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Dugonium.

It is dangerous, because it kills you. Actually, it kills everything in a 3x3 square. Because, well, dangerous.

Beethro finds himself on a new quest facing his old nemesis Klatzl, a whole lot of dangerous stuff and a bunch of bulldozers.

This has got to be fun!

Dying Flutchman
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 406
Registered: 01-27-2017
IP: Logged

Thanks to all testers and thanks to HA!

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.

vinheim
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 300
Registered: 05-31-2007
IP: Logged

This hold was fun from start to finish. DF seems to have a knack for making interesting, somewhat difficult puzzles from new custom elements (like hydra is another one I've seen) that still seem fresh even during the parts where you're manipulating old elements.

The difficulty increases slowly or is around the same pace from start to finish, so if you're getting the hang of it in the first big level, you can expect the same quality throughout, but doesn't get a whole lot easier thankfully

I felt the last level was a bit short, but it had some good puzzles, and I liked the new interactions with dugonium and water

I think I liked Air & Fire the most where it had some smaller room puzzles, but threw in tons of cool interactions, like speed pots, slayer, and mimic manipulation

Bent
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 92
Registered: 12-11-2015
IP: Logged

There’s two main scripted elements featured in this hold: Dugonium and MiniMiners. Dugonium functions somewhat like a continuously exploding powder keg, and makes for some pretty unique and interesting puzzles. MiniMiners are more similar to elements we’ve seen in the past, such as the lemmings from TSS and the blocks from Blockerture Science Laboratories. Both elements have nice custom graphics, and work well in conjunction with each other.

Architecturally the hold is pretty solid. There’s a few rooms here and there which looks a bit messy to my eyes, but most of them look all right, and there are some really nice ones as well. The level layouts are well made, and all of the levels feel visually coherent and covey their setting pretty well. Both darkness and colored lights are used a lot, sometimes creating striking visual effects. Unfortunately I found the hold too dark overall, so I played through most of it with alpha blending turned off.

The hold features a tutorial at the beginning, which I would recommend to consider skipping. I was a playtester for the hold and started playing before the tutorial was added, and I’m actually glad I did so! The custom elements mostly behave very intuitively, and the levels do a great job of gradually introducing interactions as you go along. There’s also a certain magic to be had by discovering how things work by yourself that can’t easily be replicated by following a tutorial. But then again, I am the type of person who loved the (lack of) tutorials in The Witness...

The puzzles in the hold are varied, some being lynchpins, while others focus on technique and monster manipulation. I really enjoyed the lynchpins, and most of the manipulation rooms were all right as well. Some rooms were difficult, but very few felt overly so, even among the optional rooms (which there are a lot of). I found quite a few unintended solutions in my playthrough, which were all fixed before the release of the hold, but this probably caused me to miss out on some clever puzzle design. I may go back and re-solve these rooms later on.

This is the first hold I’ve played by Dying Flutchman, and I had a pretty good time with it! While the hold is built around scripting, it still feels like playing DROD with a few extra elements laid on top (as opposed to some of the more exotic holds out there like Torus or my own Ghostsmiters), and if that is the thing you’re looking for, I’d recommend giving Dugonium a try!

Dali
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 174
Registered: 02-05-2005
IP: Logged

Wow nice new elements, really fun to play. Done half of the hold so far.

The level design is great with a nice little story. The puzzles are well crafted, and overall slightly difficult mainly because (in my case at least) players are not very used to play with the dugonium or the cute toys.

Good job Flying Dutchman!

Brain: 7
Fun: 9

Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1639
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

Dying Flutchman is turning out to be quite the architect! Dugonium is a must play hold. Even for those of you who tend to avoid anything rated above 5 brain difficulty, I'd strongly encourage you to check this one out.

The 7 brain difficulty is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the levels are open so you can play through some of the easier puzzles and get a lot of enjoyment out of them. The levels also set the more difficult rooms as unrequited so that you can make progress through the hold even if you get stuck on the tougher rooms. There is also a good mix of rooms types. There are plenty of linchpin puzzle rooms, but there are also plenty of rooms that rely more on execution and monster manipulation. There are even a couple of hack'n'slash horde rooms.

Most importantly, the hold is just plain fun. The new elements are super cool to play around with and I expect the'll be quite appealing even to folks who usually dislike difficult puzzles. The scripting is super cool, the dugonium element takes up multiple tiles making it fun to just push it around and see how it interacts with things. And Flutchamn did an amazing job with the graphics, these things look like they belong in the game. To top it all off there's a fun story that unwinds as you progress though the hold motivating you to keep going (as if the fun puzzles weren't enough!)

It's not an absolutely perfect hold by any means. While the wide variety in room types means that you'll most likely find some rooms you enjoy, it also means there's a good chance you'll find a room or two that isn't to your liking. But this hold was way too well polished and I had way too much fun with it to not rate it 10 out of 10. Definitely worth checking out!

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Insoluble
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1639
Registered: 09-04-2014
IP: Logged

I was finally playing through the last level of this hold and noticed something that I missed during testing. In Fire & Fury: 1E it's possible to exit the room at (37,22) without conquering the room by pushing Dugonium onto the custom character. This lets you re-enter on top of the green door and get a trivial high score. Really sorry about de-high-scoriffying the room. It wouldn't be too hard to prevent this with scripting since the exit at (37,22) is supposed to be ornamental only. Not sure if it's too late though since this was published a while ago.

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Dying Flutchman
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 406
Registered: 01-27-2017
IP: Logged

Insoluble wrote:
...and get a trivial high score.
...
Not sure if it's too late though since this was published a while ago.

Whyyyyy!?

But seriously: I don't want to change this. I should accept that there are folk out there that thrive on making puzzle rooms completely dysfunctional

It sends to be the fate of each hold that a couple of rooms will be broken. That's ok.

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Autocorrect is not my friend. Apologies for the typos.