Level Design - Tumblr Posts

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!

dev commentary time! as far as names go, this was a hard one to pin down – especially as i was planning to use the word Espresso in a previous level name. several candidates for nouns included Bullet-Train, Getaway, Runaway, or just Train; honestly my initial ideas were all pretty weak so i'm really happy that the final name turned up eventually!

much like Toffee Tracks and Fillet Fjords before it, the custom key / door system was practically made with this level in mind. in fact, there were not enough colors of keys to replace the sheer number of Portal-style switches in this remix... so i doubled the list and added a second set! they're all the same colors, but they use different IDs under the hood.

the switches that the keys replaced were in some pretty mean locations, with the first switch being up on the ceiling – the player was expected to jump up, aim at the switch, and press the Use key to open the door, all before falling back down. pretty gnarly!

early versions of the stage featured Blue Spinies instead of Sidesteppers (the crabs), which are functionally identical. i mostly did this so that they could feature in another level outside of Kiwi Keys, but the Blue Spinies were also totally revamped in Italian Iceberg (which we'll get to soon!).

all of the art changes to Toffee Tracks still apply, like the updated doors and windowsills, as well as the scrapped graffiti in the train cars. the graffiti would have used unique sprites between the main level and remix, with the remixed sprites being much more deadly!

you can also see new remix palette differences on the ground below the train cars – the old train cars just used the Toffee Tracks palette as a placeholder. but i was super lazy on remixing the palettes on these since they're animated tiles... in fact, these new ones are the very last animated tiles i added to Retrush, right before release! i like the purple i used on the wheels~

as far as layout changes, the last three train cars got the most updates. for example, the third last train car had much more sinister portal placements that once again required you to jump on the edges of portals to progress. i toned it back for the final, but honestly, i don't know how much i like this room in general...

the second last train car has a small but important change – this Koopa was moved from the windowsill to the entryway. jumping to the windowsill without touching the ground turned out to be a really awkward jump! and much like in Applesauce Autumn, i was finally able to make it just a shell instead of a whole Koopa, which smooths out the flow of the level.

finally, the caboose itself got a pretty major re-route. in the old versions, you would enter the caboose from the bottom instead of the top. this also felt really awkward, though, because it was hard to get past the Goombas inside in a timely manner; the portal acts as a sort of funnel that narrows the space you have to jump on them.

jumping in through the top is much more momentum focused, with the intent for most players to fling right into the red coin before falling on the Goombas below. i hoped that any players that missed would be able to surf on the Goombas for a bit and catch their bearings... but despite my testing, it turns out this is not always safe! more of my playtesters died right at the end than i expected by missing the momentum fling and subsequently dying to the Goombas out of panic. sadly i didn't have time to fix this before launch, oops...

so yeah, there's been quite a few changes to smooth out this level over the years! but honestly, what truly defines Espresso Express... is what didn't change.

you know how the layout loops back on itself and you have to leave a red coin behind? in truth, this is a remnant of the old, "meaner" red coin layouts from before checkpoints were added (see also Applesauce Autumn), where the player was expected to strategize and ration out their red coins in some places, or grab them out of order.

the fact that the red coins are not labelled makes it hard for first-time players to understand what's going on. most players will grab both coins immediately when they see them, then run out of time long before they can make actual progress. it takes a few runs to figure out why before the lightbulb moment – "OH, i can leave one of them for later!"

in truth, though, this is somewhat frustrating and not fair for first-time players. i ended up with a lot of playtester feedback about this, so i tried to make the route more straightfoward – using red coins to replace some of the keys so that the intent was more clear.

it... didn't work out. i felt like the level lost all of its soul! and the more i changed, the more changes i needed to make to smooth it out even more, until it became an unrecognizable mess. it just wasn't meant to be.

so i reverted everything back, and stuck to my guns. as much as the "leave a red coin behind" strategy doesn't work for first-time players, i feel like it adds a lot of flavor to the speedrun route that's worth preserving. besides, a lot of people really like it once they figure it out! it's just that initial frustration that's hard to smooth out.

thinking about it more, i could've made the next coin spawn in the same place after grabbing the key, instead of re-routing the whole thing. maybe show an outline where the red coin will be once the player loops back! it's a little late for that now, but hey, maybe there could be a 2.0 one day...?

Espresso Express (B-1) | Retrush

Caboose on the loose! This remixed train has new tricks and traps to make it even more labyrinthine than before. Leave a red coin behind for when the route doubles back on itself – you'll need the extra time!

dev commentary time! this remix is probably the most radically changed from its main level, because the fact that you can't swim up the falls anymore makes you approach each ledge from a completely new perspective. another pretty inspired choice, all things considered!

of the two main enemies in this game, parabeetles were always planned to be in the level (even from older versions), while ninjis were the latest addition near the end of development. but... ninjis are pretty low-tech and would have been pretty easy to do in older versions, while parabeetles were next to impossible! how were the parabeetles in the game first?

as a refresher, enemies in Mari0 aren't made from custom code; they use pre-built behaviors. older versions especially were very limited – if a behavior didn't exist, the enemy could not do it, full stop. in other words, i could make an enemy that flies back and forth... but i couldn't make it carry Mario. so the very first versions of Parabeetles would slide out from underneath you!

this was obviously not what i wanted, but there was no way to carry the player. nevertheless, i sketched out the entire remix like this, and was able to clear it consistently in one try, even as i had to balance on their backs while they moved around. i really don't know how i was able to stand this...

anyway! the next step was to come up with some hack to make the parabeetles carry the player. what i came up with was to stack the parabeetles on top of a platform, with both synced up to the same flight cycle. it looked a little silly, but hey, it worked! this is what the level looked like for the vast majority of its life.

finally, once i came back to working on Retrush in a newer version of Mari0, i was able to make the parabeetles come to life with a new behavior that gives it "platform" collision, carrying the player back and forth. a mechanic years in the making!

circling back to the ninjis, they were added pretty close to the end of Retrush's development cycle. i made them for another level and i needed a good first level to introduce them in, so i snuck them in here! though i also used them to replace a hazard that was removed from the level for being too obtuse...

you know how, in Kolache Keep, the bridges used to get hot and kill on contact? back when that was still a mechanic, it carried over to this level as well. so the bridges underneath each lava fall would be timed hazards to avoid!

much like with Kolache Keep, the mechanic was removed for being too frustrating. but this was especially frustrating with Fondue Furnace, as the affected bridges were very small, hard to see, and only kill sometimes – so my playtesters often couldn't even tell what killed them. not a good impression!

the way i used ninjis to replace them varied per section, but here's an example with the first red coin; you have to sneak under a semisolid bridge to reach it. in the old version, the bridge would get hot and keep you from getting in. in the new version, the ninji blocks your path. but in both versions, with good timing on the cycle, you can run right underneath and slip past!

even with all of these changes, it still keeps the original level's speedrun flow as much as possible. truth be told, the original level turned out surprisingly well – even though i was fighting against the game's own mechanics to make it. i had a vision, and i wanted to see it through! it took a while to really come to life, but that just makes it one of the better remixes in my eyes~

Fondue Furnace (B-2) | Retrush

No swimsuit in the world would survive these lava falls! You'll have to platform to the top the old-fashioned way. The Parabeetles will give you a lift, if you can keep your balance on their little shells!

dev commentary time! much like Vinegar Void, Honeydew Heights was originally going to feature a lot more purple gel. unfortunately, a major regression between older and newer versions of Mari0 means that purple gel no longer works as well as it once did – specifically purple gel on walls – so i had to cut way, WAY back on it.

unlike Vinegar Void, however, cutting back on this one hit me especially hard. i had a lot of really brain-bending ideas for gravitational shenanigans, and i was loathe to let most of them go!

this first section is pretty basic and probably better for being re-routed – the original had purple gel slathered everywhere, making it easy to slip off the bottom and die. the new version is much simpler, more straightforward about where to go and how to get there.

most of the stage after that is pretty much the same... but after the checkpoint, things start to go WAY off the rails.

let's start with this section, where i cut the floor entirely and expected the player to jump up to the ceiling from the wall. it certainly makes the whole thing more tense! i think i like the new version better overall, but the old one leads into something unique...

...that being this little U-turn at the end! the player would fall up to the ceiling and have to loop around the left wall back to the floor. i really liked this and wish it could've worked somehow ;-;

once you get past the U-turn, the entire route is RADICALLY different from the final. in the old version, a jump from the ceiling takes you up the left wall and into a corner for a big leap under the next platform.

from there, you would climb up the pipes to land back on the floor, while dodging the Jumping Piranha Plant to reach the last section of the level. isn't that super cool???

