×July 1: Entrance. Basically a combination of two common concepts: "split a rock giant into four golems" and "hit multiple pressure plates in the same turn". It wound up as mostly a manipulation room, but I feel pretty good about it as a warmup.

July 2: 1S. Started with some aumtlich, put down a couple of kegs, added hot tiles with force arrows, then after messing around for a bit, found that the room was solvable and the solution didn't seem obvious. So that's good enough for me!

July 5: Rooms in 1N, 1W, and 1E, made in that order. I made a first draft for 1W that I wasn't happy with, so I tried something else and it turned out to be pretty tough. But it is solvable.
Edit: Also tweaked Entrance and 1S to fix unintended solutions found by Someone Else.

July 10: Rooms in 2N, 1N1E, 1N1W, 1S1E, and 1S1W, made in that order. Some of these came out of attempts to rework rooms for Entry Point that didn't quite work out. I tried 1S1E without force arrows on the firetraps, and managed to get all but one golem in place in a few different ways, but I couldn't quite get it to work so I just put down the force arrows. Not entirely happy with some of the rooms here, but then again, the point of the exercise is to just try making rooms and see what I get.

July 11: New room in 2N1W. I felt like toughening up some of the easier rooms, too. Found a solution to 1N1E without force arrows on the firetraps, so those are gone now - it's a much trickier room. 1N1W and 1S1W are also modified to be trickier, while still structurally being pretty similar to what was there before. Not as pleased with the new room, but hey, maybe I'll think of something to make it more interesting later.

July 17: I've been keeping up with this, just not with posting updates. New rooms in 2S, 1N2W, 2N2W, 2S1E, 2S1W, 2N1E, made in that order. Also a slight change to 1E, but I only meant it as a first step to a bigger change. Also added checkpoints to many rooms, but I forgot them in today's room and maybe a couple of others. Room quality varies, as it's prone to in these exercises.

July 21: New rooms in 2W, 2E, 1N2E, 1S2E in that order. Also, adjusted 2S1E so it can't be solved with a simple fluff pattern any more. Again, room quality varies.

July 30: Finished! New rooms in 1S2W, 2S2E, 2N2E, 1N3E, 2S2W, 2N3E, 1S3E, 3E, 2S3E in that order. I adjusted some rooms but I forget if any of the adjustments were in rooms that already exist. Also, I'm pretty sure every room has checkpoints but feel free to yell at me if I missed any.

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×
June 1 (1E): Built a room where you need to clear out two mothers in the north and the south - but one of the mothers is protected by a yellow door with a pressure plate on the opposite side. Tar grows every 29 turns.

June 2 (2E): Got this done early! Built an easy room where you need to clear all of the gel. There are two mothers; you can't let them grow much. We're starting off easy. And then I had to edit it to fix the scripting - and I made it a bit harder.

June 2 (3E): Built an extra room because I had time! This one is a mud room with a caber and is relatively easy - but it has a decently challenging challenge.

June 3 (4E): Took me a while to actually beat this one. When I did, it became clear that it's only moderately difficult, but I like it quite a bit.

June 3 (5E): This is a type of room that I really quite like, and this one isn't too hard. I'll likely have another like it later in the hold - a harder one. You need to plan out where you're cutting tar or you never make any progress.

June 5 (6E): I'm not sure that I love this room. It's too easy to execute - and figuring out how to do it isn't that hard either. It might experience updates in the future, but it's a room and that's the goal for now.

June 5 (7E): This one, however, is great - very happy with it. Pure execution, not hard. I might make it harder by widening it, but I think I'll leave it as is for now.

June 5 (8E): I'm on a roll! This room is definitely an efficiency room, and I'm quite happy with it.

June 7 (10E): I built this out of order - but I can't fix it because the order of the rooms is relevant. It's an efficiency room, but the tarstuff is changed every 10 moves and it grows every 20 moves.

June 9 (9E): And that's 10! This one is a relatively easy one about efficiently clearing tar using powder kegs. It might appear identically later (but with a tighter timer).

June 10 (11E): Don't love this room - but it's a room. It's okay, I guess.

June 11 (12E): An earlier room, but this time with a few decoys to help manage the faster growth of the tar. I do enjoy this room despite it being essentially a harder (?) version of an earlier room.

June 12 (13E): Slow down the gel! This is about the right difficulty, but I'm going to have to start getting more clever. The sped-up growth is really starting to make it feel different.

June 15 (14E): Moving mirrors efficiently can be challenging. This isn't really a tar room, but I still like it.

