The 8th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest RetroAchievements @katze789
The 8th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest RetroAchievements  @katze789
Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
What a massive journey this was. Most evenings I played this game for around 3h and that for week after week, because the progress was just that slow. There has been times where I spent an entire stream on a single level.
The levels of world x were really sick and if the other levels were just 1/10th of that quality, this would've been an absolutely blast to play, but it was pretty much the opposite. After the first session I don't think there was a single day where I didn't rage because of how awfully unfun and painful many of these levels were.
The set itself is quite garbage as well. Last time I complained that the points made absolutely no sense and this time they didn't even try. Except for one single level, every yoshi coin achievement is worth 5 points regardless of difficulty. For the other set I did, you could at least somewhat tell how hard each stage is and if you should savestate practice it. Now you either practice every level or spam attempts till you figure out a level is either too hard or way too blind unfriendly.
There are a ton of speedrun achievements and for some levels it was fun trying to figure out fast strats, but there were just way too many and often really tight, so even just getting it with states was a challenge on its own.
There are other types of challenge as well, mainly playing without a run button, powerupless and don't hold left. Especially the ones where you weren't allowed to hold left were AWFUL. It takes so long to come to a stop without adjusting midair, so hitting precise jumps is just horrible. If the entire level is slippy you can't stop at all until you hit a wall, which adds even more fun.
There was one more achievement, which made this set so much worse. You would think there can't be a missable achievement, since you can access all levels from the start, but no. You have to get 112 exits without pressing a switch, so if you didn't read that before starting it's gg and you have to replay the entire game. But even if you see it, this achievement makes the playthrough so much worse. Many level greatly profit from having the switches unlocked and some of them even require them for either yoshi coins or secret exits. Really great grinding yoshi coins just to figure out you need a switch for one of the later ones. Also for one level I tried forever figuring out how to get a moon. Turns out there is a spring that falls in the lava if you haven't activated the blue switch. You can't know that's the solution, so again just screw that achievement. Adds absolutely nothing, just makes the entire set even less fun and just incredible frustrating.

This hack certainly has some interesting and well made levels, but I really don't recommend trying to master this set.
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The 8th Annual Vanilla Level Design Contest RetroAchievements

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