...okay, in truth, this route probably would've been way too confusing for people to figure out on a time limit. but i LOVE how it subverts the straightforward paths of the original level, and i was so sad that it had to be cut for technical reasons. i would've much preferred trying to smooth it out than having to cut it entirely!

oh well... at least my original vision can live on here in this post!

Honeydew Heights (B-3) | Retrush

This horizontal stage has surprising verticality, with purple gel to reverse your gravity and Piranha Plants that leap from their pipes! You'll definitely want to stay on the ceiling to avoid swarms of Spinies...

dev commentary time! in contrast to the previous post about Honeydew Heights, which had to be altered from its vision in older versions of Mari0, Vegetable Vat is a level that could only exist in newer versions of the game. i didn't really have a strong vision of the level until this year!

to start with, it was hard to even pick a palette for the remix – very few of the palettes i had available (most from SMB1) fit the level in any capacity. the best i could come up with was a black-and-white "Game Boy throwback" level, which didn't really lend itself to unique ideas (or bright flashing Red Coins, for that matter).

another idea i came up with pretty late was to invert the Game Boy palette for a kind of "vectorized" version of the level, which i sadly don't have a screenshot of. it's a cool design concept, but again, not a very strong vision... though it might've been fun if the water wasn't swimmable anymore!

what i did finally have a strong vision of was to riff on Chemical Plant, so i pulled up an NES palette (FCEUX for you nerds) and put together a custom purple palette that didn't exist in the original SMB1. it's not a stark contrast to the original level like Fondue Furnace or Tilapia Trench, but hey, it gets the job done!

the two main gimmicks of Vegetable Vat – that being the Bone Fish and the leaking ceilings – would have been very challenging to do in older versions of Mari0. normally i try not to get into the technical details too much, but let's talk through it for a moment...

the Bone Fish themselves might be the most technical custom enemy in the entire mappack, with obscure features that most players probably haven't encountered whatsoever! first off, they can tell whether they're in water or not and update their gravity accordingly, which was not possible in old versions of Mari0.

this means they can leap out of the water and break when they hit the ground. then, if you use portals to put them back in the water, they re-animate and start swimming again! i think that could've technically been done in older versions, but it would've been much more challenging.

finally, a bit of polish that no one notices but would be blatantly impossible in older versions: if the Bone Fish is falling fast into the water, once it drops in it will decelerate back to its normal speed. without being able to do that, it probably would've looked a bit like this:

as for the water leaks, those were less of a technical problem and more of an editor problem. i could've done this in older versions with another animated tile, but it would've been static, unmoving water with no cycling animation; new versions have a "Tile Tool" that can replace tiles with other tiles – such as, say, an animated waterfall.

linking them up to fall in organically is done with a series of delays hooked up to a tile tool on each row. if i had done this in old versions of the game, i would've had to slowly, manually link each object up in sequence, for every row of every single waterfall. boring!!

new versions of Mari0 have a "Link Tool" that allowed me to quickly link everything up in a few clicks. this made it easy to add as many leaking waterfalls as i wanted without much of a fuss!

the leaks are more than just a setpiece, too – the water slows you down if the leaks catch up with you. so for speedruns, you're incentivized to outrun the leaks! that makes it a very dynamic course.

i feel like it's maybe a little on the hard side overall, but i love the ideas in this remix and i'm glad i was able to learn and utilize some new tricks to enhance it ✨

Vegetable Vat (B-4) | Retrush

The only thing more dangerous than the harsh chemicals in this remix... are the Bone Fish that thrive in it. Watch out for leaks that spring from the ceiling, which can slow you down and let even more enemies drop in!

dev commentary time! i think, out of all the remixes, i've spent the most hours testing and re-testing this one. the original iterations of the level had much meaner enemy placements with much tighter enemy behaviors, and i would stub my toes a lot on little rough patches over and over again. sanding it off was a bit of a pain!

one major change that really smoothed things out was the very first red coin. in new versions of Mari0, i was able to add red coin bits where the corresponding star shards were in Fillet Fjords – which is a fun throwback! but in older versions of the game, red coin bits did not and could not exist. so where was the red coin?

...under this overhang, past the water. obviously! (?????)

talk about using every nook and cranny.

getting in and out of here quickly was really tight and involved bouncing off the cheep cheep at just the right time. then, if you did it fast enough, you could slip past the eel and keep going!

...if you did all the tricks correctly. if you didn't, you'd have to slowly swim across and stop to wait for the eel. not fun!!

getting to lean in on the Star Shard / Red Coin Bit dichotomy really improved things across the board.

switching to the red coin bits was a significant improvement and makes good use of this area that you'd otherwise just run past. much more freeform, and much, much less frustrating!

the numbers here show how much time each red coin gives.

do you remember back when i discussed Applesauce Autumn and the fact that two coins were meant to be collected out of order, because the second one didn't give enough time? this level is another case of that. the first double key section has two red coins, and it used to be that the leftmost coin gave 40 time, while the rightmost coin gave 20. and once again, the rightmost coin's 20 time (8 real seconds) was purposefully not enough time to reach the next coin. evil!!!

the eel was timed specifically for this route.

in fact, the intended speedrun route to collect the rightmost coin first was to go under the water to get past the eel quickly. this is a little easier than in Fillet Fjords since there's no fish in the way, but a coconut does drop in too close for comfort!

the whole thing is just too much to expect of anyone and i don't know why i did this at all. so when i revisited the stage last year i simply changed the coins to both give 40 time and called it a day! it's a lot more time than it used to be overall, but i think this was the right call – i've seen plenty of players who barely make it to the next coin even with the extra time.

by the way, i had to stitch these screenshots together to get two right click menus on the screen at once.

oddly, the other double key section was not set up like this; both coins here always gave 30 time, so you can collect them in whatever order. seems like i had an inkling by this point that maybe the first one was too mean to do twice...!

speaking of this section, here's a weird technical tidbit – the coconuts fall when you get close to them, and grabbing this red coin is technically close enough to trigger the coconut on the outside. i had to make a second version of the coconut with a smaller trigger region on it, just to ensure it didn't drop early!

the purple region shows the trigger radius for the coconut. note how the old version (on the left) overlaps the red coin.

even after smoothing it out, i think this is one of the levels that most benefits from the addition of checkpoints. remember, that used to be impossible on a technical level! in early versions you were expected to do this entire level, with the time switcheroo, all in one go. i don't think most casual players would have had the patience... especially since this is one of the longer ones!

so i'm glad i was finally able to add checkpoints – it means all that time spent testing it and smoothing it out was for a good cause.

Kiwi Keys (C-1) | Retrush

These beaches are no place for a suntan – not when there's fish, crabs, and eels chasing you from island to island. Even the coconuts explode! This is where the remixes really start to ratchet up the difficulty…

dev commentary time! this may not be common knowledge, but italians are not actually a food. it turns out there aren't a lot of foods that start with the letter i! most are compound words or phrases, and the few remaining ones don't go well with the level's aesthetic (or are straight up redundant). Italian Iceberg is a way of incorporating one of the phrases as a fun wordplay on one of my favorite desserts, italian ice!

you may remember how several of the main stages needed major updates because they were hot garbage... most of the remixes did not need such sweeping changes because they were made much later. well, this one was some Cold Garbage in old versions, and it was completely reworked from the ground up before i released the second demo on Christmas 2022.

Blue Spinies vs. Spike Tops. take special note of the Spike Top in the bottom right, attached to the wall.

first up: you know how the Spike Top enemies climb all over the walls and ceilings? climbing around like that was impossible in old versions of the game. the original stage instead had Blue Spinies on the ground and ceiling, which for the most part stayed locked in their little nooks and didn't go anywhere.

icicle placements, before and after. note the group of icicles in the new version.

the icicles, too, were mostly positioned so that they would kill the player... and not clear out the Spinies. so there were unkillable Spinies in dangerous nooks, icicles in inconvenient places, and of course flashing death tiles everywhere! i don't know about you, but to me, that sounds like a recipe for F-U-N... without the N.

additionally: in the final, the doors are frozen over, and you instead open up portals on the pipes that take you around the doors. in the original the same general idea still applied, but the portals were much further apart.

much,

much,

MUCH further apart.

the doors are opened by the red coins in the final, but in the original they were opened by separate switches. the red coins would be found along the route... and grabbing them too early would purposefully not give you enough time. you had to grab them after hitting the switch, on your way back to the portal, in order to have enough time on the clock.

oh and there was no checkpoint. for technical reasons, just like all the remixes used to be.

