What is your favorite type of level?

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Mario games tend reuse themes, I mean, there is only so many locations you can make, what is your favorite type of level from the Mario series?

My favorite is water levels, mostly because the music makes me want to float in the air with a smile on my face, Dire Dire Docks, yo.

Also, they tend to be challenging but rarely in an unfair way, opposed to most water levels in video games
 
Same, except replace snow with jungle
 
Snow levels are always great to me. Especially when they try doing snow levels at night, they usually include auroras. I like the occasional Christmas theme to them too. Guess I just don't experience some snow in real life all that often so games provide that venue.

In the Galaxy games, Mario can ice skate! I've always found that really fun to do, and the Ice Flower is a great power-up.

I also like the background music for Snowball Park, which is a "remix" version from the version in 3D Land. Snow Land from Mario Kart: Super Circuit is catchy as hell.

Snow levels are also home to the amazing Penguin Suit.
 
tropical, not necessarily entirely underwater but more of the the one's where theres a decent amount of water but you spend most of the time above or around it, like this
 
Pretty much my favourite type has to be unique levels (for example that painting styled level in NSMBU or Sherbert Desert in Mario + Rabbids).
 
within the mario series, basically anything that does more than just reuse the generic 8 worlds (grasslands, desert, beach/water, snow/ice, forest, mountains, clouds, volcano) without doing anything unique with it. those kinds of worlds are alright but they're really overused by themselves and need something to set them apart and give them their own visual identity. for instance, seaside kingdom has the whole sunset resort thing which really separates it aesthetically from bland nsmb beaches.

probably my favourite world that i've seen overall in mario would be autumn heights from dkctf. it takes forest and mountain themes and adds in a distinctly european flavour with the old windmills and stuff like that, and it makes for a really fun and pretty world to explore
 
I don't really have a particular favorite one within the Mario series. The ones I do see, I'm just sick and tired of them so anything that's not those tropes I would like. I have a favorite level theme outside the Mario series, most particularly a bustling metropolitan theme that I was completely satisfied to play on thanks to Kirby Planet Robobot. Love both of its city-themed worlds in the game. So you could guess my opinion on New Donk City, even if the massive sheer drops from the random broken roads completely broke the illusion that it's supposed to be an organic world that Pauline is supposed to be in charge of.
 
I'm usually fond of the "storming the enemy base" style levels.

So a lot of Bowser's castle levels in this series' case.
 
For Super Mario Maker:

Troll levels (when done well), speedruns, precision levels (even if I'm not the best at them), nice traditional levels (especially if they manage to be somewhat challenging at the same time, rather than being about 3 triple jumps and the flag)

In terms of official environments, I quite like the less conventional themes like the circus and space, also especially ones that evoke heavy atmosphere such as "ruins of an ancient demon's palace" or "pitch-black castle suspended in purple chaotic energy." I like when we get to explore familiar friendly territory turned sinister by the villains too, like Shroob Castle and Peach's Castle under Fawful's control in BIS. But I am getting tired of the staple archetypes played painfully straight these days, whenever they've got an added twist it's really cool. The painting level in NSMBU is a rare case of a NSMB game achieving this, but simply adding an unexpected directional motion to some platforms or some coins that rotate into view isn't cutting it. If we could get level themes like 3DW's circus in a 2D Mario game that would be great (one thing I really am excited for in SMM2, is that the 3DW theme will bring more interesting backgrounds)
 
Out of the usual suspects:

Snow > Beach > Forest > Mountains > Grasslands > Clouds > Volcano > Desert
 
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