Marker Man Misadventures 11

Okay, where am I now? It looks like some kind of dream world. Everything is purple, there are stars and sleepy clouds in the sky and the background music feels as calm as the last world's background music. Speaking of, this one is the biggest offender in terms of the beat count. You thought the 7 measure loop was bad? The following numbers are my best guess as to what the number of beats in each measure are: 2,4,4,2,4,3,4. That is a total of 23 beats over 7 measures. My head is hurting just listening to this song. Please, make it stop.

It's a long way down, so watch your step. The man eating houses are back, so that's fun. On the one horizontally moving platform, you can make it to the right wall using a momentum jump when the platform is moving right. There is a lot of space to move around here, so try and not to get lost.

Sad Cat

A sad cat that roams around being sad. If you touch it, it will meow and scratch you for 10 damage, given that this is world 10.

I actually cannot believe this. I checked every part of this level multiple times over. I think the developers straight up forgot to add a coin here. There is only one coin in this level as far as I know. I have no idea where the two coin exit takes me. Of course the game doesn't let me have the satisfaction of knowing every route in the game, but I guess if the second coin was never programmed in, then it's technically not even a route. How infuriating.

LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING ABOUT THIS LEVEL. As I jumped from this one platform to another, all of a sudden a star appears from the top of my screen, smashes down into me, and before I could even process what happened, I died. It killed me instantly. I had to go back and check what in the world happened at that moment. THE ENEMY IS PART OF THE BACKGROUND. PART OF THE BACKGROUND OF HUNDREDS OF OTHER STARS IN THE SKY. It's teaming up with the yellow house and trying to assassinate my progress. Go on. Collect that marker. It's totally not bait. The sound of collecting the marker is also totally not going to take priority over the sound of the star falling completely. Stupid dumb falling star level.

Alright, I feel better now.

Falling Star

These will destroy you. 10 damage per frame, and can seemingly fall from the sky at any time. There is little indication for when one is coming. They are differentiated from the rest of the stars in the background from its frown, and from its occasional blinking. If you hear a stock falling sound effect then that means you better take cover immediately because it's coming to smash your head in. They disappear after a bit.

That's not even the worst part. The worst part is in order to know when they're coming, I have to have the sound on and listen for the falling cue. And that means listening to the horrid background music.

This level is pretty fun to speed run. Just watch out for the stars, as they hang lower to the ground in this one. Go over the holes and enter the hallway where the coin is from the right side to avoid all the spikes.

This one, on the other hand, is not fun to speed run. Almost half of the length of the level involves just running right. Then you have to deal with the mess that is everything above you. Too little to do, followed by too much to do.

One of the stars will happily greet you after you climb up a wall. At this point you have two options. Either run backwards and have a line placed where you will land so you won't take possible fall damage, or quickly draw a line above you so that the star bounces off your head. I'd assume the star would bounce off the line and not kill you. I didn't try it. Just saying, in case you're the one person in the world who has the game and is going through this guide. Oh, that person is me? Great.

Hey it worked. Just thought I'd say that. Okay, moving on.

Raccoons are falling from the sky! The biggest danger is falling enemies. Otherwise, it's a pretty mild level overall. Go left on spawn to get the coin first.

I have a pro tip for myself. The timer that determines when the star disappears continues on pause! This means that you can avoid harm from a star once it jumps out by pausing for about 5 seconds. It will disappear on unpause.

This poor raccoon keeps walking to the right, and the bouncy wall keeps pushing it away. Stop doing that, wall. It's trying to get to work. I was worried that the one exit that is impossible to get to leads to the bonus level, but this one has the exit to the bonus level. It seems like I am able to access every level so far. Maybe that impossible exit goes to a level I already visited. Maybe it doesn't go anywhere! I guess it doesn't matter now.

Bouncy Wall

Even though it looks like this will kill you because it has ridges around all the edges, it's harmless. It's a moving wall that has high restitution. Anything it touches will be bounced away.

