A series of KS reviews

What if Mirror Sound doesn't read this thread? If you want to get his/her attention it would be much more likely to work if you posted in their own topic, which they are sure to check up on.

I posted in Mirror Sound's level thread with a link to here.  I just like to keep all my reviews in one place.

What if Mirror Sound doesn't read this thread? If you want to get his/her attention it would be much more likely to work if you posted in their own topic, which they are sure to check up on.

I did read this (everytime I was fixing something, actually) and was very happy that Fubaka was nice enough to alert me about the problems in my level, because otherwise, you'd still be playing the cranky, broken version. Also, as Fubaka said (or, well, included in his review), I am an admitted newbie.

I said that it is useless but what I meant is that it is useless as a review. For me it seemed your intention with having a thread like this is so that people can come here, read your reviews and see if they want to try those levels based on your opinion. Solving technical problems with a level shouldn't be done through a review, it would make a lot more sense to keep that stuff in the level's thread.

I said that it is useless but what I meant is that it is useless as a review. For me it seemed your intention with having a thread like this is so that people can come here, read your reviews and see if they want to try those levels based on your opinion. Solving technical problems with a level shouldn't be done through a review, it would make a lot more sense to keep that stuff in the level's thread.

Perhaps.

I did post a good deal of suggestions for Mirror Sound in the release thread as well.  I just wanted to make it clear that when you release a level as finished, you need to make sure huge problems like this have been dealt with.  That's why betas exist in the first place.  When you say your creation (whatever it may be) is ready for full release, and then do so, it is completely open to review, whether that creation is truly ready or not.

I am going to update the review now, based on the corrections that Mirror Sound has made to the level.

Map:  The Return

Author:  Dron

Type:  Environmental

Size:  Small

Difficulty:  N/A
====================

With a default icon and a name like 'The Return', you would really be hard-pressed to predict what you'd get if you were just downloading it from the KS Archive.  What you do get, however, is surprisingly decent.  Let's take a look...

Playthrough
=============

The level starts, and the only text you get is 'Juni Falls'.  From there, you find yourself in a dark swampy-looking place with the run and climb powerups already given to you.  You will of course notice that this swamp you have fallen into is in fact not one of the standard tilesets, and that is a breath of fresh air for most players upon starting a level.

Upon running around in this world, you will find a small obelisk placed above every save point, which is nice, but not entirely necessary considering the fact that this area is so dark to begin with.  You will also run into a red key if you venture immediately right, and above it, a passage leading to a four-key lock.  Thus, you know immediately what you need to do here.

If you run all over the map, you will find all the keys, as well as a high jump powerup, which you will need to get the last key.  It isn't particularly difficult, but you do get to see all the various situations that befits the swampy tileset that the level uses.  Once you have all the keys,  you pass through the gates and win immediately.

Scoring
========

Construction:  7/10

There are no major flaws in the level design, and the tileset looks nice and unique enough.  While the graphics do clash a little, it isn't anything to gripe about.

Exploring:  7/10

While this is an environmental level, you will find yourself searching for keys to get to the end.  In addition to the keys, you will find the high jump powerup, which you will also need.  It is a good way to get you as a player to explore all of the map.

Atmosphere:  5/10

The ambiance here is appropriate enough, though it lacks variety.  I guess that is okay, considering the size of the level, though.

Story:  N/A

Juni falls.  Juni returns.  Apart from that, there is no story at all, and there doesn't need to be.

Overall Score:  6.3  (Solid)

This is definitely above the average threshold for small environmental levels.  Check it out when you have the time.

I'll try my hardest to mimic your style, Fubaka.

Map:  Epic Challenge 3

Author:  James1011R

Type:  Challenge/Misc.

Size:  Large

Difficulty:  Very Hard
======================

Well I imagine this little specimen may be one that our friend Fubaka may gloss over, so I thought I’d throw in my first review of an outrageously difficult level (since I may or may not be known for making those). I am a pretty critical and objective guy, so don’t expect much in the way of using soft words for strong criticism.

Now I must say that I wasn’t all too unfamiliar with the author James here, as I played some of his prior work, Epic Challenge 2. It wasn’t very pleasant, so the bar was not very high. His level icon and title screen, however, were improved from before.

