It'sa me, Kaizo Mario!

[lincolnic]

I was right, Mistakes Were Made is absolutely kicking my ass. I'm having a great time, but this hack is the toughest ThirdWall's made by far. The first level took me about an hour, the second an hour and a half, and the third level (which I beat tonight) was around two hours. I saw him say that the difficulty is really front-loaded, though, so hopefully things will ease up for a level or two. The good news is that two of the levels I was dreading the most are already done. The rest is pretty much all stuff I'm looking forward to!

 

[lincolnic]

Halfway through Mistakes now. The fourth level took me about 2.5 hours, but I enjoyed it all and didn't feel like it was a grind. The last level I beat took about an hour, which is my own fault -- I could've cut like half an hour off of that, but after getting to the end of the first section in ~20 minutes I failed at the up-pipe and spent over twice as much time trying to get back in there. The second half only took around 10-20 minutes though. Very fun level!

I'm feeling okay about my pace overall, because ThirdWall himself described the hack as "next level hard". I don't know if I'd go that far, personally, but who am I to argue with the creator? I will say that it's been really pushing my consistency and jump control skills, and that's a welcome challenge. Next time I get to play the sprite stack level, which I've been looking forward to since it was originally planned to be in its own hack.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Relevant to at least one person's interests: YouFailMe is currently doing level testing for a certain European ocean-dwelling mammal. Some game called Titan 2? Not sure how far along it is, but there seem to be 14 exits, and that sounds like a pretty decent number to me.

 

[lincolnic]

Yep! YFM, revolug, ThirdWall, and GlitchCat7 are all testing for Titan 2 (I don't think Glitch has started yet, unless he's testing off-stream). The levels are all done, Orka's just doing some fine tuning at this point. I caught some of ThirdWall's testing earlier today and the hack is definitely looking great. ThirdWall said he thinks it's a lot easier than OG Titan was, but he's also one of the best kaizo players of all time, so I suspect my mileage may vary.

I'm currently 6.5 exits into Mistakes Were Made, but I've fallen deep into a Balatro hole for the past week. I'm taking next week off though, so I intend to finish it up very soon.

 

[lincolnic]

Finally managed to come up for air long enough to finish Mistakes Were Made last night. This was a truly excellent hack. It may not be for everyone, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with other recent hacks that felt like such a clear expression of their creators' style, skill level, and sense of humor as this one does. In the sense of "romhack as self-expression", it might be peak ThirdWall. Much like Morsel's hacks can only be made by Morsel, this is a hack only ThirdWall could've built. He has a real knack for coming up with the most messed up setups and yet somehow still making them feel really good to execute.

There's a lot of learning and figuring things out in this one -- the difficulty level is definitely beyond Mostly Harmless or Flip the Switch -- but building the consistency needed to get through these levels felt great. I know I had a few "level up" moments as a player while I made my way through. I lost track of my clear time halfway through, I'd estimate maybe 15-20 hours total. I know the Yoshi/shell level took me the longest (2 hours, 45 minutes), and oddly enough the final level was the fastest (half an hour on the first section, ~15 minutes on the second). I'm not necessarily in a rush to run this one back, but I'm really glad I played it.

Not sure what hack I'll jump into next, but I am pretty sure it's gonna be an easier one. After all that, I want something chill!

 

[lincolnic]

I played a beginner hack yesterday as a kaizo cooldown, Prickly Goo to the Rescue. It was fairly chill with nine very short (single section) levels. Some of them had some genuinely cool stuff going on which left me wanting more (never a bad thing). The whole thing took half an hour and has pictures of cute cats, so I'm gonna recommend this one for when you want a kaizo snack.

 

[lincolnic]

On the recommendation of ThirdWall, I played an unexpected hack today: Tower of Keys, from the far-off year of 2016. I don't remember why but it came up when we were chatting in someone's stream a little while ago, and he said it was really chill. And for the most part it was! The only hard stuff came in the two final rooms (the whole hack is ten rooms), but I can say I have a new key jump PB now (it's four!), so that's neat.

To be fair, they were wall-assisted key jumps, so it's not like I'm gonna be the next abc_ore or anything, but it still feels good to improve at something. My unassisted key jump PB remains at two and I'm not sure I'll ever spend the time to learn how to do more. (I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a tiny part of me that kinda wants to, though. That's the same idiot part of me that also says I should learn how to do a midair.)

Anyway, the hack took about an hour and while I'm not sure I'd necessarily run it back, it was a nice change of pace. Recommended if you want a little key platforming in your life.

