admin
Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 8
IP: Logged

File: Alkans Crypt.hold (44.1 KB)
Downloaded 815 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

This hold has (IMO) a good exponential difficulty with different type of puzzles but mainly horde and some lynchpin rooms.

Hikari
Level: Smiter

Rank Points: 438
Registered: 01-28-2006
IP: Logged

Just as a first post on this, what's up with that false exit in Prologue: Entrance?

____________________________
Caravel Official Holds Progress:

Red-XIII
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 651
Registered: 08-05-2012
IP: Logged

It only needs to make an appearance of a court, it leads nowhere. About unreachable rooms I understood the lesson some time ago so don't worry there are no unreachable rooms

____________________________
There's not some other world out there where everything's gonna be okay.
There's just this one, just this rock.
-33th Skywatcher

xitvono
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 55
Registered: 09-15-2012
IP: Logged

So far I think this is a pretty good hold. I recommend for people to play it.

Kwerulous
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 340
Registered: 05-15-2008
IP: Logged

Well, now that I've finally conquered this, I'll write a little review.

Story
There's a discrete storyline to accompany the hold. It is somewhat of a cliche and doesn't really add much since it's mentioned at the beginning and then kind of forgotten (I'm sure it is probably mentioned in the mastery level, although I haven't got there yet). It doesn't detract from the gameplay though, which is good.

Gameplay
The majority of rooms are of the style where it's obvious what to do, but actually doing it is the hard part. In the beginning you've mostly got (brained) horde management. This continues for a bit into the main levels (you'll get to have lots of, er, fun with brained rattle-serpents). You also get some 'surrounded' type rooms. There's the odd lynchpin style room, which were of course the least frustrating and the most enjoyable (Prologue: Once South, Once East, The Basements : 1 West, for example).

This isn't a bad thing -- most rooms were still enjoyable to play, it's just that several rooms in a row with brained rattler hordes gets a little tedious. So with these styles of rooms the hold has a tendency to get a little frustrating. And just looking at this room gave me a bit of a headache. Also, the last room I completed was The crypt : Once South, Once West - I literally spent around 700 moves aimlessly jumping through tunnels until that queen just happened to get in the serpents way by chance I know, I know, it's not really 'chance'...

I would say that Orientations turned out to be my favourite level - surprisingly, since it was probably the most difficult. I just felt pretty good about solving those rooms and they're actually a lot more fun than they first look.

Difficulty
I had to put the difficulty at 7.5 brains. Simply because it took me quite a while to get a working strategy on a lot of the rooms. But as I said, most of the difficulty is 'frustration' rather than 'what do I do?'.

I get the impression that the difficulty is what has put a lot of people off so far - I mean, at the moment, there are hardly any high scores - I was incredibly surprised at the number of times "1st place!!" flashed on the screen (not to last, of course).

Aesthetics
Aesthetics are simple and effective. The soul focus of each room is the gameplay, and nothing gets in the way of this. I would have liked to see a different room style to foundation for every level, however.

Overall
A very positive experience! Usually if I find a frustrating hold I just stop playing, but this somehow managed to keep me away from studying for upcoming exams. If you're looking for clever lynchpins or an engaging story then, granted, you won't find it here. But you will find some challenging classic style rooms and I'd thoroughly recommend you play it.

I had originally rated this at 7, but I've decided to increase that to an 8 and have given Red-XIII a +1.

---

[Last edited by Kwerulous at 06-15-2013 01:39 PM]

mxvladi
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2505
Registered: 02-11-2008
IP: Logged

Postmastered.

Overall, it's ok medium difficulty hold with emphasis on horde management, monster manipulation and occasionally - efficiency. Some very good rooms here and, sadly, some not-so-good ones. As a whole, worth playing.

Particularly good stuff: The Basements and The crypt levels - full of fun puzzles, no weak rooms there. I also liked most of Monster's Nest and secret room in Potion Land. And 1N-2N puzzles in Mastery level. First two levels were ok, too.

Particularly bad stuff: Orientations level - hated most of rooms there, sadly. The level's theme is good (although used before), but the rooms themselves don't play around player's sword-turning limitations in any interesting ways - most of them consist of a bunch of monsters which I have to kill while keeping sword direction the same. For me it was not fun. I believe architect could've done better with that level, and I know it's possible to use "no-sword turning" concept in more interesting ways. (but, to be fair, I kinda liked 1E and 1S 1W there) Also, I didn't like Mastery 3N (I believe I broke it, but what I believe is the intended solution here doesn't look much better. It's certainly less trivial, though.)

---

[Last edited by mxvladi at 06-18-2013 01:38 AM]

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1670
Registered: 12-23-2005
IP: Logged

Conquered this hold a few days ago and wanted to give it a thumbs-up here. It's been a while since I've played DROD, so this is probably the first unofficial hold I've played in three or four years...so my assessment of difficulty is probably a bit off.

That said, I found it very enjoyable and quite difficult. Most of the puzzles in this hold require some serious thinking (although there are a few easier ones).

I'd give it an 8 for fun and about 7.5 brains of difficulty.

Also, a stack of hold karma.

Josh

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

martz
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 416
Registered: 08-19-2005
IP: Logged

Okay, just about managed to finished this before TSS came out

This is a decent medium-high difficulty hold. There is a bit of story (as mentioned above) although it isn't really resolved (even in the mastery level you finally meet the bad guy but there's no real resolution apart from you killing him).

There are an interesting mix of puzzles here, including some themed levels. There are lots of horde rooms (particularly brained) but I quite enjoy those myself.

Regarding specific levels, the forced-sword-orientation level was okay, not an original idea but reasonably well done. The potions level was probably my favourite.

I was going to make a comment on how the first few secret rooms were fairly easy but the difficulty of them ramped right up after that!

Overall this is a decent hold - if you're not keen on brained horde manipulation though you might want to give this a miss.

Difficulty: 7
Fun: 7

____________________________
Without struggle, there is no progress, so get up, get out, and go make the rest of your life the best of your life; you deserve to live the life that YOU want to live...

Progress - Gavin G