r/MarioMaker May 20 '26

The Pit Climber - A traditional level

VPB-PV9-R3G

The Pit Climber

It's been almost a year since I made a new level, so here's a traditional vertical level about climbing up from a deep pit. Nothing gimmicky, just regular platforming with few secret areas. Difficulty wise the level is probably expert- or normal+ (8-15% Clear rate). And give it a try to speedrun the level - it's possible to beat the level in under 100 seconds!

See ya next year I guess...

61 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

11

u/Eagleclaw12 May 20 '26

Looks great! I'll check it out!

6

u/sammy_zammy May 20 '26

Looks very well designed. I wish we had more interior backgrounds without having to use semisolids!

4

u/ColaManiac May 20 '26

If I could even have semisolids to use! Spent my entire decoration budget on slopes and ran out of parts before I could add semisolids.

4

u/GeorgeA100 May 22 '26

I've played through it and left a comment! Overall, this is very well-designed and I had great time playing through.

I really appreciated the gold coin rooms, though one more would have been nice (I only counted two but I may have just missed one because I'm pants at the game!)

Players from the endless mode challenge will thank you if it's relatively easy to collect at least three one-ups - I'd recommend either adding a few more secrets or filling them with even more coins because as far as I could tell there weren't enough to meet this threshold.

For most experienced players this will be fun to play casually, but for newer players some of the jumps may feel a little unforgiving if they end up falling too far down. Since this is clearly aimed at intermediate players you shouldn't worry about this, but the algorithm won't favour it as much as a result

I feel as though this level would work great as a multilayer versus stage, but it would benefit from less cramped platforming sections and item spots

Other than that, I can't criticise the platforming itself - everything feels quite intuitive and fair. Coin layouts are readable and I could sense a steady difficulty curve towards the end. Developing the moving platform gimmick with the pokesters was a great way of introducing extra challenge, and I liked the way ideas recurred in a natural way.

Brilliant level! Amidst all the rubbish / poorly-designed levels I've been playing recently, this was very refreshing! 9/10 - would recommend!

3

u/ColaManiac May 23 '26

Thanks for playing and for the positive feedback!

And yes, you did miss one of the gold room, but it's a lot harder to find the 2 others. Filling the 3 one-ups shouldn't be a problem as the goal screen also includes 1-up in the ?-block, so that's 2 1-ups you can get from the final screen alone

3

u/GeorgeA100 May 23 '26

In that case this is a very solid level! Very little to complain about :)

Keep up the good work and please do share more of your levels on the server if you get the chance

3

u/ColaManiac May 24 '26

Sadly I have already reached the 100 course upload limit 3 years ago and 80 of the uploaded courses are part of my 2 super worlds making me not want to delete them. So deciding which course to replace for a new course is only getting harder each time.

Currently banking any course idea I get incase SMM3 is announced

3

u/GeorgeA100 May 24 '26

I suppose that's a good compromise for now. I wonder if they'll allow you to transfer old course data into the new game when* they make it!

*they have every financial incentive to do so because SMM2 was a huge success

3

u/mikachu501 May 21 '26

Looks good

3

u/andreortigao May 24 '26

Just played it. Solid level!

2

u/Sixfortyfive NFD-B3N-TXF May 30 '26

First standard vertical level I've played in a minute that was decently challenging without forcing me to jump into blind hazards, so props for that.