×Version 3
1N3W: Changed significantly.
2N2W: Replaced with completely new room.
2N1W: Removed US.
3N1W: Removed US.
Added hold description text.
Added hold ending text.

Version 2

2N1W/3N1W: Added fire traps to starting positions to fix unintended solutions.
2N/3N: Added vision tokens.
1W: Added oremite square at (25,14).
1S1W: Added some walls in trapdoor areas to make things slightly tougher.
1S1E: Added checkpoints.

×1N2E: Consider enforcing more specific solution.

×
The level entrance text is still default.
1N: Great room! I dreaded this at first, but it turned out to be not bad at all. As a bonus, you never need to move diagonally either.
1N 1E: Again, not as hard as expected. You could make this room so much harder by making the room larger and having a another lemming ring. But maybe not. The room is al dente already.
1N 2E: Unintended solution? It felt way too easy for a secret room, since I didn't really have to do anything. Demo attached.
2N 1E: Okay. Mad props. Full stop. That puzzle was brilliant! I felt such a rush of joy when I finished it! And that's exactly what a good architect should be able to do.
2N: Pretty good. Once I gauged just how far I could move the mimic, everything fell into place. I'm interested in seeing how other people solved the room, I'm sure there are quite a few solutions.
3N: Another great room! I didn't use the ice, but I'm not sure how I could have. If there was a second patch, this room could be a lot easier. But I couldn't think of a solution where using the ice would be easier than leaving it alone. Either it went unused, or it wouldn't have helped anyway.
2N 1W: A little bland compared to the other ones on this level. Otherwise, not too hard, and not trivial either.
3N 1W: This room was even quicker than the last (0:37 seconds of ~3:30), but somehow, it was quite a bit more fun. Putting a trapdoor in Beethro's area put quite a twist on things. Sure, you didn't need to use that space anyway, but it just being there made me rethink my strategy. I like that a lot!
2N 2W: I didn't really like this one so much. It felt too chaotic to formulate a real strategy. Maybe I'm not too good with this type of puzzle, but I just guessed my way through it more than anything else. At least it was short enough to not frustrate.
1N 2W: Neat idea. Like the last room, I kinda guessed my way through this one. But that was more my fault than yours, since I was being lazy.
1N 1W: Pretty fun. Not as original as some of the other rooms, but still pretty fun.
1N 3W: I gave up on this room. Maybe it's easier than I'm making it out to be.
1W: Very fun!
1S 1W: This room was trivial. But I don't know how you could improve it. :/
1S: Nice! Mirrors are such great elements, and rooms like this illustrate why.
1S 1E: I really liked that room. Don't know why, just a ton of fun.
1E: Not a challenge, but too fun to be trivial.
2E: Done in 24 seconds. I didn't like this secret as much since it used the exact same strategy as the last room (stay in the center, keep four brains around you).
2S 1W: Hoo boy, you turned a really easy room into a really good one, with that one little extra section. My demo says 2:04, but I bet I took at least thrice as long figuring everything out. Thank goodness for unlimited undo!
1S 2W: I don't suffer from claustrophobia, but I think I might after that room. Also, very interesting solution. I was about ready to give up a few times! It just seemed impossible.
2W: This was more annoying the first time I visited (I went and solved a few other rooms first), but then I came back with a bit more patience. I had just one golem that I couldn't reach quite a few times which was very bothersome. Good room.
3W: Again with the unreachable golems! My record so far is five left standing, I'll keep trying later.

×
3N1W: Possible US: You can leave the mimic on the central island making it unnecessary to preserve the trapdoor in Beethro's area until the end. This could be fixed by putting an active firetrap on the central island a la Trapdoor War.
3N: Neat room. The challenge was not too bad at all. This was very enjoyable.

2N2W: An interesting concept, but I don't see anyone approaching this with a strategy other than random trial and error. At least it isn't too hard to stumble on something that works and it's quite forgiving since you can't die.
2N1W: Fun but straightforward. This will be interesting to optimize.
2N: Great room. Tar cutting puzzles that involve planning things out are always good times. Believe it or not, a vision token would be nice here to help with counting (since it would make the checkerboard pattern of the floor visible.)
2N1E: This was a super fun room with a neat linchpin. It looks like a horde room at first but the setup strongly encourages the player to find an easy safe spot.

