Thanks for playing, I appreciate your honest thoughts! That's actually why I wanted to present a more official-looking download link, complete with a homepage and everything. I didn't want anyone feeling on edge over any potential viruses lol. I can see how the levels could feel stretched, as the game heavily relies on Mario as its core foundation, and also why I wanted to do something to differentiate from a typical Mario side-scroller (I tried to balance between 2D Mario and some of Yoshi's Island's level design in mind, while still being inspired by Wario Land 4). As for why it's a Boo that functions just like Mario, all I can say is, I believe my thought process at the time was to treat it like the playable
Mario Party Boo, who shared the same traits and moveset as the rest of the cast despite being... well, a 'flying enemy' lol. (Hindsight is 20/20, and could I go back, I would've tailored the project more around something befitting of Boo's attributes, such as floating and whatnot.)
Funnily enough, they both share the same track! It's the Green Garden theme from Bomberman 64 (although you may have already knew it). Nice to hear ya got a nostalgia boost from that, ha.
Hello Mario Engine is an open-source engine for Game Maker Studios and older versions, not a level creator. I find it the simplest and easiest to use and modify, as this project has been heavily tweaked from the vanilla engine, with a lot of bug fixes and patches I implemented myself. I'm far from the best at coding, so I've had to rely on what I can for now, and hey, we all gotta start somewhere!