For a first hold, this isn't bad at all. It's mostly just monster fighting, but in low numbers, with many rooms concentrating on a particular monster type -- the kind of thing that's good for beginners learning the tactics of DROD. Later, there are some decent guard manipulation puzzles.
The hold has an interesting structure, using the different coloured doors to ensure most rooms are only solvable from one entrance, so the player has to explore the prison and gradually unlock rooms. There's only ever really one choice at any stage, but I still felt this added to the atmosphere of the hold.
A few criticisms / suggestions for improvement:
* Prison: Entrance -- your scripted guard comes back after the room is cleared.
* Prison 2S makes you fight eleven guards in a confined space, which is considerably harder than anything else on the level, and it's only the fourth room. Perhaps have separate orbs for the two groups of guards, with the original version as a secret room?
*
Checkpoints. Prison 2S and 1S1W, and all the puzzle rooms in Towers.
* Basement 1E -- mopping up the large mud blob is rather tedious.
* Basement 2N2E has an easy solution that may be unintended:
Click here to view the secret text
×Go up the west side, drawing the WW over the diagonal force arrow, then go south again to get it out of the maze.
* Basement 1N1W is a bit silly. There's a large horde, but they can all be killed by standing in one place and hitting Q-W.
* Basement 3N -- It's not really that time-consuming. Yes, it took me 930 moves (for comparison, the infamous Abyssian Fortress 2N took me 1750) but as the steps of the solution were pretty obvious, it didn't take that long in terms of time. However, it was tedious to play this directly after a simpler form of the same room. Usually, when architects want to include easier and harder forms of the same room, they make the harder version a secret room.
____________________________
50th Skywatcher
.png)
. 
