YES custom title screen level and movement, love it love it

Yoshi's House
yoshi
yoshi
yoshi
yoshi
thanks for giving the birds a nice rope!

Souffle Fields
delicious palette! on like the second screen, the concrete blocks are a little awkward, exposing air behind the background with some cutoff on the right. there are some cosmetic issues in general with corner pixels on tiles, which doesn't really affect voting but is worth gently noting. very straightforward level with an obvious secret exit! appropriate for a first level.

Swoop Caverns
already ramping things up! loved this level. the variety of different paths made it satisfying, and the enemies, especially kickin koopas, were well-placed.

Zelkova Palace
love a little gentle time pressure. some wonky tile usage on occasion on corners. i took so many dumb deaths here ^^; this was fun! i got a corner clip wall jump but no yump. net platforming is fun and always very different!

Pain Au Cocoa Mound
wow that secret exit ^o^ fun and tricky! i would have enjoyed a little more flexibility in the camera's vertical movement there, platforming off screen feels a lil sketchy. i did get the moon! what a fun lil secret path, a light kaizo. the cave section of the normal exit was great, i took several deaths to the moles!

Parapet Para-Keep
whoops, took a game over here! there sure aren't many save points ^^; this was a really claustrophobic level (in a good way). i'm def thankful for the star! the platforming was super chaotic :D and the coin trails were honest.

Spice Ruins
holy palette! you brought the most nefarious sprite here :D i did manage to go above a section of the level, skipping some obstacles. also LMAO the p switch section. i did jump into the ceiling after the p switch section to see if i could and almost softlocked myself lmao. really fun time~ there were a couple of lil tile issues but nothing major.

Black Gateau Pangs
oops! i needed a switch palace! turning around too...

Archipelago La Poke
mm, poke..... your fondness for the Old Hacks is really showing itself here, and i mean that as a compliment. the overall aesthetic is all over the place with the midair water, the lava under water, the switch palace music.. i adore that. for the secret exit, i took the key all the way back before realizing i could have just taken that pipe again, heh

Sorbet Maze
oooh, maze time! there were some messed up slope tiles that i could just walk through x.x i def took some deaths to that. the reset pipe in the first section wasn't *totally* functional since sprite memory wasn't set to 3 for the level, meaning the coins didn't respawn. also unfortunately the pipe on the right side of screen OE (cracked it open in LM to verify) goes to the broken bonus stage so i had to just wait out the timer and die. as an aside, ty for the life farm on screen 10! was a genuinely good maze

Brulee Swamp
it was now that i realized there was more hack than i thought, and set a save state down for the next day (i would have loved more chances to save tbh). to start with on this level: nice palette! and wow that football jump (or yossi ditch)! this was some good usage of the special autoscroll pattern. also LMAO the forced yossi ditch at the end of the first section, i can see where you added the clouds and i can envision an earlier version without them, as a real sicko setup. this was inspired! in the second section, i took a random pipe and didn't expect it to send me back to the beginning of the section. and it turns out that i lost my yossi, then took the pipe back and since sprite memory wasn't on 3, i couldn't get the yossi again :( def a section where it pays to know that yossi tongues higher if you hold up. genuinely good job on this level, it was one i'd gladly come back to on a second playthrough! i only got 2 lives on the bonus stage after this exit.

Meringue Chateau
such a quiet beginning.. i could tell right away this would be devious. i know what kind of level designer you are now, and you're my kind of designer ^o^ the boo trails were mean haha, and i could imagine a player facepalming on hitting the p switch in the first door and backtracking. catching up with the autoscroller after the H was tricky, especially after getting the fourth dragon coin. also, thanks for providing power-ups; i never have the patience for boo rings so i constantly yolo jump through them. i did need to take a death due to sprite memory settings/the reset door not really working. that's just a nitpick, really; i think setups where you only get a single try are fine as long as they're intentional. i enjoyed the booss, though i think the potential difficulty was undermined by the ability to just chill on the top corners of the arena. good level!