...now that i've properly conveyed the horrors of the original stage: somehow, some way, i was able to beat this stage often enough to say "yeah this is a good stage, let's mark it complete." i don't really know how or why??? i definitely can't do it consistently these days. to be honest, just getting the gifs above was kind of a pain in the ass!

so when it came time to put the second demo together last year, i knew this level was NOT in any state to release. but i was already exhausted enough from converting Retrush to a later version of Mari0! how was i going to find the motivation to go back to the drawing board on this stage?

well, honestly, i still don't know how i found the motivation. i just know i redid the whole level in a single evening, and it came out almost exactly right on the first try!

in fact, of all the other levels i've mentioned having to redo to bring them up to par? this was the first. i needed it for the second demo, after all!

redoing it in one evening was proof that i could still salvage the other levels. that i still had my level design chops. that i could still do this even working full-time. that i could finish Retrush and finally close this chapter of my life.

and i am so, SO glad i did.

Italian Iceberg (C-2) | Retrush

This glistening glacier is kept frozen by patches of painful permafrost. The Spike Tops crawling all over are the only things hardy enough to withstand this climate – use the falling icicles to clear them out!

dev commentary time! Nougat Nimbus was a challenge to put together. like, you've read the story about Oregano Oak and how much iteration that one went through, and this is kind of an extension of that same story...

let's start with the basics: i couldn't work on Nougat Nimbus at all until Oregano Oak was done. i didn't even know what Oregano Oak was going to look like until this year! so when it came time to start working on this one, i was working with a clean slate; i had no backlogged ideas, save that it was going to be a cloudy level with lightning strikes. that's not exactly my most well-formed vision.

this section of the main level's layout was purpose built with remixing in mind.

as i iterated on the concept and came up with several additions to the level – disappearing cloud platforms, Jumping Piranha Plants, flying red coins – i noticed i was able to put together a few well-formed sections, but the rest was strung together with boring fluff and filler. i was just adding things that fit each area, rather than purpose-building new mechanics to fit the overall theme. in other words, the additions i was making to the level weren't really made for the level... if that makes sense?

why are the Spike Tops even here, thematically? they live in caves!

so i kept digging through my toys and adding things that fit the areas better – Ninjis, Spike Tops, Paratroopas, even more lightning – until the entire level was a hodgepodge of random garbage with no coherent flow whatsoever. no matter how much i tried, i couldn't find that golden speedrun flow i wanted! and i had half a mind to restart it from scratch several times.

okay, that's a LOT of elements for one screen.

normally when i'm making these levels, i pick out a handful of enemies and mechanics to fit the theme; usually the sweet spot is three or four total, which i iterate on over the course of the level. but by this point, i had seven! and each group of mechanics was siloed in its own little sections, swapping back and forth over the course of the level. this is Not Ideal.

so i took a break from it for a bit and asked my partner @harmonyfriends to play it and give her input. i was a little terrified that she would hate it as much as i did, because that would mean i would have to go back to the drawing board – and i was running out of time for such a large overhaul. pretty high stakes...!

that night i had her play two levels: an older version of Pierogi Pier, which i felt confident was a fun level, and this one, which i was really anxious about. but in stark contrast to my expectations, she hated the old version of Pierogi Pier, and was pleasantly surprised with this level and how good it was. what???

her input was invaluable for getting the rough edges smoothed off this stage, but in truth, there were not many rough edges to begin with. it turns out i kind of invented a problem in my head and chased it for a week straight... when there was no problem to begin with.

this skip is called the "Lightningrod Jump" and it skips having to go the long way around on the right.

i still polished the heck out of this level up to release – i moved a lot of the enemies around so that those groupings weren't so obvious, and i tried to chase that speedrun magic i was looking for. there are bits and pieces i snuck in that i really like, such as the lightning jump at the end! but honestly, even now, i'm still not 100% happy with the way the speedrun flows.

but, hey, it's a pretty good level in the end. and that's all it needs to be!

Nougat Nimbus (C-3) | Retrush #Mari0

Watch for flashes of lightning in this torrential thunderhead! The clouds here often disappear into the background, leaving you with fewer footholds. The Ninjis that live here seem to take that as a challenge...

dev commentary time! speaking of levels that didn't have a clear vision, Durian Drainway may just top the list. the only clear vision i had going for it is "the opposite of Fondue Furnace" – which is to say, all the lava in the main level (Kolache Keep) turns into waterfalls instead that you can swim through.

except, uh, you can't swim through the waterfalls in the final. because it was dreadfully boring.

this is from right after i copied the old Kolache Keep to remix and replaced some of the tiles as a mockup of sorts.

i don't think i even purposefully saved the remix for this year; i know i wanted to work on it early on. i just couldn't come up with any way to make the waterfalls any fun! every time i thought about working on this level and pulled it up to poke around at, i would bore myself to tears and go work on something else.

but when i had finished working on all the other remixes up to this one, i could no longer procrastinate on it. i had to figure out how to make this work. and the only thing i could come up with was to disable the waterfalls, because... well, what else am i gonna do with them???

bright vs. dark palettes to imply its function.

i still liked the sewer aesthetic so i kept them as waterfalls visually, but i changed the color palette so they fade back into the background and aren't obviously swimmable. once that was done, i was free to find new mechanics to fit the theme, like Rotodiscs, Buzzy Beetles, and Cheep Cheeps.

once again, the Star Shards in the main level become the blueprint for Red Coin Bits in the remix.

i laid out pretty much the entire level in one sitting and i was really proud of how it flowed! but there was still one thing missing from the equation, and that was what to do with the blasters from the original level. and i had kind of already built the entire rest of the level around them, as though they weren't there.

making them fire anything would have made it too hard; i knew that from experience with the original fire blasters. i could make them fire Cheep Cheeps, but that would be a little silly and possibly too distracting. i could make them fire little water spurts that just push you back and don't hurt you, but what if you get pushed off a cliff? that just sounds frustrating.

...so i didn't put anything there. in fact, i turned them from blasters into just... blocks! and that's how the level stayed until it was time for my beta testers to play it. maybe no one will notice?

some random pole, i guess.

no such luck. once i got playtesting feedback in, i found that one person wrote in for this level:

what's that cheeky pole doing there? doesn't really fit with the level aesthetics and distracted me from the beetle

that made me anxious, as i can't just leave them alone now. i have to justify their existence somehow! and the clock is ticking on my self-imposed release date.

so what did i do?

PROCRASTINATE!

i addressed pretty much all other feedback i got on Retrush and left this alone for as long as possible. before i knew it, it was two days before release, and i hadn't come up with anything. but the issue was still clawing at me internally!

finally i came up with a use for the Definitely Not Blasters: they could have short-range Rotodiscs attached. i think these were the final enemies i added to the entire mappack, 48 hours before release! now you have to time your jumps over the blocks, and it acts as sort of a "red light, green light" for the Buzzy Beetles overhead.

look how cute its little cycle is! adorable.

...and then i forgot to have someone playtest them until THE NIGHT BEFORE RELEASE. what if i had accidentally made the level too hard and it released in that state???

thank God my partner @harmonyfriends was there at the eleventh hour to play it for me! she got through the updated level just fine and only had trouble with a single mistimed cycle that i updated right before going to bed.

moral of the story? "don't procrastinate on your homework the day before it's due?" WRONG. the correct moral of the story is "don't plan or announce a release date until the entire project is done."

Durian Drainway (C-4) | Retrush

These sewers are surprisingly deadly, with Buzzy Beetles lining the ceilings and Rotodiscs circling the drains. Even the water isn't safe to swim in… but the cycles and spirals all align for a thrilling speedrun!

dev commentary time! one of my favorite things that i rarely see in video games is returning to "first area" vibes towards the end of the game. like how the first adventure of Kirby Super Star starts in Green Greens, and the last adventure through Milky Way Wishes starts on the grassy planet of Floria. the vibe lies somewhere between the "beginning of the last leg" and "look how far you've come" in a way that i'm super fond of!

i'm also quite fond of Floria's seasonal shift mechanic, but that's unrelated. or is it?

Coconut Canyon is my attempt at capturing this vibe – a deliberate throwback to the first world of Retrush, with an aesthetic caught somewhere between Gelato Grasslands and Dijon Dunes. a welcoming introduction to the final world, one that reminds you of how far you've come and how much more skill you've acquired along the way.

okay, yeah, the seasonal shift is definitely related inspiration.

the main level Blueberry Blizzard was done well before i put Retrush on pause in 2019, but for some reason i didn't start working on the remix until this year. when i came back to Retrush, this is one of the levels i was most excited to get to! so i did it relatively early, and got to spend a little more time polishing it than the rest.

just showcasing the three major mechanics of the level.

all three of this level's main gimmicks – Ninjis, Ukikis, and flying red coins – were tailor made for Coconut Canyon, purpose built to fit the level's vertical structure. the Ninjis and flying red coins would later be added to other levels like Nougat Nimbus, but this is where they got their start!

Ninjis were added as an enemy type that wouldn't walk off platforms. their jumps work against yours as you try to climb the canyon, but there's a handful of shortcuts you can reach by bouncing off them or running underneath with good timing!

