×1N1E:

×1W:

×1N:

×All rooms:

×I just checked, it's still possible to retrieve after clearing the room.

× It is possible to prevent the southern queens from going out (time it such that a roach spawn at 24,29, then go west of the queens).

× I don't think that it is intended that I take my sword back, push a snowball on the disarm token, and then kill the construct while I stand on the force arrow (after creating a bridge for the construct).

× I simply stopped Halph, killed the rattlesnake and went for the conquer token.

×winter variety puzzles: 9
1E was very fun. Hard pass on 1N, the platform shuffling required is too tedious. I eventually stumbled my way through 1S, but I still don't really understand what I did right.

campfire grove: 9
1N and 1W are fun and not too hard. 1E is interesting, although I'm not analytical enough to do more than eventually guess-and-check my way through. But 1S is just...no. No no no no no. DO NOT, EVER, combine hyper-efficiency with platform shuffling! That's just a recipe for pain! A shame; I'd like to see the ending. I guess I'll have to read it in the editor...

stuff it!: 10
My entry. Just kind of hastily thrown together once I had an idea because I was staring down a lot of deadlines right when this contest was announced/entries going to be due, so I'm not all that surprised if there are leaks. I kind of like the leak in 2S, though; maybe it'd make an okay challenge.

who wants to build a snowman? 6
The map art is neat, but neither room seems possible. 1N doesn't have anywhere near enough things in the room to actually block off the orb halph is supposed to not hit. And in the entrance, halph should obviously open the first door, and it's conceivable that a decoy might keep two of the roaches trying to go north to stay on their buttons, but there's absolutely nothing else in the room to hold a third one in place while Beethro goes directly southeast of it.

bag of candies: 5
Every single room is an overwhelming mess with way too much going on to even begin to parse. I spent at least an entire hour just trying to figure out how 1W works, and as far as I can tell it's impossible--there is exactly one less puff than necessary, and probably less decoys than necessary, for anything resembling a workable solution. And every single attempt to test an idea out required me to do the same painful, tedious puff-herding to get them to the southwest to try to retrieve the construct and make a bridge to let me bring the stick out into the rest of the room. The idea of "you just need to collect the candies" would work so much better if you didn't have to still clear every single room in order to do so. As it is, it might as well just be a regular blue door.

the win tar: 6
the same room 4 times, but with tiny variations. I get the idea behind it, at least in 1N, but it feels like I'd pretty much have to psychically guess what the correct configuration of mud is to ensure that the tar does exactly what it's supposed to with precisely the correct timing. It's extra obnoxious (in my opinion at least) that the firetraps stay on forever after being first turned on. 2N seems like it'd be really easy with a screenshot of the solution to 1N in hand. 2N1W only seems to change the order of when you switch tar/mud vs. when you place the decoy, which seems pointless but I guess must do something. And I really don't see how 1N1W is supposed to work--there's nothing to remove the mud from the central plate once it's on there.

king ebenezer's dungeon: 10
1N seems to be a case of "architect found the one single, solitary, very specific configuration that works and wants player to somehow divine what it is". The mechanism with the roach seems entirely pointless, as well as the roach itself. I couldn't figure it out, and had to do the rest of the rooms in the editor. 2N is way more reasonable, so why is 1N so obtuse? And then I found 3N impossible despite the quite limited set of options, but 4N was a fun puzzle. The text/story was very cute, though.

snowball: 8
A decent joke, and a mostly okay room. But the final orb is placed very obnoxiously; slowly grinding my way through the roaches to reach it has all the fun and excitement of sitting through a series of consecutive loading screens. Killing the queens afterward is a foregone conclusion; I would've just put firetraps under them instead of making the player do it manually.

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×

Winter Variety Puzzles:
Two good, easy puzzles, and one I spent hours trying to cheat at.

Stuff It:
Good use of a custom element. I did 1N1E without waking the fegundo.

Bag of Candies:
Didn't have time to attempt. I feel the complexity goes against the spirit of the contest theme.

King Ebenezer's Dungeon:
I liked the use of the theme, even though I couldn't solve the first puzzle. I know what I have to do, but can't figure out how to set it up.

Campfire Grove:
1N and 1W were nice simple puzzles. 1E took several tries to find a usable path. 1S was horrible because of briar.

Who Wants to Build a Snowman:
1N was very good, but still can't see a solution to Entrance.

Win Tar:
Super easy to solve each, but can't figure out how to apply the level text.

Snowball:
Quite good in easy mode, possibly solvable in hard mode.

×This one is as it seems, you have to grow tar onto the middle plate. No guesswork is needed, though -- just keep things simple and symmetrical! Solution follows:

×This looks like it's going to be very similar to 1N, but think... how did you remove the tar from the middle plate in 1N? Can the same method work with tar and gel?

×Changing the order means you have to grow mud onto the middle plate, with only one source -- but at least you get to do this before going into the SW widget, so Beethro and the mirrors can block off the corners nearest the mud.

×Indeed, you can't remove mud from the central plate here, so it shouldn't be made to grow there. What else has changed from 1N?

