The Sea Serpents' Shrine

The Sea Serpents' Shrine is a Make a Good Level X3 contest entry, submitted by Diggertron. The player is automatically filtered to Mario at the start.

Sturg
I love the idea of a a giant chasm of space underneath the ocean dedicated to a shrine of the ancients. Sad that there weren't any terms utilized though. There's some inventive ideas here that I found a lot of fun. The switching of Snake Block directions and the VIP-esque block spaceship were my two personal favorites. The Puzzle Block, while neat in concept, could have been done a bit better. The time limit, which isn't really indicated that there is one, is a little too short for the amount of item babysitting you get to do. Also, you can also pretty easily skip that section, which makes it even more disposable.

Zatsupachi
A very dreary level to play with one annoying enemy type. While the snakeblock segments were interesting I cannot help but point out the use of Mushrooms is detrimental to the platforming need to keep up besides providing an extra hit. The second half got me really riled up due to how essentially it took me running the course 3 times to get the optimal path and even then the Snakeblock broke and made the puzzle box unwinnable. After which the level showers you with Hammer Brother Suits in frantic cage on rails that just led to a lot of cheap deaths to being clipped into by an enemy or pipe. The level felt it had a lot of ideas going for it but never really got any good out of it.

Rameau's Nephew
Oof. The first section of this is a spammy mess. That it also spams mushrooms does not make the huge amounts of generated Cobrats suddenly forgivable, and the bit where you have to break the large glass capsule using enemies that run away from you seems to be there solely to waste your time. Unfortunately, this is also the least bad part of the level; things go sharply downhill from here.

The second section begins with a brief yet surprisingly maddening block snake section; it's completely unclear what status the switch needs to be in at any point, and there's no resets; the many inevitable failures require you to commit suicide. What's more, there's many an irksome Cobrat about, and they seem to be hilariously placed to prevent you from effectively throwing them away; they always seem to land in a safe spot (for them) and continue to plague you. The attempted switch puzzle after this is less maddening, but still seems largely pointless.

What truly ruins this level, however, is the final section. This combines the spamminess of the first section with the absurd ride in to spiraling madness of the second half. There's no design here, just haphazardness. The level seems to sense this and spams hammer suits on your behalf, but it doesn't help; nothing short of psychic powers combined with cyborg cat reflexes will guide you through here. This section really just feels tossed together at random, and the accident that results is anything but happy. Worse yet, at the end, we find out the snake goddess the level has been hyping up isn't even a thing, making the entire affair seem a waste of time. Maybe it was all an existentialist play, who knows?

+ Decorative fish are kind of nice.

- This level is not at all nice.

Other: Maybe the waterfalls in the first section are meant to explain all the generators we see in the level. It's all a metaphor for hydro-electricity.

Author's notes
Level name: The Sea Serpents' Shrine

Items:

Location - Ghost House

Adjective - Lost

NPC - Snake Block

Extra - Mellow

Mario filter is already in the luna.lua file