So you’ve gotten Super Mario Maker 2 but no one likes your levels, and you are confused. You stacked three Bowsers on top of each other. Who doesn’t like that!?

Well you, my friend, need a crash course in level design. Luckily we are here to give it to you. Here are 17 steps to making a good, traditional, Mario level. These rules don’t always apply to certain level types, such as speedrun and kaizo levels, but if you want to just make a decent Mario platforming challenge, this guide will get you there.

Step 0) Play some platformers

Before you even begin your Mario Maker design career, you should play some platforming games, specifically your favorite platformers. It’s great if they are Mario games, but they can be anything from Castlevania to Metroid. While you are playing, examine why and how the game makes you jump. Don’t just blow through them. Examine each jump you make and think about how it made you feel and whether it was fun or frustrating. When you feel like you are having fun, note the arrangement of jumps and enemies and use it for inspiration. This will help you come up with your central idea for your level.

Step 1) Have an idea

The first few steps to good level design involve holding yourself back. Many people just jump in and start laying blocks and that leaves them with a mish mash of items that can barely be called a level. Instead, think of an idea first. Are you building a puzzle level? Are you building a speedrun level? A vertical level? An auto-scroller? Do you want to build a level that makes good usage of slopes or moving platforms? Do you really want to try on-off switches? Really this idea can be anything down to the smallest of creative urges. “I want to try and build a level in the Super Mario 3D World style” is a perfectly good idea.

Step 2) Flesh out that idea into a theme

Once again, before you put down a single block, you should workshop your idea and flesh it out into a theme. What’s a theme? A theme is essentially an elevator pitch for your level. Come up with a sentence or two that describes everything your level is about.

Look at it this way, while Mario games are certainly light on plot, each level still tells a small story. These are stories like “Mario has to make his way through a dark forest infested with wigglers” or “Mario has to navigate an underground pipe maze” or “Mario has to survive Lemmy’s vertically scrolling castle and beat him at the end.” You want to come up with this same story for your level.

Step 3) Examine your theme and find the main mechanic

All good traditional Mario levels focus on a single mechanic and iterate on that mechanic multiple times. Luckily enough you just came up with a theme and you can usually find your central mechanic in that theme. Let’s look at the three themes we tossed around.

“Mario has to make his way through a dark forest infested with wigglers.” Right there, you have your main mechanic: wigglers. You’ll likely end up setting up multiple situations in which wigglers have to be dodged or bounced off of to continue. They will also make up the main bulk of the enemies in your level.

“Mario has to navigate an underground pipe maze.” Once again, the main mechanic is right in the theme: pipes, especially misdirecting ones. Mario will likely have to move through cramped rooms littered with pipes and challenges, and will beat the stage by choosing the correct pipes.

“Mario has to survive Lemmy’s vertically scrolling castle and beat him at the end.” Well we can’t put in Lemmy in Mario Maker (Nintendo, get on that) but we can put bosses at the end, like Bowser Jr. and Boom Boom. More importantly, the boss isn’t even the main mechanic. The vertically scrolling level is. This is going to be a level that has a lot of jumps that require Mario to slowly climb upward, all while avoiding whatever challenges are put in his way.

Step 4) Choose a set of enemies, items, and stage gimmicks that support that mechanic

Many first time designers make the mistake of adding everything the editor lets you add into one level. In the design business we call that “hot garbage.” Good design usually comes from limitations, so it’s time to choose some limitations.

Think about your main mechanic and choose a small set of items, enemies, and gimmicks that you will use. Let’s take the vertically scrolling castle as an example. Here are a few candidates that you might consider.

Springs – Help Mario ascend to platforms that might be difficult to jump to otherwise.

Flight power-ups – Make jumps easier.

Dry bones – Classic castle enemy, and can be bounced off of multiple times in attempts to make jumps.

Crushing pillars and saw blades – Perils that make climbing the castle harder.

Honestly, that’s enough. You’ll of course be using terrain, breakable blocks, and question mark blocks as you need but you can make a great level just with these few things. In fact Nintendo routinely does!