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×
Episode 1 - Winter Variety Puzzles 2024
Episode 2 - Stuff It!
Episode 3, Episode 4 - Bag of candies
Episode 5 - King Ebenezer's Dungeon
Episode 6 - Campfire Grove
Episode 7 - Who wants to build a snowman?
Episode 8 - The Win Tar
Episode 9 - Snowball, closing thoughts and architect guesses

×
My Published Holds
Smitemasters' Selection - Finding the First Truth
Smitemasters' Selection - Treacle Stew
My YouTube Channel - Leylite

Holds I contributed levels to

2024 Stocking Fillers Compilation
Advanced Concepts
Advanced Concepts 2
Blind Race #1: On Your Marks
The Custom Element Contest Compilation
Doorless Hold Contest Compilation
DROD Flash Project Audition
DROD History Month
Elemental Showcase
Elemental Showcase 5.0
Good, Bad and Ugly Contest Compilation
King Dugan's Alternate Reality
Labyrinth of Mellenfral (unpublished contest compilation)
Lunchbreak Special
Lunchbreak Special 2 (unpublished contest compilation)
Take Five
The Mining Business
Twelve Days of Christmas
Way Forward
ZelDROD Dungeon Contest Hold

Holds in the Making

Roach Approach, a one-level hold featuring roaches and various supporting mechanisms

...MYSTERY PROJECT (a larger one)

Styles

Workshop - DROD 5.0
Voids - DROD 3.0
Cavern Redux - DROD 2.0
Laboratory - DROD AE
Snakepit - DROD AE
Twenty-Sixth Level - DROD AE

×
Due to time pressure, I rushed every room of my entry other than the first. And now that I look at it, I see I misaligned the roach mechanism in the first; the pressure plates are supposed to be in the same row. I'll need to adjust that, and make the door in the second room into a firetrap as noted above.

The stalwart puzzle was actually the second one I made, after thinking about my "stalwart doesn't move" puzzle in my Make A Good DROD Level entry. There is a degree of logic to it, but it really was "I messed around, confirmed it was solvable, and included it because I didn't expect to have time to do anything better". Then I made the Halph room, tested it enough to conclude it wasn't completely trivial (other than overlooking that the mechanism to make you fail if he stopped moving didn't work), and then just threw together the first idea I had for the Slayer room until I had something functional.

This started with me thinking about Jacob Marley's chains and connecting that to gentryii, and the first idea I had was severing his chain. Then I tried to make rooms based on the three spirits, but I struggled to come up with ideas. Although I did at least manage to connect them thematically to past, present, and future, without even using time tokens.

I did briefly consider using time tokens for the slayer room, but I couldn't think of anything to do with them that felt reasonable to make in the remaining time.

×Don't know how I missed the obvious break in 1N1E, other than brain-fried and low on time; there should just be an obstacle, or a seeding beacon, or literally anything at (33, 9). The point of the room is that you can't make enough of a thin-ice bridge on the shallow water to accomplish anything, so you should take advantage of the fact that the construct can push something past where the power tokens are supposed to prevent you from going.
I have a suspicion that you thought 2S1E had water instead of shallow water. Nice that you solved it anyway. Maybe a "don't get wet" challenge could befit that room? Well, you also didn't find the break others found that allows Beethro to be armed, which I also don't mind so much.
You also found a slightly different way to handle 1S1E from what I thought of as "the solution" (which has the roach path go across one more floor tile to "make up" for the ice only going north/south).

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×
Winter variety puzzles 2024

For the winter theme, I loved the custom graphics!
Winter ice skate is definitely one of my favourite room of all the entries, I loved the concept (which reminded me of other similar videogames I played when I was a kid) and the puzzle.
Winter maze was also a neat room.
Winter jigsaw is not my type of room, so I did not like it very much.

Campfire grove

Overall, the winter theme was represented pretty well and I liked the theme of the puzzles. My favourite entry of the contest.
1W: First room I tried and I liked it; the wood element was pretty straightforward to understand, so this was a good introductory room for me.
1E: I liked this room a lot, figuring out which path to leave was quite fun for me.
1N: Another good room, though I wonder how many solutions there are.
1S: The only room I could not solve, the timing is not too strict, but I could not find an efficient way to carry the wood.
Stuff it
I like the concept of the snowball, but I think that the entrance is a pretty tough introduction. 2S1E and 1N1E have US noted in the posts above, but overall they seem ok puzzles. 1S1E was probably the easiest but best room of the hold for me.

Who wants to build a snowman?

This is my entry. I decided from the very beginning that I wanted to do an artwork of a snowman, though it was not that easy and I do not feel 100% satisfied, but I liked how the puzzles turned out and how they fit in the overall artwork.
Chaco managed to find an “US” to the entrance, I did not wish for the player to perform such a fiddly manipulation
Also, the NE roach is a red herring, I’m thinking to remove it from the compilation hold. 1N is pretty much all intended.

Bag of candies
I really like the theme, but these puzzles are quite tough, I could not even solve one (though I had a general grasp of what needed to be done). I managed to get some candies and found out how to get them, but pulling it off completely was too hard for me with such little time available.

The win tar

For me, the US killed a bit this entry, and I had no time to play all the entries sadly. I’ll definitely give it another go when the compilation hold comes out.

King Ebenezer’s dungeon

I liked the winter story theme, but the puzzles were not so great I think. I could not solve 1N after one hour of juggling, so I had to play the other rooms in the editor. I probably broke 2N, I simply stopped Halph, killed the rattlesnake and went for the conquer token. Not much too say about 3N and 4N.

Snowball

I think the winter theme is the growing snowball (roaches) that will go after you after a couple of queen are released. However, there is a way to nerf it, buy never letting the south queens out (time it such that a roach spawn at 24,29). Still, not an easy room, but quite fun.

×The easy way is to start ahead of Halph.

×
Actually, the main idea was do small challenges to get the candies but I give up because I didn't feel like I could make something decent on time.
1W: Stick was only for free the construct with puff help, it was never intended to bring it out to clear the room.
1N: Main idea was stuck a gel baby in the arrow at (15,20) for a while. The bomb was for it, didn't work as expected.
1E: Worked as intended although had a minor issue.
1S: Definitively the weirdest room, gonna do small changes but problably will mostly leave as it is. It's rather hard to fix given the current situation.