×My holds: Beethro's Brain, Entropy, Further Up and Further In, Washed Ashore, Hinterlands, Hypercube, jfflpnk, Lavender Levels.
Collaborations: Way Forward, Advanced Concepts 2

×
I have been continually playing contest on the forum since Dec 2004. Having often been addressed as a he my new avatar shows that I am a "Lady". And one with a very sharp sword, too.

I love the monthly contests but it took me a long while before I even placed. 21 contests in fact.

Virtual Burning Man was the first contest I took any place in and I got 1st, wow!. Yes, I have received my prize, a sweatshirt from the DROD store, and I love it.

It took 14 more contest but next I took 1st prize in Media of the Eighth Nov07, followed by a win in the Secret Santa 2007. Check out my entry: http://www.gailswebplace.com/NightSky/index.html

Suddenly I was a winner but, still the goal of a winning hold based contest eludes me....

I keep trying so come and join me.
http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewboard.php?BoardID=83

×
BoyBlue:
Being not so great at solving BoyBlue puzzles, trying to bust my brains on some of the puzzles was hardly any fun, though I felt that Twice North, Once East was awfully easy. I wish I could scratch my vote as easily as this past comment. Now that I have put my mind to the test and challenged the puzzles properly, the puzzles are actually very enjoyable. Still, I graded what was appropriate at the moment, and at the moment, I hated those puzzles. The story was neat, though the fact that the text is repeated whenever the player enters the room.

Story: 4 Downgraded in comments to 3, though my vote cannot reflect this.
Fun: 2 Upgraded in comments to 4, though my vote cannot reflect this.

da rogu3:
I found this one more enjoyable, though you can probably guess what I had to do to enjoy them. On the plus side, the story was excellent.

Story: 5
Fun: 3

Penwielder:
This was fantastic! I loved the story and how it was implemented! The puzzles were also quite impressive... in the demo.

Story: 5
Fun: 4

techant:
I was hesitant to rate this well for story at first, but it got better near the end. My only annoyance is that the entrance was really, really hard (or maybe I just never understood something) while everything else was much easier.

Story: 3
Fun: 4

Trickster:
I spent a great deal of time on the puzzles here, and even though I am not quite finished, I think I have a fair idea of the quality of this hold. The story was well-executed, but the main appeal of the hold are the puzzles. They take persistence, for sure, but they are indeed excellent. Especially excellent was Twice East, which was, without a doubt, the most extraordinary room I have ever seen. Ever. And this is coming from a person who has played many holds over the years. Of course, just before the amazing room comes Once East, which highly resembles "hidden stuff under tar" that we have all come to know and hate. What made me keep hacking at it instead of giving up was the fact that restoring over and over and over and over again made me lose all track of time, so no boredom for me. Despite that unfortunate room, the puzzles of this entry are amazing.

Story: 4
Fun: 6. Yeah, it broke the scale in my opinion.

×BoyBlue's entry
My favourite one. I liked the design of rooms, the puzzles, and in particular - the way the story is told through puzzles. I really appreciated the originality of storytelling. And this entry is pretty simple, too, so people shouldn't have too much trouble with it. My only complaint is about level 1: 1N 1W(I don't like huge hordes of brained roaches...). But despite that, it's my favourite entry.
Score: 9

da rogu3's entry:
Solid entry, tells the story nicely; quite easy, too(except the last room - which, by the way, looked very familiar ).Minor complaint: there were too many rooms before the cutscene in village IMO – some could've been changed into puzzles, at least. I think two-three non-puzzle rooms would be enough... Anyway, good entry.
Score: 8

Penwielder's entry:
Story-wise, this entry is awesome. No speech from original story was missed. Voice acting by west.logan was pretty damn awesome, too – kudos for that! And there're even custom glass gate graphics here! A lot of effort went into room decorations, too, it seems. Very nice.

Puzzles are fine, too. And it's the trickiest entry; good that demos are watchable from the menu. One issue, though: firstly, there's backtracking issue if you conquer "bait attesting": 2N 1W and go through red-door passage without having 2N 1E conquered already. Some minor complaints: in "queen's domain": 1S I found it pretty hard to see the "trash" tiles. By the way, if I'm correct, “bait attesting”: 3N is unconquerable? Aww

Overall, this is very good entry, the best story-wise. Although not my favourite.
Score: 8

techant's entry:

Sorry, didn't really like most of puzzles. Usually there were unnecessary many monsters put in the room, and first room was trial-and-errorish. On the other hand, I really liked 4S 1W in "middle of tueno" - very good, not overly difficult room. Nice job with that room.