Pine Palace
i brought yossi here and was pleasantly surprised by a kind of broken tongue graphic i'd never seen! some of the turn blocks turned into a weird broken tile after being hit. overall, i give this level tubular/10. i didn't manage a yump on the red switch :(

Truffle Reef
the autoscroller here does what an autoscroller should ideally do: impose time pressure instead of holding the player back. it makes it more risky to go for otherwise harmless extras like dragon coins and 1-ups! also you automatically win for including the first fugu i've seen in testing. the surfeit of urchins and torpedo launchers was to this level's benefit as well. when i saw some of the setups in the second section, all i could think was that it would make a great time attack section, just give a tight timer and it gets so much tougher :D

Cuisine Coast
layer 3 tides are here baybeeeeeeeee and i hope there's a message box somewhere! there were some pretty broken tiles here but that's ok. i was expecting a little more play with the layer 3 water, given your tendency to stick with gimmicks in level design. also the dolphins at the end of the second section were straight outta kaizo 1, i loved it. there was a *lot* of level after the H; it felt like a gauntlet. also, the shoutout to brulee swamp's palette really tickled me ^^

Peppermint Fortress
yesssssss ice physics platforming! at this point i began to question why i was so worried about my own entry possibly being frustratingly hard ^^; i feel that this entry is meaningfully harder in most ways! but i like that a lot. i did get shunted into a wall and killed by a noteblock once. the second half was truly inspired! you took the gimmick and ran with it in a way i could stand to learn from. great work! i also noticed i had 56 points toward the next bonus stage here, so i'm not allowed to hit any goal tapes from now on.

Typhoon Palace
underwater switch palace gaming! aside from the concealed torpedo launchers, this was a bit of a level you just swim through. not too much happening!

Black Gateau Pangs (revisited)
the blue path: good platforming, a slightly overwhelming amount of sprites without feeling like "sprite spam". this truly felt like ghost house/forest crossover! there was some devious stuff happening with the thwomps :) also appreciated the slightly hidden pencil in one section. there were some sprite slot issues after the midway with sprites popping in/out of view. the room after the fishin boo definitely relied on a leap of faith and i immediately died on the jump ^^; there are def some folks on the smwc moderation roster from whom that might evoke some harsh words and i'm definitely trying to channel my inner beekaay a little while playing folks' hacks. the boo cloud section is where i started to think "oh my god it's still going", making this an official gauntlet level ^w^ it was a rush to get to the goal orb after several tries! i'll go back and play the red path later.

Fatal Contraption
i assume this is the last level... and immediately the nature of the contraption is revealed -- layer 2 smash! the depraved energy emanating from this level is palpable. the level started hard, and when the layer 2 smash got fast with the lava, it got **hard**. it's pleasantly the kind of level where as you make many attempts, you fine-tune your approach and start one-cycling segments where you'd otherwise have to wait a bit. true story: when i had 56 lives left, i got to the last jump before the boss door full of hope and then i completely beefed it! when i finally got to the boss... oh my god the sprite!!! that is so good. so so so good. i wanted to take my time to fully see all the frames the sprite had to offer, but i also didn't want to redo the whole level, especially with time pressure on the fight. so i summarily defeated the devious switch-painting villain. in the end, nintendoes what sedon't. or something.

in the end, i had 20 exits complete on my save file, which i *believe* to be everything. all in all, wonderful wonderful job. with some tile cleanup and some cleaner indicators in places like the falling section of black gateau pangs and some kind of warning about the smashing lava ceiling at the last section of fatal contraption, this would, imo, make a really solid smwc submission and i would encourage you to submit it if you'd like! i struggled, i considered save states, i got frustrated, and in the end found myself feeling really rewarded for playing. the one thing i felt was missing was custom music, but there are only so many hours in the day for a busy pigeon! genuinely, thank you for making this and i hope to see more from you in the future!

Thank you so much for this in-depth review and analysis of my rom hack Synthetic Goddess!! Hugely appreciated that you took the time to write all this!!

I'm obviously very glad to hear that your experience was a positive one, even with some of the mistakes and jank moments on my part. Ran out of time trying to correct some of the issues, and then there were just some that'd gone entirely unnoticed on my part, like the Sorbet Maze pipe leading to the bonus room (agh, I thought I'd fixed that and set it to take you to the entrance, whoops).

20 is correct btw! Thought it'd be fun to keep the rom hack size a secret in the description.

The reset pipes: thank you for pointing this error out! I did realize, only minutes after submitting, that some of those resets wouldn't quite work as intended, but alas again I ran out of time. I also wasn't aware at that moment how exactly I'd go about fixing it, by changing the sprite memory.

