Since when were there laws saying that you gotta make the player feel like its their fault in level design? Yea Yea, I get what you mean by the whole thing. Basically the whole idea of this level was to make sure that the player rages tons but keep on pushing through in search of victory (finish line). If you checked out the GD community levels. You’ll find that over half of the >hard demons are like this. Like I can’t even make it to 2% of silent clubstep. Of course, people like Paqoe spent hundreds of hours worth of attempts, and in the end, they did the impossible. What you consider annoying is actually extremely intentional (ofc, am I the only one who tries to make a hard level yet it seems I’m the only guy who has to eat those words). Life as a level designer whose levels get called “impossible” and “a pain in the ###”, well… there is a nice ring to it.
Now getting with your other complaints, the staircase on the first part was actually to show how difficult the level really is, an appetizer to say the sort, if u cannot time right, then this level will take years to do. Everything in this level is possible if you are truly wanting the victory.
For what it’s worth, there’s a huge genre of romhacking games (often older, but pretty much cross the board) called Kaizo that is pretty much built on this sort of feeling; there are plenty of examples around but if you look at any of the kaizo mario world runs from gdq over the years you might get some, ahem, inspiration for future levels.
One very common mistake all game devs make (including myself) is because you’re the only playtester, the levels get unrealistically difficult for an average player since it’s almost impossible to gauge the right level of difficulty. I’m not sure if this applies or not it’s just something I wanted to point out which may be helpful for other levels. Try thinking from a player’s perspective, not your own.
Hard (the levels you’re referencing) - a level with substantial difficulty that’s caused by a set of hard setups, platforms, passages or whatever, but the gist is that you’re able to master them and consistently clear them. One you’re good at that, it’s a breeze. If you suck at those levels, it’s a skill issue
Annoying - a level with difficulty that’s based on exploiting an annoying feature (or bug/poor game design) of the game to bump the difficulty significantly by making inconsistent sections. That’s why I pointed out the staircase at the start, it’s difficulty is derived from the fact that the game isn’t great at registering inputs consistently.
Only when the levels are rewarding in the end
Now, not to discourage you from making levels, quite the opposite. I think it’s great if you have fun making/playing these levels, i’m just saying that I myself find a victory much more rewarding if the level was hard but balanced, instead of hard and really frustrating.
I think @AbstractDesigner has done that in Roller already, if I remember it’s one of the unused assets. I think I saw it when I was editing the code (again not sure idrk)
