Some more comments.
Wow, this was a lot of entries to work through! I definitely want to commend the community for so much active involvement in architecture contests as of later. Unfortunately I was out of town for the first week of voting and so had to play through these all rather quickly. In general I tried to vote about 75% based on how much I enjoyed the level and about 25% based on how the architect chose to interpret the title. That ratio was a little off for some entries since I wasn't really able to play all of them thoroughly.
For that second bit, I mostly gave more points to creative and interesting interpretations of the title. If a level name heavily implied that a certain element should be the main focus, and the architect found a way to avoid using that element while still keeping the title appropriate I tended to rank that fairly high. Meanwhile, if an architect just did the most obvious thing possible with a level title without getting at least a little bit creative with it I tended not to rank that as highly. I also tended to give points for humor, since that seemed to be in the spirit of the contest.
Manipulate the Snakes
I really enjoyed the rooms in this one. They were pretty fun without being overly difficult for a contest. Some of the puzzles were fairly standard, but a couple had interesting tricks and linchpins. I also can't help but love the mini-map art. That definitely earned a few extra points from me. A couple of rooms had trivial unintended solutions which should probably be patched up, but I didn't deduct points for that since it's pretty much inevitable in a contest.(That applies to a few entries in this contest to be fair). If I had to pick something to criticize about this one it was the fact that the architect didn't really do much with the title other than the obvious thing. The title is a bit heavy handed, and strongly implies that the level should focus on one thing, it would have been a bit more fun to subvert that somehow. I do love me some snake manipulation though, so this one was near perfect for me.
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Ode to Decoy
A bit of advice for all architects entering contests. Don't block off rooms behind green doors in a contest entry unless you have a very good reason for it. If a room is good enough to be in the contest entry, why would you want to prevent the voters from seeing it? The difficulty level wasn't too high so it's not outlandish to expect that most players would be able to get to see the whole entry, but why risk it if it doesn't really add anything to the entry? That being said, the puzzle rooms them selves were pretty solid for the most part. I liked the nod to the classic architectural blunder at the end. Again, the title this architect had to work with was pretty prescriptive, but I really like the inclusion of rhymes to tie in with "
Ode to Joy"
.
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Sticks and Stones
Full disclosure: I helped disoriented by doing a bit of testing for this one before he submitted it. I still absolutely love this entry. It took a bit of time to get the feel for the custom element, but once I figured out how it moved I found the puzzles to be a ton of fun. It felt a little bit like the custom element really only lent itself to one very specific kind of room. Don't get me wrong though, I liked the minotaur style mazes a lot. The final room was super fun if only because it was so different from everything else. I also thought very highly of the creative interpretation of the title. A lazy way to do this one would have been to just go with rock golems and sticks (yawn). Scripting new elements to go with the name was terrific. Lastly, I have to give bonus points for a cool level map.
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Dischorran's and Larrymurks' XTREME Puzzle Extravaganza Platinum Edition Reloaded
First of all, this was my favorite level name hands down. That gives the architect a bit of an advantage because you pretty much can't go wrong with interpreting this one. That being said, the architect definitely didn't slack here. This entry was hilarious. I absolutely loved the voice acting too. I definitely appreciate the fact that the architect went with the full level name and didn't truncate it (even though the rules technically allowed shortening in a case like this.)
The actual puzzles in this one were mostly good. Some of them were a bit on the tedious side. Most of them didn't really feel that much like the style of either architect named in the title, but that's forgivable. Even though the scripting was rather oddball at times, nothing really felt like a "
guess the scripting"
gocha. It was used pretty well to comedic effect. This one was definitely up there for me.
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Caeser Salad with Thousand Island Dressing
This one had some really neat puzzles. The architect kept things short with only five real puzzle rooms, but made up for it with mostly high quality rooms. The one to the west which was just an efficiency challenge was the only one that didn't feel top notch. The other rooms had neat ideas in them though and everything felt fresh. The central room was super cool too, I liked the fact that entering each of the rooms surrounding it was its own mini puzzle. I also liked the interpretation of the title a lot. You could have gone a lot of ways with this one, but a story based on a literal interpretation is a good way to go.