1N3W: Ugh. This was super fiddly as gentryii rooms often are.
1N2W Not as bad as its cousin at least. These two rooms are mostly going to be guess and check. I'm not sure much can be done about it though.
1N1W: Fun room. I tried to see if I could do this one without offsetting the orientation of the mimic and Beethro, but couldn't manage it.
1N: This was the first room I tried, and one of four possible first impressions of the hold that people could have. Not as fiddly as it first appeared, overall it was slightly more difficult and slightly more horde oriented than the rest of the hold for a first impression.
1N1E: Fun but straightforward lemming room. I like that you can solve this reasonable easily by reasoning about lemming cycles ahead of time.
1N2E: Nice! You don't see diagonal moving bent tail lemmings often at all. This was a lot of fun. trickier than it's counterpart, but still very tractable.

3W: Somehow I enjoyed this one more than the easier version. The added constraint on vertical movement forces you to get creative and come up with tricks like keeping the SW giant alive to squeeze you in. I quite liked this one.
2W: I mostly used trial and error here. Not a bad room though.
1W: This was a really neat room, and a good room for what could possibly be the player's first impression of the hold. The mechanic was interesting and not one I think I've seen used before. The difficulty is about average for the hold, not to hard to figure out, and the execution isn't to bad at all. Consider putting oremites at (25,14). The reason being is the player has the sword pointing NW it blocks the pressure plate that you need to place the mimic on. In a room like this I tend to rush for the potion I obviously need to take before deciding where to place it, and it would be nice to have that little safeguard for folks like me who didn't think ahead.
1E: This is an interesting twist on the usual use obstacles to push a mimic across a room puzzle due to the confined space. I more or less used intuition for this one and a bit of trial and error based on lots of experience with these kinds of puzzles, but needed to plan ahead a bit. Not a bad room for a possible first impression of the hold.
2E: This is an other instance of the "harder" secret version being a lot more fun due to the more strict constraints of the puzzle. This time I was forced to find a repeatable pattern and it made for a much more interesting puzzle. This one was super neat, an excellent room.

1S2W: This was another favorite. Like the other double mirror push room, I think it's super neat that you can establish a repeating pattern. I think you have the perfect number of iterations in this room, and more and it would have started getting tedious, and fewer and it might have been doable without finding the pattern.
1S1W: Very straightforward. This is a pretty standard mimic puzzle type and I feel like the setup was simple enough that I didn't really have to think about it much. You may want to consider making the trapdoor regions slightly more complex to add a bit more difficulty to it. I suppose it may be interesting to optimize though.
1S:This was one of my favorites. I really like the fact that the pattern is repeatable. As a possible first impression of the hold, this is a perfect room. Like the other double mirror push room, you have strike the perfect balance with the number of iterations required to clear the room. This room sends the message that the hold will contain some fun and interesting linchping puzzles that are not too hard with a little bit of thought.
1S1E: Similar to 1E in that this is a classic move-the-mimic-across-a-room-using-obsticles puzzle. I liked this one a lot more though due to the interesting way the snakes get removed to leave 1x2 spaces. This needs a checkpoint

2S1W: Heh, careful what you wish for right! Well, I guess this is what I asked for in my comment on 1S1W. This one was much trickier. The force arrows in the middle of each block presented a particularly nasty obstacle. Still, the usual trick of isolating one or two mimics on a diagonal seems to work pretty well for this one, at least if you aren't trying to optimize.
2S: Neat! This is definitely one of those "clearly impossible" rooms. 1S builds an expectation that makes it harder to see what needs to be done, but the linchpin is really quite nice. Great room!

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It's not listed in "help", but [attachment] will embed the whatever image is attached to a post.

×

superluminal wrote: Again, not as hard as expected. You could make this room so much harder by making the room larger and having a another lemming ring. But maybe not. The room is al dente already.

This is mainly due to the way I went about designing this hold. Was trying not to have many repetitions, just enough to make sure the player gets it. Feel this room doesn't need to be any larger.

superluminal wrote: Unintended solution? It felt way too easy for a secret room, since I didn't really have to do anything. Demo attached.

