made early enough that the foreground tiles i mentioned in the main level, Saltine Sewer, were a core part of the remix as well. when i made the decision to cut them, i had to consider the implications in both levels; this kind of back-and-forth between designing the main level and the remix was pretty common!

the most important change is that the Buzzy Beetles hanging from the ceiling would spawn in behind the walls and crawl out into the open, as though they were hiding just out of view. this was a cool effect, but ultimately, axing the foreground tiles completely was more important than a cool effect in one level. so the beetle spawns were replaced with a canned animation, and i called it a day.

looks like i also changed the palette of the beetles; the black is slightly more readable on the gray walls, but the blue is significantly more readable over the dark background.

the red "graffiti" tiles that replaced the foreground tiles are of extra importance here, because the arrows point to the same locations where stars were in the main level – except the bricks are harder to see. did you notice that, in every remix, stars are always in the same locations as their main level counterpart?

the blocks are less obvious than before, but possibly more helpful.

the other big change is that the platforms and gel were in much more frustrating locations in the original version. like, what even is this nonsense? the new version is much more straightforwardly designed while still requiring the player to think about what they're doing.

between this and the old version of Marshmallow Mash-Up, i seem to have really enjoyed getting experimental with the platforms for some reason.

surprisingly, that's... all there is to go over this time! this is another one that i more or less got right when i designed it in old versions of Mari0, which should come as a surprise after everything i described in the previous dev commentary.

you might think that the remixes would have less commentary overall, considering most of the layout work went into the main levels... but i actually have a LOT to say about the rest of the remixes. these are more than just "hard mode" palette swaps, they have as much development history as anything else!

Mango Mantle (A-2) | Retrush

Located deep beneath a castle, this twisty passage features platforms and gel that try to slow your descent enough to bleed the timer dry. Don't let it get to your head, or the enemies will get a bite of you instead!

dev commentary time! Tilapia Trench is practically the poster child of remixes, to the point that i revealed this remix first and crammed it in all the trailers that i could find room for. like, a desert level that turns into an ocean? hot DAMN that's sick!! i wish i remembered what inspired the idea initially... it might as well have come to me in a vision!

have i posted this gif enough yet? no? here it is again.

unlike the 12 levels in the original plan, this one was made with remixes in mind from the get-go. that means a lot of the base layout of the level was already designed to be "punched up" in the remix, like this vertical pit that forms the centerpiece of the level. in the original the challenge is to avoid falling back into the plant at the bottom; in the remix, the eel is designed to harass you no matter how far up you are.

also love how this section has a shortcut designed to test your knowledge of standing vs running jumps...

speaking of the eels, these are a fully custom sprite! i think this might be my first character animation ever, so i'm pretty proud of what i was able to accomplish here. especially considering i chose the whole "recolored SMB1 tiles" aesthetic to avoid making my own sprites in the first place...

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

i also found some really old iterations on the eels buried deep in my screenshots folder; this first attempt was designed to be one tile wide, just like the plants (16 pixels). these don't look scary at all, they're just adorable!

nibble nibble nibble

the final eel sprites are one and a half tiles wide (24 pixels) to make them bigger and more imposing, as well as give myself more room to add detail. for the most part, though, they carry the same style as the smaller version... i knew i was on to something, i just couldn't make it fit in 16 pixels!

but getting back to the level... designing the base layout around making it remix-able means that i pretty much knew what i wanted to do the moment i started working on the remix. i wanted to focus on enemy bounces and flying gracefully over the whole level, just like you're swimming – even though you can't swim in this one.

and since i made this back in older versions of Mari0, that means i was using the old red coins... which can't move. so to build the level around enemy bounces, a lot of red coins were just floating in the middle of the screen, out of reach of a regular jump. you needed to get a running jump to reach them, or even bounce off an enemy at the right time! and if you missed, you had just a few stressful seconds to come up with a backup plan, or double back and jump again.

the first and second coins, respectively. they're too far up to grab from the ground.

this was... fine, when i wasn't designing the remixes for casual players to complete. but when i switched gears, i wanted to make it more fair for players seeing the level for the first time, while preserving the speedrun flow that i had already built the layout around.

that's when it hit me – i'm using a new red coin object, and i can do whatever i want. so i made them slowly drop into the ocean from the top of the screen!

left is the first coin, right is the second; top is the fast way, bottom is taking it slow.

it took a little work to line up the gravity so that speedruns collect them in the same places, but the result plays AMAZINGLY well and i'm really happy with how it satisfies both types of players. skilled players can grab them in style; casual players can wait for them to drop to the sea floor. it's way more forgiving and way more dynamic!