 

[lincolnic]

I used my kaizo time this weekend to catch up on a couple of the hacks I missed while I was playing Mistakes Were Made. Today I played through Doro Chill, which I guess is a remixed version of one of the creator's earlier hacks to bring it down to high beginner/low intermediate level. There were a lot of cool setups and sections in this hack, but there were also a lot of visibility issues which led to a bit more "die to learn" than I tend to prefer. The difficulty level occasionally swerved into solidly intermediate territory as well. I think the hack needed a little more polish, but I still enjoyed the play. Took about an hour and 45 minutes.

Yesterday, though, I played MFC, the new collaboration hack from Jordan and FNB (aka firstnamebutt). In the past I've been a little more critical of Jordan's hacks than most folks (namely, that a lot of the setups/levels felt very same-y to me), but I had an absolute blast playing this one. Outside of the occasional shell trick, it's primarily hop 'n bop, and the platforming feels great. Almost everything is very readable and it's not super difficult, which let me pull off a satisfying number of one shots. The custom sprite work is super impressive (backgrounds too), even if they made me feel bad for having to jump on cute animals. The soundtrack is a solid volume of Now That's What I Call Kaizo, and the whole presentation is incredibly polished. They have friggin' title cards for every level! Who does that? I played through this whole hack in two hours and would've happily played through twice as many levels. Big recommend from me, don't sleep on this one.

 

[lincolnic]

Welp, suddenly the kaizo floodgates have opened again. Two massive hacks I've been looking forward to both dropped the other day, Tortured Souls 2 and We Like It Here. On top of those, Deported (of Liquid Metal fame) has released a new expert vanilla hack that looks really sick, and JezJitsu has Gambol 2 in playtesting as well. It's all happening!

I watched a bunch of playtesting for Tortured Souls 2, and it's ambitious as hell. Some levels are gonna have gimmicks I don't like (there's at least two pressurized water levels) but a lot of it looks great. Right now I'm 12 exits into We Like It Here and having a fantastic time, though, so it's gonna be a minute. For anyone who might've missed it, WLIH is a big collaboration hack organized by NewPointless featuring a ton of talented creators who all started in Mario Maker. In alphabetical order, we have levels from Brakkie, Buflen, Donkeymint (his SMW debut), JeepySol (creator of last year's vanilla highlight Super Fruits 'n Veggies World), NewPointless himself, Scags, MmmDoggy (creator of one of my favorite hacks of 2023, Super Insecure World), and revolug. I know some of the later levels get pretty tough (it's a 43 exit hack) but so far things have been pretty chill, and every single level has been creative and super fun. I'm loving this hack and I can't wait to get deeper into it.

Funny how within the span of two days I went from "I don't know what I'm going to play next" to "I have too many things I want to play". I'm not mad about it!

 

[lincolnic]

Wrapped up We Like It Here tonight. Truly excellent hack, can't say enough good things about it. Every level was super creative and clever, even the handful where I didn't enjoy the gimmicks. Nothing was super tough either. Even the hardest level only took me about 45 minutes or so, most were way quicker. I will happily run this back at some point, though I may not replay every single level (the hack has an open overworld and you only have to beat seven particular exits to unlock the final level). For those of you who play kaizo, don't miss this one.

Next up I'm gonna play Gambol 2, which I haven't seen a lot of (on purpose) but looks fantastic. A nice, chill, quick hack sounds perfect after a couple of recent bigger ones. The original Gambol was a real treat and I've got no doubt that this one will deliver too.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

Ooh, I could go for a Gambol 2, the first one was breezy, beautiful and fun. Sadly, I haven't crushed any turts for a bit, we're still deep in renovations and kaizo isn't quite relaxing enough for days when I just need to wind down. I did see that JUMP Team put out a hack that's like 80 levels of nothing but green beans, though. It apparently gets really hard, too? Can't say I saw that one coming.

 

[lincolnic]

From what I hear, the bean hack is really good, but the late game is absurdly difficult. Barb's been putting up Youtube videos, I think, it's definitely worth a look if you're curious.

 

[lincolnic]

I hate to say it, but I'm having some trouble getting into Gambol 2. I'm seven exits in, and a couple of sections have been really cool, but it feels like Jez really leaned into the "die to learn" style for this one, and I find that a frustrating way to play. This is entirely my subjective opinion, and it seems like a lot of other people are really loving the hack, but it's just not working for me. I kept wishing for either more indication or something else to improve legibility.

I'll finish the hack because a lot of work clearly went into it, and there is good stuff here, but it's not what I was expecting. And maybe this is entirely a me thing! It's certainly not a bad hack by any means, but it's also certainly not as breezy as the first one.

