Hell is Designed by Trolls

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Also Half-Hour of Silence is a Super Mario Maker 2 level created by Daniel Jacome. Level Code is VWG-28S-LDG

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What is Happening?

Hiding within the bowels of Nintendo servers, lies pain created by players of Super Mario Maker, a level designer meant to allow players to build their own Super Mario levels. Such levels can be shared with others, who play them at their own risk.

Which brings me to some cursed levels developed by some very sadistic people.

Staircase to Heaven

What kind of fresh hell is this?

Between me and the endgoal is a pit wider than a steam engine and a cliff up to the ionosphere. With nothing but a stack of POW blocks with me (of course they had to be POW blocks) I got one option: build a staircase.

What is wrong with POWs? Throw them, they disappear. Lose enough of them and there won’t be enough blocks to reach the endgoal. Simply letting go of the block will throw it, so to stack them I have to crouch down, then let go. Wash, rinse, repeat, but on one’s tippy-toes, standing my ass on a single pixel on the edge in order to let go, hoping the block isn’t dropped into the pit, gone forever.

Every.

Single.

Time.

All while rushing back and forth with the blocks. One mispress. One badly timed jump. One grab of a block from earlier destroys so much progress. So little time to get the staircase to the endgoal.

And be done with this? Will the reward of completion be worth the pain of it? Time spent? Eyes sore? Controller broken? Head aching?

Every second, focus waning, anger rising. Grab, back, forth. Crouch. Drop. Go back. No! Not grabbing a block in the middle of the case!

Not throwing it instead, watching it fall into the pit, or kaboom on the side of the existing staircase!

Everything to contain the roar wanting release in my throat. While hands shake. Room warms. Fight demanding violence. Like tossing the controller? Punching the screen? Banging on the desk?

Course, once at the goal, hours later, the relief of being finished makes my muscles jelly. The breath escapes my lips, sighing “Finally!” Not thinking about all the life wasted, in time and energy, upon a task, only to say “I did it!”

Upon reaching the endgoal the true nightmare starts.

Half Hour of Silence.  

Its utterance enough to drive even experts mad.

You think its simple. There is a platform. On the platform is a spike - a turtle with a spike on top of their armoured shell. The platform is on a track, leading somewhere in the dark.

And its all quiet. Only the sound of your footfalls as you jump over the spike so that they don’t touch you. Landing on them being just as catastrophic.

Bong.

Bong.

Bong.

Eyes focused, so the spike doesn’t get you, so you don’t fall to certain doom. Eyes bleed as the hopping rings in your ears.

What am I accomplishing by doing this? Holding out for only eight minutes.

The timer is running! i must be almost done!

A smile comes upon my face, ready to be done with this place that could easily be from hell. Designed by Satan himself. Then, I remember the title of the level. I get the checkpoint right at the buzzer. The next try putting me back on the platform with the spike. To do it all over again.

For another... eight... minutes.

The only sound being the bounce of my feet. The silence echoing. Leaving me to my thoughts.

What is the point of all this? Will it be rewarding if I actually can do it?

A single delay in input, fatigue and migraines dulling reflexes as eyes drop, as hands sweat. Entering a zone of just hop... hop... hop...

Overshooting the platform. The spike impaling. Forgetting to jump on time. Erasing minutes of progress. Willpower failing as emotion roar out from my throat upon every fall, every touch of the spike.

Why am I doing this? No one is paying me. It isn’t fun, or thrilling. Its repetitive, its novelty long gone. Its a platform on a track with a spike, for thirty minutes somehow, despite the programmed time limit of five hundred seconds - about eight and a half minutes.

Is this the fate of humanity? That we must do things, even when they aren’t interesting, for no other reason than to say I did it? Until eternity stops?

The dark truth is the opposite of stressed is bored. I could stop, but then I give up? Am I quitter? Drop what I’m doing because its hard?

No... I need to see this through! My eyes bleed. My fingers blister. Hands sweat. Controller wears.

But I control it! Its my hands on the controller. I’m here on my volition. My choice! Its my hands holding the whip so someone else doesn’t. Even as my eyes drop. Neck strains. Voice sore from screaming. Heart pounding from rage. Blood vessels threatening to burst. What little time I have on this world lost.

I control it. Right? I can just stop? Put the controller down. Shut off the system. Move on with my day. Even be happy. But the nagging feeling of Could I have done it if I grind it out longer? shall troll my soul.

So I keep going. I’ll beat it eventually. When I do, the release wouldn’t just relax, but the exciting high that will come from being able to say “I did it!”

Why would anyone do this?

Why would anyone make such levels? Abuse this need of many to say “I did it?” As a troll, to annoy the unsuspecting? Knowing people will tough it out to brag about it later? Perhaps Satan wouldn’t torture you: he would give you a whip so you would do so yourself, be proud of what you endured and tell others how tough you are.