Like the previous blind race holds, this hold gives you a nice bite sized serving from several different architects. The levels here are all very distinct, but each one has a high level of polish and is fairly approachable. These were designed to be completed in a race setting, so nothing here is brain-meltingly difficult, but you'll still see some nice linchpin puzzles that get your brain working a bit.
Friendly Faces is a classic Bomber50 style level that focuses on smallish rooms with cool linchpins based on interesting DROD mechanics. If you're not familiar with some of the mechanics involved, some of these can look impossible at first. But nothing is super obscure and most of these rooms yield to some good logical thinking. If you're a fan of Bomber's other work you'll definitely appreciate this.
Gone in 60 Turns is one of Xindaris's most polished and restrained creations to date. The focus of this level is efficiency, and each of the rooms features a timer. As someone who usually doesn't care for timer rooms, I found all of these to be enjoyable and nothing felt overly constraining. Instead of putting severe pressure on the player, the timers served more to put pressure on the architect to keep the rooms focused and concise. The result is a really enjoyable romp.
Mega Micropuzzle$ was created by ThemsAllTook (of LP and Outings with a Delver fame.) This one focuses on rooms with very tight spaces and is a bit more execution heavy. Again, given the blind race setting, most of the execution isn't overly arduous, and it's interesting to see ThemsAllTook take on some more execution based puzzles after the very linchpin focused Outings.
Claustrophobia is by mauvebutterfly, who also did an outstanding job managing the contest. This is the first architecture by mauve to be published (though you may have played some of his superb contest entries earlier this year), but this level is super solid. It has a very neat theme of movement restriction and is definitely worth checking out. The level has a very nice mix of linchpin and execution based puzzles and leaves me excited to see more from this architect in the future!
So this is definitely a nice hold to check out. It has a bit of something for everyone, though I'd argue that all four levels are a lot of fun. Nothing is super difficult and the levels are all pretty much open format allowing you to poke around to find rooms that you enjoy.
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 09-23-2017 05:12 PM]
