Finally got round to finishing this
I have to agree with the general consensus -- this is a very well-crafted hold, and nicely informative. I would recommend it to anyone who's finished GatEB, JtRH and TCB and wants a "
bridge"
to help them move on to more difficult holds. I'd certainly
not recommend, as one person did, playing this as your second hold, for a number of reasons. Many of the rooms require a good understanding of the basic room elements, such as pressure plates and oremites -- not just knowing what they do, but being able to look at a configuration and understand what it's set up to do, and so use that to help grasp the particular quirk the room is teaching. Secondly, it is long, and I can imagine the Advanced Brain Movement level in particular generating a feeling of "
if DROD is this complex, it's not for me"
in players who haven't learned to love the game through playing easier holds first.
A few comments on individual levels:
Brained Roaches
Very nice level, with puzzles that really test and consolidate understanding of what you've just learned. I disagree with da rogu3 about "
steady increase in difficulty"
though; I found the first couple of optional rooms to be nicely paced, followed by a very sudden leap in difficulty. Ah well. They are optional.
Rock Golems
Not my favourite style of tutorial -- each room just gave you a rule and a simple illustration, so that when it came to the challenge rooms, you had to work out the details of how to manipulate golems to desired squares for yourself. But that's a minor flaw, considering that the challenge rooms were great fun and had excellent variety. I found 1S2W considerably harder even than the secret rooms, for some reason.
For other levels, I guess I don't have much to add to what's already been said
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50th Skywatcher
