Mario Maker Level Design

Course ID: 3FB-BG9-RHG

My first stage ever made in Mario Maker was very simple, though I did my best to include familiar aspects of typical Mario levels. This helped me learn the interface of the level editor very quickly, and given more time the possibilities for level design. While my level doesn’t contain any jaw dropping mechanics or challenging boss fights, it got me to think critically about how to structure things based on which version of Mario I was playing as.

I went with the Super Mario World castle theme from the Super Nintendo days. It’s adds a cool ominous skin to the layout, but more importantly the map’s lava sets the cheep cheeps on fire, making it that much more difficult because Mario can’t jump on them without getting hurt. I added a good amount of enemies with enough mushrooms/flowers to keep it from being too challenging. The level contains a mixed bag of galoombas, cheep cheeps, koopa troopers, and bullet bills, each of which is positioned to make a particular obstacle more exciting. The koopa troopas are lined up so that Mario can easily hit them with a shell (which is always fun) and the bullet bills come in during a very narrow passage, making them harder to dodge.

To make things more dangerous, I also threw in some spike blocks and thwomps in some places to give players the option to dash or jump across treacherous areas. At one point, I considered adding a boss (either Bowser or Bowser Jr.) to make it more extreme at the end, designing a boss fight is somewhat different than designing a level. The former requires more forethought into how the fight will progress in a confined area whereas the latter focuses on moving through various obstacles.

The real challenge was added later after the level was uploaded to the server. I added a clear condition to the stage which requires Mario to end the level while riding a Yoshi. There are several Yoshi eggs hidden on the map, but the hard part is making it all the way to the end with him still alive. Setting a clear condition also takes away the checkpoint I had placed, so players must make it all the way to the end with a Yoshi without dying. I also made use of the on/off blocks and switches for multiple outcomes of the level to take place. During playtests this made it much more dynamic, leading some players to backtrack in search of the door that can’t be accessed until a on/off block is hit.

For one playtest, my friend exploited the cape I added by jumping off from a high place and soaring to the finish without even attempting the level. I had overlooked this in my initial build so I had to close off sections of the horizontal level to keep this from happening. The cape mechanic in Super Mario World is a lot of fun and is very useful for speedrunning, but it takes away from the level design if it can easily bypass entire sections of the course.