04-Oct-2016, 12:08 PM
Now this is more like it! Plenty of strong candidates all over this pack.
Some favorites:
#5 Nether Fortress: The aesthetic of the bombs everywhere and the gravel in the starting area is just fantastic. It's cool that you have to blow some of them up to get into various rooms, but it's pretty easy to tell which ones need to go. A level full of manageable puzzles that unravels itself as you go. Being able to have free reign to blow up a bunch of the bombs in the south due to the cloner was also cool. One minor point of confusion was the room with the fireball cloner, as I didn't quite grasp what was causing the continuous cloning until after a couple tries. Once I did, it became a frantic and exciting dodging challenge in an otherwise fairly calm level.
#18 Magic Block: The solution to this level is not hard or involved. In fact, there's not much freedom or decision-making at all. But hot diggity dog, is it creative! It felt like a real magic show, as the illusion was flawless. The designer knew exactly what the room would look like after each step in order to replicate its appearance in the next.
#35 Colour Control: Let's just say this manages to pack an impressively devious puzzle into a small space. Quite a few factors have to be accounted for with the limited resources you have. It does require precise timing, but it's short enough for that be nothing more than a very small annoyance.
#36 Forsythia: What can I say? The level has some creative puzzles that mesh together really well. The fire boot/recessed wall contraption is something that I've never seen anywhere else, and the Monster Sorter section is a different take on something that I've only rarely seen. The way the blocks are re-used later in the level after you solve the initial sokoban is just a beautiful design choice.
#39 Toggletank Factory: Hectic! That's how it appears at first glance, and then you realize how well everything is set up for you to avoid causing disruptions to the monster cycles. It takes a bit of foresight--recognizing that you shouldn't venture into the southeast before you pick up a blue key, and that you shouldn't let the horizontal pink balls into the path of the vertical one that bounces from (26, 9) to (26, 15), but these were easy enough to spot that I don't consider them unfair. It's still a pretty tense level with lots of dodging, but in my opinion it's fun to discover and solve each new challenge in it.
Honorable mentions:
A couple of blue wall mazes. I actually prefer #9 Dayrdreamer's Maze over #29 Air Shaft. Both were easy to get lost in, but Air Shaft consisted mainly of a tree of twisty-but-ultimately-linear paths where your only challenge is making sure you remember to push on every wall, whereas Daydreamer's Maze had loops and, in my opinion, a more logical structure, making it a more likable experience to solve. I finished Daydreamer's Maze with only 84 seconds on the clock (which is pretty close to my initial solve time of Mazed In) so I agree with Chipster that its time limit could be bumped up a bit.
Others I liked included Pongo, Alcnalkcxa, Frozen Waffle and The Crusher. Also, One Tank's Adventure is in my top 3 of my own levels that I really want to see in CCLP4, just because I'm not sure I've seen a level that focuses so strongly on the concept of escorting a single tank. I wouldn't mind seeing Brutal make it in as well, as I think it's a tough but fair level that's decently fun to play...but I can see how the beginning ball challenge might turn a few people off.
Some favorites:
#5 Nether Fortress: The aesthetic of the bombs everywhere and the gravel in the starting area is just fantastic. It's cool that you have to blow some of them up to get into various rooms, but it's pretty easy to tell which ones need to go. A level full of manageable puzzles that unravels itself as you go. Being able to have free reign to blow up a bunch of the bombs in the south due to the cloner was also cool. One minor point of confusion was the room with the fireball cloner, as I didn't quite grasp what was causing the continuous cloning until after a couple tries. Once I did, it became a frantic and exciting dodging challenge in an otherwise fairly calm level.
#18 Magic Block: The solution to this level is not hard or involved. In fact, there's not much freedom or decision-making at all. But hot diggity dog, is it creative! It felt like a real magic show, as the illusion was flawless. The designer knew exactly what the room would look like after each step in order to replicate its appearance in the next.
#35 Colour Control: Let's just say this manages to pack an impressively devious puzzle into a small space. Quite a few factors have to be accounted for with the limited resources you have. It does require precise timing, but it's short enough for that be nothing more than a very small annoyance.
#36 Forsythia: What can I say? The level has some creative puzzles that mesh together really well. The fire boot/recessed wall contraption is something that I've never seen anywhere else, and the Monster Sorter section is a different take on something that I've only rarely seen. The way the blocks are re-used later in the level after you solve the initial sokoban is just a beautiful design choice.
#39 Toggletank Factory: Hectic! That's how it appears at first glance, and then you realize how well everything is set up for you to avoid causing disruptions to the monster cycles. It takes a bit of foresight--recognizing that you shouldn't venture into the southeast before you pick up a blue key, and that you shouldn't let the horizontal pink balls into the path of the vertical one that bounces from (26, 9) to (26, 15), but these were easy enough to spot that I don't consider them unfair. It's still a pretty tense level with lots of dodging, but in my opinion it's fun to discover and solve each new challenge in it.
Honorable mentions:
A couple of blue wall mazes. I actually prefer #9 Dayrdreamer's Maze over #29 Air Shaft. Both were easy to get lost in, but Air Shaft consisted mainly of a tree of twisty-but-ultimately-linear paths where your only challenge is making sure you remember to push on every wall, whereas Daydreamer's Maze had loops and, in my opinion, a more logical structure, making it a more likable experience to solve. I finished Daydreamer's Maze with only 84 seconds on the clock (which is pretty close to my initial solve time of Mazed In) so I agree with Chipster that its time limit could be bumped up a bit.
Others I liked included Pongo, Alcnalkcxa, Frozen Waffle and The Crusher. Also, One Tank's Adventure is in my top 3 of my own levels that I really want to see in CCLP4, just because I'm not sure I've seen a level that focuses so strongly on the concept of escorting a single tank. I wouldn't mind seeing Brutal make it in as well, as I think it's a tough but fair level that's decently fun to play...but I can see how the beginning ball challenge might turn a few people off.