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File: Caverns of Animus.hold (47.7 KB)
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This is the sequel to King Reubus' Palace. I started on it almost immediately afterward, and it was then delayed by several months due to factors beyond my control. When I found it on my system again recently, I decided enough was enough and I put it up in here.

It's not really 19 levels, I had to use multiple copies of the same few levels for one of the meta-puzzles. There is a single hidden room in this hold. First person to post a victory demo for it gets many mod points.

I hope you all enjoy this!

Stefan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2119
Registered: 05-25-2004
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File: CoA Secret Room Victory.demo (43.2 KB)
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Here's the victory demo for the secret room. It should work in AE.

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0.099³

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
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Wow. Um... I'll verify the demo when I have time. It's 1am right now and I need to be up in six hours. Bravo!

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

Atch
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 81
Registered: 08-29-2003
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I played through the hold properly last week and now think that The Long Ascent is my favourite level – there are some classic rooms here, some the best that I have ever seen of their type:-

Against the Clock (Snake Timer)
The Entrance: it took me a while to cut the tar mother correctly (I could clear her completely) before the race to the NE – very well timed I thought.

Against the Clock (Tar Timer)
1N, 1W: I wasted a lot of time clearing all the tar from the second section before twigging what was to be done.

Tar Maze
2N, 1W: I like tar mazes but had the distinct advantage of having played this in the Editor where you could see where you have to go. I think that I would have struggled with the orb puzzle here if I hadn’t seen How Things Work.

Horde
3N, 1W: This had been issued earlier as a competition entry but replayed was still a most enjoyable war of attrition as you inch your way against the horde at the finale.

Orb Puzzle
4N, 1W: not my favourite type but this was unusual albeit straightforward.

Puzzle
3N, 1E: hats off to DiMono for this absolutely first-rate puzzle: it had me stumped for a couple of hours and could well be my all-time favourite DROD room.

Snake
2N, 1E: a simple room superbly crafted.

Another advantage of having played this in the Editor was being able to avoid the booby traps – I wonder if I would have seen the joke otherwise?

Was it intended that only two rooms on this level are required? After finishing both 3N, 1W and 3N, 1E I was invited to leave and did so having missed several rooms in the SE which I had to then go back to.

Secret Room: well you are not going to get a demo from me! I got fed up after three cycles and that was doing it the easy way! I even got fed up watching Stefan’s demo at full speed, giving up after 20 cycles. In case you are wondering Stefan I awarded you 3 mod points for doing this – I am hoping that these will help pay for your therapy – but have we been duped? The demo was not recorded in AE so presumably was in JtRH: did you really spend 200 minutes and 124,867 moves or is there a new box of tricks available to you – to write macros perhaps?

Stefan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2119
Registered: 05-25-2004
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Atch wrote:
Secret Room:
...
but have we been duped? The demo was not recorded in AE so presumably was in JtRH: did you really spend 200 minutes and 124,867 moves or is there a new box of tricks available to you – to write macros perhaps?

You are correct that the demo is recorded in JtRH and then made importable into AE. However, the demo is not made using a macro or anything like that - I really did spend ~200 minutes and 124867 moves on it. The reason I did it in JtRH was just because of the undo-possibility and because JtRH is faster (and because it looks better (and I wanted to test the hold in JtRH)).

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0.099³

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
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Atch: Yes, it was intended to be that way. The idea is that you either go left and face tar, or you go right and face serpents, which is why the entrance is divided the way it is. And yes, it really does take that long to defeat that room. It's not difficult because it's a challenging room, it's difficult because it's so much commitment to a single task.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3310
Registered: 07-05-2004
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Finished. (I played only half of it in the Architecture version)
I think that there were too many orb puzzles but some rooms were quite enjoyable. A few comments:

Twice Down - 2N1E:
You can kill the serpent into the checkpoint/mimic potion passage. The second door isn't necessary.

Twice Down - 1S:
This was one of my favourite rooms. Sneaking behind those eyeballs was kind of fun

The Long Ascent - 3N1E
This room got me for a while but then I realised how to do one part of it. Luckily there are extra potions. That saved me from restarting the room after using some of them in useless places. I wonder what's the minimum amount you have to use.