Similarly, there are things you probably want to avoid in this level. The Angry Sun, for example, would feel a little out of place. Things like burners and lava balls could fit, but generally fit better in a level that focuses on lava jumps rather than vertical scrolling. You probably don’t want to add anything that makes vertical ascension too easy, like a lakitu in his cloud or a koopa clown car. Creating lists of things to avoid is just as important as creating a list of things to include.

Step 5) Introduce your enemies and platforming challenges in a safe context first

Good Mario stages tend to telegraph their challenges. Sometimes this is done by presenting a single challenge without any risk. For example, it can be a jump that you have to make over solid ground, so failing doesn’t kill you. In our castle example, it would involve a few tricky but safe vertical jumps with no enemies, allowing Mario to try again if he falls. The wiggler forest would introduce a wiggler on flat ground with nothing else to challenge Mario, allowing him to jump over it or experiment with it.

Sometimes major enemies can even be introduced by being trapped in a wall. Say you were building a stage full of buzzy beetles. Trapping a few in the wall before you even see one in the stage will telegraph their presence. You can do this with stage hazards too. A buzz saw in the middle of a wall is a good way to tell Mario “there are buzz saws coming up.”

Step 6) Create a single easy challenge that involves your main mechanic and then follow it with down time

Now is when you start actually introducing your main challenges. Make jumps that need to be made or else Mario takes damage or dies. However, your first challenge should be relatively easy. Yes, there should be stakes, but they should be small. You shouldn’t force Mario to jump through a ton of death spikes. Maybe make him avoid a single enemy or hazard.

Once you have created this challenge, allow Mario to rest on the other side. That means no enemies, no hazards, just a chance to take a breath and ready himself for the next challenge.

Step 7) Add optional challenges in your downtime areas

Just because your downtime areas have to be rest areas doesn’t mean that they can’t have stuff in them. The point of down-time is to give players a chance to rest. However, you can put power-ups, coins, and other objects in downtime areas to keep them interesting. Many down-time areas have optional challenges, like a tricky jump to get a power-up, or an out of the way enemy that can be ignored safely, but if interacted with will allow Mario to reach an optional path or perhaps a 1-Up. Sections of downtime should always allow Mario to rest and do nothing if he so wants, but optionally giving him something else to do will keep them interesting.

Step 8) Add more challenges interspersed with more downtime, evolving on your mechanic as you go

This is the basic pattern you’ll want to follow for the rest of your level. Create a challenge, then put an area of downtime before the next challenge. Each challenge should also increase in difficulty and complexity as you go. If your first jump simply had Mario avoiding a single stage hazard, maybe your next jump has him avoiding two stage hazards in a row. Maybe it puts him on a falling platform. Maybe it asks him to make two or even three jumps in a row. Just remember to restrict yourself to the list of stage elements you chose before, and to only introduce these elements after you have telegraphed them. (Downtime is also another great time to telegraph upcoming stage elements).

Step 9) Add checkpoints before creating a big change to your level’s central mechanic

If your level goes on long enough that it needs a checkpoint, be sure to put it before your major theme changes in a major way. This is usually after Mario is forced to take a warp pipe, if a level is being designed well.

Here’s an example. Say we were making the vertical castle. In the first half of the level you had to contend with tricky jumps and dry bones. In the second half, you introduce the crushing pillars. Before the crushing pillars come into play, put a checkpoint in the downtime right before them. This will prevent players from being frustrated if they die to your new mechanic, and will allow them to quickly attempt to learn the new mechanics without having to go through the first half of your level again.

Step 10) When the level is coming to a close, combine your challenges into one final test

Over the course of the level you have likely created and remixed several platforming challenges. Let’s take the wiggler example. In the beginning of the level you may have had Mario jump onto a wiggler to make a long jump. Then maybe he had to jump from wiggler to wiggler to avoid a floor filled with spikes or poison. Then maybe he had to use a wiggler to avoid a koopa paratrooper in the way of his next jump. Then maybe you had him repeatedly bounce on a large wiggler to get across another damaging area.

