CC2 Custom Set Review - Explorer's Delight 1.2

[H2O]

04 POWDER MONKEY
The busts of the west puzzle should now all be fixed.


05 SCATTERED
I ended up not changing as much as first thought here; the main change is replacing the green door below the flame jets with a chip socket and the key with a chip, to give more incentive to use the green key on the door instead of going through the recessed wall, especially since all other keys up to this point had to be used more or less immediately. The assumption of having to use the green key to get the yellow key, which got apparent watching the LP, even after collection the second green key is therefore way less likely. Other changes I had initially in mind turned out to either would mean major reworks of the entire level, and therefore will be more of a guide for future levels than this particular one, or have roughly even downsides compared to their potential upsides.


06 SMALL OBSTACLES
As signalized before, the last puzzle is removed, having some kind of gimmick puzzle, even though not that difficult, at the end of a long level was definitely not the right choice, the bribes are removed, and the wall pattern changed to make it clear that the bowling ball can be used in just one way. The blue tank section just got slightly redesigned, removing it completely didn't feel right, and the puzzle itself didn't seem to be responsible for any major problems in the LP, in stark contrast to the extra blue key, which does not exist any more, and just one tank is remaining. Now it is possible to see beyond the fire in the clone machine section, initially I thought being able to see the fire tile is enough, but that was not the case judging the cook in the LP. The wire for the revolving door now is completely visible, to avoid any possibility of the player making the assumption that maybe more is going on than meets the eye. A solid tile is added in the yellow tank puzzle, to avoid any reasonable chance (theoretically still possible, but unlikely) of cooking the level in a late stage.


I hope all those changes together will increase the playing experience quite a bit


An interesting comparison difficulty wise might be as well between SMALL OBSTACLES and OBFUSCATED AND INTERRED from a pure player perspective, especially because they are both CC2 levels which just recently where released. Your level is a bit longer compared to SMALL OBSTACLES even after knowing what to do (at least measured on my times to play through them), and it felt part of the challenge, and the setups/ordering/... in OBFUSCATED AND INTERRED seems to me a maybe even a bit less obvious to figure out, but there is less of it, yet that might be just caused the different perspectives of player and designer in the two. I had a lot of fun figuring everything out and solving it, but it did take me quite as much time, but watching the LP however it felt as well like you could have solved the last level in 30 minutes, when you had seen the whole level and solved basically every puzzle - even with an extra blue key ^^.

The other really interesting question would be, how difficult or easy does the majority of the community wants the levels to be. It doesn't make to much sense designing challenging levels if hardly anyone will ever play them, or easy levels if they are perceived as boring and people would wish for more difficult ones...