Here's a whole bunch of terrible feedback. Most of it probably isn't particularly valuable, but I feel like some parts might be useful to some extent in case Jeff_Ray... does decide to continue on with this hold.
Secreted because this kind of turned out to be *a bit* longer than I expected it to be:
×
The Anti-Event, The Place of "
Real"
Puzzles
Click here to view the secret text
×Entrance: Because of the way master walls work it's currently possible to get to the post-mastery placeholder scroll when you first enter this level because it's not required to end the hold and has no secret rooms. Considering that this level has most of the hardest rooms in the hold this probably should be changed at some point. The other optional level already has a secret room at its end, so it is required for mastery.
1N:This room is extremely easy compared to the others on this level and as a result feels a little filler-y. Especially because right afterwards there is another easy room, but that one ties into the plot. I suppose it could serve as a little bit of a buffer between "
Let's clean a normal dungeon instead!"
and things tying back into the insanity that is the An Event canon.
2N: There's no way to backtrack through this room which in itself seems like a fairly minor backtracking issue since all that's before it is a room that has to be cleared to get there and the master wall, which you'd probably want to restore to anyway, but it seems a little inconsistent with 2W of this level explicitly allowing backtracking.
1N1W: This one has a bit of a mean trick, but I don't think it's too bad.
3N1W: This room seems like a candidate for a challenge. It's possible to kill all of the goblins before damaging the rock giant (demo attached). I'm fairly sure it's even possible without leaving the rock giant out of his pen at all until all the goblins are dead but that'd require a pretty painful amount of goblin manipulation.
2N2W: This room looks like it'd be pretty fiddly at first, but once you actually try it it's pretty straightforward.
2W: A very easy room to end the level on, but since it's mostly there for the plot I don't think there's anything wrong about it.
2E/cut scene room: I really like the way you made it look like a retracting drawbridge with the sound effects and the row-by-row removal of the bridge. It's a very creative and it also implicitly explains why you can't backtrack to The Anti-Event, which wouldn't make much sense plot-wise, anyway.
The Event, The (Main) Event
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×Entrance:The different speech for each of the three entrances is a nice detail.
1W (entering from the east): This room is a funny reference to the original, but there appears to be an issue with the scripting: If you stab the seep any time from turn 10 on, the characters move on "
normally"
, whereas if you stab it on turn 8 or before or re-enter the room when it is already cleared you get the joke dialogue referencing the scripting issue in An Event #1. But if you kill the seep on turn 9 then neither of those will happen and you will become stuck until you leave the room with no apparent indication as to why. I think this also happened to Lucky Luc while he was streaming and was part of what confused him about the scripting. I suppose having an issue like this is kind of fitting in a way, but people who haven't played the original might be pretty confused.
(Bonus points for the speech if you enter the room from the SW entrance and wait, though.
)
1S2W: It's the return of the original's best trio of characters! Finally we get to see what The bed., The food machine and An TV did all the time since the first event!
It seems they went on to remain stationary objects with scrolls lying next to them!
4S2W: The fact that there was a script for killing the monster and then trying to listen to its story is funnier to me than perhaps it should be.
1N2W: You can mess with the scripting here by killing the talking roach and THEN clearing the room with the challenge. (The ghost of the roach will speak to you and it's very spooky!)
2N2W: This room has the best "
Why would you enter this room from that entrance?"
speech.
1N3W: The script in this room probably shouldn't repeat if you clear the room and re-enter. It makes more sense in 1N2W and 2W because the roach lamenting the broken rooms still makes sense after the first time, but him telling you that you won't beat a room after you've beaten it does not.
It might also be better if it didn't happen when the player enters the room via the northern corridor since it's not really relevant because you can't kill the queens from there anyway.
1N4W: Nice job on the really cool backtrackability secret in this room.
The speech here should probably also have an End when the room is cleared.