Twolce Down - 1S
This was a bit too repeating. 3 Cycles would've been enough IMO.

DiMono
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1181
Registered: 09-13-2003
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Thank you everyone for the kind words. A lot of work went in to this hold, and it's good to know that people are enjoying it. +mods to each of you.

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Deploy the... I think it's a yellow button... it's usually flashing... it makes the engines go... WHOOSH!

rothro
Level: Delver

Rank Points: 46
Registered: 06-29-2004
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Hi,

this was a good hold, I enjoyed the fruit of life, and a lot of very clever ideas went into it. Full marks for the rooms.

But I got totally annoyed by the way the long ascent was put together. The rooms were very good, quite challenging, but not too bad, but the inability to backtrack was a huge turnoff for me. I don't believe room exits that force you to take a random one, find out which one would have been correct, reload then take the correct one are any fun whatsoever. You could for example have given scrolls in front of each exit with a riddle (true/false questions, observations about the room, etc.), - anything that allows the correct sequence to be found without having to reload.)

I did not give a rating for the hold, because a single number will not give an accurate description. The rooms themselves up to and including the long ascent deserve a mark in the 8-10 range. The annoyance factor in the long ascent deserves a much lower mark from me, but it would do the rest of the hold a great injustice.

Please take this as constructive criticism.

Cheers,
Rothro

PS: I also am still stumped by TLA 3N1E - if it is really solveable it is very clever.

____________________________
And god spake unto me "Be merry and glad in your heart, for it could be much worse!"
And I was merry and glad in my heart and it got worse!

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1917
Registered: 12-09-2004
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This hold has a lot of superb rooms!

First, my criticisms..
1. The Forgotten Getaway (1st level) 2 East- I conquered this room and exitted to the West and was stuck. 1East has a red door you can not pass from this direction and I do not believe you can exit 2 East to the north unless you pplay the room with the tar mother alive. Yes, I reloaded, replayed the room, and used the North exit. Yuck.

2. Too many orb puzzles (of course, 1 is too many for me). Luckily, I downloaded an orb solver from TripleM on the forum or else I surely would have stopped playing the hold.

3 Terrible level design. This might just be my opinion (although I see at least one person has made a similar complaint). I don't even know where to start on this point.. forced restores, many duplicate levels (with the same name), blind exits leading to stairs leading to restores..... I assume this is what the architect wanted, but not fun for me.

The GOOD stuff.

All that said, I still rated this hold a 9. Why? Because there are plenty of gems here.

The Forgotten Getaway 2N 1E and Fruit of Life 1N1W are fun puzzles with Wraithwings.
Once Down had plenty of fun roach horde management rooms.
Level 4 was one of my favorite rooms because of the timing required near the end (of course I'd have preferred for the orbs to simply open doors instead of being a puzzle).
TLA 3N1E is a great, unique puzzle.

Overall, great job! Please keep making the fantastic rooms, but please don't torture me with the level design.

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
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Managed to conquer this hold last night. Well, mostly.

Haven't yet done the two rooms on the left-hand side of The Long Ascent, the secret room (about 1/3 done with it), or been back through all of the duplicate levels solving and re-solving each to fill things out.

But I did manage to get to the end of it. I have to echo some of the other comments -- great room design, but the level design confuses me. Is there some value to the Middle of Nowhere that I'm missing? I did explore the whole thing once just to make sure, but it doesn't seem to lead anywhere useful -- just have to restore.

I did figure out the Fruit of Life meta-puzzle, and it was clever...but not enough for me to be excited about replaying all the rooms again once I figured out the correct path.

So anyway...room design is a 9. Level design is about a 5 (IMO, anyway). Overall, I give it a 7 with 7 brains of difficulty.

Oh, and how does one get to 'How Things Work'? Do you need to use the editor?

Good work, DiMono!

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

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[Last edited by jbluestein at 07-13-2006 04:18 PM]