not discussed: these old cannons used to fire bullet bills underwater. they were changed to fire more cheep cheeps in the final... to feed the eels, of course.

in the old version, some red coins were already on the sea floor to begin with, caught in little corners that were admittedly a pain to get into. the new dynamic red coins allowed me to rethink those as well, giving skilled players a chance to nab them with a jump before they land in the corners. that makes running the level even more fun!

pretty slick jump, if i do say so myself.

all in all, between the main level and the remix, i think Dijon Dunes and Tilapia Trench are among the most polished levels in all of Retrush. i really pushed my limits here – inspired themes, custom sprites, a fantastic dual-purpose layout, and then elevating the remix with dynamic red coins... definitely one of my biggest level design accomplishments 💖

Tilapia Trench (A-3) | Retrush

The fish might be swimming in this sandy reef... but you still have normal gravity! Some well-timed enemy bounces will help you catch Red Coins dropping in from the top of the level, making for a fun, dynamic run~

dev commentary time! pierogis are one of my favorite foods, but i never actually knew they existed until a couple years ago. this level was originally going to be called Brisket Boardwalk, but i switched the name to celebrate my new discovery... and to land one of the best wordplay titles in the entire mappack, of course~

since Nectarine Nocturne (the level this is a remix of) wasn't finished until this year, that means Pierogi Pier wasn't started until this year either. i had an idea of what i wanted to do with it – a daytime bridge under assault by cannons that break open paths previously accessed by portals. but until i was able to lock down the main level, i didn't really know what executing on that idea would look like.

in the very earliest iteration, i wanted to have a pirate ship in the background, to give a source for the cannon fire. but spriting a pirate ship is rather complicated, and making cannonballs smoothly transition from background to foreground is doubly so. i wanted to avoid that if i could, but i couldn't come up with better ideas... until the right inspiration came along at the right time.

this is Crust Cove from Pizza Tower, which released right around the time i started working on Pierogi Pier! the way that the cannonballs fire from the top of the screen towards targets on the ground inspired me to do Exactly That, helping me nail down the execution of the level.

in fact, it was originally going to be even more like Pizza Tower... i wanted to have a pirate Lakitu with a cannon in the foreground to complete the Pizza Tower reference! that involves more spriting, though, and at this late stage of development, i never really had time to do more than sketch it out. the sketch is kind of a small sprite and doesn't really carry the gravitas of a pirate firing at you, plus the way the cannon juts out does NOT look kosher to me...

at first i set up the cannonballs to hurt you on their way down – this ended up being too frustrating to play, and isn't even accurate to Pizza Tower's implementation. but it's worth noting because all the strats were balanced around this, so when i removed the cannonball hitbox, that also gave the speedrun much more wiggle room!

the way that the cannonballs destroy the bridges is much, much easier to do in newer versions of Mari0. it would've technically been possible in older versions with a lot more legwork, but in newer versions it was as easy as one entity attached to a region trigger where the explosion drops. on top of that, newer versions can copy-paste these entities, which didn't work in older versions – that made it super quick to add it in as many places as possible, opening up fun shortcut opportunities!

Pierogi Pier was also going to feature more orange gel, in line with the original stage. most of it was removed because the locations were too frustrating; only two sections remain. one is around the third coin, in the same place as some orange gel in the original.

the other is an extra portal shortcut on an otherwise unused path! in fact, i forgot i put orange gel here at all – i just getting ready to write about how i wish i had put orange gel in this spot... great job, past me! though i wish i had remembered it for the "Try This!" portion of the video... oh well!

the gel, cannonball hitboxes, and a lot of mean enemy placements means that early versions of this stage were a LOT more challenging to play in general. so i'd like to give an extra special shoutout to my partner @harmonyfriends, who spent a LOT of time and patience on playtesting this stage in particular for me – it would not be nearly as good without her input!

no matter how you slice it, Pierogi Pier is a better stage for having waited until this year to make. the Pizza Tower inspiration wouldn't have existed, the base layout in Nectarine Nocturne is better for having taken its time, the stage altering mechanics were easier to put together, plus my loving playtester partner in the house with me... i'm pretty proud of how it plays, and that means i'm proud of having waited to make it too 💖

Pierogi Pier (A-4) | Retrush

BOMBS AWAY! This battered boardwalk is under assault from constant cannon fire. Stay on your toes, because the explosions will open up shortcuts – and sometimes even *destroy* them!