The All Kaizo-Style Hacks sheet is a resource designed to give an overview of which kaizo hacks exist and how difficult and popular they are. For this purpose of estimating the popularity of these hacks, it is also possible and welcome to track your progress directly on the sheet.
Primary sheet managers: katze789, Iwer Sonsch, Confluence
To start documenting your progress, right click the column whose name is right before yours in the alphabet, then select "1 rechts einfügen" (the 6th option in the rightclick menu). Then enter your name. You can now start filling in how many savestateless stars you have in each romhack.
To add a note with additional information about your progress, rightclick the cell you want the note to refer to, then select "Notiz einfügen" (the 3rd-to-last option in the rightclick menu), and write the note. Please use notes rather than comments.
Keys, cap switches, final fights etc. are usually not tracked on the sheet. However, if there is a red marker on the "Stars" cell (column C) of a romhack, you are expected to enter a statistic other than your star count. Read the corresponding note for the specifics.
There are a few cases in which a star you obtain may count for more than one entry in the sheet. Those cases are marked in blue.
Note that LTT and SM74TYA are treated as pairs of two separate hacks each, and progress on the harder version does NOT count for the easier version.
The main sheet consists of two sections, namely beaten and unbeaten hacks. Each section is sorted by peak difficulty, i.e. the hardest single savestateless task in a romhack.
Some unbeaten hacks are easier than some of the hardest beaten hacks, but they are still kept separate as their peak difficulty isn't perfectly known.
The "Rating Pending" section differs from the main sheet in that the romhacks on that page are not yet sorted by difficulty, and some of them might be placed in a different miscellaneous section once they have been rated.
You can enter your progress for those hacks just fine.
If you have played one of the hacks on that page and would like to help out ranking its difficulty, the place for that is #placement-discussions on the "All Kaizo Hacks" Discord server.
Below the rating pending section is a section with romhacks where the star count is ambiguous or unclear to regular players or even communities due to broken, unclear, or glitched stars:
Broken stars - Stars that are intended to exist and to be possible, but that are not possible.
Glitched stars - Stars that are intended to not exist or to not be possible, but that are possible.
Unclear stars - Stars that are intended to exist with no or positive care as to whether they're possible, but that don't have a working intended or trivial solution. Sometimes these stars have a known obscure solution, sometimes no solution is known.
Hacks with unclear stars are separate because it can be annoying to try and figure out which stars are possible and how.
Below the unclear stars section, there is a section with old versions of kaizo hacks that are either notably harder than the main version or have notable cheese. They are kept separate from the main version due to their significant difference in difficulty, but outside of the main sheet as they are essentially duplicates.
Below the outdated versions section, there is a section with unfinished kaizo hacks that are still in development. These are kept separate because someone looking to complete them will not be able to sustainably do so without coming back at a later time.
Below the demo section, there is a section with hacks that consist of just one basic trick, repeated excessively.
These hacks are kept separate because their difficulty, especially within super kaizo, is hard to compare because it is unclear how consistent someone will one day become at these tricks. They also tend to be less interesting due to their repetitive natue.
Below the single-skill section, there is a section with hacks that draw most of their difficulty from interfering with the player's ability to play, be it through an inhibitory physics mod or through severely compromising the game's visibility. Their difficulty is also hard to compare because the skillset required has a vastly reduced overlap with regular hacks.
At the bottom of the miscellaneous sheet, there is a section with inofficial or casual-style nerfs of other kaizo hacks. Those are significantly easier and don't usually offer any new content, so they are kept separate from the main sheet.