Story Mode

Story Mode is a Game Mode in Super Mario Maker 2. It's a fairly traditional campaign mode that follows a story centered around rebuilding Princess Peach's Castle after a rather destructive accident by collecting coins through many developer-made courses.

The gameplay follows a mostly non-linear progression through a set of developer-made courses given to you by the Taskmaster and many other characters with their own small set of levels, that are irrelevant to the main story.

Overworld
Story Mode takes place in a very small and controlled hubworld with a fixed camera producing a 2D Perspective similar to that a 2D Mario Title, though not being exactly based on any of the Game Styles. Despite the 2D perspective, the player has full 3D movement of Mario and the ability to jump and interact with some elements in it. Mario can even collect, albeit a minor amount, coins in this hub world.

The progression system in Story Mode is mostly nonlinear. "Mostly" due to some fixed events in the story that happen based on where you are, percentage-wise, in the game. Otherwise, the only thing needed to complete Story Mode's main campaign are coins and the completion of (any) courses to progress the building time. The order they're played in, and the courses done (unless a story event is happening in the hub world) is irrelevant.

Courses
The main part of Story Mode's gameplay are the developer-made courses. A majority of them are created using the same tools that are available in the Course Maker mode (with some having some exclusive story-based Course Parts).

When playing a course, you will be given 5 lives. You can earn an unlimited amount of lives in courses, but they are local to that attempt only. There is no global life counter in Story Mode. If you lose all 5 lives, you will get a "Game Over" and be kicked back into the Overworld. Attempting a course again will give you another 5 lives but if you had last started at a Checkpoint, then you will not start there upon your new attempt.

Losing a life also will take away a percentage of collected coins from that course, and if you lose all 5, you lose all coins collected from that course. Getting a "Game Over" will not effect your coin reward, however.

Story
This section covers major events in Story Mode, so please keep in mind there may be what could be considered 'spoilers' in this section.

Plot
Mario and numerous Builder Toads had finished building a new castle for Princess Peach, congratulating themselves. Then all of a sudden, Mario and friends find a Reset Rocket button right in front of the castle, conveniently out of their sight and start to panic.

Upon this happening, Undo Dog appears, catching their attention as it strolls in front of them.

Then the Undo Dog, in the middle of its stroll starts to pounce towards the button, and then presses it, holding it down similar to its function in Course Maker. This ends up completely destroying the castle.

Upon the grief between the toads and their heavy loss of work and lack of a budget after spending it all on the previous castle, Mario and friends make a plan to have Mario collect coins and follow the orders of clients that were willing to pay in coins in return for their request (playing a course) that go towards the construction of the new castle.

Ending
In a quick turn of events in the construction of the final part of the castle, The Chief is kidnapped by Meowser, and Mario must rescue her.

After defeating him and saving The Chief, Princess Peach returns and thanks Mario and the Builder Toads for their work. Mario is flattered before Princess Peach kisses him on the cheek, surprising him.

The Builder Toads let off fireworks off of the cannon on both ends of the castle and every character in the overworld celebrates the construction of the castle.

In the middle of celebrating, Undo Dog strolls around, and starts pouncing the ground near a Rest Rocket Button right in front of the castle once again. Mario and friends stop to be alerted by Undo Dog's presence, and Undo Dog stays in front of the Reset Rocket. The credits roll.

Building
These are the list of castle parts you can build:

List of levels
Taskmaster Levels

Undodog Levels

Mr. Eraser Levels

Partrick Levels

Soundfrog Levels