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File: Six Times Six.hold (205.2 KB)
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It seems to have become a trend that I release content long after its creation. This is mostly an effort from two years ago, that I never bothered to release back then. Now thoroughly scrutinised, revised and polished, I am happy to present a full new hold with plenty of puzzle fun. Because of its age, the hold is a call back to the TCB era, with none of the elements from the newer Drod games. This is in fact my sixth hold, and given its name, it will be no surprise that it contains six levels with six puzzle rooms each.

Although I like to think that this hold is easier than my previous work, testers kept insisting that they were having a hard time getting through it. I'll compromise by giving it a 7 brain rating, but please judge for yourself. For the persistent player, there is some unique and newly revised hold art at the very end. To whomever conquers the hold, a high resolution image is available on request.

The hold uses my three custom styles Basalt, Sandstone and Garden. If you have CaravelNet access, importing the hold will automatically install them. Otherwise, download them from the style page and import manually to experience the hold in its intended form. These styles have been updated recently for TSS. If you already have them installed, I recommend deleting and reinstalling them.


Many thanks to the beta testers and Hold Admins, who were invaluable in the process of prefecting and promoting this hold:
– Beta testers: mxvladi, disoriented, Red-XIII, blorx1
– Hold Admins: Chaco, Dischorran

Dischorran
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3414
Registered: 09-10-2005
IP: Logged

So this is a cool hold.

I tend to associate Jutt's work with being extremely elegant, and utterly impossible to solve. This time, it's really only the former; most rooms look much harder than they are. The hold's a series of themes and variations ranging from goblin manipulation to broken wall cutting to pathologies of movement order, and is very light on the fiddliness.

Sort of makes me want to pick up Elusive Exhibitions again. I'll probably regret that.

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Lucky Luc
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1215
Registered: 08-19-2012
IP: Logged

Okay, this really is a pretty cool hold. Basically everything Dischorran said, with an emphasis on elegant - almost all of these puzzles are amazingly simple, but with a really clever and fun solution. Even the small number of snake manipulation rooms (though I never hated that, anyway) were pretty easy to pull of once you knew how to do it.

The levels are thematic and nicely ordered by difficulty. "Guidance" was a bit weaker than the others in my opinion, but still a good level.

And the last room is fantastic. The puzzle is brilliant and the reward for solving it is beautiful.

So yeah, recommendable.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1917
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

Thanks Jutt for another masterpiece.

Beautiful puzzles.
The puzzles may appear daunting at first, but I was able to get through most rooms with a little patience and simple deduction.

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 11-14-2005
IP: Logged

This is definitely a hold worth sticking around for. If you get frustrated, set it aside, but not forever: come back to it. You won't be sorry.

This hold won't fool anyone into thinking it's easy. But it's approachable, and I definitely say this as someone who probably hasn't made it all the way through a Jutt hold before. If nothing else, it's a wonderful look at the "variations on a theme" approach to holdbuilding (and that's a point in its favor, because if you get stuck on, say, a room with mud, well, go west and try the same room with gel, and maybe that'll spark some new ideas). [Note: not an actual example. But you get the idea.]

OneMoreNameless
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 131
Registered: 07-31-2010
IP: Logged

This hold is almost entirely lynchpins which are based on non-standard level themes such as cascades or carving. The solutions are pleasingly tidy and easy to execute once you grasp the concept. The downside to this is that most of the variant rooms (and there a lot) become trivial to solve as even after swapping out a tool or tweaking element placement you're still using the same trick to achieve the same objective. I'm left with the feeling of a few great ideas being spread too thinly in order to fill out the hold.