 

[lincolnic]

Finished Gambol 2 today. I liked the second half of the hack a lot more than the beginning. There was still a bit of the "die to learn" stuff, but significantly less of it. A lot of the mid-/late game levels were just clever and fun, which was enough to lift the hack up as a whole for me. I'm not sure if I'd run this one back, but overall I thought it was pretty okay.

 

[lincolnic]

Racked up another couple of hacks over the past week. On Sunday I played the new beginner hack Easyland from Ricardo De Melo. I was curious about this one because all of Ricardo's previous work was very hard shell hacks, so I spun it up. It was interesting -- generally not very hard (most sections are 2-3 screens long and only took an attempt or two), but there were a couple of spots that seemed like they'd be very challenging for a beginner (typically where shells were involved). Also interesting because even though it wasn't a Brazilian shell hack, it has a lot of the same aesthetics and overall style as those hacks. Lots of big arrow indicators, lots of 1f0s. I'd recommend it for beginners, but for more experienced players it goes down very quick. I think I finished it in half an hour.

I spent the rest of the week playing VLSkoot's surprise new hack Second Nature. This hack was great, frequently surprising, but occasionally frustrating. The most frustrating parts for me were front-loaded in the hack, so I felt like I was fighting it a bit more than usual up until around the halfway point, but once I got there things really clicked into place. All of the levels are extremely creative with a lot of unique setups, even the ones I didn't personally get along with, though I would like to single out the back half of the hack especially for being really excellent. Really smart design with tricks that feel good to execute. This is another recommendation from me, but with two caveats: 1) the second half of the hack makes the annoying parts in the first half worth it, and 2) it's a fair bit harder than VL's previous hacks. Nothing is super tough, but there is some minor item abuse (shell stuff) in a late-game level. There isn't anything that anyone reading this thread can't handle, though. Worth playing for sure.

I won't get to play anything this weekend, but I think my next hack is going to be Ja Tack from new creator strong. I caught a little bit of drkrdnk playing this one the other day and it looks extremely up my alley: eight solid levels of creative platforming, no extra gimmicks in sight. He really loved it and I'm very excited to spin it up myself.

 

[lincolnic]

I did indeed play Ja, Tack! (as I now know it's meant to be punctuated) last week. It was a very good hack, but it took me by surprise a bit -- it was a lot tighter and tougher overall than I was expecting. It's rated as intermediate, but in my meaningless opinion I think it probably deserves to be in low expert. Jumps are frequently super tight, and the input density reminded me of My Favorite Things. Having said that, I did enjoy it quite a bit. Strong clearly put a ton of thought into the setups and overall level design, and I hope to see more from them soon.

Yesterday I played another new hack, OK Mario, by FiveFactor. I don't know the creator personally, but I've seen them hanging out in various streams over the years. This is their first hack and it's a fantastic debut! It went down quickly (a bit over two hours for me), but left me wanting more. Sections are relatively short and not too tough, but also tough enough that clears still feel satisfying. (I feel like I've been saying stuff like this a lot lately. I guess it gets harder to talk about each hack individually as you play more and more of them.) This one gets a recommendation from me, it's one that I wish I could've played when I was starting to move into intermediate hacks.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I think after the 150 or so hacks you've played, your opinions might actually be worth something! If you feel like putting together another list of "these are the coolest hacks I've played in the last 6 months", I'd be interested to see what's worth playing in the newest crop of hacks.

 

[lincolnic]

I think after the 184 or so hacks you've played

Should hit 200 in the next few months!

But yeah, I meant to do a writeup for 2023, and now it's friggin' April already. Work is demanding more of my time these days but I would really like to make that list for you! Maybe over the weekend.

 

[lincolnic]

Time to get excited, the SGDQ games list is out and we're getting another kaizo relay! As usual, the runners are some absolute killers: GlitchCat7, juzcook, MarkAlarm, Shoujo, shovda, Thabeast721, TheJavaBrew, and YouFailMe. I don't know how the teams are going to be divided up but either way, it's going to be a hell of a show.

That's not all the kaizo representation, though: MrMightyMouse is going to be running GPW3 any% (with a donation incentive for all exits, and Shoujo is running Super "Sonic Saves the World" World any%. Maddy's already said she wants to be there in person to be on Shoujo's couch, and Barb is going to try to go for the GPW3 couch as well. And I think I heard that FrozenFlygone has Fresh Hops ready as a backup run if a hole appears in the schedule, so there could be even more. It's gonna be good!

Unfortunately for me, I'll be on vacation that week so I probably won't get to see anything live, but I'm still super excited for the community to have such strong representation this year.