Hmm, this hold is tough to write about, but it deserves a writeup at least.
First of all, Hyperme did a great job managing this contest. I didn't follow it much as it was going on since I was rather busy, but you can take a look at the contest threads to see what it was all about:
Topic thread
Voting thread
As with many contests though, the results were a bit hit or miss. I hate to say it but there were a lot more misses this time than hits. There was at least one really solid entry that I rather enjoyed. That Which Cannot Exist by blorx1 has a lot of typical blorx1 craziness. Some of the rooms have more than one solution, but the solutions are always interesting at least. It's probably worth downloading this hold for that entry at least. I also had fun with Cutting Edge Gel Facility by jamesdenem though I imagine folks not in to time clone optimization may not enjoy this one as much as I did.
Sadly a lot of the other entries don't really live up to the usual standards of the architects who created them. The first and second place entries have some amusing dialog and (in the case of the second entry) very nice use of custom images. Unfortunately the rooms in these entries range from somewhat average to really fiddly and annoying. This may be partially due to the nature of the contest. Some of the post 2.0 elements lend themselves to fiddly rooms. But having several horde rooms based on puff vents, soldiers, and water skipper nests? I think we should all know better than that! Other entries make similar mistakes. The Negotiator's Challenge by Xindaris has four sub-levels, some of which are very fun. But the very name "
Temporal Gentryii"
is enough to turn off at least half of the DROD community (and it's just as fiddly as it sounds).
This isn't to say that the above mentioned entries were bad. They all had some good rooms in them and it's probably worth exploring them all at least a little bit. But if you aren't a completionist you'll probably find yourself leaving most of them unfinished.
One last thing that I'll mention is that a lot of the entries seemed to go against the spirit of the contest though. For example the first place entry has a few rooms that are all about rock golem manipulation. Cutting Edge Gel Facility (which I really enjoyed) was almost entirely about cutting tar and mud, not gel. The entries
technically got around these things by having the room start with rock giants and gel, but it did feel a bit cheap.
Sorry to post a mostly negative review of the hold here. I definitely think there are some redeeming qualities to this one and it's worth at least taking a look at. But whether due to the time constraints of being a contest or to the constraints of using only version 3.0 and up elements (many of which lend themselves to fiddly rooms) a lot of the entries don't live up to our usual expectations of the architects who made them.
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 09-23-2016 04:39 PM]
