In my continuing mission to try to be as cool as Curious Shy Rabbit, I thought I'd take a shot at a hold or two in Architecture. I'm not going to comment a lot on the rooms that work, since I'm assuming you're not looking for feedback on whether any given room should be changed or not included or the like. (That isn't stopping me from an overall comment along those lines at the end of this post.)
I made it through the Stick Museum, which brings me to the first--well, last, really--problem: the room behind the blue door in the Stick Museum is marked "
required"
. Once that's fixed, I'll download, update, and keep going.
Out of what I got to:
Click here to view the secret text
×The "Levels" level:
* 4N1W: This room can be done without using the stairs, i.e., without conquering the levels. Send the roach queen north, stand on door below the orb, and wait for roaches to fill the space above you, eventually hitting the pressure plate. You wouldn't
want to; it takes much longer; but it's possible. (I think putting the pressure plate an extra square north should solve that.)
* "
Gargantuan"
is misspelled on the signpost (and possibly elsewhere; that's the one I didn't get to yet).
"First Level":
* You might want to add in which hold it's the first level of, especially since there's a First Level later on as well...
* 2S1E: minor backtracking issue, of the "
clear room, create new baby, leave to the south"
variety.
* 3S1E: I'm not really certain why that mimic potion was there, but, well.
"Second level":
* 1S: same minor backtracking problem as above.
* 1S1W: the scroll refers to a "
reset system"
that's been removed; I'm not really sure what that means.
* 1W: There's a more serious backtracking problem here, namely that if you exit south--and that's the closest exit when you're done, so most people will go that way--you can't continue because of the 2x2 tar blocking the west exit.
* 2W: the scroll should say "
from going"
. (I haven't done a lot of grammar checking; just noted a thing or two here and there. I can proofread in full before it gets sent to HAs if you like.)
* 1N3W: of course, you can just chase the queen into the snake's area and ignore the wubba.
* 1N5W: "
harder"
? The roach seems extraneous, in fact.
First trial:
* 1N: make the NPC invulnerable.
Circle Chambers:
* Entrance: Are you in fact supposed to...
Click here to view the secret text
×...use a roach to kill the snake, as opposed to a rock golem? If so, it's clever, since I was expecting each circle to be independent. If not...well, it's clever anyway.
"First Level" of JR's Thoughts:
* Entrance: the usual tarcutting backtracking issue
* 1S1E: a presumably unintended solution, if you care:
Click here to view the secret text
×I stood on the arrow south of the bomb and hit it, thereby getting to the outer ring without having to go through the green door.
* I'm not sure I understood the "
papercraft"
reference on the scroll leading in.
As a final note, the hold is...very complete. It's a little like Elton John putting out a Complete Collection including not only demo tapes and tracks cut from studio albums, but also the home video his father made of him banging on a piano when he was eighteen months. The "
demo tapes and deleted tracks"
part of this hold is quite interesting--I like the idea behind the Circles, for instance, and am kind of sorry it never got completed, and Stick Museum 1N is quite interesting, even a little devious. But the "
First Level"
whose rooms have a handful of roaches and little else...well, it reads like a young architect poking around the editor and making something that's half-homage, half-pastiche of the beginning of KDD, and it's not in the same class as the other stuff here.
