Demos attached in case you want another set. I don't think I broke anything badly. Some specific comments to follow. In general I think this did a relatively good job dealing with an inherently fiddly element (soldiers). Most of the rooms did not require having to manipulate their notoriously unpredictable pathing. Some rooms were a bit much though. The final room isn't so much difficult as it is tedious. Trying to come up with an arrangement of the 6 soldiers to prevent them from dying is pretty much just blind trial and error and isn't really a satisfying conclusion to the hold. I skipped this one.
Friendly Forest
As mauvebutterfly mentioned the story is great. It really fits in with the sense of humor GatEB had.
2N: This is potentially the first puzzle room players will encounter and first impressions are important. This room unfortunately relies mostly on trial and error to keep the roach alive due to the unpredictable nature of soldier path mapping. Thankfully it's fairly forgiving, but it's an important thing to consider.
1N1E: This is the other room players might encounter first. This one was a lot more enjoyable. The puzzle is all about timing the soldiers but their paths are 100% predictable so it's much less trial and error. Nice room.
3N: Another enjoyable one since there's no having to guess what the stalwarts will do. It's an interesting application of pathmap blocking.
4N: You commented your DRODscript? Wow! Nice! This one felt a bit more reliant on trial and error, but again, there was a lot of leeway so it wasn't too bad. Even the challenge is pretty manageable.
5N: I feel like this one could have been more complicated actually. The way it is it isn't too hard to just cut almost any old path and the timing is lenient enough to get it to work. Even though soldier pathing is annoying to deal with in general, giving the player crumbly walls to work with makes it much easier to force certain paths. I feel like the idea behind this room is pretty interesting and wish the puzzle was a bit more involved.
2N1E: Another nice room. I like the fact that Beethro gets one roach and the soldier gets the other even though the widgets look very similar.
3N1E: Another nice room. It took me a minute to realize that the one orb could be hit by Beethro.
4N1E: At first I thought the soldier had to stay in the middle the whole time while I hit the orbs. Thankfully that was not the case.
5N1E: I brute force trial-and-errored this one. Not much else you can do.
Forewarned Fortress.Still enjoying the dialog and story. This also fits in well with GaTEB style. I also really like the layout. It was a bit disorienting starting the level at
1W, but I get why you did it that way. I might recommend putting a scroll in reminding players that they can hit F5 to record a multi-room demos since I often find that useful for multi-pass rooms like these. Otherwise the game will only typically save a demo on the pass where you clear the room.
1S1W: Both passes were pretty straightforward, but still enjoyable.
1S: First pass: Fairly straightforward. Second pass: much trickier to stay alive. Interesting room though. Third Pass: trivial. This is the only pass that I have a demo for unfortunately.
1S1E: Thankfully the orbs were toggle so I didn't have to worry too much about keeping the roach alive. This was a nice room.
1E: I liked this one too. More a demonstration of some nice tricks than anything else. Still it was fun and the dialog was enjoyable.
1N1E: First pass was mostly manipulation to stay alive. Not too bad. The second pass was a really neat little puzzle that explored some interesting pushing manipulation mechanics. Really liked this one.
1N: This was one of the few rooms where the soldier manipulation felt a bit much. Getting him to face the right direction was mostly guess-and-check. Thankfully it's possible to get the roach stuck somewhere pretty easily, but I fumbled around a few times at first with the roach roaming free and had a horrible time with it. The trick for the last roach was nice and sneaky. I really liked that bit.
1N1W: Getting the soldier turned the right way was pretty tricky in this one too. For some reason I enjoyed it more though. Possibly because figuring out the orientation you need was much more of an interesting puzzle this time and it made the manipulation feel more worth it.
1W: This was another "
Keep the roach alive"
room that I didn't enjoy as much.
The Entrence: Wow, I really only have myself to blame for this one. I made it much harder than it needed to be because I didn't realize I could just open the yellow doors. So uh, challenge: kill the roaches before you open the yellow doors. (don't actually make that a challenge).
Firey Furnace
This one looks to be just the one room. As I mentioned before I quit soon after I saw what needed doing. The left bit seems fine, and getting all the soldiers from one half to the other is also okay. But after a few attempts at setting up the soldiers in a way that will allow them all to survive on the east side I gave up.
All in all a pretty neat hold. I make no secret of the fact that stalwarts (and soldiers) are one of my least favorite elements due to their horrible path mapping, but this hold mostly used them in a painless way. I had fun with almost all of the rooms. Difficulty level is pretty consistent at maybe a 4 to 5 for the first level and maybe 5 to 6 for the second level (as in brains out of 10).
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[Last edited by Insoluble at 02-24-2018 05:56 AM]
