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If TowerFall creator Matt Thorson has a specialty, it's platformers. From the seminal indie series Jumper to the criminally underrated MoneySeize, the 27-year-old Canadian game designer has been exploring 2D platforming mechanics for well over a decade. That's why, when Devs Make Mario first kicked off back in September, Thorson was one of the first developers we thought to ask.
Now, months later, we finally caught up with Thorson at Indiecade to have him make a level — but in the meantime, he's made well over a dozen Super Mario Maker stages, which he's been posting to Twitter. Nonetheless, he assured us the level he had in mind for us was a special one, built upon some ideas he'd prototyped and abandoned previously.
At long last, after over an hour of repeated attempts from yours truly, it's finally uploaded and ready to play: "Nightmare Architect," a stage built around the quirks of Super Mushroom collection that we think just might be Matt's masterpiece.
The Course ID is B575-0000-00F0-81D9 if you'd like to play it for yourself, and you should — it's a highly challenging but fair test of the player's Mario reflexes, riddled with precise jumps, carefully-timed course elements and a pinch of playful misdirection.
For now, this episode concludes the first season of Devs Make Mario — but we're already talking about who we'd like to invite for round two. Have a game developer you'd like to see try their hand at Mario Maker? Let us know in the comments and they may appear in a future episode!
(Music: NΣΣT - "Pretty Girl")
