1. Two Tails - Cocoa Level FUN: 10/20 DIFFICULTY: 10/20 DESIGN: 11/20 AESTHETICS: 11/20 OVERALL: 42/80 Notes: The level was fairly average in all respects. Nothing really wrong with it but it offered nothing very interesting either. Not hard or easy but mostly boring difficulty with little challenge in any regard. ----- 2. darkmario777 - Very Scary Scramble FUN: 0/20 DIFFICULTY: 2/20 DESIGN: 0/20 AESTHETICS: 0/20 OVERALL: 2/80 Notes: This is not your level. This is the original game's level with a new palette on it, a bad background, a boo ceiling, a low time limit and a boo boss tacked on at the end. ----- 3. GameplaysDetonados - Frosty Land FUN: 18/20 DIFFICULTY: 16/20 DESIGN: 17/20 AESTHETICS: 18/20 OVERALL: 69/80 Notes: Really enjoyable. I loved the little touches that made this more of a believeable snowy level like the snowflakes and layer 3 clouds. Smart idea making the ice blocks actually trigger the slippery level mode. Difficulty felt really good too even without a midpoint, since the level didn't last long enough to warrant having one. If I had any complaints it's that there were a few places where the player is stuck waiting around as the autoscroll plays catch up, breaking the pace of the level. ----- 4. Vink - Bridgy Brocklyn FUN: 15/20 DIFFICULTY: 13/20 DESIGN: 16/20 AESTHETICS: 15/20 OVERALL: 59/80 Notes: Clever use of an underused SMW sprite. I liked the uses for the ON/OFF turn block bridges a lot. Difficulty could have been more consistent. Case in point, the jump right before the midpoint is very unfriendly to big Mario and presents a significantly larger challenge than anything leading up to it. Overall good but difficulty spikes made hurt the level overall. ----- 5. Neidave - The Blue Pipe FUN: 17/20 DIFFICULTY: 16/20 DESIGN: 16/20 AESTHETICS: 16/20 OVERALL: 65/80 Notes: Personally I don't care very much for the "weird geometric shapes" theory of aesthetic design but I think I can put aside your floating diamonds for a moment because aesthetically this level was really good. It felt like a mystical floating land, using clever respritings of boos and platforms to sell the theme. Consistent difficulty and design followed through, making it an enjoyable level to play. Favorite part: the resprite of the moving hole into a moving pipe hole. So clever! ----- 6. MarioFanGamer659 - Cloudy Level FUN: 12/20 DIFFICULTY: 11/20 DESIGN: 12/20 AESTHETICS: 13/20 OVERALL: 48/80 Notes: You need to learn how to properly make a silhouette level. It should be EXTREMELY OBVIOUS what everything is because the player can't see anything but solid color shapes. Here, you hide traps and holes that the player can't predict ahead of time, like the flame jets and falling platforms, by disguising them as normal blocks in the ground. While pretty, the misuse of the silhouette effect actually detracts from your level and as a result, hurts it in each category in some way. ----- 7. MercuryPenny - Clouds and Stuff FUN: 12/20 DIFFICULTY: 14/20 DESIGN: 11/20 AESTHETICS: 11/20 OVERALL: 48/80 Notes: The gimmick didn't really do much for the level. You could have explored its uses a lot more. The level was also really short, ending too fast to really enjoy it. ----- 8. Nick139 - Level FUN: 10/20 DIFFICULTY: 11/20 DESIGN: 12/20 AESTHETICS: 11/20 OVERALL: 44/80 Notes: I think every year we have at least one person interpret the Chocolate contest as a literal theme and make a chocolate themed level. Makes me wonder how many people do it as a joke. Anyways, the level was average overall in terms of just about everything. I'm not a fan of the random geometric landscapes. I think they've been severely overused in the past and they don't really contribute much to the level here either. ----- 9. Sockbat Replica - Chocolate Replica FUN: 11/20 DIFFICULTY: 10/20 DESIGN: 12/20 AESTHETICS: 9/20 OVERALL: 41/80 Notes: I had no way of knowing what those falling bombs did and died to it the first time. Even once I knew about them, they were often used in situations that made it hard to not take damage to proceed. The palette used on the forground wasn't very good either. I could see some interesting puzzles coming from the falling bombs but their uses weren't explored very well or safely. ----- 10. Gamma V - Midnight Meadow FUN: 16/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 17/20 AESTHETICS: 16/20 OVERALL: 64/80 Notes: I don't really have much to comment on this time but the level overall was pretty good! If I had to say something, the level felt a bit low on powerups but was short and simple enough that it never really felt like an issue even if I did get killed by the hammer bros. multiple times. ----- 11.Lespna1 - Weird Falling Chairs FUN: 2/20 DIFFICULTY: 7/20 DESIGN: 2/20 AESTHETICS: 0/20 OVERALL: 11/80 Notes: I'm not sure what made you think this was an acceptable entry. I can't even be sure that it's a joke entry because work had to be done with the custom music and sprites. Bad palettes and glitchy graphics, difficulty was inconsistent because of those semi-homing chairs and sideways thwomps. Just not fun at all. ----- Rykon-V73 - Level FUN: 17/20 DIFFICULTY: 17/20 DESIGN: 15/20 AESTHETICS: 16/20 OVERALL: 65/80 Notes: Challenging but fair 95% of the time with the exceptions of the first jumping statue and the jump to the pipe right after the midpoint. Thankfully you moved the player to a different starting location after death, making that pipe