Playthrough
===========

The level gives you a fairly odd introduction, but the premise is quite simple: There are four stars which need to be collected, each in their own distinct challenge, and you need to collect them all and recombine them into the Superstar, looking for secrets along the way. And we turn into a universal icon or something, which I assume is a decent reward, since I’ve never been a universal icon, really.

Every section of the game has a theme, however indistinct it may be. The first star, the red one, exists in neon colored block and star land. The yellow star is in… uh… platform and checkerboard/striped block land. The green star is in the weird land (if the other lands didn’t seem weird enough) and the blue star is in the danger land.

You might be predicting that this level may be a bit of a mess, and you’d be right. Actually, it’s a gigantic, messy thing. But mess is not a big problem for me if it really plays into it and makes it fun, which this level rarely does. This level is significantly flawed and isn’t fun, not to mention completely unfair in difficulty, but it’s not without some semblance of charm to it. It’s occasionally has a hint of structure or design, but it’s just specks in a large muddy mess of a level.

The level has a few cutscenes at the very least, which gave the author some voice in the level and also gave a sense of progression. Without those this level would have droned on.

Scoring
=======

Challenge:  2/10

First of all, this is not Very Hard. It’s outright Lunatic in difficulty, asking the player to make their way across several screens of often poorly designed obstacles that place your life on the whim of a random number generator. That’s not to say it’s all like that, the difficulty curve is much closer to a difficulty rollercoaster. Often there’s two dozen screens of absolutely nothing hard (or really nothing at all, big empty rooms are pretty common) bordered with several screens of inane and difficult obstacles. Also, save points are scarce so practically all challenging rooms next to each other will force you run through all of them without dying.

I will give credit that he did have a couple of challenging and slightly fun rooms that fit Very Hard well. Not many, though. At least there were less pop-out spikes and munchers than I expected.

Construction:  3/10

It’s not the worst in this category I’ve played. It’s got wallswims and voids everywhere you look, for certain, but never was it unplayable due to a glitch – it’s only unplayable due to certain overly difficult obstacles. The look of the level certainly is weird, but this varies from the good kind of weird to the confusing weird to the ugly kind of weird that hurts your eyes.

It’s evident that the author really did try to make something interesting and crazy for a level, but it’s lacking the playability or uniqueness to really make that work at all. Occasionally some shiftwork or screen wrapping or even a custom object comes in, but I never found that it was used in an ultimately interesting way.

Exploring:  4/10

It’s no secret that there’s secrets, so the main thing was looking for them. And generally speaking it’s worth it, so the author wins some points here.

He loses more points, however, that for every three times you go off the path to search for something, two times you’ll run into a void or a wallswim instead.

Atmosphere:  2/10

Nothing custom in the sound department. A single track and no atmosphere generally is what you get for an entire section, so it goes silent quickly and all you can do is listen to sound effects.

Story:  4/10

I’ll give a little here. The cutscenes give this level a little character. A surprising touch was also that the blue star’s section had a bit of a mini story to it too. However, nothing much really comes out of this.

Overall Score: 3.0  (Skip it)

Despite the fair bit of wackiness that some people could possibly enjoy, I really doubt anyone would appreciate this level’s difficulty or brokenness. To me, it’s one third an eyesore, one third a boring romp through bland and empty areas, and one third a frustrating gauntlet of unfair obstacles.

Hah!  Thanks for reviewing this level, SecretGlitch.  Honestly, I tried to play this, and got pretty far, but there were a couple of challenges at the end that I simply could not get past.

To be fair, I thought the screens (some of them anyway) were built with a fair amount of intrigue, and, as you said, the author did appear to put a good amount of effort into this level, but it is riddled with pull-your-hair-out moments of cheap 'challenges', and there are a lot of places where you can find Void screens if you get too adventurous.

All in all, I agree with your scoring.

It's no problem, I got time for a lot of these, and to be honest I've made a habit of playing potentially bad Knytt Stories levels just to see how bad they are, as crude, time-wasting, and masochistic as that may sound.

Speaking of which, I took this one off of your hands:

Map:  Raging Land

Author:  The Love God Corporation

Type:  Challenge

Size:  Large

Difficulty:  Hard
=================

I often get worried when I hear anything business-related in the title or author of a Knytt Stories level. The Love God Corporation is a provocative one, but I’ve also encountered Poop Factory and Cat Company. These things tend to be quite bad.

