Alright, back for round 15. This week we're looking at

Black 'n White - adtk
Swwoper - Thinga-Ma-Jig
Mirai Mirai - XZombieKing1999X
Ghosts. - HalfUp
Pinky's Workshop! - jhonsiak

A lot of good, and one real oddball this time around. Managed to get a Swoop level in there, relatively fresh off the presses...which has picked up a slew of plays since i did the recording, so...it might not be as fresh as i'd hoped by now (really? A thousand plays in 8days? Well done).
Ended up going back to the simple game cameras for the moment, still not quite getting what i want yet, but we'll keep working on it.

Thanks everyone for keeping up with this, and as always for all the feedback. Hope you enjoy the episode this go around, and have a great day!

Beep boop boop! It's the Tuesday (actually Wednesday) Takeaway!


Black 'n White - adtk
This was a nice chill level. Lots of little background details and animations. Some simple platforming, but nothing particularly stressful. Great music, and a rare use of sharp contrast in color and lighting. This makes for a solid cool down level if you've had a few frustrating levels crop up. i do think that some of the climbable areas could have been a bit better marked (there's one toward the end that's easy to miss). Also, i still, personally, constantly forget that you just need to run into bounce pads set at a 45degree angle to get thrown at an angle. i always try to jump on them, and that's no help.

Swooper - Thinga-Ma-Jig
To be perfectly honest, i wasn't a huge fan of the mechanic here, particularly the need to occasionally go into the Poppit to...err...pop yourself. However, i do appreciate interesting new uses of base gameplay, and i can't argue that it wasn't well implemented in the stage. Thinga clearly thought and planned out where it would be necessary and had those areas clearly marked out. i liked the slightly more fast-paced puzzling/flying (as compared to last week's Swoop's Dreamland, which was fun, and pretty, but very slow). You could argue that the boss is a bit of a departure from the stage's focus (you need to die to progress, oh wait, try not to die here), but isn't so far from the basic gameplay you've been doing that it doesn't feel jarring. Also it looks really nice and fits the stage well in theme. The death counter for prizes at the end was a cute idea, though it's pretty unforgiving. A better player than myself probably wouldn't have too much trouble getting top ranks, though.

Mirai Mirai - XZombieKing1999X
 i'm still wondering if the creator's supposed to be a king who is a zombie, or a king of the zombies, or possibly both. Neither here nor there, i suppose. This one's a nice, fairly simple world-as-level example. It manages to integrate the platforming with the setting in a way that doesn't take you out of things, Considering the focus on this being a world, i think things were just a touch too crisp, but that is a super minor point. There's really nice use of the neon material for accent, and tons of nice incidental details. The puzzle elements in the outside areas a relatively simple, but still fun to work through; though the more straight-forward platforming once you're inside the factory may present a bit of a jump in difficulty (especially the hero cape bits). All in all a fun level to go through, for sure.


Ghosts. - HalfUp

Like it says, "There are ghosts." Nothing to see here. Move along. That's not entirely fair, there's a neat platforming element to play with, but it's not really a level, per se. i don't really understand why there wouldn't be a prize bubble with a ghosty-launcher in it, seeing as this is basically a gallery. Who knows? Maybe i really did miss something completely, stupidly obvious. Still, take a look at some of HalfUp's other levels. They're both levels, and not bad at all.


Pinky's Workshop - jhonsiak
Ended up a bit on the fence with this one. On the one hand, the first 3/4's or so are pretty decent, nicely presented platforming. Sure, there could have been a bit more decoration (or a tighter close up) in some of the more open areas, but there are some nice touches here and there. The hook hat bits aren't particularly difficult, but they are fun, and make pretty solid use of layers. But it just goes on and on. Really, the level could've been ended before the introduction of the Blink Ball, and it would've been a perfectly acceptable experience. It doesn't help that the few bits that use the Blink Ball are pretty frustrating. Maybe it's just me, i can never seem to aim the stupid thing. Still, it's not bad, definitely worth a runthrough. Just set aside a bit of extra time (especially since there will be a few loading issues along the way).


So that's the takeaway this week. A nice set of levels all around. Even Ghosts. can be fun if you know what you're going into. Like i mentioned in the blog, i'm actually ahead of schedule this week; so i might actually be able to figure out what's going on with my cameras, or at least how to better get them to do what i want them to do. At the very least, i'll be able to put together a few things for future episodes, and save a little time there. Or maybe do level recordings for next week's episode. Who knows? The world is my oyster? i guess? i've never actually been a huge oyster fan.

Thanks a lot for all the support folks; glad you're having as much fun with this as i am.