When the player sees the challenge

The good thing with Mario Maker is that it makes it easy to illustrate how Mario games are built and where are the high-quality level design element. One point for which I had hard time to understand Kirby Kid's discourse was about coins placement. He typically objects that rings in Sonic are less interesting than coins in Mario

because some rings can't be obtained in one play through, the encouraging function of the rings becomes diminished. [...] Instead of saying "you can do it, keep trying," they say, "too bad you missed. better luck next time."

I ultimately got the true meaning of that thought while watching "Super Mario Fixer, episode 2" and see how KirbyKid played it, how he pushed effort into getting all the coins doing only one jump per platform, without going backwards. An exercise that may sound futile at first but that he describes as "recognize the challenge for themselves and let the player go for them".

Vous vous souvenez de Kirby Kid et de ses précieux commentaires sur le gameplay de ce qui devait devenir School Rush ? Un que je n'ai toujours pas pris en compte -- parce que je n'en comprenais pas la pleine mesure -- c'est la nature "généreuse et dense" des bonus sur les niveaux de School Rush. Forcément, il y en a assez bien, entre autres parce que c'est un enfant de 4 ans qui a choisi où les placer.

Où est le problème donc ? Eh bien, voyez-vous, si les bonus sont bien positionnés, ils peuvent proposer des façons alternatives de parcourir le niveau, par exemple "d'une traite, sans faire demi-tour ni s'arrêter mais en prenant tout de même tous les bonus". Ça représente une sorte de challenge supplémentaire que le joueur aguerri peut se fixer lui-même une fois que "finir le niveau" n'est plus un challenge intéressant pour lui. Mais pour se faire, il faudra veiller à ce que chaque pièce soit placée avec précision, pour qu'il n'y ait pas besoin de plusieurs passages pour être sûr de les ramasser toutes.

That's all about having some room for extra challenge for those who have full mastery of Super Mario. At that level, a single coin placement can make the difference. A single misplaced coin and the challenge is just impossible, and thus actually doesn't exist at all.

I want to have two ways of playing School Rush. One is power-play, rushing through. The other is exploring and experimenting. I can use some bonuses to tease the explorer and reward her. I can use some other bonuses to tease the rusher and reward him. Because I don't have a single coin, but multiple bonuses. I can have e.g. the "A" letters show the path for rush-and-be-amazing, and other letters for exploring places that require to do multiple pass over the level.