jump a one time hassle. The castle looked and played really well, but the second to last room was the best one. The creepy Zelda music clicked with the red background well in my head and made the end of the level my favorite part. It's too bad it ended so abruptly. ----- 13. tcdw - Sea Level FUN: 16/20 DIFFICULTY: 13/20 DESIGN: 14/20 AESTHETICS: 18/20 OVERALL: 61/80 Notes: I loved the graphics used in the level and aesthetically the level was great. It really felt like some deep underwater place. The first half of the level was much better designed than the second half, though the puzzle to find the key was pretty clever. Getting to it wasn't as fun though. The rip van fish were sometimes tough to avoid and the second half's difficulty felt much different from the first. ----- 14. levelengine - Keweni Highlands FUN: 17/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 17/20 AESTHETICS: 12/20 OVERALL: 61/80 Notes: I'm not sure if the brown and blue shading on the foreground during the first half was the best color choice but it wasn't too bad. The second half of the level was not very good for palettes though. Too many bright and clashing colors really hurt the aesthetic score, which it too bad because colors aside I really liked the detail put into the level. The aboveground parts really felt like some rocky ocean crags and the simple animations on the vanilla tiles were nice added touches. The actual design of the level was solid and enjoyable with no major complaints. Lots of fun. ----- 15. Sokobansolver - Space Sokoban FUN: 8/20 DIFFICULTY: 10/20 DESIGN: 10/20 AESTHETICS: 12/20 OVERALL: 40/80 Notes: I guess I'm really not that good at Sokoban. It's hard for me to judge this level because I didn't actually manage to finish it. I also don't think I solved the second puzzle before the midpoint correctly. I'm giving it an average score because in reality, I don't know if this was a well designed sokoban puzzle or not, though I do know I stopped having fun after a good 20 minutes or so of trying. ----- 16. THY - Switches Being INC FUN: 11/20 DIFFICULTY: 12/20 DESIGN: 13/20 AESTHETICS: 15/20 OVERALL: 51/80 Notes: I felt like this level dragged on longer than it needed to. Couple that with the tight hallways, dangerous enemies, backtracking and slow trickle of powerups and you have a sort of boring, difficult level. It looked nice and there were some clever uses of the switches like in the elevator segment, but otherwise the switch blocks felt like little more than a way to add length to the level by backtracking, because there really was only one true path to follow if you didn't want all the red coins. ----- 17. Alessio - Pyramid Grassland FUN: 12/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 13/20 AESTHETICS: 15/20 OVERALL: 55/80 Notes: Does a pretty good job of emulating a classic SMB3 level, right down to the music and graphics. Aside from the general feel of the level though, it kind of felt like the level was just going through the motions after a while and didn't really feel inspired in the second half. I also disliked how the alternate route pipe was before the midpoint and let out after it, making it easy to miss the midpoint entirely. ----- 18. Gregor & Moose - Yoshi's Treasure Hunt FUN: 16/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 14/20 AESTHETICS: 16/20 OVERALL: 61/80 Notes: I never realized how hard it is to play as Yoshi until you can't just tank enemy hits using him. I liked how there were uses for Yoshi's shell powers throughout the level but I disliked the last set of yellow shell blocks a lot. Up to that point, the level had taught you that falling on the blocks broke them. Imagine my surprise when I simply walked on them and fell in the lava. Level was tough but there were plenty of extra lives lying around. I didn't like the final room because it felt like nothing but blind jumps the whole way down. ----- 19. Mirann & Oh Hell No FUN: 18/20 DIFFICULTY: 17/20 DESIGN: 18/20 AESTHETICS: 19/20 OVERALL: 72/80 Notes: Man, I loved this level. The graphics you chose worked really well in each part, creating a convincing windy forest aboveground and dark, damp cavern underground. There was a surprising number of enemies to avoid but good numbers of fire flowers alleviated that difficulty. Design never felt like it got boring and instead remained interesting and fun to traverse. ----- 20. Ladida - loli FUN: 16/20 DIFFICULTY: 13/20 DESIGN: 14/20 AESTHETICS: 19/20 OVERALL: 62/80 Notes: If this was a joke hack I'd be very interested in seeing your serious effort... I was pretty much blown away by the graphics on display here. I don't think I've ever seen that much parallax in a mario hack before! Unfortunately, while the level looked good and was still fun to play, the design of the level wasn't very interesting, and the life bar didn't make for a very difficult level. The only time it got tough was the Quality Hill which was tough just because the very steep slopes are very silly in SMW. ----- 21. Tahixham - The Tale of Oogtar and the Silly Goose FUN: 14/20 DIFFICULTY: 14/20 DESIGN: 16/20 AESTHETICS: 13/20 OVERALL: 57/80 Notes: Solid puzzle hack overall. I'm really glad that there was an instant retry button combination for when I inevitably messed up on the puzzles. There were a lot of tricky solutions! Aesthetics felt okay but nothing special and some sprite changes felt like a downgrade from the