Stairs in “the middle” 3S 2W end the hold. I guess they shouldn't? Also, I can go to "middle of tueno: 4S" *after* cleaning all other rooms - then Beethro and citizen talk about closed door... but it's opened already.
Score: 4

Trickster's entry:

Story-wise, fine entry.
Puzzle-wise, though, I liked about 2/3 of it; I liked the very first room, I liked “inside the bar: entrance”, although usage of secret walls there is cheap(EDIT: ok it's possible w/o secret passage, but still...); I liked the whole last level - both "metapuzzle" of from which entrance the rooms are clearable and puzzles in the rooms; I also liked "inside the bar": 1N 2E... and I even liked “inside the bar”: 3E - it was fun gel-clearing exercise . However, I didn't like “inside the bar”: 1E at all – why there's no vision token there is beyond me; "inside the bar”: 1N was pretty tedious; "inside the bar": 2E had potions hidden under monsters(I consider it cheap trick; though other than that it's fine room). And then there's this postmastery room – tedious and pointless.

Also - I really don't appreciate force arrows at room entrance *looks at "trickster's bar": 1N*.

Overall, I've got mixed feelings about this entry. I would've given it higher score if only the hold hadn't those tedious rooms mentioned above...
Score: 6

×Re-enter the room and solve it from the North entrance.

×I already was entering from the north, I just didn't know how to get the roach to go up while I was up there. Not familiar with brained roaches yet.

×I have a vague notion of trying to get Halph to block the serpent in, but I'm not competent enought apparently.

×Yeah, it ends up being mostly luck-based without a snake clock. From my experience, try to trap the snake within itself until it is three tiles long. Then, get Halph to activate the north orb from the southwest tile while taking the serpent north alongside the wall. If timed correctly, this should shorten the snake to two tiles in length, where it becomes a bit easier to randomly kill the snake with Halph. It is fairly trial-and-error-ish, but at least you do not die if you fail.

×
BoyBlue:
Interesting way of revisiting the story, in that it took random snippets from the story as the theme for each room. This did make it feel disjointed though, and I didn't really get any sense of narrative from it as a result.

The rooms themselves were clever, and the circle motif was nice... but not as clearly linked to pi as it might've been. Difficulty was moderate: not too easy, but difficult enough to get enjoyment from solving each room. The layout felt kinda barebones though, and the extra levels seemed to just have been thrown in to make up the requirements. And when I came back to the hold to decide how much I enjoyed it, few of the rooms were really that memorable. Level 2 - 1N was probably the one that stood out the most though.

Total: 5/10 (2 Story/Design + 3 Fun)


da rogu3:
This hold followed the basic structure of the story, though with a few things that seemed that they could've been better dealt with (Conquer Token in particular), and there seemed to be far too many rooms before finally reaching the bar. Still, a lot of the events were covered well.

The hold itself was quite enjoyable, though the final challenge might've been a bit more tolerable if it had been optional. That said, Village : 3N was the puzzle I enjoyed the most, followed by Inside : Entrance. Nothing felt too unfair, and the rooms were put together fairly well.

Total: 8/10 (4 Story/Design + 4 Fun)


Penwielder:
Not only was the story followed very closely, but it was well decorated and designed, and the voice acting was a nice touch. A level of professional polish not seen in many of the other entries was found here, in both room design, atmospheric effects, graphics and level names.

Puzzles were nicely arranged, though as has been noted elsewhere in the thread, there's at least one backtracking issue (Bait-Attesting: 2N1E, if you drop the trapdoor in 2N but haven't solved 2N1E yet). Some fairly decent lynchpins and again, nothing that seemed unfair (although the scripting in the final room meant that you couldn't be sure what door was opened by what trigger). I think I enjoyed The Queen's Domain : Entrance the most out of all the rooms.

Total: 9/10 (5 Story/Design + 4 Fun)


techant:
Some fairly involved scripted cutscenes, as well as some additional story/exploration not featured in the original story. Rather inventive altogether. However, broken scripting and typos detracted from it.

Whilst it was the easiest of the five holds, and there were a number of rooms with just scattered monsters and no real tricks to them, there were still a few that were quite clever indeed -- I particularly liked The Middle : 4S1W. The simple rooms were relaxing enough to breeze through so exploring didn't feel too tedious, and it didn't take long to get to the good stuff. As stated, there were some problems with scripts, and there was a nasty backtracking issue in The Middle : 3S2W (where taking the middle eastern tar gate exit, or the NW exit before completing the room to the west could lock you in). Level layout could've been a bit better, but altogether, it was a solid effort.