The info screen is a quick little number drawn in Microsoft Paint I assume (for some reason calling the level simply “Rage!!!”), and the icon is just the upper left corner of the info screen squashed down onto a small square. The level is subtitled with “Sure is pea…” which of course means someone saying “peaceful” and was cut off, but I like to imagine they were saying “pea soup.”

Playthrough
===========

There’s not much to this level honestly, making the label of Large is a misnomer. Juni is hanging out in peaceful land, but accidentally activates the Make Everything Bad Machine, and it won’t recharge for over five hundred million years. During that time, Juni has a microscopic adventure that inexplicably seems to take five hundred million years, because the machine is recharged when you get back.

This level is a token bad level that is probably one of the first, if not the first, of the level creator. Bland and awful design with annoying and broken enemies, I’m going to save my breath on this one as it really needs very little discussion.

Scoring
=======

Challenge:  2/10

Obstacles are usually just a few enemies being spammed, although the invisible blocks over a lava pit obstacle really shook things up. It was too hard for Hard but it wasn’t really Lunatic hard.

Construction:  2/10

No level design to speak of, and it primarily features the use of a single tile being most of the level’s architecture. Floating enemies all about and a few wallswims and voids are also easy to encounter, but it's just not bad enough to get the coveted 1/10.

Exploring:  2/10

Invisible death blocks are the main inhibitive measure for the player to not tread off of the path. Also there’s a “secreat,” I suppose, but its location is arbitrary.

Atmosphere:  N/A

It’s got 2 custom tracks but it’s evident that they aren’t exactly under the author’s ownership.

Story:  N/A

No real story or cutscenes. The end scene is mysteriously replaced with an all white screen containing a small green triangle.

Overall Score:  2.0 (Bad)

The real demerit to a level like this is that it's quite obviously an early attempt at a level, and this, along with a good many on the level database, don't seem to look for any true critique from anyone. Certainly this review is compulsory criticism, but it's more for the benefit of everyone but the author. Authors who deposit their early works into the database and never seek to help from this community or ones elsewhere really get the least out of the level making experience.
 

It reeks of first level, and in all honesty most people shouldn’t release their first level, or in some cases even the first few. I didn’t release my first level, but I will say it’s better than this.

Horrible advice. Some people make nice levels on their first tries,  other people don't. Some people know the basics of level design, other people don't. If they don't know what they are doing wrong, they'll just keep doing it, so no matter how many levels they make before releasing one, it's gonna have those problems in it.

Quote from: SecretGlitch on July 06, 2012, 21:11:45

It reeks of first level, and in all honesty most people shouldn’t release their first level, or in some cases even the first few. I didn’t release my first level, but I will say it’s better than this.

Horrible advice. Some people make nice levels on their first tries,  other people don't. Some people know the basics of level design, other people don't. If they don't know what they are doing wrong, they'll just keep doing it, so no matter how many levels they make before releasing one, it's gonna have those problems in it.

I was thinking I might get called out on that, I should have worded myself more carefully. I'll defend my statement in this scenario by amending that it's bad for someone anonymously releasing early levels, as they won't receive comprehensive feedback that they would use to fix up their levels, and thus littering the database and not learning, as you said. If one doesn't seek feedback, then another method is to make levels privately and play good levels to slowly learn on your own, which was what I was trying to allude to, as it's how I learned, and generally speaking the stuff you make just learning the ropes of the editor is vastly below what you'll subsequently make when you really understand the editor and what you make thereafter may be improved when you see what well-built levels are like.

If Love God Corporation wants to pop in and ask for the extended run down on what's right and wrong in level making, then the egg's on my face. Or maybe the author is getting feedback somewhere else, it's hard to tell. But what I fear is a lot of people just set their level there and never get feedback.

To be honest, I didn't review this one because it appears to have stolen music from copyrighted sources.
I do not remember the name of the song, but the one that plays during the peaceful sections is from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

I'm pretty sure that violates the rules of the archive.

