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This hold has been in progress for almost 9 months now. It was originally intended to be my final 2.0 hold, and a Smitemaster's Selection. Well, after all of the delays around the SS releases, it is still my final 2.0 hold, but now I just want to release it to the public and allow other people to have a chance at an SS release.

This hold was, in many ways, an experiment in room construction under self-imposed constraints. The room elements in each level are constrained by chromatic themes, which I thought was interesting in that it forced me to only have specific combinations of elements. But that wasn't enough--I also wanted to constrain the room layouts. One level is a symbol that should be recognizable to many people. The other three main levels have room and level layouts heavily inspired by an old action/puzzle RPG. I'm curious if anyone will recognize it. In any case, I also enjoyed being constrained by the room layouts as I think it drove me to create puzzles that I never would have thought of otherwise.

The constraints did cause some issues that people may not appreciate as much, unfortunately. Because of the room and level layout constraint, the hold is pretty linear. Two of the levels are more open than the other two, but overall it's pretty linear. In addition, because I chose early on the order of the themes and the order of the levels, and then made the puzzles, it turned out that the non-hub levels actually decrease in difficulty as the hold progresses. It just turns out that certain game elements, when grouped together, are much harder than others. So this is definitely one of my more devious holds.

Many many thanks to Schik, who helped me translate the symbol of the hub level into DROD, and also with playtesting. Briareos, Alneyan, Rabscuttle, Hikari, and Tuttle playtested early on, and then also jbluestein and Stefan in the last week or so, and they all had excellent comments and fixes.

Game on!

Stephen4Louise
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 548
Registered: 04-06-2005
IP: Logged

I'm just getting started here, but I have to say, "Primary the First: 1N1E" is a great room

Steve.

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
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This is an excellent hold. Not that I'm surprised, but it does make me happy to see another quality hold from Oneiromancer.

I give it a 9 with 6.5 brains.

Hard to rate difficulty entirely accurately, since the earlier levels are IMO a good bit harder than the later ones. But there you have it.

Josh

____________________________
"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

NiroZ
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1302
Registered: 02-12-2006
IP: Logged

Cool!
I must check this out ASAP.

Pilchard VIII
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 392
Registered: 01-21-2006
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I loved the Choice. This one will undoubtedly be great as well.

____________________________
The DROD Dragon

tokyokid
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 453
Registered: 05-06-2006
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Playing through this slowly...

But I must say, that this is another ingenous hold by Onei! I loved the ying-yang design in the first level, too. Too bad that this wasn't released as a SmS. Keep up the great work!

I gave this a 9 with 7 brains. Nice!

iamyum
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 64
Registered: 11-26-2006
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I'm glad this isn't a Smitemaster Selection, or else I couldn't enjoy this fantastic hold ... ha I didn't even know what is smitemaster selection until my membership had expired for a few months.

After much struggle and using H&S board, finally conquered the hold. Take a break now and will try the secret rooms later.

The visual theme beaming from the entire hold is pure awesomeness. IMO, holds with themes (however simplistic) are more enjoyable than those with extreme difficulty that look snapped together.

I enjoyed the yellow level the most. 1E of the yellow level is so much fun, and the chanting upon clearing was a real ego booster! 1N looked so ridiculously easy, and then I was stuck in the end of the room. Argh..... I was ridiculously underestimating the room.... 1N2E was fun too. For the longest time I was short exactly one decoy potion. In the end the room was cleared with a spare decoy. If you left the extra decoy there on purpose, then you are just devious to get people stuck on that one-minor-tweak-will-save-me-one-decoy dead end.

I don't particularly like movement restricting style rooms but that's just me. So blue rooms were more of a chore. 1N is a little long and repetitive. I was short one move in 4N when killing the mother for a very long time. And then, with luck, the extra move was trimmed.

All in all, thanks for the fun hold.

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
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Thanks for the kind comments. About the chanting in Yellow 1N...that's funny that you enjoyed them, because the testers mostly hated them! That's probably because they used to chant throughout the entire room. I was convinced that was extremely annoying, and instead of removing them completely, made it so that they just had specific comments at first, and then chanted at the end. I'm glad it worked out well for at least one person.

Yellow 1N (internally, I call the levels Mono, Red, Yellow, and Blue...it's just easier as I'm sure you will agree) was one of my favorite rooms, just for the reason you found. 1N 2E was one of the harder rooms to get right, because it was too easy to make trivial solutions. The number of iterations I went through...ugh.

Well, congratulations on being the first non-tester to complete the hold, as far as I know of. Have some extra points!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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Great hold!

Pretty much all solid rooms. They take thought and work to get through.

christine83
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 158
Registered: 08-14-2005
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Thank you Oneiromancer, I had a great time solving this hold.

Personally I dislike golems, but the blue and red levels were fabulous. Especially the mud ones had me stumped for some time. As for the secret blue room: my only thought when I discovered what to do was "no way!".

My personal favorites are Red:1N1E, Yellow:1N1E and Blue:4N . The teams and the overall level (the yin-yang symbol) showed real thought and effort and made continuing a pleasure (even though there were some hard rooms that made me want to give up). LarryMurk trained me to much in serpent handling and movement order to see any trivial solutions

____________________________
#1 Fan!

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks for the comments guys.