Total: 8/10 (4 Story/Design + 4 Fun)


Trickster:
Basic structure of the story was followed, but although a number of story elements were covered, it seemed too easy to ignore; it wasn't until a while after playing that I actually noticed how some things had been integrated. Perhaps this was due to the focus on and length of puzzles, or the level layout, or divergences from the story... but it didn't seem quite as well integrated as it could've.

The hold itself was among the hardest of the bunch, but not in a way I found that enjoyable. There was an overuse of tarstuff clearing and hordes and trial-and-error. There were some highlights through the hold where figuring out the right entrance to start from was important, but many of the rooms just felt like chores. The secret room was also fairly obnoxious, and the postmastery room didn't feel like much of a reward (being yet another horde room). It's a solid 'first time hold', but given the competition, I really couldn't rate it that high. It's difficult for me to pick the room I felt was the best... probably Food Shed : Entrance; the Gel Mother annoyed me on my initial runthrough (especially since I had solved the secret room before seeing it), and it was only much later after my initial completion of the hold that I realised I didn't need to use the SW orb to escape, and could thus deal with the Gel Mother immediately rather than giving it time to grow.

One last thing that influenced my decision was a lack of friendliness about the hold. I didn't appreciate the absence of vision tokens in Inside the Bar : 1E or the secret room. I also felt the use of spiders as 'hidden' objectives to be unfriendly, as it really didn't add much to the room. And frequently, rooms used too much space or too many monsters to make a point where much *much* fewer would've done -- there was really no point in having so many goblins in Food Shed : 1N or wubbas in Inside the Bar : 1N.

Total: 5/10 (3 Story/Design + 2 Fun)


EDIT: I've been slowly revising my comments over the week as I applied more thought to it, but I made my votes a few hours after completing the collection. In hindsight, I may have been a little unfair or too generous to one or two holds; but not by more than a point, I feel.

×Oooh. Another BoyBlue hold. As with most BoyBlue holds, it's all about the puzzles, and this one certainly doesn't disappoint. 5/5 for the puzzles. My favourite was the first room, it had a very nice lynchpin. And most of the other rooms were pretty good, too (although a bit easier than I expected). However, what disappointed me was the plot. Apart from the rooms being loosely based on certain sentences, the hold doesn't really tell the story at all. So, despite having the best puzzles, I couldn't rate this as high as I would've liked.

×This is by far my favourite entry. Firstly, the looks and use of lighting were excellent. Secondly, it followed the story pretty well. Thirdly, the puzzles were at perfect difficulty - tough enough to not be trivial, but not too tough to make me give up. 2N was a very nice movement order puzzle, and 2N1W was pretty unique. I thought 1W on the 3rd level was good, but a bit too fiddly. There are just a few reasons why it didn't get a perfect 10/10. Firstly, a backtracking issue in 2N1E. And the very last room was a bit frustrating since at first I couldn't see the little trash characters which activated the doors, and once I figured out how to get the doors to open, it was impossible to predict in advance which doors would open. And the guy following me got annoying (would be better if he was invincible instead). But other than that, the hold was brilliant. (btw, I didn't take voices into account when voting, but they were a nice touch)

×I didn't like this so much. The first puzzle was frustrating trial-and-error and the hardest in the entire hold. The cutscene in 4S repeats and doesn't show the correct final "Everyone knows to open a level clear...." speech. The room borders don't match up correctly. But worst of all, 3S2W doesn't give any indication of which direction to go first, and if you go west, then you get stuck due to a backtracking issue and the scripted character doesn't re-open the door for you. I suppose it did follow the story well, even if the puzzles weren't that spectacular.

×This was good for the most part, but some things were unnecessary. I spent too long in the entrance room, until I spotted that secret wall. The same was true for the second level. I spent over an hour trying to kill all the queens (reminds me of that horrible secret room in JtRH), before spotting the secret wall. In the next room, there was a big mass of tar, with walls and trapdoors hidden underneath. Without a vision token, searching each corner of tar to find an entrance is tedious. 2E was a pretty good puzzle, although I felt that hiding potions behind characters is a bit mean. The 3 mothers secret room wasn't as bad as I initially thought, but still took over 3000 moves and over an hour to complete. It was boring and tedious. The rest of the puzzles on the level were pretty good however, especially the other secret room. Then I arrived at The Food Shed. It took me quite a while to destroy all of that gel. Eventually, I arrived at the postmastery room. I liked the drawing, but found it rather cheap that the speed potion was hidden behind darkness. So fun, not so much compared to BoyBlue or Penwielder's entries, but it stuck to the general spirit of the story well, though.

×yes, j, not i. I is current yo