RZRiot
Style: Expert
Pro: Great platforming
Con: Enemy placement, balancing difficulty
Magnum Opus: Bowser Jr's Security System
Most at home: Balanced- leaning SMB 3
Progression notes:
You strike me as someone with a great affinity for platformers and as such you excel in that area. Unlike the others I've analyzed, you started out strong and you started to lose your way as you went on. I adored your early levels, but was not fond at all of your two latest stages. You do not want a zero percent clear rate, no matter what difficulty you're aiming for. Man, your early levels that focused on platforming were so solid! They really gave you a sense of momentum due to the top notch platforming layout and and unobtrusive enemy dispersion. I am giving you a very specific criticism: your boo circle hazards do not work. These were a pain in the ass, and next to impossible due to cramping issues. Providing players with challenge is fantastic... but you don't want to confound them. Honestly, most of your stages were more than great --really, truly well done--but those last two soured the batch. I was beyond confused in your Mario 3 Castle/ghost house hybrid. I was backtracking half the time without even realizing it! Mario maker has new tools that allow us to block off paths. You should try them.
You're clearly way more skilled than me. Perhaps some of these shortfalls are strictly due to my own ineptitude. My advice to you is to find a good pace and balance. Maybe try playing your stages like a less skilled player for perspective? What worked for me in this regard was instead of working from the solution you started with (your idea), work TO the solution as that's what players have to do. I think it's pretty sweet that you are experimenting and pushing the envelope, but balancing difficulty going forward should be your top priority(as you predicted it would be.)
Feel free to PM me with your new stages and I'll gladly help playtest them so you can finetune them. I can't represent every player, but I can represent a player with above-average Mario experience.
Thank you so much for taking the time to go through my levels, and I apologize for subjecting you to Under and Over Hill. That really is meant to be a brutal challenge... not at the level of Panga's stages, but still at the deep end of challenge. That said, I have a few ideas of how to edit that stage and a few others from your comments.
As far as the boos, I will readily admit I've spammed them. Mainly because I discovered how deceptively hard they are when making Kamek's Kourse that I got fascinated with ways to use them to create tight timing windows. In that stage in particular I'm going to take one out, because I violated one of my own design rules which is to never make the player do the same thing in the same way twice for the sake of difficulty. It just adds tedium. I may edit the others as well, but either way I'll lay off for a while.
If you're willing (and we could do this by PM) I'd like to know what in particular confused you in the Castle/Ghost House stage. The intent is that as long as you're moving to the right, you're making progress, but I didn't want to discourage backtracking to find powerups/secrets. I'll try and make the paths a bit clearer, but I'd really like to know what you found unlikeable about the stage, as I do want that one to not be overly hard. I don't mind some confusion, just because it's based on what I felt was a confusing stage from SMB3, but I want it to be fun.
My plan for my next few levels was to go back to easier, more focused levels as well and try to make some more classically styled stages, so your feedback is incredibly helpful in dialing back the difficulty. I will almost certainly take you up on the offer of future critique, thank you again!