As I said in the intro post I enjoyed coming up with puzzles in a limiting environment so I will probably do something similar for my next hold, whenever that is. I probably won't do it chromatically, but will come up with some other method for choosing the game elements. Or maybe I will only do really detailed level layouts first and then see what kind of inspiration strikes. Only time will tell!

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

NiroZ
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1302
Registered: 02-12-2006
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Nice hold. Those secret rooms are tricky.
Playing this gave me a strong reminder of JtRH, but that's no surprise seeing as you made rooms for that as well. It's also interesting that DROD has started it's own cliché when it comes to storylines. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to these sorts of things, but most of the more extensive storylines revolve around a organisation that's either overly bureaucratic, insane, fanatical or all of the above.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1842
Registered: 07-31-2005
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NiroZ wrote:
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to these sorts of things, but most of the more extensive storylines revolve around a organisation that's either overly bureaucratic, insane, fanatical or all of the above.

Not to mention that they evolve from an organization that's -- GAAK! *thug*
That was funnier in my head, before I tried to improve it.

____________________________
DROD has some really great music.
Make your pressure plates 3.0 style!
DROD architecture idea generator

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

NiroZ wrote:
Nice hold. Those secret rooms are tricky.
Playing this gave me a strong reminder of JtRH, but that's no surprise seeing as you made rooms for that as well. It's also interesting that DROD has started it's own cliché when it comes to storylines. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to these sorts of things, but most of the more extensive storylines revolve around a organisation that's either overly bureaucratic, insane, fanatical or all of the above.

Thanks. I actually didn't make that many rooms for JtRH...a few on the decoys level, some seep rooms (just the basic one), a few secret rooms, and some rooms on the final level that most people hate. My representation in TCB is much higher, for better or for worse.

As for the storyline...yeah, it is getting pretty cliche, isn't it? Although to be honest, there's nothing that says that they couldn't have been right about Beethro...he just didn't believe it. However, when I was initially doing the hold I was just going to let Erik do the story, but when I just released it not as an SS I threw what you see together. Not very exciting, but I did want to share the puzzles more than craft a literary classic.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1645
Registered: 12-12-2004
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I'm wondering why anyone is particularly surprised that a game in which everything is very, very neat and tidy and works in very precise manners tends to have recurring villains who are very neat and tidy and work in very precise manners.

Briareos
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3516
Registered: 08-07-2005
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NiroZ wrote:
It's also interesting that DROD has started it's own cliché when it comes to storylines. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to these sorts of things, but most of the more extensive storylines revolve around a organisation that's either overly bureaucratic, insane, fanatical or all of the above.

Well, what they don't tell you is that DROD is actually a cleverly-disguised remake of "Brazil".

____________________________
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009)

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[Last edited by Briareos at 03-14-2007 08:01 AM]

silver
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 915
Registered: 01-18-2005
IP: Logged

all my favorite holds come from Jacob and Oneiromancer (I'd like LarryMurk's more, but his are usually impossible for me to get through). Anyway, this hold continues that trend nicely. Yay.


____________________________

Ezlo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1214
Registered: 01-08-2006
IP: Logged

Mastered! Great job Onei! I would've loved to see what you could have done with a green level with speed potions, golbins, gel, and adders, but I guess that wouldn't have worked. Maybe next hold. I give it 7 brains, (mostly for that last room and 1n 2e of yellow) and a 9 rating.

Question: What game is it vaguely based on? I would love to know so I can try it.

Oneiromancer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2936
Registered: 03-29-2003
IP: Logged

I'm glad you got past that room you were having trouble on, Ezlo. Of course, I knew that if I waited until 3.0 came out I could have easily added a green level, but since I wanted it to be 2.0 I obviously couldn't have speed potions, adders, or gel in there.

I'd still rather see if someone recognizes the game layout without giving it away...I've even refrained from putting a screenshot from this game up in your game thread so as to not ruin it. I suppose I could PM it to you if you really want to try it.

Game on,

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Beef Row
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 471
Registered: 12-28-2005
IP: Logged

Oneiromancer wrote:
I'm glad you got past that room you were having trouble on, Ezlo. Of course, I knew that if I waited until 3.0 came out I could have easily added a green level, but since I wanted it to be 2.0 I obviously couldn't have speed potions, adders, or gel in there.

Speaking of 3.0 and 'green', if I understand what you were going for in this, 3.0 slightly ruins the intended effect where green/blue doors are concerned. I think there's a request in it (which I'm posting now).


____________________________
"Now I will repeatedly apply the happy-face rule"

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[Last edited by Beef Row at 04-24-2007 02:41 AM]

OneMoreNameless
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 131
Registered: 07-31-2010
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Visually, this hold is impressive. Most of its rooms are dense and mazey, and make clever use of their space. The colour theming is clearly a novelty but the given elements for each level are integrated into the puzzles just as well as you'd expect from a purely mechanical design.

Playing through the rooms, though, I found was often a slog. It's not that there weren't clever tricks to be found (or one fun queen horde), it's that too many times I would effectively solve a room but then still spend far longer whispering snakes into position or safely peeling golems away one-by-one or bumping mimics around or whatnot without real challenge.

If you enjoy the minutia of DROD, this classic hold is probably right up your alley. If not ... better pack your patience.