I think this is a strong contender for the worst marker man level so far. The majority of the level is simple platforming, and the only enemy type is the spiky wall. The middle section of the level is ridiculous. You have to jump from one moving platform to another moving platform, and the platforms change directions in different frequencies. This means there are times where you can make the jump and there are times where you cannot, and you have to be able to tell the difference, often while the platform to jump to is out of view. The first time this happens is at least systematically manageable, but the second time there is a spiky wall column introduced! That wall has its own movement pattern and can stop marker man from making the jump to the other platform. That specific jump is almost impossible unless you do what I did.

On the stationary platform before the twin moving platforms with the spiky wall in between, pan the camera to the far right until you see the spiky wall. If you place a line just above the ceiling and when the spiky walls are at its highest point, then you can barely get the shape to be sandwiched between the walls and the ceiling, preventing the walls from coming back down for a little while. You have a ten second time frame at this point to make the jump from one moving platform to the other. The last jump in this set is to the stationary platform, which can be blocked yet again by the spiky wall that gets in the way. You have to time your jump so you can land on that safe area before your line disappears, or else you have a good chance of getting hit by the spiky wall that was trapped from earlier. Absolutely insane. Hope that extra life was worth it.

Search. Find. Collect. Dodge. Jump. Exit.

These coins are getting pretty tough to find. However, if you're insane like I am, you can try using the cool shortcut to get the coin instantly. Get on top of the structure you spawn in, and just jump off to the left. You'll have to try to not hit the falling star or miss the platform, and draw something under you so that you won't die from fall damage. It's pretty risky, but it's so much fun. These stars are always inconveniently placed everywhere, and they still scare me when they jump out.

This has been the most difficult world for mapping yet. The platforms are scattered around so there are a ton of paths one can take. I often mess up the scaling of a path when it finally joins with an earlier visited segment. It sucks. Also help me: I'm running out of ideas for level titles.

I can feel my soul draining.

No enemies, and basically no pickups? How many of these levels have even been reviewed? I didn't play this game to appreciate the architecture of the levels. I expect an actual game to be here.

Yep. My soul's gone now.

Beware of the large amount of stars in the beginning segment. Just watch out for stars no matter where you are. Except for this bonus level, of course. Wait, what? Another bonus level? This is the same world, right? Please don't be as bad as the previous bonus level…

I am so relieved. The ending part is slightly tricky because you cannot ramp over the cake because the line you create will just slide off. Just build from the last platform in the air so that the slope is shallow enough not to slip.

Another really annoying level to map out. The middle area has 4 to 5 different layers of platforms, all pretty separate from each other. Just… one more… level… to go…. Get me off this wild ride.

Oh no….. oh noooo….. THERE ARE INVISIBLE WALLS IN THIS LEVEL. THEY ACTUALLY MADE INVISIBLE WALLS A THING. I'M SO SCREWED.

The grey lines indicate invisible walls. As you can imagine, they are SO MUCH HARDER to draw than regular walls because I have to make a ton of checks just to accurately figure out the length of one platform. And that's assuming I can find them. Just imagine a regular player trying to beat this level! First, they have to find the second coin. The only way to find it without blindly jumping to your death is to hold the camera down control while on the moving platform. The coin will be barely visible for a moment. Then they have to get down there to realize that there is an invisible wall in the way. THEN after they figured out that theres a hole in the top that also leads to a spike pit they have to build their way out. Building your way out of that tiny hole is not easy, even if it was all visible.

So how do you build out of the coin hole? You cannot build a line up hugging the wall because it will either fall through the hole or it will be too steep for marker man to not hit the ceiling while climbing up it. You have to build a perfect rectangle. A perfect rectangle is pushed all the way to the left of the hole and has a height that will barely get it touching the ceiling. This makes it so that the rectangle will not move once the line gets built underneath it. A circle is not ideal, but is possible to use as well. There is a huge chance you will accidentally give marker man a power. Honestly, if you have the markers to give marker man a power up, just give it super jump and bounce out of there. Build to the moving platform, minding the invisible ceiling, and escape this monster of a level.

There is a good chance that the next world is the last one. There is also a good chance that this might be the world that breaks me. I have no idea what it has in store, but if this level is any indication then I am in trouble. Wish me luck.

This world is so massive that the developers felt the need to add two bonus levels. Probably. I don't know what they're thinking. Probably not about how much they enjoy making levels for this game.