MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Super Mario Bros Doomsday (Demo), by BuzzNBen
Review Author	Hypernova
Created	Sep 14 2015, 5:30 PM

General Commentary and Game Overview

SMB Doomsday is one of those few game built out of my SMW engine (Supernova Mario World Engine) and has some nice additions to it. However there's tons of flaws making the game itself poorly executed.

Pros	- Decent modifications from a premade engine - Nice music - Wide variety of levels - Decent concept
Cons	- Some enemies are not that well executed - Difficulty curve is too steep - Graphics clash

Impressions

Gameplay 5 / 10	Enginewise: the engine is broken. For instance slopes can be quite sloppy handling Mario. In some cases Mario can fall through the slopes. And in some levels the moving platform (especially the vertical moving platforms) can keep Mario in a jumping pose even though he's on a solid surface. To be honest I felt bad for complaining something I programmed in 2011. Level design: level design is mediocre. Some are well designed while some feels like they were done in a hurry. There is a also an extremely sharp difficulty jump at the level before the cave world (world 3 I presume). And some levels feels almost impossible due to its difficulty. Enemies: some enemies (especially those new enemies added to the engine) are not that well executed and/or polished. For instance the homing (following) bullet bill makes the swimming section of a fortress very difficult (sometimes impossible to dodge) until you figured out where the hidden starman is located at. Another good example like the jumping/flying koopas, their sprites rarely flips to the other direction after turning (or moonflight/moonjump). Podoboo (the jumping fireball) poses no threat at all since they disappear once they fall into the lava.
Graphics 6 / 10	Even though BuzzNBen tries to stick to the SMW style, there's a lot of graphics clash throughout the game. At the intro cutscenes, some characters feels more realistic rather can cartoonish like how SMW do. There are handful of other objects/enemies that doesn't seems to fit into the game environment at all. I understand you're trying to go for a fancy transition but they are poorly executed or they just don't seems to work.
Sound 8 / 10	Audio for the game itself is mostly well done. Most of the audio and music are SMW styled, and with some character voices they're fine in my book.
Replay 5 / 10	It has a potential, but due to lack of polish of physics and its acute difficulty spike make the game itself feels more like torture rather than having fun. And please consider an option to skip the cutscene.

Final Words

It has good potential. But the game design itself is mediocre and it needs some serious work polishing up the game.

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Comments

	BuzzNBen Sep 15 2015, 9:12 PM
Fair review. I'm gonna try and fix some of the issues you pointed out. I've already started to tweak the difficulty curve. Also, all the opening cutscenes players can skip if you press Enter and select "Skip Cutscene", I just haven't programmed the rest of the cutscenes yet to have this option. Anyway, thanks for the review.

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