Through the Crabacombs

20th: Through the Crabacombs Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level

Overview Creator(s): NARFNra Composer(s): NARFNra Statistics Scores: 78 60 83 56 Total: 69.25 / 100 Rank: 20th Elements: 1 Box Items: Cyorown Feeber M-445 Bubble Platform Falling Platform (MM5) Enemies: Feeber Cyorown Crabbot M-445 Croaker Haiker N Gimmicks: Bubble Platform Falling Platform (MM5) Bosses: Grey Devil Other Information: Skippable

Theme Music No End in Sight Stage Order Location: Tier 9 Previous: Cornerstone to Dominate Next: Spicy Banana Bread Storehouse

Through the Crabacombs is the 20th place entry in Make a Good 48 Hour Mega Man Level. It consists of an underground collection of flooded tunnels using Pump Man's tileset, wherein the player is forced to deal with Feebers and infinitely spawning M-445s while maneuvering around large numbers of spikes. It also features several long vertical rooms where the player is forced to ascend on Bubble Platforms and Falling Platforms while being attacked by Cyorowns.

It is notable for being the highest-ranked level in the game to feature a Skip Teleporter, the next-highest being Cosmological Factory in Tier 4.

Skip Status

This level was deemed skippable on M-Jacq's suggestion, due to the difficulty of some segments (especially given the low number of checkpoints and heavy use of instant-death traps like pits and spikes.)

Scores

Judge Comments
ParmaJon  : 78 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 30 / 35 09 / 15 10 / 10 17 / 25 12 / 15 CRABACOMBS, I LOVE IT. What I don't love is the checkpoint placement. Like legit, if you fixed that you'd solve most of my problems with this stage. Your gimmicks and the bubble crabs are fairly conducive to using spikes and pits as obstacles, and the challenges you made (especially with the 3 Gyro Man Platforms on top of each other covering a hole, or the long vertical sections with the bubbles) are great uses of the gimmicks. Really good job. The issue is that since so much of the level is based on instant death, you need more checkpoints to make the level ebtter. Going through the same sections multiple times is boring since this is not a fast-paced level. Splitting this level into 3 or 4 sections instead of 2 would go a long way in making it better. Despite that, this level feels, sounds, and looks grate (get it?) with that sewer theme. Has that nice dismal sewer feel. Overall, good experience.
PKWeegee  : 60 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 18 / 35 09 / 15 10 / 10 13 / 25 10 / 15 Dang, those crabs were a pain at times. Well, this stage was pretty fun at times, and at others, it felt kinda...blah. If that makes sense. Clearly, there were clever ideas behind some of these challenges, but some of them just didn't click right with me. The last bubble elevator, for example. The crabs kind of screwed me over more times that I'd have liked. Overall, though, it was decently fun.
M-Jacq  : 83 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 33 / 35 13 / 15 08 / 10 17 / 25 12 / 15 Difficult sections in the Mega Man games - and most video games, really - comes in two varieties. You've got tricky sections, which are difficult because executing the correct maneuvers to get through them requires skill on the player's part. You've then got "gotcha" sections, which are difficult because they require you to act and respond extremely quickly. (So, single-screen Yoku Block puzzles are "tricky," Quick Lasers and spike drops are "gotcha"...-y) Both can work in a level, but you get significantly more leeway on tricky sections than you do on gotcha sections when it comes to how punishing a level is. Players get less angry when the mistakes they make are due to something they could have foreseen. This is a long prelude to say that while this level is very, very hard at points, and it's light on checkpoints as well, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. The sections done over pits have very generously-timed and obvious cycles; I never thought that my failure on these sections was due to anything other than human error. Meanwhile, while there were a couple "gotcha" enemies - the Cyorowns in particular - they never showed up over spikes or pits. It's not ideal that the difficulty curve was close to backwards, and that the earliest part of the level was harder than what came afterwards (especially when you had to hop between ledges placed directly above one another), but I can forgive that. This level is really, really well-made from a technical standpoint, if you ask me - clean level architecture, interesting setups, that sort of thing. That final segment in particular is ace - the bubble "elevator" turning into a more standard wave bubble puzzle as you dodge spikes and M-445s was really cool, and a nice showy capper to the level. Grey Devil was pretty cool as well. I suspect I'm in the minority on this one, but I really liked this level in spite of how tough it was in spots (to the point where I think it warrants a Skip Teleporter - not for me, mind you, for other people). Just a really solid platforming experience.
Freems  : 56 / 100
Design Creativity Function Fun Aesthetic 19 / 35 08 / 15 09 / 10 13 / 25 07 / 15 Well, we got ourselves a perfectly fine level, so let's get talkin'. A few placements of the crows didn't feel well thought out given how they act almost instantly upon spawning on screen (which is more annoying when the screen just keeps going up vertically), there were probably a few more spikes than really needed, and a few jumps just felt more janky than they really needed to be. Now you certainly did have unique ideas for those gimmicks. Using the Gyro blocks in a way that there's multiple ways to go down and you have to determine the correct one while dodging enemy fire and the bridge of Wave Bubbles at the end that slowly gets smaller as some of them hit spikes. These are neat ideas in theory, but I don't think the level takes full advantage of them. The Gyro situation can be handled very quickly and the enemies prove a little threat and while the Wave bubble section at the end is cool in theory it really ended before it began. And given the fact that it was underwater, it was very easy to just skip the whole last part of it entirely and jump up to the boss door. They're kinda saved for special moments when I almost wish more of the level was dedicated to these cooler sections. More of that would have been great.

Trivia

• This stage is the only stage in the game to feature the Grey Devil.