I walked away from this experience learning, what I feel, is a lot about designing level structures in a game. I didn't stick to the traditional Mario formula and instead tried to push it a bit further. So, for starters, I learned that the space with which I had to work with was very limited in Super Mario Maker. This provided its own challenges and caused me to scrap segments of the level I had planned. It also made me think about how best to work around this limitation.

I also quickly figured out how important it was to understand everything the player can do at any given time. This is such an important detail that can completely break the game. What made this more difficult when designing my stage was the fact that the player generally gained more abilities as they progressed so I had to make previously accessible areas safe from potential abuse from any backtrackers.

The final, and probably most important lesson, was to test everything and then test some more. And when you are done testing make sure you test again. Then watch someone else play your stage who doesn't know what you've created and make adjustments and test again, and again, and again.

Because I learned that lesson I can promise you that almost every room and area in Metroid: Negative Mission has been tested more than I'd like to admit. Still, even after all this testing, I still thought of various improvements after releasing my stage and have gone back and revised it multiple times to create a better experience.

Do perfecting these little details eat away at real game designers too? Probably. It's an itch that needs to be scratched and just knowing you can fix something to make players happy is a rewarding experience. In a world before patches existed I'm sure this drove some developers insane.