1N5W and 1N6W: This is a clever puzzle, but as Lucky Luc discovered, you can kind of break the entire end of the Roach Quest by just going north in 1N5W.
1N: I checked through the editor to see if I've missed any secret scripts and it seems that the speech that's supposed to be displayed here when you hit the orb will never activate. This is probably because "
orb damaged"
only triggers when it becomes a broken orb, rather than being completely destroyed. Then again, I have no idea about scripting.
3N1E: You can actually kill the evil eye character here by entering the room from the south when the room is cleared by just going the longer way around. Thought I'd point it out since there's an alternate escape route specifically for the player coming from the south and taking the short route.
2N1E: The player can trivialize the challenge in this room by entering from the north again after the room is already cleared. It's kind of a shame because catching up with the eye when the others are still around is actually a nice challenge!
1N1E: I think you already know about this, but the puzzle in here is broken and you can just ignore the scripted eye and don't have to worry about it shutting you in. You have to be careful if you fix this, though, because the player has to keep being able to backtrack through this room, because 2N1W, 3N and 2N1E can all be passed through without clearing the room and they are required rooms. Since killing the snake in 1N1W blocks off the way to these rooms from the intended initial direction they HAVE to stay accessible from the other side, or it'll be impossible to drop the blue door if the player hasn't cleared one of them.
3N2W Possible challenge: Clear the room and exit to the north without the pressure plate at (18/7) being activated.
4N2W: I think this room may automatically be marked as unscorable if this hold makes it to the Holds board since the player can make sure there's a tar baby alive to prevent the room from being conquered and then re-enter the room from the north to step on the Conquer Token in one move. I'm not sure if 1-move solutions get auto-marked as unscorable if there's a conquer token involved, but you could prevent that by moving the token one tile to the south to reward people who go out of their way for highscores.
5N2W: This is where I thought there might be an unintended solution, but it turns out that some of the mimic-orb corridors are just long enough to prevent that. My thought was that it might be possible to exit the room south after killing all the eyes if you're careful to always stay close enough to the southern entrance on turn multiples of 5 so that the slayer can't spawn.
The Reconditioning, The Beethro Parable
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×Entrance: The narrator's speech probably shouldn't repeat if you enter the room from 1N since it's impossible to actually change what path you're on from there.
1N: I would REALLY love it if the narrator had a special comment for going the wrong way from the Entrance into this room, then using the secret to get out only to choose the wrong way into this room AGAIN.
2N: Having to wait 60 turns after getting stuck here for some bonus dialogue seems a little excessive. I'm not sure how many players would really naturally find this.
3N: It's possible to turn the seeding beacon on and then leave to the north. I'm not entirely sure whether or not that's intentional since the narrator says something like "
You'll have to kill that roach again"
, which is only true if you leave to the south entrance.
4N and 5N: The scripts here should probably have an End because it's kind of silly to backtrack between those rooms and have that speech.
The Ending, This Wall of Text is Almost Over
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×1S: The way the slayer gets stuck here is pretty neat, it's just a shame the player doesn't really have to do anything to make that happen.
If there was way to have that part be a puzzle without being too trial and error-ish that'd be preferable, I think.
2S: This room has a nice not-actually-hidden-but-harder-to-get-to secret entrance.
There's actually a lot of lenience to get to it if you use the room's space well, but you can make it even easier by exploding some of the kegs in the keg chamber by standing on its nothern force arrow and stabbing them. Not sure if doing that was intentional.
2S1W: I was staring at the apparent impossibility of this room for about 10 minutes before I even realized that the slayer's scripting powers would help me here. This room and 3S as well could perhaps use a small clarification on what the slayer will do. In contrast, it's far more obvous in 2S.
3S Killing the slayer in this room is actually pretty easy and thankfully his power still works even after his death.
Perhaps there should be some speech for that scenario or it should make the room unsolvable instead?
I really don't want to come across as negative and I'm not really used to giving any kind of feedback at all, so take all of this nonsense with a grain of salt.