Ukikis were added as a way to supply coconuts to the level in a way that minimizes them dropping in on your head from offscreen. i almost added a second type of Lakitu like in Watermelon Walls, but i figured this was more thematic! i tried to make my own sprite but it did NOT work out, so these are 8 bit versions of the sprite from Yoshi's Island instead.

turns out it converts quite well to 8-bit!

as with most of the remixes, the early versions of Coconut Canyon were tougher than they needed to be; unlike with the other remixes, all i needed to do to fix it was tweak the timing! since i made these enemies relatively late, i was able to add a bunch of settings for timing each Ninji's jump cycle or Ukiki's coconut toss arc. this is another way i was able to purpose-build elements and cycles to fit the scene.

ukikis have two timing cycles that alternate throwing coconuts.

settings for Ukikis (left) and Ninjis (right). "offset" refers to the timing cycle.

the last thing i want to touch on is this section of red coin bits – unlike other coin bits that are based on Star Shards, this one was added to the remix and then backported as Star Shards to the main level. in old versions of Blueberry Blizzard, this entire area used to be empty! it's always fun getting to go back in time and add things that couldn't exist in old versions ✨

pictured on the right is the comparison between new (top) and old (bottom) Blueberry Blizzard.

Coconut Canyon (D-1) | Retrush

Bad monkeys! The explosive coconuts they throw make these thin platforms ever more dangerous. Don't forget the Ninjis hopping around – you can slip underneath them with good timing, or even bounce from their heads!

dev commentary time! let's address the elephant in the room: this level kinda sucks. nobody likes solving mazes and misdirection under a time limit. it's the only level in Retrush that i am straight up not proud of, and if i ever make a Retrush 2.0 i would want to completely overhaul the whole thing.

but an apology would make for a boring developer commentary, you know? so let's talk about how we got here and how it shipped in this state. hint: this level used to be a lot worse.

✨ computer colors my beloved ✨

first let's start with something i am proud of! i love the palette choices in Starfruit Scanlines and how they play off the original level. the platforms in Earl-Grey Electricity are Red Green Blue (RGB), so the remix takes it a step further with a throwback to CGA colors (Cyan Pink White). it's a clever aesthetic remix!

the structure of the original level is built out as a big maze using portals, one whose layout is purpose built to be misdirecting without being frustrating. the remix, then, no longer has a purpose built layout, instead reusing and remixing what already exists.

unfortunately for me, this activates a Specific Part Of My Brain.

does this even qualify as a maze?

most of y'all know the story by this point: i've been making mazes since i was nine years old, and it's a core part of my online identity as Skysometric. back when i didn't have access to level editors and game engines, i would instead draw mazes to scratch that same itch, and i filled multiple graph paper journals cover-to-cover over the years.

some of these mazes were practically Sonic levels with unique gimmicks and layouts! zones full of vines and collapsing bridges, crystal caves with dynamic water and breakable gemstones, abstract music based worlds with guitar amps and bouncy visualizer platforms and volume knobs that affect every single stage element. some of these are unbelievably clever for being, what, 14 when i made them?

seriously i have dozens of these things – some even bigger than this! in true ADHD fashion, most of them went unfinished.

in order to get the most out of these levels, i would typically strive to fill out every single square of the grid – lest the level feel short or unfulfilling. that means i tried to use up every ounce of space for something, like a bonus room with a Chaos Emerald or a gratuitous speed booster section with teleporters.

note the highlighted sections that use up extra space – the red sections served as teleporter redirects, while the purple one is a "Gotta Go Fast" U-turn.

of course, when i got access to actual level editors like Mari0, i no longer needed to draw out levels on graph paper – now i can just make whatever i want. but as i rediscovered replaying my very first mappack on stream, i never totally kicked the maze habit... more specifically, i never stopped filling every single nook and cranny.

that brings us back to this maze-like level layout that i need to remix, full of nooks and crannies.

thank goodness i added those portal location indicators i mentioned in the base level, or this would be a lot worse!

the original version of this remix truly does use every single box in the level in some way. nowhere is this more obvious than the middle section, which used to be much more complicated; the old version uses multiple extra rectangles, including one that hangs over a pit! and a lot of the stage elements used to accomplish this were just Nonsense. this was significantly simplified for the final – but it still redirects you into a previous rectangle where a Red Coin is waiting.

old on top, new on bottom. look at how absurd this is. what is with those light bridges, anyway?

even the first section of the level (below) used to make use of an extra rectangle, as a trick jump from a moving platform into an aerial U-turn. and if you miss, you drop right into a pit! in the final i just cut the U-turn out entirely for being way too mean.

i managed to land right back on the platform when i missed the first jump, which is great for showcasing how ridiculous this is. most players wouldn't get so lucky.

it doesn't help that the majority of this level was laid out before i took a break in 2019, meaning most of what i described was intended to be this evil – just like the old versions of Kiwi Keys and Italian Iceberg.

...the best way i can describe it is that this level was kind of a liability from the start. each time somebody playtested it, there would be major complaints to address. i would fix those complaints, somebody else would playtest it, there would be more complaints... and instead of focusing on the bigger picture, i mostly laser focused on the individual comments.

sadly, it did not occur to me that this level might need to be rebooted until it was too close to release for me to have time for a full overhaul. all of my playtesters universally rated it their least favorite remix by a mile, but the deadline was rapidly approaching – i had no choice but to smooth over some rough patches and let it go.

in the old version, the platform was small enough to slide all the way under the overhang, leaving the player no room to stand on. blessedly, a playtester rightfully called this out.

my perfectionist attitude has a tendency to take over in these situations, but lately i try to live by the words of a wise Tumblr post reminding me that "90% is still an A; strive for 90% instead of 100%."

i released Starfruit Scalines in the hopes that it would be good enough to qualify for that 90% grace. instead, it is enough to sour the final world for many players, and rob them of their patience to tackle the final two levels... a misstep at a critical point in the cadence of the mappack. it's unfortunate, but it is what it is.

maybe one day i'll get to address it in a 2.0, or use this story as a cautionary tale for an actual game; but until then, it's just a mappack, and i'm allowed to make critical mistakes. a nine-year-long mappack, but a mappack nonetheless.

Starfruit Scanlines (D-2) | Retrush

As if this diabolical maze couldn't get any worse, the remix is even more confusing than ever. It's not so bad once you learn the routes, but this might be the toughest level for most casual players!

dev commentary returns! look, i was legally obligated to go for the rainbow road thing, okay? even calling it Raspberry Rainbow was a purposeful candy-themed callback to make it as sweet and indulgent as possible. not to mention the choice of music – Bulby has done 8-bit covers of pretty much every Rainbow Road out there, but i felt this one (from Mario Kart 8) was the best fit for a hyped up sugar rush space race!

since Vinegar Void was finished so early, Raspberry Rainbow was one of the first remixes i started on, mostly to nail down the custom palette for the blocks – the main level's alternating gray blocks gave me exactly six colors worth of room to fill out with a rainbow pattern. it was challenging to find a way to fit all six colors in order using NES limitations and still have it look good, but i think the results speak for themselves!

honestly? screenshots don't do it justice. it looks way better in motion.

just like with Vinegar Void, most of my initial ideas for this level involved gratuitous use of purple gel and gravity mechanics – and when i updated to newer versions of Mari0, i had to scrap most of those dreams. i did get to try a few wacky layouts though… like this gravity loop made of fading paths!

on a technical level, this loop is one of the wackiest things i've ever made. why does the purple gel float in the air like that?

just like with Sonic, the idea is that you'd jump in from the left and make your way around the loop to the top where the red coin is, then come out the right side. it looks cool and it sounds cool on paper, but it had way too many side effects – namely, that it's hard to get in and out of the loop, and it's hard to keep your balance once you're in the loop. so even if i could use as much purple gel as i wanted, this probably wouldn't have made it to the final anyway!

there's no loop like this in Vinegar Void, so adding a loop would've been a pretty radical reinvention of the layout… even though the point of the remixes is to keep the same layout. but the idea is that i'd pretend those fading paths were objects instead of tiles, with the intent to replace all of the existing fading paths with new ones for the remix. really this is just a lot of internal rules nonsense to justify the use of more ridiculous fading paths than the base level has.

but that didn't actually work out! it turns out the existing fading paths are really technical and hard to replace. besides, preserving as much of the base layout as possible helps the player know where they're going and what they're doing when they, you know, can't see the paths half the time. so i made only minor adjustments to some areas and left most of the fading paths untouched! (which is a lesson i wish i'd learned in time for Starfruit Scanlines…)

similar layouts, but one is fruit punch flavor.

