no recording of this from me because it was frustrating to play the first two levels and being unable to get them done even after playing for an hour.

then i tried it without recording, played the first two levels with savestates and then managed the other ones a lot better. not sure if this was just a skill issue or not. heres my feedback on the levels. levels with * were solved with savestates after trying for 30 minutes.

breezy woods*: a cloud navigation level is cool, i like how the chucks and vulcano flowers make it difficult to navigate but since you can remember where they are, its just a matter of practicing until you know how to avoid them. why the bullet generator tho? makes the level harder for no actual benefit. just "harder for the sake of it". dotching them in a cloud with limited controls is annoying af and doesnt work most of the time.

illusiyossi*: at first, i didnt understand what to do at all because i am super unfamiliar with the glitch and the explanations were not very detailed. the fuck is a "stealth field" ... i figured it out eventually but it took some attempts. and the glitch-yoshi behaviour is super weird for someone who has never rly seen it or even played with it themselve... setting up some of the glitches is frustratingly hard to do because the timing is tight and i need to reset the damn room everytime.

only after i played it, i realized the link in the entry description. im not sure if its great that you first need to read a detailed glitch explanation before a level makes sense tho...

a vulcano: actually decent and fun. i like that you get a live everytime at the midway point. makes it okay to die and try again.

shells on ice: this was my quickest win. some shells were in mean positions and unable to avoid for me, but luckily i had a powerup at those times :D

spiny peaks*: lakitu is a bitch, some of the jumps are just super annoying or you need to hunt down lakitus cloud constantly. i probably cldve made this one without savestates but for my own sanity i decided to get through the rest by using them.

urchins, yo: just slightly bigger paths or 1 or 2 urchins less wldve helped a lot i think. i ended up damage boosting through most of the enemies in my way

rolling star: fun platforming, but the background choice is bad. i simply cant see where the lines of the platforms go, when they will fall etc. makes it unnecessarily hard at times and a lot of it is repeating the part and learn where each platform/saw will go. with a brighter background, this cldve been avoided.

angels outfield*: this level was just frustrating and after some time, the music also started to annoy me... especially the part where you need to use the 4 mushroom-platforms to delete some parts of the lines for the brown platform to go to the right. first i didnt even understand what to do. then when i figured it out, i wasnt sure how far below the screen i cld go with mario because i was afraid of dying and then having to do the whole thing again. then when i got the platform to move to the right, it kept going all the way and falling down, so i eventually ran out of time at this part and had to start over completely.

and then, at the second part, i had trouble understanding the message hint again until i realized it was glitch abuse time again. at that point, i wasted quite some time and almost ran out of it at the end. the climbing part was tricky to do and super stressful. but at least i got that one again by damage boosting at the end.


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all these ideas have their potential but overall it was just the bit too difficult for me to enjoy properly. im sitting here now thinking "fucking finally im done" and not "that was fun, i wld like to play it again at some point". if this was what you were going for, congratz you did it.

interesting! i tried to get a wide variety of playtesting from folks of a variety of backgrounds and didn't get any feedback like that, so thank you for the honesty. i do hope the difficulty wasn't a surprise; i tried to be very up front about that and kept the overworld open so nobody would feel obligated to play every level. it's definitely for the sickos lmao, my goal when making my levels was to make things i and some people i know personally enjoy playing.

frankly, i am firmly in the "if you don't enjoy it, please don't feel obligated to play it" camp, but i understand if you do feel an obligation to play all the way through for the sake of voting! i was def worried about difficulty until enough people in botb chat (including you hah) said not to stress about it and that it's fine to make something that's really for the smw nerds lmao, so it became time for some talkhaus and gbreeze pastiche

it is fine! just not completely for me and my skill level. so thats the perspective i am trying to give in my comment. the majority of levels was actually cool to play, so dont get me wrong here. i also got, that the overworld is open for the purpose of trying the levels and moving on if you cant finish them. thats nice! c:

in case it wasn't clear: no hard feelings and there's def some lessons learned from your feedback!

While I do understand Kleeders POV, I would definitely recommend giving this hack a few chances. Playing it multiple times has helped me develop my thoughts on this one.

Now I do share some perspective with Kleed - still wonder about the Bullet Bills in Breezy Woods for example. On the one hand, some of the moments dodging them brought were thrilling and intense. Ducking into the cloud at the very last second, or daringly leaping into the air to precariously land back onto my smiling nimbus friend. But on the other hand, in an autoscroller, where you'll find yourself inevitably on one edge of the screen at certain times, they have resulted in some pretty instantaneous and unfair deaths. Fortunately it seems they have a sort of pattern, as I've noticed them shooting in similiar spots during certain moments (always just assumed they were fully random).

I think a serious amount of creativity has gone into this hack that needs to be highlighted. For example having an invisible Yoshi glitch as a puzzle and level gimmick, or likewise Mario sky-climbing in the latter half of Angels Outfield. I thought it was especially clever in the latter level, how the tile erasure mechanic was used; first to provide openings, then later on to allow the moving platform to create a path.