June 24 (15E): Built this one yesterday (but I'm way behind either way). This room is super easy and essentially trivial, so it's not likely to survive.

June 24 (16E): This one, on the other hand, I quite like. Haven't figured out how to beat it yet but I think it's both possible and challenging.

×1/7: Built two guards + orthosquares rooms and started a maze room.
2/7: Built a guards room and a guards + mimics room.
3/7: Built more guards rooms and (with NoahT) brainstormed and started our rooms for PCT3.
5/7: Improved one of the earlier rooms.
9/7: Built another guard room and a speed potion room.
11/7: Built a spear/pickaxe room and a temporal split room.
12/7: Built and scripted a cutscene room.
13/7: Added an area in EP with recaps of the story so far. Since this required writing eight texts in all, I'm counting that as a room.
30/7: Built a puff room and a cutscene room.

Rooms/days so far: 15/30

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×Entrance: I'm not sure what the intended solution was. I just put the giant on one of the plates and hit the conquer token, then killed the giant (and golems).

1S: I loved this room... until I realized that there were force arrows and so the solution amounted to "do the East keg first". I feel like there's a cleverer solution hiding somewhere, but I don't see it.

1W: I can't get this one - you're sure it's solvable? Where does the guard need to kill the construct, or am I doing it wrong?

1N: A surprisingly tolerable gentryii room. Despite my first instinct being "Gentryii? Nah, I'll give it a pass" I ended up liking it.

1E: More an exhibition than anything else. There's only one thing to do, so do it.

×When I was testing 1S, I couldn't get anywhere without using the west keg as an obstacle to do the east keg. Then I had to do some minor manipulation to kill the rest of the aumtlich.

As for 1W, I originally had a more constrained door shape and couldn't solve it, but I got things into a position which would work with the new door shape. I don't believe it's necessary for the guard to kill the construct at all, just to let it out.

×Yeah, for 1S just face SW and push the right keg all the way down, then it's trivial from there.

I'm very confused about 1W, but I'll probably get it eventually.

×I see, move order opens a gap, which doesn't happen if you do it on the other side. Made a quick fix that should prevent that.

Also figured out the problem in the Entrance: I put a wall under the orb that's supposed to lock you out if you don't hit all the plates at once, so the explosion didn't activate it. Fixed that too.

×7/6: Added 1N1E and the start of some decoration. This one's back to being pretty far on the easy side of medium-easy, I think.

7/7: 1S1E added. Not much of a trick to this one, but I'm not really sure how the room idea could have one.

7/9: I spent some time yesterday (7/8) on aesthetics and drafting what I thought was a vague idea for 1S1W. Came back to test it today and found that it's solvable and that I kind of like it as-is, so I added checkpoints and upgraded it to "actual room" instead of WIP. Also added a scroll to 1N1W to make the player aware of an important mechanic to that particular room, due to Someone Else's comments.

7/10: 1N had a puzzle element removed during redecoration, so I fixed that. Minor edit to the informative scroll in 1N1W. Added the framework for more rooms, and started drafting out a really dumb idea for 2W.

7/11: Finished turning the stupid idea for 2W into a really stupid room. I think I've achieved a balance where at least the stupidity doesn't overstay its welcome, and maybe the room will at least be fun to optimize? Also altered the move order in 1S1E so that the adder goes first, in hopes of that making the room easier. (My demo is unaffected by this change.)

7/14: Came up with an idea for 2N, and executed it. This one's back on the easy side of the easy-medium spectrum, I think, but it should be fun anyway.

7/15: Instead of coming up with a whole new room, I redecorated 2N a bit and came up with a variant to it that is now a "secret" room at 3N.

7/16: Added 2E, which has fairly tough challenge but shouldn't be too hard to do non-challengewise if one figures out the (not too hard to guess) trick.

7/17: Decorated 2W (and maybe other rooms, don't remember); added an initial draft for 2S. At the moment it's way too hard (not even sure if it's possible); I'm open to suggestions on how to make it a bit more doable without losing the idea.

7/18: Thought of a good way to make 2S tractable, which also gave rise to a potential challenge (although this is another case where I can't do it myself, so I don't know if it's really possible to do). I also decorated 2S a little more and added 3S (which I hope to be a final post-level-clear room before the end of the hold!), but there's nothing actually in 3S yet puzzle-wise.

7/20: Once I thought about it a bit, I felt that there was really only one option for the finale room in 3S, so I did it. The result is a ridiculous, glorious mess that has a couple of specific requirements along the way, but can otherwise be solved in many different orders/ways. Should be a fun time, even if it isn't too terribly difficult.

