Boom Boom's Concern of the Bot Population is Ill and Overbearing

Boom Boom's Concern of the Bot Population is Ill and Overbearing is a Make a Good Level X3 contest entry, submitted by Lolbarr. The player is automatically filtered to Wario at the start.

Sturg
Sadly, the graphical changes made to enemies would be the most positive thing I’d say about this level, including the spooky bot that looked like an upside down jellyfish. There’s… a lot of unusual choices happening. Random patches of puzzles and events that aren’t really worth your trouble, and there are strange side-pathways that are nigh impossible to traverse (clouds in the 1st section). There’s a new wave of muncher block spam in the form of thorned vines, and a skippable,"gotcha" boss that appears at the end that seems more spiteful than anything. Yet, despite all of that, this level would've been improved 150% times over if you hadn't used those wavey platforms. NEVER DO THAT AGAIN THEY ARE HORRENDOUSLY BAD TO PLATFORM WITH! LIke huge props for the effort to make the platforms wobble around like they do, but YIKES is it super easy to fall through the platform or get a jump input gobbled up. Thanks for making it regardless, and just use this as a means to improve for the future.

Zatsupachi
Enemy Spam. Not in a fun way either. The wavy bridge is the pinnacle of jank, you can fall into a bed of spikes or pit with very little to do with the player. Finding the key was stupid, it so against the laws of common logic in this context without the hint telling you to do so and yes, you can lose the key very easily costing you a time sink to attempt again. And of course, talking to Boom Boom in the end just punches you in the face with enemy spam. Great.

Rameau's Nephew
Man, this level is just *bizarre*. The concept of Snarfy yelling at Wario to clear his haunted mansion of Bots sounds like the premise of some childhood game, and the coherency of the plot and gameplay is roughly equivalent to such. There's multiple endings, but none of them really matter, and there's all sorts of weird bonus stuff you can do, but there's not much of a purpose to it, except maybe that you might want to do something different. That honestly would be a pretty cool approach if only the level itself weren't extremely unfun to play. There's no real reason to play as Wario aside from the fact that it makes the platforming more awkward, which doesn't really help in a level that's pretty randomly designed, and the level really seems to like odd vine structures with thorns. The first part of the mansion almost seems to be going somewhere, with some admittedly cool touches like Haunted Bots and the note blocks that transform in to Boo Lasers after a single jump, forcing you to boldly go forward, but the later sections just become an even bigger mess than the start. The undulating floors are really the worst thing in the level, and the part of the mansion featuring them is an awful slog. That you get teleported instead of dying if you fall off mitigates things slightly, but you're still very likely to land on thorns, which makes matters much worse.

Allegedly this level is about Bots, but the NPC proper isn't used all *that* much in level, particularly after the start. At the beginning we have the Fish Bots, which are adorable, the Wiggler Bots, which are super-creepy, and the Flying Wiggler Bots, which mostly look like a blue Flying Wiggler. Once the level reaches the mansion, the bots are kind of forgotten beyond the Haunted Bots, and I guess the Boos that look vaguely like them, though there are more normal Boos than these, to be honest. The Boss Bot is very stupid, though not necessarily in a bad way, and the good ending is kind of funny in a Dada sort of way.

+ The exploration/multiple-endings-for-their-own-sake concept is not a bad idea

- The level itself is a bad idea

Other: I still remember the distinction between Bit and Bot years later on account of the Zelda II manual featuring the alarmist line of "Watch out! Bot jumps."

Author's notes
Username: Lolbarr

&#9;*Level Name: Boom Boom's Concern of the Bot Population is Ill and Overbearing

&#9;*Gimmick Terms Used:

&#9;&#9;&#9;-Location:&#9;Mansion

&#9;&#9;&#9;-Adjective:&#9;Grumpy

&#9;&#9;&#9;-NPC:&#9;&#9;Boom Boom

&#9;&#9;&#9;-Bonus (NPC):&#9;Bot

&#9;*Character Preference: Wario

&#9;*Endings: There is 1 (one) SMB3 star exit, however there is more than one way to achieve it.