Levels • Curious Shipwreck - My First Level!

The first and arguably most prominent thing I would criticise about this level is the enemy placement, as well as some of the other NPC objects. They feel a bit messy and incoherent, with some enemies only really being there as obstacles, rather than coherent parts of the level. My goal, initially, with the first section, was to create the feeling that these enemies had come running out of the shipwreck, but I couldn't really emphasise that when not one of said enemies actually appears in the ship section, nor does the outside of the ship telegraph anything to imply a great escape. What I learned from this was to be more reserved with my usages of enemies and to consider more carefully when and where I place them, and who I place in each spot. I do feel like this is handled better in the optional puzzle section and the ship section than in the first area, but it's still not perfect. In the ship section, I feel like much of the design was only there to be stylish, it doesn't create much of a cohesive experience, and as far as platforming goes, it's not the most fleshed-out. I'm not really sure how to rectify this, but I will figure it out.

The next thing I want to reflect on is the usage of space. In every section, I wanted to fill up as much of the empty space as possible, because my personal golden rule for game design is that there should never be a moment on-screen where the player has NOTHING interesting to look at at all. However, in doing so, I feel like some rather pointless design choices were made, which don't really add anything to the level, and there still ended up being a pretty big empty spot (near the first section's key) because I honestly couldn't think of anything interesting to add around there. So, from now on, I'll cut back on trying to fill space and focus on fleshing out the space that I KNOW I will use.

The way I started this level, given that I had no actual concept in mind, was to gather a bunch of items from the selection and place them all in the level space for me to use freely. The goal here was to work with what I had, and not end up adding more and more cool-looking NPCs, it was my way of exercising self-restraint, and also - while I love SMBX's style-mixing - to avoid making it look TOO messy. However, I still ended up overestimating how many items I would actually need, and ended up prioritising committing to my past self's selection rather than deleting anything that really didn't matter. For the most part, I'm happy with how many of the various NPCs were used, but I imagine to the unknown eye, it does come off quite over the top.

That said, I also understand that this level is, in of itself, a little conceptually excessive, and lacking focus. I wasn't too concerned with this when I was creating it, because my goal first and foremost was to create something that would serve as a proof of potential both to myself and to others, which is why it has a variety of little quirks and ideas. I feel like I did as good of a job as I could have done of showing off what I'm capable of at my very earliest stages of SMBX development, rather than creating one singular gimmicky level that could fit seamlessly into any non-existent episode with ease. I imagine - and hope - that my future levels would be a lot more focused, and restrained in their variety, but ultimately, as a proof of potential, I think this level works best the way that it is.

I had originally planned to include some kind of bonus ending for anyone who managed to get all three star coins - or all of those and the five dragon coins - but for one thing, the level's challenging enough as it is, for another thing, I couldn't figure out how to do events in time (this is something I sorely need to work on as soon as possible), and I also didn't want to cause FOMO when the entire point of the player experience is to play the level how you want and choose how much exploration you do purely for your own experience, especially while the optional section is actually quite challenging, if I do say so myself. The last reason why I chose not to do this is because I forgot.

I believe that's all of the notable criticisms I can give myself, though I'm sure I'll think of more later. Maybe a year or so down the line I'll reimagine this level to show how far I've come since now. Who knows? Anyway, thank you if you read all of this, if you agree or disagree with anything I said, or have anything to add in general, please feel free to say so. I hope you enjoyed my first level!