Cool hold so far. I'll mention some things that I mentioned in the Beta forum (By the way, will you be updating the beta forum or will you be testing primarily through this architecture thread from now on?) So far I've only played through level 4
Nice aesthetics overall. There are definitely some cool Tarstuff puzzles here. My favorites are still
1N4W,
1N5W and especially
2N8W. The room design for these is quite elegant, and I really like the subtle parity switching that goes on in
2n8w. As a minor detail,
2N2W could maybe use a checkpoint around (24,5). This is just before a place where it becomes possible to accidentally cut mud in a way that traps an inaccessible mud baby in the wall. There is still the backtracking issue which I'll mention in more detail below.
The new rooms seem to be the variants on
3N3W. First of all, The new version of 3N3W seems much more doable now. But I'll be honest, I only cleared the first three variants and just got tired of it halfway through the fourth. I have no problem with multiple variations on the same room, but in this case I'm not so sure that having all of these back to back is a good idea. The room is a long one (I'm not much of an optimizer, but I'm getting demos well over 1000 moves). I'd be happier to repeat the room if the variants weren't so long. By the time you get to the last third of the room or so, the challenge of fending off multiple babies is mostly gone and it becomes more tedious than fun. You could probably remove the mother or brains at (17,19) and (17,20) and not diminish the idea of the room. Alternatively, if you want to preserve the structure of the room, you may want to consider spreading these out a bit (perhaps saving one or two for post-mastery) so that the player doesn't get burnt out on it.
Backtracking issues:
As I mentioned in the beta thread, the usual backtracking issues with green doors in a tar stuff level will come up here. Namely, if you clear the room but create a tar baby then exit through the green door in
2N1W,
2N2W,
3N3W,
2N8W,
3N8W, and
3N6W you will be unable to return and clear the room. (This may also be an issue in
1N4W but I haven't verified if its possible.) This is mostly a trick that optimizers might use to try to start the room from a better entrance, and they should know better than to try this with a green door not touching the wall. But it may still be an issue in the HA review. One possible way to fix this would be to create one way tunnels leading from behind the green door back to the preferred entrance.
Another more serious backtracking issue that I mentioned before is that the force arrows in 2N4W make it possible to accidentally skip
3N3W and
4N3W and not be able to come back to them. The force arrows are somewhat hard to see on the road background, and unless they are necessary for plot reasons, it may be a good idea to get rid of them entirely so that players don't accidentally clear a bunch of rooms after them, but then have to restore and lose progress in order to clear
3N3W and
4N3W.
Lastly, I just wanted to reiterate that I've enjoyed the hold so far. I'm glad you're working on it again!
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