speaking of minor adjustments, this level has one of my favorite examples of minor adjustments in the entire mappack! when i first asked @harmonyfriends to playtest the level for me, she got stuck at the section below, with the star shards / red coin bits – it was too hard to get through the fading paths. this wasn't a problem with the main level, just the remix… even though the section is nearly identical. the only difference is that you are required to get the red coin bits, whereas you're not required to get the star shards.

i watched my partner struggle a lot with this section, ultimately deciding to give up with the attempt... and i immediately knew how to fix it. i made just ONE minor adjustment – moving a single red coin bit from a lower step to a higher step. can you spot the difference?

i asked her to play it again… and she breezed through the same section without a sweat, just because i moved that one piece. how is that possible?

well, moving that one red coin bit completely changes the way that the player approaches the fading paths! when it's on the lower step, the fastest way to the next red coin bit involves jumping up through the fading path, which is a little finnicky in this game's physics engine. by moving the coin bit, i moved the player's line of focus – now the next coin bit is across from the player, and they can simply jump over to the next platform!

old path on the left, new path on the right.

i am so proud of this little change… these are the little things i've learned to spot in ten years of working with level design! this is the culmination of all my time working on Retrush and beyond! i'm far from perfect but i've come so far, and i love being able to see that reflected in real time ✨

Raspberry Rainbow (D-3) | Retrush

A radiant run through space with even more colorful lights flying by to cheer you on! Wait, those are lasers. Wait, that's a LOT of lasers holy frick

dev commentary time! the ultimate final challenge of Retrush is itself a remix of remixes, where every single mashed-up tile from Marshmallow Mash-Up was updated to use the remixed palettes from their respective levels. it was a massive undertaking! and it could only have started once i had finished every single other remix and locked down their respective designs. no ADHD pinballing here – for once in my life, the grand finale was the very last level created for the mappack!

of course, that didn't stop me from daydreaming about it over several years… but i didn't really have that strong of a vision for the level. the only thing i knew is that i would make the player traverse the whole thing, with no teleportation skips. but i also knew that would make it take longer than 50 in-game seconds to clear each section… maybe these red coins would give you more than the maximum amount of time? and maybe there would be some kind of boss involved…

in the original level, touching the pink flag on the left skips this entire section in a quick transition to the next mash-up. in the remix, the red coins are located within the transitions, and you have to go through each one on foot.

it wasn't until i returned to working on Marshmallow Mash-Up that i finally locked down the major idea of its remix: the corruption wall at the end of the main level should instead chase the player through the whole remix. that meant that it would need to be a straight shot, with as few stops and u-turns as possible – so i designed the base level around this, hoping that the remix would be able to take the idea and run with it (so to speak).

originally, the corruption would chase you from the very beginning. there was a whole opening event to force Mario to run for the first second. it was needlessly complicated.

the original idea was that the corruption wall would chase the player the whole time. grabbing a red coin would push it back a bit, but otherwise it would always be there at the edge of the screen, chasing you down. this turned out to be really hard to implement, due to some strange limitations with Mari0's custom enemy system… long story short, i couldn't wrangle it to slow down properly when it was chasing you in screen-space, and i couldn't find a good balance for how fast it was chasing you in world-space across the entire level. multiply that by the fact that the timer felt superfluous, since something was already chasing you the whole time – and i just couldn't get the level to feel cohesive!

early test of the corruption wall. notice how the corruption suddenly speeds up the moment Mario trips over a block momentarily. this is an odd side effect of one of the game's custom enemy movement options, and it's what we in the biz call Not Cool.

luckily, this is where that Pizza Tower inspiration from before came in extra handy.

footage courtesy of this absolutely incredible run by Derpyfailz.

during the escape sequence in each of Pizza Tower's levels, there's a timer pushing the player to the end as fast as possible. unlike in Retrush, the timer doesn't kill you when it runs out; instead, it spawns a boss that chases you around at top speed. it has a VERY high probability of killing casual players, but clever speedrunners can outrun it to squeeze in an extra bit of time during score attacks.

ready or not, once the timer hits 0, the corruption wall spawns.

Wasabi Wrap-Up apes this system to spawn the corruption wall when the timer reaches 0, and push it back once the player gets another red coin. remember that each of these sections is too long to take all 50 in-game seconds… and that means the corruption wall always spawns towards the end of each section! it makes for a fantastic push-and-pull: first you outrun the timer to spawn the corruption as late as possible, then you outrun the corruption itself – which is always possible, no matter how early it spawns – and finally, you get the relief of watching it push back with each red coin.

this also made it a lot more fun to balance the speed of the corruption wall itself! i decided to spawn it in game-space, moving just a bit slower than Mario's top running speed… then slowly ramp up over the next few seconds until it matches Mario's running speed exactly. in other words, early on you can afford to make mistakes and still outrun the wall, but if you take too long then there's no way to gain ground – every mistake counts.

as the corruption gets faster, each mistake leaves less and less room to recover.

and that just covers the main mechanic of Wasabi Wrap-Up… as a remix of Marshmallow Mash-Up, this level contains all of the corrupted elements and fake-outs that the original level does – and as a remix of remixes, it contains all of the custom enemies and mechanics added to the other remixes! it was INCREDIBLY tough to balance all this against the push-and-pull of being chased, and honestly, it turned out to be much harder than i was hoping.

…possibly too hard. i wanted to push the player's limits! and i may have ended up pushing their patience instead.

for one thing, all of the remixed levels only have one checkpoint… except this one! it has three checkpoints, one for every two major sections. it's more generous than the other remixes, but dying right before a checkpoint still bites – and the corruption wall is timed to show up at the end of each section, right before the checkpoint. oops!

additionally, not all of the level is as straightforward as i'd have liked it to be, considering it's a long chase sequence; there were always shortcuts for speedrunners that make it possible to never let go of right on the d-pad, but not every player can pull those off. the most egregious sections have pre-placed portals to take the edge off, but in one case, that simply wasn't enough.

the train car below went through several iterations in playtesting – originally, jumping on the right side platform would launch the player via faithplates and blue gel across to the next train car. but my playtesters got stuck on the roof one too many times, so i had to use portals instead! the problem is that these portals are placed way too far apart… if the corruption wall is chasing you, the portal might just drop you straight into the corruption, killing your run instantly.

on the left is the beta version, on the right is the final release. on top is what it looks like to succeed… below that is what it looks like to fail.

really, most of the deaths in this level can be narrowed down to a handful of places like this one. either a specific group of enemies are too targeted and the player isn't able to react in time, or the final chase from the corruption wall right in front of the red coin is too tough. difficulty via death by a thousand cuts!

all of my playtesters spent at least half an hour on this level alone, and even after making tons of tweaks to smooth things out before release, @notquiteapex still took half an hour on this level in his launch stream of the mappack. there's no denying it: this level is too hard.

but it brought to the world this incredible moment that i completely forgot about until now. thank you apex

honestly, with more time spent playtesting, i think this would've come out perfect…! but i didn't have that luxury, since this was the very last level added to the mappack by necessity. i spent nine years replaying all of the previous levels on my own time, but i only had about a month with this one before release, and most of that time was spent refining the timing of the corruption wall.

frankly, i don't even think this level is particularly egregious – it isn't a complete attrition drain like a certain other level, it just takes a long time to conquer. if anything, i aimed for a specific mark in pushing the player's limits, and i don't think i quite nailed it… but hey, in all my years of designing levels, i've never tried to design a difficulty curve quite like this! the fact that i came close to my mark counts for something, and i get to take what i've learned and apply it towards future levels like this. long story short, i feel much more confident in designing challenging levels now that i have this experience! ✨

the last thing i want to share is that there's a secret message at the end of the level! by clearing either Marshmallow Mash-Up or Wasabi Wrap-Up without checkpoints, the level will acknowledge your achievement with a special message. but Wasabi Wrap-Up has another special message – by clearing the level so fast that the timer never runs out. i've never done it myself, all i know is it has to be done with portals… it might even need to be tool assisted. anyone up for a challenge?