game's original ones. ----- 22. MarioFan22 - A Random SMB3 Level FUN: 15/20 DIFFICULTY: 16/20 DESIGN: 15/20 AESTHETICS: 13/20 OVERALL: 59/80 Notes: The level didn't really feel like much of an SMB3 level to be honest. Graphics, yes, music, yes, but the general design wasn't much like 3. But that's mostly an aside, I'm not scoring on how close you got to emulating SMB3. I think it was pretty good overall. I was worried the secret exit was going to require a lot of item carrying but it turned out to be more of a switch run than anything else which I was fine with. Design felt a bit cramped at times and I don't think that the autoscroll section really added much. Difficulty was high but tolerable. I know you were using Layer 2 for overlapping tiles but it would have been nice if you'd broken up the plain sky with some clouds or something. ----- 23. JackTheSpades - Level FUN: 8/20 DIFFICULTY: 7/20 DESIGN: 5/20 AESTHETICS: 12/20 OVERALL: 32/80 Notes: The graphics used looked nice but I really didn't like how cluttered the ground tiles were. Random bits of dirt, bones, boo faces and item outlines didn't make it look very good. The general design felt really poor as well. Why were powerups so rare when the level was as difficult as it was? The only mushroom I found was hidden behind a locked barrier beyond the first one. You'd need to be clairvoyant to think to bring the key a second time. Lots of annoying jumps, surprise ghosts that you have almost no time to react to, and no midpoint made a tough level simply tedious. And then I got to the end and discovered that the goal sphere was surrounded by brown blocks and my P-Switch had already run out. Maybe there was another way to get it but I won't know because I stopped there after seeing such poor design decision-making. Making a level look good does not give you a free pass when it comes to design. ----- 24. notgoodwithusernames - Rush Hour FUN: 20/20 DIFFICULTY: 18/20 DESIGN: 19/20 AESTHETICS: 19/20 OVERALL: 76/80 Notes: This level is awesome. Who knew a race level would be one of my favorites? The level felt masterfully designed to be perfect for racing, with plenty of shortcuts and alternate routes available, not to mention the 5 Yoshi Coins hidden for the secret exit. I loved how the music only picked up its melody once the switches were pressed, it really added something to the race for me. I enjoyed the level enough that I did actually try and get a time under 35 seconds, but the closest I got was 36'32". Damn near perfect in my opinion. ----- 25. Daizo Dee Von - The Sweet Tall Mountain FUN: 14/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 16/20 AESTHETICS: 16/20 OVERALL: 61/80 Notes: Well if you're going to make a chocolate themed level I guess this is a good way to do it. The only graphic I didn't like was the white and black ground because there was simply too much alternating contrast between them and it confused my eyes a little. The elevator portion was interesting for how little time you actually spent on the elevator, but it was bogged down by so much lag and slowdown that I enjoyed it less than I should have. Work on fixing those slowdown issues in the future. Otherwise, the overall design felt pretty good, but I wish the first half had been as interesting and creative as the second. ----- 26. ZMann - Speedy Castle FUN: 15/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 18/20 AESTHETICS: 17/20 OVERALL: 65/80 Notes: This was a hard level! The superspeed enemies really messed me up badly, even more so when they were combined with the bomb generators and treadmills. The Mouser fights were also tough simply because the treadmills were pushing and shoving you all over. At the same time though, the difficulty felt good most of the way through. It's meant to be a hard level and that's what it achieves. I just wish there had been a few more powerups to conpensate, but I did find a hidden 1up after the midpoint that kept me from game overing too fast. ----- 27. Veck - Lost Switch Palace FUN: 13/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 14/20 AESTHETICS: 14/20 OVERALL: 56/80 Notes: For a level names Lost Switch Palace there really wasn't much Switch palace in it. I know it was supposed to be some sort of expedition to find it but I think the level might have worked better if you'd gone with haunted Switch Palace as the level's main theme. As it was, the caves were not all that interesting compared to the short switch palace segments. There wasn't anything really wrong with them aside from being a little cramped at times but nothing really stodd out about them either. The switch palace parts felt rightfully creepy though, with a good dark palette and a nice creepy song playing in the background. ----- 28. HuFlungDu & TLMB - Level FUN: 19/20 DIFFICULTY: 15/20 DESIGN: 16/20 AESTHETICS: 17/20 OVERALL: 67/80 Notes: Now that was some impressive assembly. I don't really know how to rate this level well since it was so different but here goes! The idea and execution is really cool. Being able to do teamup moves made for a really unique level, though it tended to get quite difficult at the end. The boss's window for damage was very frustrating to hit towards the end of the fight and the lack of a midpoint really began to hurt after dying to it a few times. All that said, the level was really fun and all the little status bars and aesthetics were well designed.