As someone who spent a good amount of time play-testing this hold when it was in architecture, I'm thrilled to see that it's finally been released. This is a great new hold that explores the idea of rooms which you need to traverse more than once. Remember that amazing pair of interconnected multi-pass rooms in TSS? Yeah, imagine that concept expanded to an entire level!
The first and third levels will require you to play through just about every room multiple times, but each play-through feels completely different due to subtle differences in the room entrance, (weapons and tarstuff tokens often make a huge difference). For example, the northern branch of the first level has you clearing tarstuff, but with completly different weapons depending on which play-through you are on. In one attempt you'll get to explore the mechanics for clearing tar with powder-kegs which is interesting enough to be a whole hold in itself!
The hold has a somewhat linear feel for the most part so that the mechanic of multiple passes can be enforced. The difficulty level isn't too terrible though so you never feel boxed in because of this. You also get a bit of a break from the linearity in the second level which is a more open design.
There are loads of neat puzzles in here, and probably something for everyone. There are also quite a few interactions that haven't been explored before in a published hold. The powder keg tarstuff puzzles mentioned above are extremely interesting. There's also a neat room on the second level that uses fegundos and seeding beacons to add a really interesting twist to the usual "
lights out"
style puzzle and breaths a breath of fresh air into that puzzle type.
Short summary: This is a fun hold that's not too difficult but offers a lot of variety and has a very interesting premise. You should play it.
EDIT: One last thing. Here's a good bit of advice for those of you who like to have a full set of victory demos for everything (to help others in H&S and so on.) Remember to hit F4 to record demos since you will be passing through most rooms without fully clearing them, thus not necessarily recording demos automatically.
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Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:
Click here to view the secret text
[Last edited by Insoluble at 11-11-2015 06:09 AM]
/dy