Mugetsu's Monotonous Mansion

""I've seen plenty of occasions under which the following level has put players into a fit of scalding rage. Proceed with caution.""

- Warning from Zatsupachi in the hub.

Mugetsu's Monotonous Mansion is a Make a Good Level X3 contest entry, submitted by King of GETs. The player is automatically filtered to Mario at the start.

Sturg
I don't know Touhou, but some of the presentation was okay here. Most particularly, with the wonderfully goofy Bowser fight at the end, but less so with the rest of the level. The progressively, evolving room was a neat concept, though, I'm not sure why you decided on settling on this being "monotonous." Sure, it makes a lovely alliteration with the title, but some of the challenges here get pretty annoying. Some of the stuff I felt was fine like doing the timed bullet jumps (I guess I'm experienced in it, but it can be pretty tedious in general), and *some* of the spin jumping rooms. With mostly everything else, it's incredibly easy to ruin a good portion of the rooms by doing something wrong on accident, and it can get time consuming. Like, why was the fire-flower a single use thing only, and not a filter like the other one? And, while I think there's merit in the idea of making ice bridges with frozen enemies, it's repetitive and easy to mess up with how long some of the bridges need to. A lot of my deaths were caused by the instant death blocks. It was a little crushing to spend so much time making my way up the tower, accidentally getting hurt and losing a required power-up, having to travel back down, and forget the layout of death blocks in the lunatic room and just die. I feel there needs to be a good excuse to use those blocks, but I don’t find that the level provides any good one. Then there’s the invisible block mazes, which is such a “blegh” idea to work with. It slogs an already sluggish level down even more. Hunting for invisible blocks mixed with the ice block building gimmick wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. Bowser fight was still fun though!

Zatsupachi
This is the kind of level that you'll get an audible groan from me. I hate every single part of it. It leaves me with nothing but a bitter taste in my mouth. That said, there seems to be reputation around Touhou-themed levels are bad and this level kinda accentuates that. At least this isn't filled with projectile spam, which is really totally fine if you are given a way to deal with it. This level had a few concepts here and there but they're just really crummy concepts to work with.

Rameau's Nephew
Declaring your own level to be "monotonous" in the title may not be the most auspicious of portents. That said, the idea of increasingly more difficult variations on a room is fine, and there *is* variety in the challenges. And indeed, the level starts out all right, but once we get to the invisible coin block section--and even more so, the fire and ice block sections--the level starts to live up to its name. What's more, these sections don't get any less tedious with repetition, and should you slip up and die (or even lose your fire flower, as there's only one and no reset), you have to repeat *all* of them every time, only increasing the monotony. In an odd contrast, you can completely fly through the second part, as the guaranteed ice flower at the midpoint allows you to completely cheese all of the challenges.

The lun-AT-ic section starts out well enough, but things take a sour turn once you bang in to an invisible coin block and fall all the way down a shaft that is littered with kill blocks. Once again, the block shenanigans kill this section, these being just as tedious as before, but now more demanding and with lots of kill blocks present in order to make for maximum repetition. Even once you pass them, there's more than enough danger above to subsequently murder you and make sure you have to repeat the wearisome blocksperience again, making for a less than compelling level. The boss, in contrast, is almost impossible to lose to, as camping out on the ice lamps renders you completely invincible. It still takes a million hits though, in keeping with the monotony theme. The shocking plot twist *was* pretty funny, though, it must be said.

+ Central concept pretty decent

+ Shocking twist a nice touch after the wearisome final third

- Fire, ice, and invisible coin block obstacles tedious

- Third half rather cheap, and boss long but trivial

Other: Fire is a rare and closely guarded secret here, for we are in the Land of the Cave Toohoos.

Author's notes
Terms Given:

Location:

Zoo

Mansion

Bakery

Ocean Cruise

Military Base

Adjective:

bitter

impossible

hypnotic

impolite

weak

NPC:

Disco Shell

Metroid Zoomer

Bullet Bill

Tweeter

Buster Beetle

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Terms Chosen:

Location Term: Mansion

Adjective Term: Hypnotic

NPC Term: Bullet Bill (resprited as a fairy)

Extra Term: Metroid Zoomer (resprited as an F.O.E.)

Mario is expected for this level, and the level has blocks to switch to Mario. The level filters out vehicles (Yoshi, Blue Shoe, etc.). It also filters power-ups at some points to keep certain parts from being too easy, but the level has many power-ups throughout.