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Level: Legendary Smitemaster
Rank Points: 8
IP: Logged

File: Deadly Choices of Death.drh (20.6 KB)
Downloaded 525 times.
License: Other
From: Unspecified

This is an easy-medium hold which should keep you busy a couple hours, hopefully having a good time.
There is no story, I just focused on putting as many choices as possible to give a large amount of optimization.

Big thanks to Someone Else, Midootje, Nuntar and Gordius for testing the hold!

Chaco
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3659
Registered: 10-06-2005
IP: Logged

This is a fairly straightforward DROD: RPG hold, very similar to Tendry's Tale. You've got a set of levels to complete, each with an end-level boss, and it's up to you to optimize enough to beat them.

One thing unique to this hold is that each level is self-contained - when you beat level 1 and move on to level 2, there's no staircase back. This is an interesting change in gameplay, and I think works fairly well. First, it helps combat the unstable equilibrium where people leave powerups behind in old levels, become really powerful, and then come back to pick up powerups or keys for free. Second, it helps keep each level self-contained, so you have less to think about at any one time - all the available decisions are available to see on the mini-map, and you don't have to keep track of unseen levels.

Overall, I think the difficulty here is just right. As seems to be a tradition, there's a normal final boss for people who just want to see the hold layout, and a super-boss for people who want a challenge. That said, there's a lot of leeway in this hold and you can actually kill the super-boss without even using all the accessories that are available.

So, good work! There's definitely room for more holds like this one.

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Rheb
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1211
Registered: 08-04-2006
IP: Logged

Conquered! With secret boss slain as well

Really enjoyed this hold.

+

Challenges are well balanced even though you get extremely strong towards the end if you manage to get all the gem pickups.

Having the levels be non-backtrack-able works well for me as it allows me to completely move my focus over to the new level entered. I felt there was some fun choices involved with this as well as it was fun to try to guess for example what the worth of a yellow key would be in terms of health later on.

The hold features no altars (power buying machines), no hot tiles, no aumtlichs, no lucky blades and no moving enemies which makes me very happy. I feel these elements often hinder exploration, and encourage extreme micromanagement of your resources in a game that is already heavy on resource management and exploration.

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Greckles accumulated quickly and I felt I didn't even have to consider ever not spending greckles freely. There was one point where an interesting choice came up that let you spend a large amount of greckles to revisit an area now locked off, but the way the level was set up it didn't feel like it could bring much value unfortunately.

The worth of yellow vs green keys was pretty stable for the first three levels I felt, but in the final two levels you were able to get extreme amounts of health for a yellow key which made me end up with a surplus of green keys and too few yellow; which felt weird as I was now punished for continuing the prioritizing that the first three levels rewarded me for.

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Voligner is my very own DROD-like game. Please check it out!

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[Last edited by Rheb at 03-24-2014 01:21 AM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2868
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

I just beat this hold and wanted to say that I thought it was excellent. I had a lot of fun.

The opening of the first level is pretty tricky to make progress on and get the sword without dying, but once you've found your feet the rest of the hold goes much more smoothly. I loved that each level was self-contained and did not allow backtracking as it removed the extended "clean up" phases that typically get in the way of the action. Also the lack of the typical accessory "rat race" gives you the freedom to actually use any accessories you might come across, although there aren't many of them.

All in all, definitely one of the top RPG holds published so far.

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Well... I have to disagree with you gyus (especially Rheb). Not about the quality of the hold, it was great, but about some other stuff. I love being able to backtrack, and I missed it in this hold. I did think the greckles was well balanced up until the third level, and I actually did use the backtracking door. And I had no problem with the balance of green and yellow keys. As long as I played by the rules 1) always get power-ups, 2) green key = 2 yellow keys = 800 HP,everything was fine.

Thanks for producing this hold!

Lucky Luc
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1215
Registered: 08-19-2012
IP: Logged

So, given the steam release and stuff, I've decided to give this game another go (and I think I've gotten a bit better at it). This is one of the holds I've recently conquered, and it's really cool.

As the other reviewers mentioned, this hold doesn't allow backtracking into previous levels, and as the majority, I also really liked this concept and I'd like to see more holds using it. It's nice to just be done with a level and don't have to wonder about whether leaving something for later might be better. Also, this would justify things like aumtlich beams and hot tiles, which have become kind of discredited, since you can obviously instantly collect all potions in a level when you see there's none of the above.

I thought the first two levels were pretty tricky, but doing well there made the third level quite doable and the fourth level almost too easy. One thing that was particularly anti-climatic:

Still, I thought the hold was pretty well-balanced overall. I never really felt like I had a ridiculously large stock of anything, though I do agree with Rheb's criticisms.

So yeah, recommended.

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[Last edited by Lucky Luc at 03-01-2016 06:29 PM]

Nuntar
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 4764
Registered: 02-20-2007
IP: Logged

This came up in "Guess the Room" a couple of times, and that reminded me that I never fully played through it. So I gave it a go, and it's a nice short hold that I got through in an afternoon. On the easy side, but there's nothing wrong with that, and this does all the right things in terms of presenting interesting choices, rewarding the player for good plays, and allowing you to enjoy the feeling of growing stronger, then ratcheting up the difficulty to match.

The only real design "oops" is in First job 1W, where there's a pressure plate trap that's really easy to hit accidentally when ctrl-moving. Fortunately, with the small levels, you won't lose much progress, but it's a good reminder to keep an eye out for similar traps.

I hope we see more from Red-XIII, maybe after RPG 2 is out!

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50th Skywatcher