Since I didn't see any of the other demos do it this way:
| C h a l l e n g e ! |
 CS: Fixing the Ingredients: lemon Juice Don't stab the rock giants until after you've hit the conquer token. |
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Sad Trombone
First things first, the sound effect is terrific. It was just as amazing as DROD's horn fail sound, and I applaud the architect for not going the obvious rout and making a hold based on stepping on horns that fail to call anyone (as interesting a level idea as that is.) The rooms in this one were really a mixed bag though. There were a couple of really neat ones towards the west. I rather enjoyed the mimic pushing room and the aumtlich room. Some of these rooms were super tedious though. The guard room was just an annoying exercise in guess-and-check, and I didn't even bother finishing the mud and spike trap room.
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Bad Evil Restaurant II: Electric Boogaloo
Yeah, I guess this felt a lot like the original Bad Evil Restaurant. This is another one for which subverting expectations from the title might have been a better way to go. At the very least it might have been better to not include a "
guess the scripting"
room. It's hard to vote for this one though, in the same way that it's hard to rate the original
Bad Evil Restaurant. I was half tempted to just flip a coin to decide between either a 1 and 10. In the end I went with something in between though. Things I liked: the rooms that were a direct homage to the original were funny. I also chuckled at the scrolls. Things I didn't like: the hold couldn't decide if it wanted to be an all out spoof or a legit puzzle hold. The entry room includes a real actual puzzle. And while it's not my favorite and somewhat too execution heavy, it set up the expectation for the rest of the rooms. But then almost every other room I stumbled through was just silly Bad Evil Restaurant style stuff-slapped-down-any-old-where. Then somehow 2N ended up being another interesting puzzle room. It kind of made me wish that the architect had made a hold that
looked like it was going to be a rubbish hold, but actually had clever puzzles hidden in each room (like in 2N). I feel like that kind of meta-troll would have been more fun that just doing the expected homage. That being said, I did leave a couple of rooms unsolved here (though I suspect that at least the unrequired room is not solvable.)
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Exit Point
I really wanted to like this one. There was obviously a lot of work put into it. But I just didn't really enjoy the custom element here. The hold seemed to focus too much on dancing around and manipulating a new element. One problem is that the element lends itself naturally to making big hordes, so a lot of rooms devolved into horde rooms. And rather than actually spending time learning the rules for how these things work I found myself just stumbling through. It was mostly guess-and-check and there weren't really many actual puzzles. Not really my kind of thing. I feel like the connection to the title is a bit vague (that the "
exit point"
of the level is shown to you from the beginning and that you're trying to make your way back to it?), but I may be missing some sort of cultural reference. I am glad that the architect didn't do the most obvious thing and just reference Entry Point a whole lot since that wouldn't really be fair to the folks that haven't been involved with that hold.
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This Architect Couldn't Follow the Rules
This was one of my title suggestions. I really like the interpretation of the title for this one. In my mind, the obvious thing to do with a tile like this would be to copy Xindaris's use of the title in the last architecture contest and make a troll entry. I love that the architect subverted that expectation and went with a completely different interpretation. The puzzles themselves were mostly okay. They all followed the same theme which is neat. I can't help but feel that more could have been done puzzle wise though. Most of the rooms felt a bit too similar. It's pretty clear what you need to do and it's just a matter of knowing how to manipulate the monsters into positions that will get the job done. It startes to feel a bit too samey after a while. Admittedly there were other entries with very cohesive themes that have the same issue (
Octodecaphobia and
Sticks and Stones for instance). But in those entries, the cohesive theme is unique enough that I didn't tire of it quickly. While I feel monster manipulation of the variety used here is pretty common. Still, the rooms were mostly fun and it was overall a solid entry.
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That is NOT how that is supposed to work.
