A Mario fangame! It's a fangame! With Mario!

[Zero Kirby]

So! Here's some concept sketches.



So this is Fire and Ice Mario's dynamic! Fire Mario's a much more offensive-type powerup. Unlike official 2D Mario games you can ricochet the fireballs off of walls and such, but they only last for five bounces! Whereas Ice Mario's iceballs don't bounce at all but, you can aim them for different parabolas. Fireballs defeat more troublesome (but not all!) enemies while iceballs freeze them for use as platforms (or in the case of fire enemies, puts them out).

Finally, feedback from the beta testers on the Boost Jump amounted mostly to "I like the idea but not the execution so much" so I've taken their concerns, a few of my own, and redesigned it once more. (Since this is a common mechanic and not a boss I'm not worried about this leaking - it's mostly secret stuff like later locations and bosses I don't want spoiled by the beta testers.)



Now, once you begin charging the jump, Mario will start spinning in the air and you'll lose most control over him (while skydiving you'll be able to control him a little bit but it'll be nowhere near as much as if he weren't charging so you gotta be careful). If he's in the air or skydiving he'll be slowly descending, so that's something to be aware of. Once you let go of the button he'll blast off in the last direction you were holding at speed (again, can't Boost down unless you're skydiving), and once you slow down a bit you'll exit the Boost Jump. Hitting stuff like enemies and Brick Blocks extends the jump slightly by speeding you up (kinda like the roll attack in the SNES Donkey Kong games). You aren't invincible while charging and there is no grace period of invincibility after the Boost Jump ends. And of course, you need to wait a while between Boost Jumps. This is done, it just needs to be retested.

And work on the Options Menu is actually progressing!



You can change the volume of the game's sounds and music, and it gets saved to the Options file for when you reopen the game.

And if you suddenly decide to change your mind you can hit the cancel button and it goes right back to what it was.

Controls is still the trickiest part of the Options menu but I'm gonna try and get it done. It might require a hilariously large rewrite (or at least copy-paste) of the game's code but I'mma try it anyway.