I'm shocked by how little attention this hold has gotten. It deserves far better than tumbleweeds! So let's fix that.
Thanks to the titular trefoil-style knot, Xindaris managed to accommodate
nine-count-em-nine puzzles in just four rooms. Each is pretty self-contained, but they influence the others just enough to make the whole thing feel cohesive and intimate. And thanks to the looping structure, each room starts you from a new entrance, which forces you to adopt a new perspective for all of them. My favorite room is definitely 1S1E: the first time through, you have to battle a gel mother and create a mimic ratchet using gel babies, while the second time, the room starts clear but now you need to ratchet the mimic in the other direction using
tar babies. It's fantastically clever!
The loops remind me of another hold I'm playing through -- A Quiet Place -- where you're dealing with the same rooms from many entrances. There weren't seeding beacons back in AE, so conquering those rooms was often the last thing you did. Here, it's only the halfway point. But the scale of rooms there, plus the cleverness of loops here, times the power of seeding beacons, and it's clear the potential of these kinds of levels is limitless.
Xindaris has created a good little hold with fun little puzzles, but I think the real value is how it's a proof-of-concept for intertwining puzzles. Whoever capitalizes on this will have a
seriously awesome hold on their hands.
Even if you don't plan on architecting the next great knot, you should play this hold. It's fun and engaging! (And leave your thoughts in this thread. It deserves even more attention.)
5 brains
8 fun
[Last edited by Kaelyn at 05-30-2019 05:52 AM]