Heh. This one was hilarious. This is pretty much my favorite interpretation of a hold title. Sure it'll present some challenges when the compilation is being compiled for publishing, but you can always just make this one unrequired. I like that the puzzles were all fairly straightforward applications of the bugs too, making them too tricky would probably have detracted from the entry. The only flaw in this one really is the fact that some of the scrolls just listed a forum topic without describing the bug, and I'm too lazy to go looking through the forums while I'm in the middle of playing. Thankfully I remembered most of these from when the posts were made (and posted one of them myself), so it wan't too much of an issue, but it would be nice for publication to include at least a brief description.
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Recursion Aversion
What a neat concept! I had never seen this puzzle before and found the idea to be fascinating. I have to admit though that I couldn't come up with a good strategy for it and just ended up looking up the solution to it here:
https://www.rit.edu/~w-k12/documents/MATH_Fractal_Maze.pdf
Still, I thought this was a neat entry and a good use of the title that was given. There are a lot of things you could have done with recursion, but this was a really creative idea.
Dischorran Pizza
This was one of my least favorite entries to play. I think there were some good rooms in here, and I think the story-line was fun, but the style of architecture just had too many things that rubbed me the wrong way. Lots of empty rooms that didn't really have a purpose filled with crumbly/secret wall paths that didn't actually lead to anything. Some of the puzzle rooms were okay, but a lot of them were just tedious. Oh man. That room with the stalwart. Ugh. Ad for the use of the title, I thought that the story was a pretty good way to go. I get the impression that the architect who submitted this maybe isn't 100% familiar with Dischorran, but that's not really their fault.
Octodecaphobia
Super cool concept. The title of this one was very interesting and I think the architect did a great job with it. I love concept holds like this where the concept is something more than just "
use this combination of elements."
The first room was very straightforward, but that's okay, it was a demonstration of concept. I like that the difficulty level here wasn't too intense. I had to plan things out a bit and do some counting for most of the rooms, but if you don't enjoy a good count every now and again, you're probably playing the wrong game. I think the only thing that I think would have improved this one would have been to make it a bit longer. I feel like it went by very quickly.
The Five Stages to Baking
This was another one that had a nicely pitched difficulty level. The interpretation of the title seemed good (similar to the other food themed level names I suppose). I think most of the rooms were pretty good here. The player role maze at the end was super cool and that probably ended up being my favorite room. I like that each room's contents had a bit of a connection to the "
stage"
of baking. My only real complaint with this one is that the puns got a bit
stale after a while...
When You Wish Upon a Tar
This was my entry. I have to admit I'm a bit underwhelmed by my interpretation of the name. I mostly did the obvious thing and just made a tar level. Wish I had spent a bit more time thinking of a clever way to subvert the title or get creative with it. At the very least I was able to work in the "
wish"
concept. I am indebted to
disoriented for inspiring that idea while he was testing out the hold. I'm mostly happy with the puzzles. I know that the demos that
Doom and
Uncopy2002 posted showcase some alternate solutions for a couple of rooms, but I like their solutions just as much as the ones I had originally intended so I'm fine with it. I'm mostly content with how this one turned out. I do feel like the first puzzle you encounter in this level is probably the weakest though. I wish I had either swapped the location of that one for one of the better ones or come up with something more interesting.
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Gentryii-yi-yi!!
Another level name that was very prescriptive. There's not much to work with in that title. That being said, the architect kinda punted here and did the obvious thing. I'd have been hard pressed to come up with something better though. The puzzles themselves were meh. They were mostly fiddly guess-and-check style rooms. Not really my cup of tea. A few of them also definitely looked like not much thought went into them and the architect basically plunked stuff down in a room to make a nice looking pattern.
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I've Had It With These Mothergrebbin' Snakes On This Mothergrebbin' Euclidean Plane
Aside from the unsolvable rooms I actually mostly liked this one. I think it would have done fairly well had the architect picked up on that by play-testing the entry before submission. Some of the room ideas were pretty neat.
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Links to neat forum tools that I always have trouble finding:
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 07-14-2017 10:25 PM]
The puzzles are a tad too difficult for me, unfortunately, but it's more than made up for by the wonderful voice acting. This was my favorite entry!