The last portion of any level should be a final test. So in this case, Mario could bounce off a small wiggler to get on the back of a large wiggler that walks across a spiked floor, with paratroppers in the way. If designed right this final challenge won’t be too busy, and if it is then you have probably put too much stuff in your level to begin with. This is the conclusion to your level’s story, a section that ties everything you have done before together.

Step 11) Create an outro

Now that Mario has cleared your major challenge, it’s time to add an outro. This can be a simple as creating a pipe that leads to the exit, however more exciting outros put the exit in place and give Mario one less platforming challenge, a denouement so to speak. This is a platforming challenge that can be ignored to just hit the flagpole and end the level, however if the player so wishes they can attempt the challenge to, say, hit the top of the flagpole and get a one-up. This challenge should never threaten to kill Mario, just to drop him down the floor preventing the bonus.

Step 12) Add supporting enemies

Believe it or not, the majority of your enemies should be added after your level is mostly complete. Enemies are essentially tweaks for your platforming challenges. If a challenge feels too easy, you can add an enemy on the beginning or ending platform, or a parachuting or flying enemy in the middle. You can also use enemies as alternative pass/fail conditions for more or less skilled players. Bouncing off an enemy to get extra height and skip a tricky platforming section is a good example of using enemies in this way. Just don’t let your enemies allow the player to skip the majority of your platforming challenges or you won’t have a level in the first place.

Step 13) Add supporting items

Just like enemies, most items should be added after a level is already complete. If enemies are tweaks to make certain platforming sections harder, items are tweaks that make them easier. Difficult to get through a section without getting hit once? Consider adding a mushroom in the downtime before that section. Swarmed with enemies? Consider a fire flower. Jumps are tricky? Consider a flight power-up. Lots of threats coming from above or below? Consider a spiny hat or dry bones shell.

Just remember, items shouldn’t be requires to pass a section. If they are, then be sure to spawn them infinitely, but this should ONLY apply to things like flight power-ups or spikey hats for their unique mechanics. Damage boosting should never be required. It just isn’t fun.

Step 14) Playtest your level multiple times in multiple styles and if anything feels off make edits

Now it’s time to play your level over, and over, and over again. Play it normally. Play it without running even once. Play it without collecting a single power-up. Play it without killing a single enemy. These multiple styles of playthroughs should show where your level’s weaknesses are.

Maybe you designed a jump that is only clearable if you bounce off an enemy. What if that enemy accidentally dies early due to a fireball you threw? Would suck to have to kill yourself just because you were using the power-up you were given.

There’s lot of these problems that you’ll find through testing, from soft-locks to platforming sections that just aren’t fun. Don’t be afraid to scrap whole sections of your level if they just aren’t working out.

Don’t just playtest a level yourself. Get your friends and family to playtest it. Listen to their feedback. The feedback of people who play your level without having seen the design process is priceless. They will notice things you haven’t. Don’t brush their criticism off. Go back into the editor and fix the things that they didn’t like. It will just make your level better.

Step 15) Once your final playtest is done, add elements like arrows and lead coins

Now that you have a level that is close to being done it’s time to add visual elements that assist your players. Arrows are a good addition if navigating your level feels confusing. Coins can be used to lead tricky jumps. Also, be sure that none of your threats or challenges are off screen. This will cause to cheap deaths and those are never fun. If you absolutely cannot prevent a threat from being off screen, telegraph it with other aesthetic elements.

Step 16) Add whatever aesthetic elements you want

As you add ground and platforms you’ll notice that tiny aesthetic elements pop up in the background. These aren’t actually set in stone. You can copy and paste them as you choose and make your stage as aesthetically pleasing as you like, provided you don’t actually change any of the mechanics.

Remember, you can include items and enemies in a wall as aesthetic elements too, since they can’t interact with Mario. Just remember, don’t do this with projectile enemies because that will create hazard Mario can’t deal with.

Step 17) Upload and get a friend to play and like at least once

Exchange your stage’s code with someone who would be willing to give you a like. Yes, cheese the system. Quite frankly, something is broken with the system right now and without that one like, your level will just get buried. So just get the one like and watch players come flooding in.