Wasabi Wrap-Up (D-4) | Retrush

The longest and most challenging speedrun of the whole pack! The coins in this level spawn a wave of corruption to chase you when the timer runs out. Keep moving and let your confidence carry you to the finish line!

dev commentary time! yes, even the credits get dev commentary.

purposefully crusty, as all memes should be.

gotta be honest, i put off making the credits cutscene until the very end – not because i didn't know who all would be in the credits, but because i thought it would be challenging to time everything to the song. the original plan was to make all the credits fly in from the side on the beat, but the main credits list was too long for that, so i made it a standard credits roll instead. this greatly reduced the complexity, making it so that i could, you know, actually finish the credits in a timely manner. so it wasn't so bad!

something i learned from making this is that juggling three credits lists as live, updated documents – one of which is a pre-baked image, like this credits roll – is kind of tedious and should be avoided at all costs. i was still adding stuff at the end of development, after all! but next time i do this i think i won't bake the image until everything else is finished and the credits are finalized, and just use a placeholder instead if i need to block out the credits in advance.

internally, the entire credits roll is one single, giant "custom enemy."

the credits level itself is a plain old grassy plain, mostly to make it easy to lay out the cutscene and make sure the credits themselves took up the maximum possible real estate on screen. one potential idea i had early on was that Mario would walk back through little snippets of all the levels, but Mari0's cutscene system is too brittle for that – if Mario got stuck anywhere, he'd stop walking entirely and the camera would keep going without him! instead, this idea got repurposed for the warp zone.

speaking of the warp zone, i never did get to talk about that, did i? and there's not much else to say about the credits, they kind of speak for themselves. so let's hijack this post and talk about the making of the warp zone!

seriously i haven't thought about this meme in ages, i don't know why it came up for this post specifically.

the very earliest iteration of the warp zone, back when Retrush was just 12 levels, was a grid of horizontal pipes with some text and extra platforms. this was simply meant to be an easy way of accessing the levels after you beat the game, with no frills or extra features. the pipes were color coded using the pipes from the original level, which was a neat touch!

each world is sorted by column; worlds 2 and 3 are off to the right.

once the remixes rolled around, the idea for accessing them was that you could press a switch to push the pipe back into the wall, and then going in would take you to the remix. pipes in Mari0 are based on position, so changing where the pipe is can change where it takes you!

static images, because there's no animation for this. it would've used the same tech as the pipes at the end of each remix.

once i added an extra world, this warp zone was too small to accommodate all 16 levels, so it needed a refresh. i was envisioning a credits level around this point too, so i knew i wanted to represent the levels with little organic snippets instead of just pipes! but i procrastinated hard on updating it, since some of the levels weren't done – so the new warp zone wasn't actually started until this year.

you know how i've written a few times now that i had to redo some level or another from scratch and i was super intimidated by it, but when i actually sat down to do it i did the whole thing in a single evening? i thought this was going to be another quick refresh like that… and it ended up taking me a week straight of working on nothing but the warp zone.

first i had to lay out the main levels in each world, showcasing as much of their level design as possible in a way that flows from one to the next. this was challenging enough and probably took me two days to finish all four worlds, but i was super proud of it when i was done!

did you notice that the warp zone wraps around the edges so you can get around more quickly?

then i had to find a way to do the same for the remixes without it feeling stale. i decided that the remixes should be the same layout in reverse – and bear in mind, there's no "flip horizontally" button in the level editor. i did all this by hand, again, for all four worlds of the remixes!

sadly i couldn't time the two gifs to be in perfect sync. it's pretty close, at least.

next up was some technical work to make the pipes function. warping to a level is super simple, but having the level take you back is not natively supported by the engine; i had to add special handling for every single level that takes you back to the pipe you came in from. for the main levels, that also meant ensuring that clearing the level in a normal playthrough takes you to the next level, but clearing the level from the warp zone takes you back to the warp zone. it was no small feat!

following that, i wanted to make the warp zone for Marshmallow Mash-Up and Wasabi Wrap-Up extra special, so i made several dozen animated tiles that glitch out as you walk by, for that special touch. i did not have to do this whatsoever and it took a few more late nights than i would've preferred in order to make all the tiles, but i love how it turned out and i wouldn't have it any other way!

the tiles get a little messed up if you move around in the same place too much, but that just adds to the glitch aesthetic.

finally, i wanted to add some extras and notices to the warp zone, so i added an Options section above the lobby with a toggle for disabling checkpoints and a way to watch the credits again (which only shows up if you've already seen the credits, of course). altogether this was mostly a lot of technical polish, but it's an important part of what makes the warp zone special!

i still wish Mari0 had some kind of autosave...

and indeed, there's one important thing the warp zone and the credits have in common – that being the joy that blossomed in my heart when i finally finished them and started walking around the warp zone, or started playing through to the credits for playtesting. both times, i said out loud:

"Oh my God, this is like a real video game. Retrush is a real video game! Retrush is real!! I can't believe this is actually real and not just some random ideas floating around in my head!!!"

in other words, the warp zone and the credits are both the bow on the whole Retrush package, elevating the entire level pack beyond just a collection of levels into something truly special. so of course they get dev commentary – i'm as proud of them as i am of everything else!

Credits | Retrush

That's all, folks! Here's a list of everyone who helped make this mappack possible – it's surprisingly long! I guess that's what happens when you use so much custom music...

dev commentary time – and yes, these get commentary too! secret coins didn't exist at all in the original plan for Retrush, even after i added the remixes. they were only added this year, as one last bit of "scope creep" during the final push to finish Retrush… probably around February? so two or three months tops before its release in April.

at the time i was thinking about the red coin remixes and what the scope and purpose of 100%ing the mappack would be. i did the math in my head, and if there's 16 levels with 8 red coins, that means there's 96 red coins total, right? what if there were 4 more coins hidden in previous levels to bring the total up to 100? that'd be an easy way to count what 100% means!

…well, no, my math was WAY off. 16 levels × 8 red coins = 128 total red coins, not 96. even so, the idea of adding four secret coins stuck around, as it matches up with hiding one per world. that would add some last minute replayability!

but do i need last minute replayability? you may remember back to previous commentaries where i discussed the consequences of adding remixes and a fourth world to the scope of the mappack… notably that they're a big reason Retrush took nine years to release. why would i let myself add even more to it?? what if adding secret coins made it take even longer???

the reason i allowed myself to do this was as follows:

i'm not making any new levels or even changing their layouts. i'm just adding secret challenges, which is more of a technical thing.

i'm only doing four secret challenges. i'm not doubling the amount of content or whatever.

it's a well-formed vision. i know exactly where i want to hide them, and exactly what the reward should be.

so i allowed it, and got to work on adding the secret coins. i decided that it should be an open progression; the game doesn't tell you where to find the "mural room" with the secret coin hints until the credits roll after the final remix, but there are several ways to find it early (like clearing the last remix first). if you do find it early, the murals aren't revealed until you clear all of that world's remixes. all of this uses systems that i was already leveraging to track cleared remixes, so it had minimal technical cost.

if you get here early, the mural is obscured.

my choices for the challenges themselves were twofold: one, they should all require portals. two, they should be challenge runs that a clever player might think of on their own. i didn't always accomplish the latter, but the former is how we arrive at the first secret coin challenge: clear Nectarine Nocturne without using the pre-placed portals.

it was really hard to word the hint in a way that people would understand intuitively, without knowing what a "pre-placed portal" is. i'm still not quite sure i hit the mark.

this challenge was mostly inspired by a realization i had while finishing the level layout: you could portal around almost all of the pre-placed portals, except one – the pipe jump. at the time, i was not adding secret coins, but i did open up the top with a flashing neon light to let players go over it for potential speedrunning purposes. who knows, maybe someone would find out that going over the top is somehow faster than using the portals! i have no idea if it's faster or not, i was just… leaving the door open, so to speak.

before the secret coins existed, the dot on top of the wall was supposed to be a hint that you could go over it.

of course, once i added the secret coins, i made the challenge require going over. but the fact that this route wasn't initially designed for a secret challenge… means it's accidentally the toughest part!

the pipe on the ceiling was added near the end of development.

on our first playtest, my partner @harmonyfriends didn't realize you could just scale the wall using portals. why would that be possible? you can't do that in Portal! so i added an extra pipe for players to be able to infinite freefall and then fly over the wall, which is a much more momentum-based solution reminiscent of actual Portal puzzles… though it's pretty hard to land somewhere safe when you come back down!

but this is also the only part of the level where you have to skip two pre-placed portals, and the time is incredibly tight. first you have to figure out a way over the wall, then you have to do it in a timely enough manner to get past the second part! it's a lot to do with just 40 Mario seconds on the clock (16 real seconds), and i really wish i had bumped it up to 50 for release.

what it looks like to scale the wall... as well as the rest of the section.

for the most part, the rest of the challenge is SUPER fun and well-balanced! but it might be the hardest challenge of them all just for this one section, and that makes it extra annoying that this is the first secret coin. not a great impression!! oh well, if i ever make a 2.0 release i can easily bump up the time here.

one last thing i want to mention is how this challenge works under the hood; Mari0 has an event-based scripting system that i used to track challenges, but there's no way to tell if the player has entered a portal using this system. instead, every single portal has a region trigger inside of it… which was really hard to balance. where does it count as entering the portal? what if you put your own portal on the back side of a pre-placed one? the whole solution is really brittle… and i'm always afraid that someone is gonna get all the way to the end and not see the secret coin.

note the tiny orange rectangle in the middle-left of the pipe.

the good news is, everyone i've watched has succeeded! even when i was afraid the system would fail on me. that probably means it's fine, right?