Rule #1 in fact. I wasn't sure what that first song was but it certainly sounded like it was from a game, the other song being a heavy metal cover of the Song of Storms (which I couldn't trace to any particular band). Since you know the first one's from Brawl, then that's settled.

Is there any formal way to report copyrighted material on KnyttLevels?

Rule #1 in fact. I wasn't sure what that first song was but it certainly sounded like it was from a game, the other song being a heavy metal cover of the Song of Storms (which I couldn't trace to any particular band). Since you know the first one's from Brawl, then that's settled.

Is there any formal way to report copyrighted material on KnyttLevels?

I never saw one.  You could send a PM to LPChip or the other staffers of this forum though.

BTW, the proper name of the stolen song is 'Ai no Uta'.  It was in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but actually comes originally from the Japanese version of Pikmin.  Where it's true origins are is irrelevant to this point though.  It simply means that Nintendo holds the rights to the song, and unless the level creator can give definitive proof that he got permission from them to use it in his level, he is in fact, infringing copyright law.

Map:  urko

Author:  N/A

Type:  N/A

Size:  N/A

Difficulty:  N/A
====================

In the archive, this level does not even bear an author name.  With a title like 'urko' and without an actual author name, it would be difficult for a browsing player to consider downloading this.

What is even more disorienting is the fact that when installed, this level has a completely different name, an an actual author listed.  In Knytt Stories itself, this level is called 'abc' and was made by a user named 'duri'.  After all that confusion, very few people would expect a good level, but let's take a look anyway.

Playthrough
=============

This level uses the default info screen and opening cutscene, so nothing special there.  Once the level begins, you find yourself in a very barren screen, using the default starting tileset for a new level.  It becomes clear immediately that this level is noob-ish in design.  It looks like you could walk to the left edge of the screen, but the way is blocked by invisible tiles.

Going right will lead you through a series of challenges.  Standard get past obstacles and collect array of powerups.  You will find that the challenges are actually decently put together.  Nothing special, but it works at least, which is more than could be said for many of the other levels I have reviewed.

End:

Secrets:

Scoring
========

Challenge:  5/10

There are some semi-interesting things you need to avoid in this game, but it isn't executed with the level of finesse you would hope for.

Construction:  5/10

While fairly bland, the level is put together well enough, with a few notable exceptions.  One of which is the beginning invisible wall, which you can climb up into the Void if you think to go back there with the climb powerup, and another is an area where climbing up some shafts kills you for no reason.

Exploring:  4/10

Very linear and standard, there is no real way to go but forward.

Atmosphere:  3/10

The screens are very bland, and there is absolutely no ambiance anywhere in the level.

Story:  N/A

No story whatsoever.


Level title and author confusion: - .5 points to final score

Overall Score:  3.7  (Shaky)

Honestly, it was better than I expected, but it still wasn't anything special.  The lack of proper titling and the dissonance between the KS Archive title and in-game title really do hurt it more though.  Play it if you are bored, and have nothing else to do.

As for the missing information, allow me to make a few suggestions:

Type:  Challenge

Size:  Small

Difficulty:  Normal

For my own reasons, and for reference for the rest of you, I will now post the review summary words that I will use, sorted by score range from least to greatest.  The rest of you, when writing reviews do not have to follow this, but please use similar words for similar score ranges please, to avoid confusion.

(Of course, I do not expect to end up using all of these words in various reviews, particularly the ones on the extreme low and high ends.  I may be pleasantly - or unpleasantly - surprised, though.)

0.0 = Physically Crippling
0.01 - 0.49 = Irredeemable
0.5 - 0.99 = Wretched
1.0 - 1.49 = Awful
1.5 - 1.99 = Miserable
2.0 - 2.49 = Terrible
2.5 - 2.99 = Bad
3.0 - 3.49 = Troubled
3.5 - 3.99 = Shaky
4.0 - 4.49 = Not That Great
4.5 - 4.99 = Mediocre
5.0 - 5.49 = Average
5.5 - 5.99 = Okay
6.0 - 6.49 = Solid
6.5 - 6.99 = Good
7.0 - 7.49 = Great
7.5 - 7.99 = Superb
8.0 - 8.49 = Excellent
8.5 - 8.99 = Amazing
9.0 - 9.49 = Legendary
9.5 - 9.99 = Euphoric
10.0 = Perfect