The Twentieth Annual People's Choice Awards
Welcome to the 20th Annual People's Choice Awards, also known as The Deadlies! 
There were no ties in the voting this year, so let's just get in to the results!
Best Custom Game Element
Ice Golem in The Descent of King Hesper by Pinnacle
Since The Descent of King Hesper is a fairly long hold and I suspect that a lot of people currently playing it still haven't encountered the ice golem, I'm not going to say much about the element here, but I will give a shout out to Pinnacle for scripting the element and to Xindaris for taking the element and making good use of it.
Technical Design Excellence in Scripting
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
Scripting can mean a lot of things, and in the case of a hold as big and comprehensive as The Descent of King Hesper, many different types of scripting ended up being used in the final project: cutscenes, character role changes, custom elements, an inventory, and a bunch of flags tracking all sorts of ways in which the player has made progress. TDoKH is a solid demonstration of how DRODScript can be used to make a hold just that extra bit more interesting.
Technical Design Excellence in Layout and Aesthetics
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
When a hold contains so many different levels by so many different architects in so many different styles, it will end up showing off a lot of different ways that the DROD engine can be used artistically. From minimap art to room by room aesthetics and thematically appropriate hub levels, there will be a range of expression in TDoKH.
Technical Design Excellence in Concept
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
While the initial concept of Entry Point was to provide a gentler introduction to a lot of the new elements that were coming out in the harder installments of DROD, the final hold ended up as more than just a tutorial hold or the third installment of Advanced Concepts. While the hold is built with the assumption that someone playing it won't have any previous DROD experience, it also contains a bunch of "
optional"
content for veterans. It's also likely the single largest DROD hold that will ever be published.
Creative Design Excellence in Storyline
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
The Descent of King Hesper has a story, and a lot of care was put into making it consistent. Since it's not a strictly linear hold, attention had to be paid to situations where players might do things in different orders, and the whole thing overall also made the assumption that a player wouldn't have experience with any of the main DROD stories. This means that the story of TDoKH is a standalone experience, and while it may make allusions to things that have happened in the official DROD holds, it should be a spoiler-free experience for players who then want to go on to play the main DROD entries. Well, spoiler-free in terms of story; all the elements will be inevitably spoiled for someone who plays TDoKH first. (This also means that TDoKH is non-canon.)
Creative Design Excellence in Difficulty
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
Difficulty can be a hard thing to judge in general, and in the case of a massive hold like TDoKH, it can be somewhat arbitrary where people draw the line on which rooms count. The hold currently has a rating of 7 out of 10 brains, which is the minimum to qualify it as a hard hold, but in my opinion there are definitely rooms that go up to 9 brains here. I'm not actually sure what it would take for a room to be a 10 brain room, so your brainage may vary. 7 sounds about right for me if considering the content required to get to an ending. Regardless, there are lots of fun rooms here, both above and below the listed difficulty, and the early chapters should be fine even for people who don't enjoy the harder content.
Creative Design Excellence in Entertainment
Aerosol Agitation by Xindaris
This RPG hold has a gimmick where the player has some limited control over increasing the multiplier. Despite the potentially long reaching implications of something like this, Aerosol Agitation does a good job of breaking up the player's decision space into manageable chunks. This is to say that even if someone isn't too confident in their RPG optimising abilities, this hold should still be approachable. The levels aren't too long and there's no backtracking once you progress to the next level.
DROD Hold of the Year
The Descent of King Hesper by Team Eclipsical
The Descent of King Hesper, previously known as Entry Point, has been in development for a long time. The beta board was created on August 2nd, 2014, and the hold was finally published just after Christmas in 2024, which means that this hold was over 10 years in the making. The community has been looking forward to it for quite some time, so it's not surprising that this hold ended up winning Hold of the Year. It took a tremendous amount of time and effort, and the whole team should be proud of what they managed to accomplish.
DROD RPG Level Set of the Year
Tetrahedron by Nuntar
Definitely the most difficult DROD RPG set to come out this year, this is a solid offering for RPG veterans. The main conceit of this level set seems to be that the player is descending pyramid, with each level being larger than the one above it. The rooms are densely packed and there is an altar, giving the player an incredible number of options at any given time. Despite this, conveniences were offered to the player to minimise the difficulty of scouting, allowing a cunning stalwart to commit to the choices that matter.
Erik Hermansen Award for Lifetime Architectural Achievement
Red-XIII (RPG)
Red-XIII has been producing DROD puzzles for us since Fortress of Death was released in 2012, and the most recent hold was 2024's Museum of themes. In addition to the 8 standard DROD holds, Red-XIII has also released 2 RPG level sets. Many of these holds are on the more difficult side, showing that Red-XIII has a solid mastery of a number of DROD mechanics. This reward acknowledges years of good architecture, and we can all hope that Red-XIII will continue to make new puzzles for us into the future.
Best Community Contributor
Schik has been the duct tape that keeps the online community features of DROD running. On top of the usual maintenance, Schik also integrated Discord into the CaravelNet experience, making things more convenient for people who prefer not to use the web or in-game clients, or for those who just appreciate the additional functionality offered by Discord. On top of that, the Archivists had to scramble to fix their procedures ever since Schik updated the high score system, which is something that had remained unchanged for a long time. High scores now track challenge completion, and players can get a UCS (Ultimate Completion Score) on each hold when looking at their individual ranking among players who have played that hold. Even outside of the game itself, Schik still works to provide all of us with a better experience.
Best DROD Video Presentation
Chaco (a.k.a. Leylite)
Chaco has been doing a variety of puzzle (and other) content on YouTube for many years, and in terms of DROD 2024 started with a developer commentary and playthrough of Treacle Stew, our newest Smitemasters' Selection, and ended with the beginning of his playthrough of The Descent of King Hesper, a playthrough that is still ongoing 4 months later. His presentation style allows the viewer to follow along with his thoughts, and he often provides additional commentary beyond just solving the puzzles. Chaco's videos have provided a lot of value to the DROD community over the years, and we're lucky to have him.
With 13 new releases in the past year, DROD is still going strong. It truly is the community that makes this game as special as it is. Looking ahead to 2025, development on DROD RPG 2 is coming along, so we'll hopefully be getting some more big news on that front in the near future. As of the time of writing, we've already had 5 new DROD holds released in 2025, and an architecture contest is currently wrapping up, so it looks like the next Deadlies will also have a good number of entries to pick from. I'm looking forward to seeing all the new innovations that the community will come up with over this next year. We're already on track for 2025 to be another good year of DROD.
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106th Skywatcher
[Last edited by mauvebutterfly at 05-07-2025 03:47 AM]