It's not my favourite solution. The intended one involved moving around the edges. I could stop your solution by placing hot tiles in the 5x5 center of the room, but I don't know if that's best, your solution seems OK (had to watch it a few times to understand it)

superluminal wrote:
3N 1W: This room was even quicker than the last (0:37 seconds of ~3:30), but somehow, it was quite a bit more fun. Putting a trapdoor in Beethro's area put quite a twist on things. Sure, you didn't need to use that space anyway, but it just being there made me rethink my strategy. I like that a lot!

Not having to use that trapdoor probably has to do with the fact that you can start and end mimic at same place. I'll fix this (and 2N1W) per Insoluble's suggestion.

superluminal wrote:
2N 2W: I didn't really like this one so much. It felt too chaotic to formulate a real strategy. Maybe I'm not too good with this type of puzzle, but I just guessed my way through it more than anything else. At least it was short enough to not frustrate.

Was meant just to be a little bit of a fun room, though I agree there's not any real strategy to it. I'll replace it.

×

Insoluble wrote:
2N: Great room. Tar cutting puzzles that involve planning things out are always good times. Believe it or not, a vision token would be nice here to help with counting (since it would make the checkerboard pattern of the floor visible.)

Adding vision tokens to 2N and 3N.

Insoluble wrote:
Ugh. This was super fiddly as gentryii rooms often are.

This room felt fiddly to me too, I'm going to try to rework it somehow.

Insoluble wrote:
1W: This was a really neat room, and a good room for what could possibly be the player's first impression of the hold. The mechanic was interesting and not one I think I've seen used before. The difficulty is about average for the hold, not to hard to figure out, and the execution isn't to bad at all. Consider putting oremites at (25,14). The reason being is the player has the sword pointing NW it blocks the pressure plate that you need to place the mimic on. In a room like this I tend to rush for the potion I obviously need to take before deciding where to place it, and it would be nice to have that little safeguard for folks like me who didn't think ahead.

I like this room quite a bit as well! Added oremites to (25,14).

Insoluble wrote:
1S1W: Very straightforward. This is a pretty standard mimic puzzle type and I feel like the setup was simple enough that I didn't really have to think about it much. You may want to consider making the trapdoor regions slightly more complex to add a bit more difficulty to it. I suppose it may be interesting to optimize though.

Added a few walls to both areas.

Insoluble wrote:
1S1E: Similar to 1E in that this is a classic move-the-mimic-across-a-room-using-obsticles puzzle. I liked this one a lot more though due to the interesting way the snakes get removed to leave 1x2 spaces. This needs a checkpoint

Added some checkpoints to the room.

×
2N 1W: I didn't know you could do that with firetraps. That's pretty brilliant! Anyway, solving it this time felt a lot easier to pull off for some reason. But that's probably just my imagination.
3N 1W: Again, the firetrap changed my solution, but only slightly. Still just as much fun!
1W: Even with Insoluble's very worthwhile idea, I *still* forgot what the heck I was doing and put down the mimic in the roach chamber. Ah well. Same solution, and now there's less chance of the player screwing themselves over.
1S 1W: Adding in the asymmetric walls was a great idea. Now the room isn't trivial anymore. (Although it's still much, much easier than the room to the south.)

2N 2W: If you want any more proof that this room is a little ridiculous, I've attached a demo where I hold down the W key until I'm in the right position. You can also hold down the Q key, but it takes a few more turns.

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It's not listed in "help", but [attachment] will embed the whatever image is attached to a post.

×Skell's idea generator: http://forum.caravelgames.com/ideasGenerator/view
Challenges Scoreboard: http://forum.caravelgames.com/challenges.php
Level map viewer: http://forum.caravelgames.com/map.php
Tactical DROD game: http://forum.caravelgames.com/tsspreview.php
(Note: Requires Flash)
Room Element Search tool http://forum.caravelgames.com/roomsearch.php
(Search through all published holds for rooms with various elements.)
Room position Heat Map http://forum.caravelgames.com/heatmap.php
DROD has a wiki! http://drod.wikia.com/wiki/Deadly_Rooms_Of_Death_Wiki
Skell's super cool list of turn sequence stuff https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QS9Vk3xsd4jlGF23J8p7c2IM5cmhwmoe6eCEaaAn8jY/edit#heading=h.ocovx14zokm4

It's not listed in "help", but [attachment] will embed the whatever image is attached to a post.