Black Gateau Pangs sprite issues were certainly frustrating, and had to remove a fair few sprites that were vanishing (you would think it would always just be a case of too many sprites on screen at once, but then I was experiencing issues with a lil spark vanishing and killing the player. Replaced it with it's larger brother, and boom, wasn't an issue. I'm sure there's a logical reason behind that).
That level was designed to be a gauntlet. Maybe it could've done with a room or so being cut out or made as an optional alternate route after the midway point. Alternatively perhaps needed to place one or two more powerups in the level. I feel like there are a few potential solutions. Ultimately wanted the player to feel a wave of relief and victory from reaching the orb, like finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

Glad you liked the autoscrollers! I realize they're an acquired taste, and I intentionally limited the usage for that reason - 1 full level, and 2 with autoscroller segments felt about right to me for this hack. I really wanted to implement the special autoscroll in particular, so I'm pleased about that.

I'm particularly glad you liked Peppermint Fortress! It was fun devising a level that incorporated elements of returning to certain rooms with a means of accessing alternate paths. And I enjoy the blue switch mechanic in mario world a lot as you can probably tell.

In hindsight, enabling a save after beating any level probably woud've been a good call. I wanted 1ups to feel valuable enough to take risks, and search alternate paths for, but tbf, they would've still served in providing a midpoint.

You make many other good points - I won't respond to them all, but they're all very fair - again, as a project I spent the better part of last month focused on, huge thanks for taking the time to cover my hack in such detail. I will definitely consider your words of maybe trying to submit it onto smwc, after touching up on some things. You and Heraga should definitely do the same with Prelude. :)) I know there are people that would passionately enjoy speedrunning it! Next time I hope to create original music too!

"Pigeon flying away sounds"

honestly i don't think Black Gateau Pangs needed to be shorter! gauntlet levels are fun.

also, i hope that pointing out technical issues like with tiles was okay! i didn't mean anything negative by it, it's just something that one can benefit from knowing about :)

Ohno not at all, I take it in stride and value the critique. Making a rom look pretty obviously comes well after fun and functionality, but it's still a meritable aspect, and it's something I've commented on previously. Had to make a few custom 8x8 tiles for 3 of the 4 switch palace corners on the final day, but couldn't seem to perfectly match the palace palette. And some tiles in the hack cut off abruptly or have unnatural empty space between them.
Still I like to think they're exceptions overall!

i have finally finished this hack in 5 recording sessions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej8kx4OULzA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYf1iRfxyt4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbp4lcqhv_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1LJtrhMff0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=powTtNpC4M4

im already talking about the levels in details in the videos, but to sum it up:

this is a great hack!!! the difficulty is somewhere between "i can do this" and "i can barely do this". i think all the levels are doable with enough time and practice for me, but some of them are leaking into a territory that is slightly above my skill level. but not by much. its always just in reach so that i feel like moving on.
for the sake of finishing the thing in time and for the recordings, i still used savestates in some places. theres one very good 1up farming spot which i could have used more excessively and overall could have avoided most if not all savestates.

a few levels i think cld benefit from either an additional midway point, or getting split into two levels. the classic "wow wtf another room? when does this level end?" situation occured a little too often for me. as soon as you know how long the level is, this feeling goes away because you can focus on your progress more ("80% done, only 2 rooms left")

some weird tile placements here and there - walls you can jump through when you shldnt. walls you cant jump through when you should. but all of this is alright if we keep in mind the length of this hack and the entry period time. and that it was only you, one single person, who created the whole thing!!!

levels all had cool gimmicks, the level design felt very thought through and every single enemy felt well placed to make my life a little harder.

i know it was because of the time running out, but i still have to say it: this hack needs one or two custom music tracks!! it would make a few of the levels a lot more fun to stay in, too! i think :D

overall a great entry and im glad you particiapted. and im glad i played it!

You went above and beyond what your had to with this thorough 5 part playthrough, and I'm extremely grateful! It's been my greatest pleasure watching each part as you uploaded it, seeing how you fared, your opinions - what you liked and the critiques alike. It's very much helped motivate me towards doing game designy stuff more!
You're awesome Kleed! Thankyou :DDDD

okay yeah this has my vote for winning! the world building here is stellar and it rly boggles my mind this was only made in a month. levels were cool and gimmicky and what mario could be if he decided to be a challenge

mirroring kleeds I think all it's rly missing is some custom music and maybe some cool gfx and stuff too

I'm missing a few levels because I won't finish sorbet maze because of the jank, but otherwise very quality levels.

Appreciate both of you playing through my game!
Thanks Retro!! :D Had to push myself to get this one finished before the deadline was up. Tried to give each level its own identity.

And likewise appreciate it Kaytse. The slope jank is unfortunate, and I would certainly like to iron that out. And it bugs me that there's that one pipe that leads to an inescapable bonus room (was meant to send you back to the level start). The red switch route is a purely optional alternative route anyway, so I'm glad I stuck to that decision I guess.