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×Entrance: Nice and easy. Good start.

1N: The challenge needs a scroll - I got it, but I'm not 100% sure why (presumably it's for clearing the room before turn 30?)

1E: Fun! Easy to beat, but I feel like my 124 moves is really slow.

1S: I didn't even consider that it might help allowing the brain to be unstunned. Interesting idea, but it might be better in a room where that was more beneficial. In any case, the challenge probably needs a scroll here too.

1W: I found it hard to get to the horn without killing the guards first. ...and then I looked again and there's no ortho square.

Is there a challenge in every room? Yep, there's one in 1E too. Maybe there's an indication somewhere else (it doesn't need to be a scroll in every room) but that these challenges exist needs to be mentioned somewhere.

1S1E: Might come back to this. It feels like there's a perfect setup needed to get anything done, and I'm not seeing it.

1N1E: Not bad; no real comments.

1N1W: I feel like there's some obscure slayer interactions which get him to open the door - but I don't know what they are.

×1W is an intentional troll that way; the challenge is to not use the horn at all, but I haven't managed that myself, so I'm not sure if it's possible.

The potential challenge in 1E is to not ever take the stick; if you managed it, could I have a demo for future HA purposes? I haven't managed it, hence the word "potential".

The original idea for 1S is that braining the golems allows them to path themselves out of a cramped area to where the player has room to kill more of them, but I feel like making that absolutely necessary would amount to making the room overall perhaps higher difficulty than I really want, besides not knowing how to be sure I've achieved that balance myself. So the challenge might be easy for golem-pile-management "experts", but I feel like it might still be meaningful for someone less experienced with those techniques.

I'm not great with snakes, so 1S1E isn't excessively precise. The idea of the room is to use the tools available in a specific way at the start, and then everything should more or less fall into place.

For 1N1W, the singular mechanic I relied on that I'd consider possibly less well-known is that a slayer goes to open a door if it closes on his wisp. Maybe I'll add a scroll to that effect at the start of the room, since knowing that really isn't supposed to be the point of the puzzle.

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×First, check the "square of smell" when standing in shallow water--that is, the area that monsters who are in can detect you (lore says "by smell") even though you're hiding. Is there anywhere with a particularly useful such square?

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×Things I believe to be true:

I have 3 spaces to stand in where I'm not going to be killed by the spiders - the three spaces directly South of the plate (or the two North of the plate, but that's worse). Anywhere else they can scent me.

This means that I can't cause the serpent to turn without attracting the spiders.

So it's not actually helpful to have the serpent press the plate; all that does it place it further from where it'll be helpful.

The serpent moves after the spiders, so I can't even have it following around after me like is commonly helpful.

I'm 95% sure there's a magic sequence that will solve this, and nothing else.

×

I can't cause the serpent to turn without attracting the spiders.

But you don't have to attract all of the spiders to cause it to turn, do you?

×MyScript Primer and Reference!

My First Hold, also the first published!
Persistence, a mini-hold about returning to rooms.
The Spacetime Kerfluffle, a mini-hold I made once.
Variations, a collab hold I'm managing.
Beethro's Awakening Preview, Zelda and DROD?!

Alphabet Stream info, about my stream thing I do sometimes.

×
0: Drew a map to put puzzles in. Added some orphaned puzzles I made last year. I'll wind up with 40-45 total rooms, probably.
1: 1S3W - A puzzle about some golems, a wubba, and hot tiles. Uninspired but on-theme.
2: 2N2W - A rotationally symmetric (or is it...?) roach queen manipulation room. Lots of failure states, definitely the upper bound of difficulty I'd like for this.
3: 1N1E - A single blob of mud that has to be used in two opposite ways. Actually completed yesterday's room, way too many failure states. Added an additional constraint the player is already primed to look for, will make it much more obvious what the critical path is. Much, much easier.
4: 2N - A reprehensible rock giant room. A stain on my soul.
5: 1S1E - Draw-your-own-path puzzles are always trival or devastating. This one's the latter, and no way to change that. Definitely a secret room contender.
6: 1N2E - A very straightforward and small room to showcase one minor interaction. Couldn't think of any bigger puzzles to make with it.
7: 2E - A inevitable and rote queen/trapdoor room.
8: 4 rooms - Four rooms that are one room, that are four rooms. I simply assume that they are all doable.
11: The four rooms are completable.
12: 1S - Tar cutting room with a premise that is hopefully funny enough to make up for the fact that it's a tar cutting room.

×
14: It hasn't been the 14th of September yet.