Like the original Ghostsmiters this is really neat. The attention to detail is great. I really love the aesthetics and layout. The aesthetics, scenery, and dialog are all terrific. Also like the original Ghostsmiters the execution is pretty exacting. I don't really know if it's really all that much gentler than the original. I managed to clear three rooms (including the first room, which technically starts cleared). Haven't gotten the last two yet. Demos are attached. I tried to record multi-room demos and label them in a way that makes sense. If you start watching from #1 it should play through the whole sequence. Here are some thoughts:
Beginning sequence: Getting to the top.
Getting past the second floor is already a pretty big roadblock. There are a lot of different ways to manipulate the ghost on the first floor that feel like they could be correct but leave you in an untenable position on the second floor. The player first has to realize where you need the ghost to be on the second floor in order to make it to the bottom, then has to find a way to get the ghost into position on the first floor. The sequence of moves required is interesting, and I thought it was a neat puzzle, but it was pretty involved for what is supposed to be a gentle introduction. The irony is that just about all the sequences after that for getting to the top floor are pretty manageable. Those felt like they might have been a better choice for a first puzzle.
If you are planning to keep things pretty much as is, I would recommend putting a checkpoint at somewhere like (7,17) in the first level (the entrance). That way if a player does mess up the positioning of the ghost a bunch of times while making attempts at the 2nd floor, they'll have at least one good checkpoint to restore to that doesn't make them replay through the whole opening dialog.
Clearing the 5th floor: Already for the first real room clear we need to manipulate a goblin to block the ghost in a corridor. Thankfully the goblin manipulation isn't too tricky, and it's pretty clear that getting the ghost stuck on the goblin in level 4 is the only way to get him in the right spot in level 5. But manipulating the ghost to get into that corridor took a bit of figuring out. Again, this was a neat puzzle, but didn't really feel like a gentle introduction. I'm feeling a solid 7 brains difficulty so far.
Clearing the 3rd floor: The "
telefrag"
hint in the opening sequence is nice in that it lets the player know that this approach will work without having to experiment with it. It's also pretty clear that this is the only way to kill that particular goblin. But again, the setup for this one was pretty tricky, involving all three top floors, plus requiring the ghost to be in the correct spot from the end of the first kill (so you'd better not have moved him out of place and overwritten your checkpoint save),
and coming to the realization that you need to reuse the western area that seemed to be just for the introduction. I really enjoyed figuring this one out, but it was easily 7 brains if not more.
Unfortunately I'm not seeing how having level 3 clear opens up any new opportunities and so I haven't made further progress. Still enjoying this so far. Closing thoughts: This is definitely a bit more difficult than anything I would describe as "
a gentle introduction"
. It may just be me though, difficulty is very subjective. The manipulation, while tricky, is not as precise and demanding as the first level of the original Ghostsmiters. In fact, I think the difficulty lies more in the long term planning across floors and in thinking three dimensionally (possibly with the exception of very first puzzle in the first two rooms). I've enjoyed this so far, and wouldn't complain if you just decided to keep the difficulty and re-conceptualize it as a hold of comperable difficulty to the original.
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