Vanilla Level Design Contest is a series of collab hacks of Super Mario World, starting with VLDC 7 in 2014. In these contests, the levels are created using only graphics and objects found in vanilla SMW, with custom music being an option starting from VLDC 7. The first six design contests did not include associated hacks until 2017, when VLDC 1 got its own collab hack.
In addition to all vanilla gameplay tropes, the VLDC franchise contains examples of
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Prior to VLDC 14, Platform Hell levels are made completely optional for obtaining 100% Completion.
- In VLDC 7, only 1 exit per stage is required to get 100% completion.
- Bag of Spilling: You cannot take powerups or Yoshis into levels with you.
- Bait-and-Switch: VLDC8's version of Hostel starts with the same submap as its VLDC 7 predecessor, but once you enter the door, a bright and lively platform level is there.
- Bowdlerise: 1.0 of VLDC 9's version of Streamside had a voice saying "Fuck You!" during the second half of the level. Starting with 1.1, it's been muted.
- Compilation Re-release: The first 6 VLDC collabs would get one in late 2023 called Six-Pack. This marked the first time contests 2 through 6 got a collab hack.
- Continuity Nod: VLDC9's level Hotel has a secret exit that is a tribute to the author's VLDC7 level Hostel.
- Crossover:
- VLDC9 has levels set in Hogwarts and Aperture.
- The Death Star makes an appearance as a level in VLDC X.
- Descending Ceiling: Layer 2 is used to replicate the trash compactor from A New Hope. This trope is present in many other levels throughout the franchise.
- Down the Drain: VLDC 9 has a sewer level.
- Empty Room Psych: VLDC 8's "Epic Nothing" is a long level that is devoid of anything except the goal post and a single checkpoint. Even the music is completely absent. Needless to say, the judges weren't impressed, as it ranks at the very bottom of the list, even below the blatant Stylistic Suck mess "A Vanilla Level".
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: VLDC 8's "Signs are Useless" has signs that either tell you to go backwards or lead to a pit.
- Extremely Easy Exam: VLDC 11's "Quiz Mario Academy" is a trivia quiz on various facts about the canon Mario games, with it being very hard to lose.
- Fake Difficulty: The lower-ranking a level is, the more likely it is to employ unfair level design elements such as Leaps of Faith, Trial-and-Error Gameplay; etc.
- Guide Dang It!: Some of the secret exits can be this trope.
- Hell Hotel: The VLDC 9 level Hotel is bright and cheery for the normal exit, but the secret exit has the player go in a creepy basement resembling VLDC 7's Hostel.
- Kaizo Trap: MariYOLO Adventure features plenty of fake goals that kill you in the Kaizo route of the level.
- Lethal Lava Land: Some of the collabs have fire-themed submaps in them.
- Marathon Level: Some levels have been penalized for going on for too long, such as with "Variety Path", "Red Hot Ruckus" or "Twilight Lakeside".
- Mascot Mook: The Muncher is the icon of the Worst World in the first three collabs.
- Naked People Are Funny: Waluigi in Abstract Plain's.
- No Fair Cheating: In VLDC 7, altering the hack in Lunar Magic prevents you from getting 100% completion.
- No Swastikas: In a prototype build for VLDC 7, the worst world submap was in the shape of a Nazi swastika. The SMWCentral release version replaced it with glitched tiles in the shape of a Muncher.
- Oddball in the Series: VLDC 6 didn't allow the use of merging tilesets or custom music, making it more akin to the later Old-School Level Design Contests than other VLDC contests.
- 100% Completion: In VLDC 9, this involves getting every exit, every moon and every Dragon Coin in the game.
- Overly Generous Time Limit: Subverted in Platform Hell level "Nice Ice Adventure". It gives the player roughly seventeen minutes to complete the level, but it's a Marathon Level where every second counts.
- Platform Hell:
- In earlier contest, these levels are optional, with either free skips or not being required to play them.
- VLDC 14 makes these levels part of the contest, with their own scoring and judges.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: One VLDC 8 level had an unsampled version of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as it's music.
- Put on a Bus: Starting with VLDC 12, the Worst World submaps don't exist in the collabs.
- Resurrective Immortality: This trope is used in VLDC 9 to explain Mario having infinite lives in that collab.
- Sampling: Sampling songs from other SNES games is common, as is songs from more recent games. The Imperial March makes an appearance in VLDC X's Death Star level.
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Sequel Difficulty Spike: The announcement thread for VLDC 14 stated that Kaizo levels will be allowed in this contest for the first time, naturally resulting in increased difficulty compared to earlier VLD Cs. - Sequence Breaking: Levels where it's possible to use the classic World 1-2 trick tend to score much lower in these contests.
- Shout-Out: VLDC 9's Red Switch Palace quotes the ending text of the NES Ghostbusters (1984).
- Stylistic Suck: The Worst World overworld maps from VLDC 7 to VLDC 9 are designed to mimic low quality SMW ROM hacks.
- Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: In addition to custom music from other games, remixes of the Super Mario World theme are used.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: In VLDC 8 and 9, the bonus judge worlds qualify as this.
- Troll Fic: Confirm Level Viewer's levels, as well as "A Vanilla Level" and "Epic Nothing" are examples of this, and these were the lowest ranked levels in VLDC 7 and VLDC 8.
- Understatement: When starting "Nice Ice Adventure" (the lowest-ranked level in VLDC 7), a text box appears and warns players that it's a kaizo level, and that they should grab the sphere to their left if they wish to skip it. What it doesn't tell players is that the level runs for seventeen minutes long, yet barely gives them enough time to complete it, even if played optimally.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change:
- VLDC 12's Space Cave Rescue feels like an ASM-heavy level out of Brutal Mario, and is a puzzle level where you select what blocks spawn before playing the level.
- The level that Daizo made for VLDC 9 attempts to be a Shump, but ranked very low due to nigh-unavoidable hazards.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: In the 1.0 version of VLDC 8, the intended path through MariYOLO adventure is made unwinnable due to a muncher preventing a saw you need to spin jump on from progressing
. A 1.1 patch was issued very soon after, fixing this bug.
