Deep Dark Temple

80th: Deep Dark Temple Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

More like "Damp Moderately-Well-Lit Temple", honestly.

Overview Creator(s): Da Man Cutman Composer(s): Minae Fujii Statistics Scores: 60 38 59 50 Total: 51.75 / 100 Rank: 80th Elements: 1 Box Items: Fan Fiend Metall Swim Submarine Flier Bubble Platform Needle Press Enemies: Fan Fiend Metall Dance Metall Swim Neo Metall Submarine Flier Gimmicks: Bubble Platform Needle Press Reflect Block Bosses: Pharaoh Man Other Information: -4 Functionality Penalty

Theme Music Mega Man 4 - Pharaoh Man Boss: Mega Man 4 - Boss Stage Order Location: Tier 3 Previous: Down the Drain Next: Outer Excavation

Deep Dark Temple is the 80th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. Heavily evocative of Pharaoh Man's stage, it is a tomb-themed level with several water-filled areas, which tend to have Submarine Fliers inhabiting them. As said enemies spawn underwater, they skip their cloud phase entirely and thus are more aggressive than normal. The level also makes use of Fan Fiends to blow Mega Man in different directions, both to his benefit and detriment.

Strategy

The opening section has enemies that can fire multiple shots that are hard to avoid, such as Submarine Fliers' aimed arcing shots, so the Flame Mixer helps to block most of them. The Concrete Shot can kill Submarine Fliers in one hit, but its arcing nature and limited ammo (coupled with the enemy's tendency to stay above Mega Man) makes it fairly situational. A Met-filled corridor introduces Needle Presses, and the screens afterwards introduce Fan Fiends, with one being protected by a Reflect Block. The Rain Flush can still destroy it, however, and it also helps against a Metall Dance lurking on the other side of some spike pits. The first checkpoint is down the ladder, where small (and unnecessary, as the entire room is underwater) Bubble Platforms first appear. Larger ones on the next screen will try to carry Mega Man into a set of spikes, so wait for them to pass before dropping down.

After going through a short submerged corridor with spikes along the ceiling, Mega Man must ride Bubble Platforms up into higher screens. A Fan Fiend behind Reflect Blocks on one screen tries to force him to jump into spikes, while another Fan Fiend's wind is needed to jump a wide gap and reach a ladder. From the final checkpoint onwards, most of the level involves dodging Needle Presses, which poke out from walls and over pits. One Fan Fiend actually cancels out the effect of another one blowing behind Mega Man, giving him normal movement until one of the two is destroyed; the one blowing ahead of him is the only one that can be damaged without Special Weapons. Right before the boss corridor is a bottomless pit five tiles wide, and can only be jumped over with the aid of a Fan Fiend blowing behind Mega Man. However, it is still easy to fall down into it if Mega Man jumps too early, so using either the Concrete Shot as a safety net or the Rush Jet to fly over it is a valid option.

Judge Comments

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 60 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 23 / 35 9 / 15 8 / 10 14 / 25 6 / 15 The first half of this level is really weak. Like, it just feels like a worse Pharaoh Man. Then, in the underwater part with the bubbles, you hit a stride. Mixing the air blowers and the bubbles is challenging, but you also manage to not make it stupid hard. It's weird that the needles stop showing up. Overall, okay level.
PKWeegee  : 38 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 11 / 35 6 / 15 7 / 10 7 / 25 7 / 15 Hmm, this is a bit clumsy. The bubbles are a bit useless during most sections they are in, and the Fan Fiends were used more as a gimmick. But those are actually used kinda nicely, with having to defeat some to get the wind effect from others. The needles were more of an annoyance than anything, being placed weirdly, with hard or impossible ways to get through with no damage. It's odd.
M-Jacq  : 59 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 25 / 35 9 / 15 10 / 10 8 / 25 7 / 15 On a purely objective level, this is really good. You rolled some potentially awful gimmicks but didn't fall into the traps that come with them - the Wave Man bubble segments were snippy with no downtime, the Fan Boys weren't used in situations where the push and pull could frustrate you, the Needle Presses weren't spammed, etcetera. And they were all used together in interesting and novel ways. So how come I didn't really enjoy this level? It just felt kinda generic, I guess - just a bunch of obstacles in a flooded version of Pharaoh Man's stage, with not much in the way of theming. I guess there was also a minor problem where a lot of the enemies felt hard to take on with an uncharged buster, sometimes because they're just below your line of fire, sometimes because - as with the submarines - they float too high up and you have to kind of jiggle left and right to get a shot in, in a way that's not all that fun if you're not sauteing them with Flame Mixer. Not my cup of tea.
Freems  : 50 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 18 / 35 5 / 15 9 / 10 14 / 25 4 / 15 I find it very hard to talk about levels like this. It's... fine. Its worst sin is that it's pretty ugly and there's a lot of broken or unpolished tile work all over the place. But level design wise, it's well and fine. It doesn't really do anything exciting and is incredibly average. But that's not a bad thing. It just won't really end up sticking out in my mind at all. Using the Fan Fiend for the last jump was a hint at something, but it was just a romp through Pharaoh Man town with some needles and water.

Notes

• Deep Dark Temple was submitted with two functionality problems, earning a -2 score penalty for each (thus the final score would be 47.75). The first was for the spawn point, which was positioned near the level's end; the second was for broken tile animations intended to animate the torches in the background (but wound up causing the entire stage except the torches to flicker black). Both errors were fixed for the final game, although the tile animation was disabled entirely, resulting in static torches.
• Some misplaced screen boundary objects in the upwards Bubble Platform climb causes its screens to be slightly wider than average.