Review: Mario in Mushroom Rix Land

 

Finished in ~7h (4h in world 6)

I played Mario in Mushroom Rix Land. This is a hack with no real story, all about the level design. The game also doesn't have any secret exits. Let's see what we have here.

 

BLOCK YOUR CEILINGS AAAAAAAAH!!!

 

The overworld is pretty generic and just serve to place the levels. Some ExGFX could have been good, for the city world for example. The levels doesn't even have original names, they are just "Grassland 1", "Grassland 2" and so on. I don't really like it. The levels themselves are very different to each other, but on the overworld they don't stand out.

That this hack doesn't have infinite lives. They are very finite: very few life farms (I haven't found one until 4-3) and there is no lives in levels except coins. The game save after every levels, so at worst you can lose your midpoint, which isn't too bad (at the beginning). After a level, having Game Over on purpose to refill your lives back to 5 is a viable strategy.

One thing I disliked is no cape. There is fire flowers, but no cape at all in the entire hack. I know cape is OP, but it's fun to use.

 

Even the castle is just called Grassland 5.

 

The choice of aesthetic and musics are nice, no problems here. It's not vanilla, but some SMW foreground and background are used with other elements, that mix well together.

Many sorts of Rexs.

Now let's get to the meat of the subject. The level design. It's quite good. What I like about the game is it has this approach of having a different gimmick every level and also having each level unique in appearance too. The castle levels use a mix of elements of the previous levels in the world.

So many custom sprite are used. All available from smwcentral. They are nicely used. There's just the punching gloves I don't like, but that's just me. Plus the game doesn't explain that's it's better to not hold direction and hold jump when touching one. Could be frustrating if it's the first time you see those.

Blind jumps that put you on grey platforms, forcing you to react quickly.

You could summarize the level design of the hack as quick reaction platformer, where many obstacle are made to be identified and cleared fast. The game use a lot of falling grey platforms and snake blocks to force you to act quickly. Too much in fact. This is nice, but I like to take it easy sometimes too.

One thing I disliked is the game spend too much time at the top of the screen, when you can barely see Mario. It appears too often, and sometimes there's danger at the top you can barely see because it's covered by the status bar.

But overall, I think the level was nicely done, and the obstacle made around the custom elements feels good to play.

There's spikes here. You can barely see them.

So the game is pretty nice huh. The difficulty is good, it's hard but it's some fair and fun challenge...

Yes, until world 6. In world 6, the difficulty take a nose dive and become quickly too overbearing. You will have to start to farm lives to not having to redo the first parts of levels. Let's go into the details of world 6 levels :

First level has moles that spawn in the air you have to hop on. It's seems crazy but is tolerable, except one jump at the end that is incredibly hard and stupid. I could only pass it by taking a hit and by pure luck. Yes, I feels like my victory was only due to being lucky. Maybe there's a trick, but you don't have the opportunity to safely try because it's above a pit and near the end.

Second level is an autoscroll where you have to jump from leaf to leafs... the leafs are 1-tile wide sprites that fall left and right. It is very precise, and requires great execution. You also have to be at the front of the autoscroll to not miss the platforms, so less time to react. This levels took me 90 lives to beat. In retrospective that wasn't horrible, but still not the best experience.

Then a weird level you're forced to be small to go in narrow passage, including a passage blocked by a shell I had no idea to pass it other than using a reserve mushroom. The level wasn't hard, just weird

Next levels are actually alright. A platform level, a thwomp level that way easier than the rest and a bubble level. Those play fine and doesn't feels frustrating like the first two levels.

Then the final level is a bullshit marathon. 6 parts, a midway point only in the middle (before part 4). Each part is the size of an half level (or more), and are the hardest of the game.You HAVE to use savestates, at least one between each room. Trying to do a set of 3 rooms without is pure madness. Although the rooms are a bit creative, too many setups use snake blocks or grey platforms. No multiple midpoints, no instant retry and no infinite lives make it too tedious.

And that is unfortunate. The first 5 world were really good, but the last world is just too hard to be enjoyable, and the quality is uneven (in aesthetic too, I disliked the neon graphics of some levels and the glowing palette of the final level but that's just me).

So I'm gonna rate this world separately because I can.

Have to be at the front, less time to react.

World 1-5:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Very good

World 6:

⭐

Poor