These Are Shy Guys

These Are Shy Guys is a Make a Good Level X3 contest entry, submitted by Septentrion Pleiades. The player is automatically filtered to Mario at the start.

Sturg
Way to subvert my expectations of shy guys by false advertising the existence of shy guys in the title! :P There isn’t much to say here, though I am curious how this level developed into what it is. I liked the “ring-around-the-rosie” aspect of travelling to different sides of the level to change the water level, and I thought it was neat how the water would progressively fill with enemies to provide an alternative pathway. It is rather filled to the hat-brim with non-shy-guy enemies, and not very easily dispatched enemies either. Other than that, as I said, there’s not a whole much happening here. Thanks though!

Zatsupachi
The level wastes no time going from 0 to 100 and it stay that way with no checkpoint. This level is plagued with Enemy Spam. With an enemy that's really annoying to deal with a Dino-Torch Snifit. The fire flowers the level gives you might as well be a joke since they're fireproof and you'll probably lose it to them making the Hammer/Boomeranga/Fire/Sledge Brother encounters nigh-impossible. Good grief.

Rameau's Nephew
Rather spammy and confused. The level relies largely on oversaturating the screen with projectiles rather than creating unique obstacles; most of the level consists of rows upon rows (or stacks upon stacks) of projectile-spewers marching towards you across flat or gently terraced land. The Sniffo-Torches (which are difficult to distinguish from the normal Blue Snifits at a glance) and the basilisk properties of the enemies are thrown at you very suddenly in a dangerous situation without a proper introduction. The first powerup is somewhat far in, in a dangerous, projectile-heavy zone, and only fire flowers are given, despite the enemies being largely fireproof, stomp-resistant, and incapable of simply being tossed in the water, making obstacles feel a chore to get through, a sensation only increased by the monotony of the setups.

The level does try to mix thing up a bit with the flood, apparently reshaping the geography, but in practice all it really does is send you up to the next tier of islands, which a block could do just as well. What's more, the flood interacts poorly with some of the other elements, occasionally sending enemies flying across the screen, and after the first tier, it effectively allows you to swim under the platforms and skip most of the obstacles. This comes as something of a relief considering the nature of said obstacles, but it doesn't make for the most engaging gameplay experience.

Æsthetically, it's just kind of there, and there's some cutoff on the slope. The Sniffo-Torches are an amusing idea, but their fire will be left floating in mid-air if you grab them or they get caught in the flood while fire-breathing. The stacked enemies don't look particularly good, and contribute to a general jumbly atmosphere.

+ Sniffo-Torches amusing in concept

+ Tries to do something with the flood

- Uninspired geography and setups

- If this level were a Dashiell Hammett character, it would be Spam Spade.

Other: Those are Snifits.

Author's notes
Given words:

Island, Amuck, Snifit

Chosen Word:

Tidal