Dear DROD folk. Some of you know that I have a weak spot for gentryii. Not that I’m particularly good with them, but I do believe that they deserve better than being abused in chain-straightening puzzles or to act as mindless widgets or enforcements.
In fact, all complaints about gentryii seem to focus on their (admittedly arcane) chain dynamics. So here goes: this contest is about
gentryii without a chain a.k.a.
lone heads a.k.a.
solitary bitey bitey mouths.
Chainless gentryii are hardly ever used and that’s a shame. I have a couple of puzzle ideas myself, but I could imagine that you’ll manage to build some quite intriguing puzzles revolving around them. A couple of example uses might include:
1. G heads hold down plates like mirrors, but they can move as well;
2. G heads can attack like a roach horde, but they won’t die;
3. G heads can move and wait on floor spikes, fire traps and hot tiles, which other monsters can’t traverse;
4. G heads can hunt you down and force you to be speedy.
But in the end, gentryii don’t need to be killed to finish the room, giving a particular flavor of architectural freedom that other monsters don’t have.
The rules
I’ve written down a couple of rules. Think of them as suggestions and feel free to break them as you see fit. I don’t want to chain (see what I did there?) your creativity.
1. Make one or more rooms where gentryii heads (no chains) are the stars of the show.
2. Of course, you can use chained gentryii and other monsters as well. But try to focus on solitary heads for the main room theme.
3. You can go any thematic direction you like. Are you a sucker for horde rooms? Go build them!
Always craving for linchpins? Go build them!
Can’t get enough of those plate shuffling brain wreckers? Go build them!
I am just really curious whatever stuff you can come up with.
4. A good number of puzzle rooms for your contest entry might be somewhere from half a dozen to a dozen. I would not recommend building larger levels. But its OK if you build just want to build one or two rooms. I’d rather have a few outstanding rooms than many similar or boring rooms.
5. If you build just one or two rooms, there is no need to include stairs. I’ll put those rooms in the compilation hub.
If you build a level,
please provide two stairs. The first stairs can be used to go back to the hub without finishing the level. The second stairs can be used to end the level (behind blue doors, probably). These stairs will also go back to the hub and allow you to finish a small widget to ‘mark’ your level as completed in the hub.
Please make sure that the player can always return to the first hub stairs regardless of level conquer status.
Submission
I will open a submission topic for your convenience. Magic will happen and only I will see your entries. This will ensure your anonimity
I will be on vacation for some weeks and I guess many of you will also be away during the summer. Therefore, I have set the deadline for submissions at
25 August (I’m @ Amsterdam time, but I’m not here to make your live difficult, so submissions that are reasonably close to 25 August will be able to compete.
I’ll start building a compilation hold shortly after that and starting 1 September, I expect voting to begin.
Meanwhile, I'll try to answer any questions
if and when I am online. No guarantees, sorry for that.
Expect your entry to be judged on overall coolness of layout, puzzles, etc. with a particular emphasis on creative gentryii head trickery.
I’m looking forward to your entries!
BTW: the contest title was suggested in chat some months ago, but I can't seem to remember who came up with it (Nuntar perhaps?) (yes, it was). Thanks anyway!
Prizes
This is an official contest and has the usual prizes:
First place: 100 rank points + pick from the Prize Pile
Second place: 50 rank points
Third place: 25 rank points
First-time entrants: 10 rank points
____________________________
Autocorrect is
not my friend. Apologies for the typos.
[Last edited by Nuntar at 07-11-2019 03:10 PM]
