This is my entry for the 10th vanilla level design contest where you are only allowed to use the vanilla resources.
The level is about parsing the trajectories of some sprites, and bubble popping shenanigans. In some of the intermission rooms, there are also simple puzzles where you have to make a bridge of sprites from the bubbles.
I'd like to thank all the cool people who gave me some feedback.
BGM:
Equinox - Tori (ported by RednGreen)
Undertale - Bonetrousle (ported by Lui37)
Link:
bin.smwcentral.net/u/1250/vldcx_cerulean_cave_v5f.zip (single level hack for now)
Some (long) stories behind the level
1. Name
At first I named the level "Mines of Moria"(lotr reference), with a plan to relate the falling segment with Gandalf vs. barlog scene. But later I found there's nothing about water or bubbles in Moria so I scrapped the name.
It is now called "Cerulean Cave", aka "Hanada Cave" which is also the name of the 3th(actually 4th) stage of Kaizo mario world. Its origin is Pokemon, and I made some silly story like "You were immersed in Pokemon Go too much and entered a deep cave without being aware."
Other candidates were: Swiss Abyss, Dwarven Dwelling
2. Length
Last time, many people said that my level(Ice Cutting Site) was kinda short and they wanted to see more from it. So I create this level somewhat longer; if the optional minigame doesn't count, the level is about 1.5 times longer than my previous one.
3. Objective
People who like to play easier games were usually not my major audience. This time, however, my goal was to provide satisfaction for a wider spectrum of people.
I attempted to make obstacles which seemingly involve some hard/complex action, but are actually tractable. Obstacles had to be intuitive; so that just reacting by intuition would unravel the dangerous situation, and as a result anything wouldn't seem unfair to various players. Also obstacles still had to be interesting enough; to minimize the loss of satisfaction from the challenge that experienced players long for. It is tough to make something that meets the both conditions, but I tried at least.
4. Unused sections that are not shown in the video
Two other complex bubble puzzles used to be in the very early version. These kind of puzzles might be nice to a niche audience, but they were a little far from being intuitive(which was the main purpose of this level). The level seemed already long too, so I discarded them at last.
Honestly I had much trouble with making a decision whether to put them or not. Maybe I will use them for a future level or release them independently somewhere.
There was another layer 2 sinking room with sprites that move sinuously, attempting an optical illusion that they seem to move upwards more. But it didn't do anything interesting in terms of gameplay, so it was excluded later.