Actually Ed
Level: Goblin

Rank Points: 22
Registered: 08-13-2018
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File: Elbertsons Basement.hold (7.5 KB)
Downloaded 59 times.
License: Public Domain

I've only got one level so far, but hopefully there's more on the way.
I didn't know much about puzzle design and stuff going into this, so I hope it's at least half decent.

All feedback is appreciated!
Made in TSS

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[Last edited by Actually Ed at 09-23-2018 09:25 PM]

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1638
Registered: 09-04-2014
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File: Elbertsons Basement.demo (23.8 KB)
Downloaded 44 times.
License: Public Domain

Welcome to the forum! I've attached a set of demos for the first level for you so that you can take a look at how at least one person approached your hold. This was a fun level to play through. It felt very much like a good Architect's Edition hold in that most of the monsters were from pre-JtRH and that there was a lot of focus on performing the correct tasks in the correct order while being harassed by roach hordes. On tho whole I thought this was a fun throwback. I like that you also included some convenience elements like pressure plates and fire traps though to make the room much more readable. AE holds often have a problem with clunky and hard to parse widgets and just the inclusion of pressure plates and fire traps makes a huge positive difference.

On the whole I'm feeling a 6ish brain difficulty maybe? I'm always bad at judging these things. The main thing that I think this hold could use is additional check points. Some rooms have none at all and most of the others have them too sparsely placed or else placed in spots that you'd never want to step.

Individual room thoughts:

The Entrance: This room does a nice job introducing the hold and shows off what the rooms will primarily be about. It looks like all the widgets here are well enforced.

1N: The wraithwing manipulation here was pretty fun. It's nice that there's only one of them so it's pretty straightforward to control. The roach horde felt a little bit intense at times, especially while on the bridge. I wouldn't complain if the bridge portion were made two tiles wide instead of one to make pushing through the horde less time consuming after the pressure plate has been hit, but it's fine the way it is. This room definitely needs checkpoints though. The one currently there may as well not be. It's in a spot that no one trying to optimize the room would ever go.

1W: This was a fairly standard mimic horde room. Not much to say here. I felt like this was fairly forgiving and was maybe a bit on the easier side given how long the room is.

2S1W: This was a super fun room. Possibly my favorite on the level. I attempted to clear the northern roach queens first then saw that that made things difficult for the way back and had a nice moment of seeing how the trapdoor puzzle and mimic puzzle intertwined. Very satisfying room. I would definitely recommend placing a checkpoint either on the trapdoors somewhere or in the roach queen area somewhere for the mimic to step on.

1N1E: I liked this one a lot. It had a nice little linchpin that was fun to work out. This was another favorite. It would be nice to have the checkpoint in a spot the player doesn't have to go out of the way to get too.

1E: The orbs were thankfully fairly easy to figure out, and the trapdoor path was not to convoluted. The roach horde here was actually a nice added layer of complexity that made for a fun room. Definitely some checkpoints would be nice.

1S: This was a really fun roach queen manipulation puzzle. These tactics are fairly well known these days, but still a lot of fun to pull off. Nice room.

1S1W: I like the scripting with the raft! It was a nice touch. The room itself was fun, though I was getting a bit tired and distracted at this point and was super sub-optimal with my demo. Looks like you have some flexibility about what you use to hold down those pressure pates which is nice.. I did it two different ways and have demos for each.

2S: It was somewhat tricky to coordinate the two separate puzzles of sword restrictions from the bombs and getting the roaches all clumped together so that you could enter each chamber. This may have been the most difficult room on the level. Still in line with the overall difficulty though, and I suspect that there are multiple ways to do it.

Overall this was a nice level. It would make a nice bite-sized hold as is but it sounds like there are more rooms on the way. I look forward to seeing what you have in store for the next level!

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Lucky Luc
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1215
Registered: 08-19-2012
IP: Logged

File: Elbertsons Basement Lucs Demos.demo (15.8 KB)
Downloaded 41 times.
License: Public Domain

Neat hold, especially for your first one! Layout and aesthetics are top-notch. Puzzles were medium-ish difficulty and mostly pretty fun. The combat-heaviness really feels like classic DROD, while adding a few neat lynchpins to the mix.

I feel like checkpoint placement is suboptimal, and some rooms even miss them entirely. Since I'm so used to paying with UU now, I can't really say which rooms are really bad and which are ok.

Attached my set of demos. Room specific comments:

Entrance: Good room, and good intro to what the level is going to be like.
1N: I feel like there may be a few too many roach queens here? Made manipulating the wraithwing a bit of a pain. Maybe that's the point, though. It's definitely not too bad.
1W: Honestly, I'm not too fond of this room. It becomes clear very quickly what you have to do, and then it's just busywork. The roaches aren't really challenging to deal with, either, they're more annoying than anything.
2S1W: Way more fun than I expected it to be. One of the tougher rooms, I think.
1N1E: Toughest room for me, but also pretty enjoyable. For some reason, even after I figured out what to do, I felt like I had lost because the roach queen would escape when I hit the fuse. Probably I'm the only one to blame for this, though.
2N1E: Pretty standard old-school puzzle, but enjoyable enough. However, there's a backtracking issue here, since you can't return from this room.
1E: I feel like this room becomes a lot tougher (maybe even unsolvable) if you don't enter with your sword facing SW, but I'm willing to consider this a lynchpin here. Once that's down, the rest kind of falls into place.
1S: Pretty forgiving queen manipulation, which is always enjoyable. The end was a bit tough, but neat.
2S: Neat twist on the usual rotational constriction. The first order I tried pretty much worked, though I had to redo the third section.
1S1W: Another room I didn't care for too much. Was it intended that I could just use both eyes to hold down the pressure plates? After I figured that out, it mostly turned into busywork.

Anyway, off to a pretty strong start