AndrewR1 feedback and discussion

[Ihavenoname248]

With 9 puzzles in a single level, it's rather difficult to let you see them in their entirety without making the puzzles very small and thus likely trivial. I'm really curious to hear what you think about the individual puzzles, though, as I think that some of them are extremely clever - would you mind reviewing each one individually?

I remember playing through this is the CCLP1 voting packs and I absolutely hated the level. There's 9 rooms but most of them require you to commit to an option without being able to see if it's correct, and an incorrect guess will force a restart. The first room with the monsters is good to be first since it does get out of hand very quickly. Not my personal preference of design but it's fine. The second room starts the main problem-from the editor, you can clearly see the green key is required (and following back, the red as well). From the game view, that second green lock is completely out of sight. So I guess red and yellow since usually the green key is wrong on levels like this, and back to the start (and a couple more deaths on the beginning until I have a consistent method).

At least guessing wrong gave me a better look at the room, so I took the red and green, walked through the blue wall path and...oh fun, another guessing game. From what I can see, flippers and skates look promising, as do flippers and suction. I don't really see the purpose of fire boots unless I could also take the flippers, so...flippers and skates it is for minimal pushing. Obviously, this was wrong, so now I look at the room from the inside and figure out which is correct, then play through everything up to that point again.

The fifth room is guesswork as all 5 columns look identical and only one is correct. I said screw it and pulled up the editor at this point. I wasn't going to replay the level several more times just to guess wrong (I would have gone with the center and been able to see the correct path from there). Sixth room you really could have allowed Chip access to without breaking the puzzle, but instead it's another 1/3 chance guessing game, this time with execution involved! I would have guessed correctly here just because the fireball cloner seemed to be a trap, and the tank being lined up with the trap was too convenient.

Then you have an ice maze with bombs at the end of slides you can't even see. You go left because up is a bomb and right is backwards, now left is a bomb you can see, down is backwards, and you can't see where up or right will go. Up is death and redo everything again, but you could go back and look to see right is safe. From there you can see where to go, so this room is well designed but the fact that you can't tell what's safe in many previous rooms works against the level here, as the player would likely assume this is yet another forced guess: assuming they haven't given up.

Then a block pushing room where you can see the goal before you move anything and a teleport maze. Nothing special in either room, though the teleport maze is fun.

Running down the chances of beating the level on the first try with logic: 1/3 chance of keys, 1/3 chance of boots, 1/5 chance of blocks, 1/3 chance of buttons is 1/135 with not much that can be done to mitigate it. If you could tackle the rooms in whatever order you wanted, or these were more on their own (Maze of the Obeyor in CC2 does this), or you could just see farther for the 1/3 selections (the block column room would still be an issue) the level would be a lot better. As it currently is, the level is a frustrating experience since it relies on a lot of hidden information, where not knowing this information multiple times results in a restart.

Now, I don't necessarily want to be able to always solve a level on the first attempt. But I do want to feel like it was my fault I didn't solve the level anytime I don't. Trust Me (and its sequels) have obvious traps on the way to the correct answer. If you fall for the right path in Trust Me, it was while exploring and right at the start so it doesn't bother me. Again, Puzzling forces you through all the rooms in the same order every time.

Andrew Menzies's "And the Walls Kept Tumbling Down" and "What's Wrong with This Puzzle?" (both in The Other 100 Tiles) are good examples of puzzle level that makes full use of what you can see from a given location.



Thoughts on some other levels:

Welcoming: Fun, though I'm not a fan of circling the level at the beginning in most cases. The fact that there is a small puzzle involved doesn't help either, since it's a fairly long amount of downtime before the player gets to try again. The hidden wall section is well designed, especially with how it looks like you have to loop around the level again but don't if you were thorough with exploring.

Forcing: One of the best levels in the set, even despite the guess at the end, since you can, with keen observations, discern the correct path.

Building: Invisible walls have to be used very carefully or they're just annoying. If these were hidden walls instead, the level would be much stronger (but still not fun with the guesswork ending- and no, I don't mean the hot blocks!)

Deciding: It's scaled absolutely right for the concept. It makes the player have to remember where they've been and where they still need to go. The one downside is that where the borders are isn't entirely clear, but that's very minor and a mis-step can always be taken back.

Riding: I like force floor levels and I wasn't a fan of this either. It's too rigid for my liking-there's only one path and missing a single sidestep puts you who knows where.

Reducing: This is another level that does the "you screwed up, but it's your fault!" design well. It's very easy to mis-place the teeth but since you know you'll be returning through the teeth room, it's a clever trap that can be avoided with careful thinking ahead, but probably won't be.

Icing: That you MUST memorize the path is a fairly big downside to most people, myself included. The problem with a level like this is that in MS it's going to be easier due to boosting shaving off time on every landing, and the path isn't obvious.

Both Reflectings: They're both a little tedious. Picking up chips isn't the most exciting thing to do, and when the entire level is that (this applies to both Timing levels as well, since those have 80-90 seconds of picking up chips) the level had better have something else going on. Dealing with a few teeth...it's Hunt again, and just like Hunt, you can trap the teeth easily. If there were small variations in the block pushing quadrants and the 'pick the correct path' at the beginning didn't kill you (like Mixed Nuts did at the end) it would be a stronger level. As it is, it's the same thing over and over.

Escaping: With a larger time limit this wouldn't be a terrible level, but it is a little annoying with the waiting and how tight the ending is. Even 75 seconds would be an improvement. (for what it's worth I just played it again in Lynx and had 3 seconds left)

Tempting: Small, simple, looks impossible but isn't. No complaints here, though I wouldn't have minded seeing a couple more rooms in the same style as part of a longer level.

Comparing: The inside rooms are great, but the outside hallway could definitely use a bit of dodging space.

Both Bearings: Too much waiting for buttons to be hit on very long cycles. The ending of Bearing II does what Puzzling should probably be doing, in that you can look and see that the fire boots are a trap.

Overall though I pretty much agree with Miika and J.B. on the set.