Secret Coin 1 (Nectarine Nocturne) | Retrush

You thought we were done? Guess again – I hid one last secret after the credits roll! The first mural asks us to clear this stage without using its pre-placed portals… a daunting task!

dev commentary time! what you see here was actually the backup plan for secret coin #2. my original idea for the challenge was to clear Pineapple Pipeline without swimming in the waterfalls, by using portals to get around them and climb up the level!

unfortunately this idea required too many changes to the level, and would've been WAY too hard for players to solve. even once i added extra bridges and footholds, most of the portal tricks were too technical for casual players, so the whole idea had to be scrapped. besides, these challenges aren't supposed to require this much reworking – i'm trying not to overscope myself here!

the backup plan then was to clear a level without collecting any coins, and Watermelon Walls was the best candidate for this. it's quite an arbitrary challenge and doesn't have the intuition factor i was aiming for, but hey, i get to reuse a ton of scripting from the first secret coin!

speaking of the first secret coin, you may remember that i had to put those finnicky region triggers inside of every single pre-placed portal. this one was not nearly so involved, as i was already tracking when coins are collected – i could just hook into that.

i haven't mentioned this in the developer commentary yet, but Retrush adds extra time to the clock when you pick up coins! each coin adds one extra second to the clock – remember this is Mario seconds, which are like 0.4 real seconds, so it's really more of a small boost. but it can be a lifesaver for the tougher levels!

watch the timer and the coin counters as Mario picks up coins.

the way this works is that it watches the coin counter for any collected coins; if you have at least one coin, the game's event scripting will remove it and add one second to the clock instead. since it looks funny always having zero coins, the game instead has a second coin counter on the side of the screen using the collectibles system… which is kind of a hack, but hey, it works!

all i had to do for this challenge, then, was check if the event was fired to see if you've collected any coins. if it does, the challenge is failed and the secret coin despawns. simple as that.

way easier than placing region triggers inside of every single portal... wait, that sounds familiar.

i think my favorite part of this challenge is that i didn't alter the coin positions at ALL to make this work. most of these are even the same coin positions as they were nine years ago when i first made the level! it's kind of amazing how naturally the challenge works here, so i'm really happy with this choice.

this troll of a staircase at the beginning is possibly my favorite part of the challenge~

one last thing i want to talk about! both secret coins 1 and 2 have special handling for checkpoints. first off i had to add handling for dying and restarting from a checkpoint, which was only a small technical nightmare. but i decided to go the distance and also add handling for if you fail the challenge and restart from the previous checkpoint by dying on purpose – which was a MUCH larger feat.

this was accomplished by making the tracking variable, aptly named GoForASecret, a two-step failsafe. when you start the level from the beginning, the variable is set to 2, which starts the challenge. if you fail the challenge by collecting a coin, the variable is set to 1. at this point one of two things could happen:

if you reach the next checkpoint then the variable is set to 0, fully cancelling the secret challenge.

if you die while the variable is set to 1, it gets reset to 2 when you reload from the checkpoint, thus continuing the challenge.

it's a surprisingly robust system for how simple it is to write out! with this system in place, grabbing a coin by accident and dying before the next checkpoint will keep the challenge going, despite the fact that you grabbed a coin on the previous attempt.

so even though i wanted to keep these secret challenges from ballooning into too much extra work, i was still able to polish them up and make them fair challenges ✨

Secret Coin 2 (Watermelon Walls) | Retrush

The second secret mural asks us to complete this stage without collecting any coins. The only trouble is… This stage is full of coins that are easy to jump into by accident!

dev commentary time! every good SMB1 style level pack has a secret hidden over the top of the screen, so why would Retrush be any different? Kolache Keep was the perfect candidate for a secret challenge, because i had already planned around the possibility of players going over the top LONG before secret challenges were in the cards…

Bowser should probably patch up that roof sometime.

this section in the middle of the keep was directly inspired by a castle from SMB1 – endless platforms with a hole in the ceiling to make platforming easier. in original drafts of the level, you could just jump over the top of the screen and run past the rest of the level… boring!

the time gates each have a region trigger that i can adjust the size of for each checkpoint. normally i want this to be as large as possible, but in this case i moved the region down below the ceiling so you can't get the extra time when running across the top.

the little gap between the region trigger and the ceiling is to account for the marginal possibility of Mario falling into a portal and touching the region through the roof.

so now, when running across the top, there's not enough time to get to the exit!… for casual players. i still wanted it to be possible for speedrunners! so i fiddled with the amount of time the last checkpoint before the ceiling gives you, so that it's just a few seconds too short. but with good timing and precise portaling, a clever speedrunner could still make it across the top in time!

this is more precise than it looks!

long story short, this route was built into the level from the beginning, so i wanted to leverage it for a secret challenge. but as you can see from the gif, it was kind of… too hard. canonizing this as a secret challenge meant that i had to once again make it doable for casual players, without making it too easy.

in the long term, this solution ended up more brittle than i hoped; it's too easy to get caught on the platforms, for example.

my first thought was to set up a portal fling, so that momentum could carry the player to the goal. only problem is, there's no wall to fling from over the ceiling! i had to extend the ceiling to make it possible to fling across the top.

old vs. new. in the original SMB1, none of the ceilings reached up to the top of the screen like this, as not to obscure the HUD.

once i did… the ceiling stuck out like a sore thumb. is this too obvious? it's the only raised spot on the ceiling! it doesn't look anything like the castles from SMB1! surely someone will notice, right?

luckily, that's what playtesting is for. i handed it off to my playtesters… only to find that all of them tried to do something completely different!

hope you've enjoyed looking at the same section of the same level several times in a row~

first found by @qwerbey, the idea was to place a portal on top of the ceiling, take the normal way to reach a gate with more time on it, and then portal back to run across the ceiling with the extra time. what an incredibly clever solution!!

…that i hadn't accounted for, so it didn't work during their testing. oops!!!

once my playtesters informed me, though, i immediately rearranged the way that the challenge is handled internally to make the solution work. it's just too clever to pass up! so, now, there are three ways to complete this challenge – using brute force, a portal fling, or the time extension from a later gate. gotta love a good puzzle with multiple solutions~

the other good news is, nobody thought to use the portal fling in testing (at first), so the raised ceiling wasn't obvious after all. honestly, it was probably only obvious to me because i was used to seeing the lower ceiling for the last several years…

the takeaway here is that it's pretty hard to design a puzzle like this for players who have never seen the solution before – but the best way to get around your own designer bias is to watch people solve it and rework the solutions from there. playtesting is one of the most powerful tools a designer has!

Secret Coin 3 (Kolache Keep) | Retrush

According to the third secret mural, there's a way to clear this stage by going over the ceiling. But wait, there's not enough time on the clock to just run across! We'll have to be extra clever…

dev commentary time! have you ever wondered what's beyond the edges of the game world…? leaping over a wall that it seems you could reach, or changing the events of a game's story by skipping an obvious trap, or looking for secret areas that the NPCs talk about. sometimes the game rewards you! and sometimes the game wasn't programmed for that. but i spent a LOT of time testing various theories like those as a kid, and this challenge was my way of capturing a little bit of that magic.

the "glitched" flagpole is, of course, very intended. it uses a metric ton of the game's custom event system under the hood, which means i could add a secret challenge to it without much fuss. but a player would not have the chance to try slipping past it on their first try – it's a purposeful trap, made to look exactly like the power lines that toggle the level's fading pathways. even the flag graphic itself is disabled, and the border that stops Mario's portal gun is removed (a feature exclusive to newer versions of Mari0!).

so i love the idea of a challenge that lets you get past that trap, and circumvent the climax of the adventure! what else lies beyond the flagpole? where does it take you? maybe there's some corrupted level data, or an alternate ending…??

