I like the concept of turning a dream into a level. However, the level itself is slightly disappointing.
Gameplay: 4/10
Within the first few second of playing, I found the gameplay a bit lacking. At the very start, I jumped and found that midway through the building I was standing in front of, the tiles became masked. This feels very unnatural and confusing. Throughout the entire level I continued to find misleading tiles. On occasion the same tile was used in layer 3 and 4 or 4 and 5 which is rarely a good idea. Also, many tiles were used with no explanation at all. For example, Bower threw green block which seemed tome to be a platform you’re supposed to jump on until I touched it and found it hurt. The level also felt too short. If it had taken longer to beat, I would have enjoyed it more. Not everything was bad though. There were at least a couple secrets and you have some places where multiple different paths can be chosen.
Eyecandy: 5/10
The level looks like an old Mario game. In general, things don’t look bad, although the green pipes don’t look connected to whatever they’re next to. Also, some things just look too square to me, and don’t appear natural. Layers 1,2,6 and 7 are not used at all. This is understandable with the tileset choice, although I can’t say I’m thrilled at the tileset choice itself.
Event Placement: 3/10
I was not impressed by the event placement. There was no ammo or food, and the number of gems was rather limited. Enemies felt thrown in as an afterthought and were either absurdly easy to kill or incredibly annoying. Case in Point: When you reach Eva, you hit a sucker tube and (on hard mode at least) a float lizard will start throwing bombs at you before you get out of the tube. This caused me to get blasted back into the tube several times before I could progress with the level. The carrots in the coin maze were good, but the other carrots were much too close to the end. I can’t imagine how a player would make it that far, then require two more health to walk maybe 15 tiles right to the exit, even with the random enemies.
Overall: 4/10
The concept is good and the level itself could be worse. The majority of the problems come from a lack of experience making levels and the need of more beta-testing. Keep working at it, and you’ll make much cooler levels in the future.