My favourite level is "A Volcano". It took me awhile to get anywhere, but it's very rewarding when you're in sync with the level. The background and layer 2 scrolling is very cool, and is just one more element of SMW that the hack plays with.
Level design in general is put together very thoughtfully, with lots of little touches and some flair that bring it all together. I've seen some pretty cruel romhacks on the internet over the years - this one ain't easy, but I'm grateful that it provides as many second chances and powerups as it does.

Presentation here is extremely strong. Custom intro, original music, some creative custom (I think) palettes.
The music in particular is the highlight of it all for me. All fantastic original compositions! "Illusiyossi" has to be my favourite tune of all, with it's lush dreamy harmonies.


I wonder if maybe it would've worked more to the benefit of this romhack if it had instant death reset (where Mario dies and immediately respawns at the save point - hacks like Grand Poo World 2 implement it).
I haven't watched the exact footage, but I believe a YouTuber called DanOfAllTrades covers how you would program it in, in a Mario hack tutorial series he has (guys videos helped me out a ton for this major, I can tell ya). But frankly I also don't know how much leg work that would take, so maybe it's not as practical a suggestion as it could be. Heck knows I never got as far as modifying hex or anything like that.

One other thing that would've been super cool perhaps, and almost definitely easier to apply; events playing out when beating a level in the overworld. Transforming the island as you conquer levels might be very rewarding and cool for the player. Now saying that, I actually love your overworld, and I think it was a very clever play on both your parts to make it entirely open. Having so many level options means I can swap to another challenge when I've gotten frustrated with one. And it saves which is a nice touch :) feeling like the game acknowledges your beating a difficult challenge is a good feeling.

I'm not docking points with not having event animations anyway, because you both already went above and beyond. It's just an idea that came to mind. And plenty of levels where Mario's normal death and overworld reset aren't problematic, as the difficulty is intentionally varied (another thing I do appreciate in the hack).

So far I've managed to beat:
A Volcano
Shells on Ice
Angels Outfield
Urchins, Yo
Breezy Woods

So yarr, to anyone reading, I would overall recommend giving it a couple of tries with this entry. I was drawn in by it's music and overall presentation, and that helped bring me back to play more, which in turn let me appreciate the challenges of this hack more, as well as the passionate creativity.
Personally wouldn't start with Breezy Woods, despite it being one of the closest levels on the map. Shells on Ice is a good starter, as it's one of the easier levels overall.

I think you both should be super proud of this entry Synthetic Goddess, Heraga. This is a fantastic showing. And I'm certainly not trying to rule out Kleeds thoughts and feelings on the entry. I just found myself actually having a lot of fun on my second play, and so wonder if it's the sort of experience that requires a few goes at it.

Anyway I'm going to sleep now cos it's 1:20am and I've been writing this since like midnight, so byyyee. (dies)

opm, i've been having a rough week and this was so uplifting to read ;u;

heraga's been making levels forever, but as a long-time player of hacks, it was so much fun to take what i love and make some homages to exactly that for the first time.

i definitely agree on fast reset for the harder levels -- JUMP is a notable case of having normal death handling for most levels but fast retry on the really tough levels, the ones that have some kaizo sensibility. and additionally, i thought about actual overworld events, particularly something to mangle the area around illusiyossi on clearing the secret exit, but time worked out so i had to prioritize a couple level reworks first, alas..

again, thank you so much, especially for the comments on the music and aesthetic elements :) a little polish in areas like music and custom palettes can go a long way. additionally, i'm glad nothing came across as cruel.. where something has the chance to be vicious or cruel, i'd prefer to land on the side of capricious, of whimsical while also trusting the player to figure things out if they have the desire and time but giving some power-ups and lives to play with (and the obligatory life farm)

so yeah, cheers, thanks for enjoying, and have a great night get some sleep!

Happy to hear that and no worries at all! :))) Hope the week softens for you.

this was super hard. i don't really have much to say, kleeder kinda covered all the bases for me.

honestly i liked the creativity that undoubtedly went into this, i'm just bad at video games i guess

i liked angels outfield :) anscented

ah retrokid, i have been punished for my love of the old kuso hacks, of the yumps and my little puzzles.. (i made what i like to play, and what i like to play is fucked up lmao and often revolves around glitch puzzles)

and ty for ascending to baseball heaven fortuna

Aesthetically very impressive, new vibes all through while still being tight and holding to the smw mood. Still too hard for me although unlike a couple of the other entries I feel like I can at least experience enough of it to vote lol

That Yoshi level was fucked up lol. I wasn't aware of the intricacies of the glitch. Needed to look up the last 2 solutions.
Also wasn't quite sure whether or not I needed to go fast in the volaco level.
Otherwise decent.

now that the dust has settled I think this was my favorite out of all. Super impressive fun vibes and I think it should have won in the music category at the very least [no offense to the other entrants but sheez this music is nice ;) ]