…well, to be honest, i didn't have a lot of time to do anything fancy! by this point in development i was cramming as much as i could before my self-imposed birthday deadline. i had to settle for a simple challenge to tie together the secret coins and call it a day. it may not be cool in execution, but at least it's cool on paper, right?

the challenge itself is an alternate take on the ending of Raspberry Rainbow, the level's remix – once i laid out the jump for the last coin, i figured that a taller version that requires portals would be a neat way to remix the remix, if you will. like a third tier challenge! if anything, Raspberry Rainbow is the player's biggest hint that there's something beyond the glitched flagpole, even before getting to the mural… though i don't think anyone ever realized that was supposed to be a hint.

like all of the secret coins, this challenge requires the portal gun. with a mouse and keyboard, it's the perfect level of pressure for the average player! but sadly, it's a little too tight for players using a controller. the angles are just too precise, the time just too short. luckily, dying behind the flagpole here resets to the checkpoint without triggering the cutscene that goes to the final level, so the player can retry without any problems… as long as they don't touch the flagpole itself.

it's not as fancy as i wanted it to be. there's no alternate ending hidden behind the flagpole or whatever. but as the last secret coin… it does lead directly to the secret ending in its own way! and that's what counts. maybe in another game, i can explore that out-of-bounds magic more thoroughly~

Secret Coin 4 (Vinegar Void) | Retrush

The final secret mural suggests that we can get past the glitchy flagpole that normally sends us to the final stage! But how do we get there, and what awaits us at the end…? Only one way to find out!

dev commentary time! every once in a while i am struck with a vision of a fully formed scene for a game, or a comic, or a video… and the vision feels so strong, looks so real, that i have to drop everything to bring it into reality. whether i have to learn new skills, or it pushes my abilities to their limits, it doesn't matter; the vision will not leave me until i have made it real. such is the nature of my adhd daydreaming curse.

most famously, if you've read all of the other dev commentaries so far, this is how the Red Coin Remixes were born – a vision of extra challenges for my silly little 12 level pack, turning it into 24 and then 32 levels as the vision iterated and grew. this was the central reason why Retrush took nine years to finish, and a cautionary tale on the dangers of scope creep.

so when i had another big vision, just two months before i intended to finally release Retrush… i was more than a little concerned!

the vision is almost exactly as you see it in the video: my oc Rivers congratulates the player at the end of a long journey, complimenting the player's confidence for having cleared every level, while a special song plays over a sunset beach scene matching the song's ambient waves. as it played and replayed in my head, it was so beautiful, so fitting… that i HAD to add it somehow. even though it was intimidating.

but why was it so intimidating? it was surely not the writing, as i knew exactly what i wanted to tell the player. nor was it the fear of overscoping myself, as i decided to limit myself to four extra secret coins. nor even was it the technical work of tracking and saving completion, a system that doesn't exist natively in Mari0 and had to be manually added via the game's event system…!

no, it was two very specific things that intimidated me most: the music, and the sprites of Rivers – both skills that i had tried and failed to cultivate in the past. but for each of these, i had a new blessing that i did not have before.

the song, Last Wave, plays at the end of OutRun, a Genesis-era arcade game with gorgeous FM synth music throughout. it's not an 8-bit NES song, though, and all of the other music in the level pack is in NES style. and no matter where i looked, no NES covers of it existed.

but i could hear it in my head…!

so my plan was twofold. worst case scenario, i could just drop the original song in – i doubt anyone would've cared too much about the style clash. but Plan A was to ask my musically talented partner @harmonyfriends to cover the song for me... in a style that she had never tried before.

and to both of our surprise, she pulled it off! she was able to split the original FM synth into its constituent parts, transcribe it in Famistudio, and arrange the song using the VRC6 expansion – the same expansion chip used by most of the other NES arrangements in Retrush. the results are absolutely incredible and they elevate the scene far beyond anything i could do on my own!

(i paid her for her work, of course~)

long story short, the first blessing i didn't have before… was my partner. long ago, when i wanted to add my own music to Retrush, i tried to do it all alone – and got just short of nowhere. now i'm not working alone anymore! i have help!

that brings us to my final magic trick: the sprites and animations for Rivers… which, by contrast, is art that i did all on my own.

see, the whole reason Retrush looks the way it does – made entirely of recolored and lightly edited tiles from the original SMB games – is that i've never really been a sprite artist. all of my level packs over the years have used existing assets from other games and artists; the most i've ever done is re-arrange them for use in Mari0's engine, or maybe edit a few pixels here and there to make them flow better or fit a specific scene. outside of that, i tried to avoid making sprites as much as possible; my few attempts at custom sprites always came out rather shoddy, in my eyes.

so when i saw the grand vision in my head… i instantly knew what the most intimidating part was. it was the prospect of making custom sprite work for Rivers.

by the time i launched the beta, i had just put together the outline for the secret ending. all the text and scripting was there, but Rivers… was not. in her place was a line of text saying "pretend that Rivers is standing here."

a little too goofy for the impact i was aiming for... though one of my playtesters said they still cried at the ending.

when my playtesters got back to me with feedback about the rest of the mappack, i got to work on tweaking the levels, adding new quality-of-life features, fixing bugs… everything other than making sprites for Rivers. i procrastinated until the last minute, as my fear very nearly got the better of me…

finally, on the last Friday before Retrush was set to release, i cleared my day and dedicated it solely to sprite work. i expected to hammer my head against the wall all day and night, only to chicken out at the last possible second, with a single, motionless, half-baked sprite of Rivers standing at the end.

instead, in three hours, i had all of this.

that's her!

see, even though it's "just" recolored SMB sprites, Retrush is the most that i've ever experimented with custom tiles and spritework. all of the animated tiles are still just heavily edited versions of existing SMB assets – but i got to experiment with different effects and styles. looking back, i can see a throughline of growth from the waterfalls in Pineapple Pipeline, to the train tracks in Toffee Tracks, up to the wave effect in Fillet Fjords… each of these is just an effect applied to an existing tile, but making these by hand helped me understand the composition of the tiles and why the effects worked to create the illusion of movement.

then, without me realizing it, my abilities grew. the Retrush logo was my first custom logo, and possibly the first custom sprite art that i ever finished and released. the custom eel sprites in Tilapia Trench were my first ever character animation. the bone fish in Vegetable Vat, while loosely based on the sprites from mario maker, are custom sprites – the first time i ever made rotated adaptations of existing sprites. my technical prowess grew without me ever noticing…

and, apparently, it was enough for me to bang out a character sheet in an afternoon.

now, that was far from the end. in fact, all the sprites above ended up going unused – because they all face right, and i need them to face left in the final. but it wasn't hard to flip the sprites, move the flower, add some more expressions…

you've seen this before, haven't you?

in doing so, i even got to attempt a full turnaround, which i used for looking towards and away from the horizon. but even this kind of technical work was more fun than frustrating, and it didn't take long for me to complete the rotation!

good day to fly a kite, by the looks of it...

also, because the wind effect only plays when facing the horizon, these front shots of the wind effect also go unused. but they were a GREAT base and a huge help for the rest of the sprite sheet…

still not 100% happy with the scrunched grin on this...? expressions in general were probably the hardest part.

one little detail i'm extra proud of is her little nervous foot shuffle. i've never animated anything like it before, and it looks great in motion!

"in celebration of the upcoming launch of Retrush, i made some Rivers sprites to use as my pfp! these turned out a lot better than my last attempt and i'm pretty proud of how far i've come as an artist 💙" — April 23rd, 2023 via Twitter.

finally, here's the promo tweet i made for using the Rivers art as my avatar… i almost didn't want to do this, i wanted Rivers to be a surprise! but i was so proud of the sprites that i wanted to share some of them early, and i'm glad i did – this my favorite avatar i've ever had, and the full animations ended up surprising most players anyway.

where did i suddenly get this skill? i asked myself at the time… but it wasn't sudden at all. the rest of Retrush taught me all the skills i needed. all i lacked was the courage to use them.

so if the first blessing that i didn't have before was my partner, then the second blessing i didn't have before… was confidence. the very same confidence that i wanted to impart to the player, right here at the finish line.

turns out, i needed that confidence just as much.

and i meant every word of it.

our work together – her music, and my sprites – are the last things we added to Retrush, the night before release. fitting that it would end this way, after nine years of ADHD workflows, procrastinating on challenging endeavors, pinballing between levels. the last completed piece was the finish line itself, and i'm so happy that i could properly greet players at the end, just as i had so strongly envisioned.

38 posts later, this is also the last developer commentary post… as much of an adhd mess it was to write and schedule these too. but the mess doesn't matter – because when my memories have faded in a year or two, these blog posts will be the journal pages that i cling to, the last vestiges of the development stories i can no longer remember. i hope you've enjoyed them too, that you found some insight and lessons to take with you on your own journey!

one day, when i get to make another game, we'll do this again! i'm sure i will have a lot to share, and i hope you'll be there for it too. for now, though, i am going to take a break from big projects and work on smaller things. nine years is a long time, and i think i need the space to rest and get my IRL in order before i tackle something big again.

but i'll still be writing, streaming, designing, creating… and maybe even spriting. i hope you enjoy my smaller things too, and i hope we keep sharing new things with each other for a long time.

until then, thank you for reading. 💙💜🩷

Secret Ending | Retrush

After clearing EVERYTHING in Retrush, we arrive at the end of the road… where I pour my heart out to the player. Whether you've unlocked this yourself or simply watched along, thank you for joining me on this journey 💖

(Note that the "perfect stars" you get for clearing the stages without dying are NOT REQUIRED to see this ending – you simply need to clear all 16 remixes and get all 4 secret coins, no matter how many deaths it takes.)