The problem is that the hard rooms are often too hard by comparison to the rest, so the player
is liable to give up from the difficulty, if they are of the standard most of the hold is aimed at. Also, several rooms have the problem of being really hard at the beginning because you are fighting a lot of monsters in cramped space, but after killing the first wave of enemies, the rest of the room is really easy because you have a lot of space now, which makes it a little tedious to finish.
Take, for instance, Level 4 -- I've just played through all this level in the editor. Most rooms are really fun, and I like the way you've exploited the variety coming from the different weapons. The only problems with this level (other than lack of checkpoints): 1N2W and 2N2W both have the problem of starting hard and then getting easy, and the first wave in 2N2W is far harder than anything on the level.
I've also played Levels 8, 9 and 10, so I'll comment on these.
8
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×Not wild about the red lighting -- it makes things tricky to see and it gets a little wearing.
1N and 1S are nice horde rooms, requiring thought but not too difficult.
1W is a perfect illustration of why checkpoints are necessary, even with UU. Solving this will take hundreds of moves, so if you take a wrong approach and need to go back and try something else, that's hundreds of moves to rewind. And with this many brained enemies in the room, rewinding is very slow.
1E is okay... just strange. I didn't know firetraps worked that way with speed potions. Might be frustrating for new players who don't realise this.
9
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×Fine, a nice selection of floor spike puzzles. In 1E, did you realise that you can still kill the first four eyes if they walk on the arrows? Not that it matters; it's very easy to get past them anyway. Dealing with the second group of four eyes correctly is a very good puzzle.
1N1W is rather tedious: once I've got one mirror to the furthest pressure plate, what do all the other mirrors add to the puzzle?
10
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×1N is utterly trivial. Beyond that, a nice selection of Slayer-killing rooms. I particularly liked 6N -- it's not too hard to kill him with that many bombs around, and much easier for beginners to learn the trick here than in that one room in TCB. As for 7N, I guess it's a fitting climax to the hold, but I think beginners will struggle to discover the killing trick here.
A problem with all the rooms 3N and beyond is that there are no required targets, so they start out cleared and can be "solved" in one move, so there is no reward for optimisers. The cure for this is to place a conquer token in front of the orb opening the door to the next room (and you could add one to 2N as well, for consistency and so that handling the Slayer becomes part of optimising the room).
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50th Skywatcher
[Last edited by Nuntar at 10-26-2014 04:31 PM]
