Initial reactions to CC2

[M11k4]

Many of you have had the chance to play CC2 and I would love to hear your initial reactions. I haven't played it yet myself, but it would be great to hear which mechanics you've liked and maybe what your favorite levels have been so far

[FelixNemis]

I just played flea market and I really like the hook so that's my favorite level so far

[tensorpudding]

Graphics: I like them mostly. Dated? Well, sure, but that's okay.

Music: I did say that it was okay that the graphics were dated, but the ragtime-style soundtrack to this game is annoying, so I turned it off. Sound effects are loud and unfamiliar but I guess I'll get used to them.

Game Design: There is too much new stuff to process, but I played around in the editor in trying to port CC1 levels to compare...from what I can tell there is both more and less flexibility with the rules in CC2. Levels that were pedantic-compliant on TW seem to generally be able to work in CC2, but otherwise I'm not sure. Once we get used to working in CC2's rules I think the richness of the palette will be a boon to developers and we'll have no trouble finding people who want to make a CCLP for CC2. I can't wait to see what kinds of tricks that our community could come up with. I predict the green pop-up walls will be added to the list of "hated misused features" alongside invisible walls.

Level Design: I haven't played beyond level 20 yet. The early levels are kind of tricky! I really dislike the number of turtle/pop-up variant levels so far. They seem to be introducing new components very slowly, so i figure the "Lesson" levels will continue well into the game with more advanced and difficult components. None of the levels so far have impressed me a lot, but that's fine. I'm sure there are some more of "my" kind of puzzles ahead.

Editor: Frankly it stinks. It crashed the game multiple times (causing me to lose a lot of data...be sure you save before you test a level) and is a pain to use. Someone is going to create a workalike alternative if the problems aren't fixed (it sounds like the devs are going to improve it though, by adding magnification and hopefully patching the crashing bugs).

Multiplayer: This is a thing I didn't expect to see. I don't think I'll ever use it, but that raises some possibilities.

Other: The lack of a Linux version makes me sad, but I can live with it for now. The dev team hasn't mooted the idea of ports, but it is probably not going to be forthcoming.

[quiznos00]

I'm up to level 165, and there's quite a range in the quality of levels. Some are inarguably dumb, like 49 (Caitlyn's Maze), 94 (Decisions), and 102 (Obstacles), but there are plenty of levels that are genius, like 68 (Lights Out), 120 (Foursome), and 159 (In & Out). I've found nothing as tedious as On the Rocks or Pain yet.

I agree with most of the tile additions. The rover, floor mimic, and canopy are probably the least sensible additions, but the rest lead to some very interesting puzzles. The yellow teleport, bowling ball, railroad tracks, and logic gates are my favorite addition. The editor hasn't crashed on me, but the small window size is sort of unbearable, so I probably won't use it much until it gets an update.

[Ihavenoname248]

I played through the entire set in one go last night.


It was fun, though 170-172/173 aren't that great of levels, they do get much better after that point.

There are definitely some amazing puzzles, but nothing tedious aside from redo-ing sections of the aforementioned group.

I'm not sure I'd replay everything again all at once, but I'm definitely going back and redo-ing some of these for fun: let alone higher scores!

[Flareon350]

I've enjoyed the game for the most part, there's some levels where the concept presented has surprised me, like levels 68 & 120. I don't necessarily have a favorite level yet as I'm currently on level 138.

On another note, the game also has a large pool of short timed levels which I personally dislike the most about the game as they are mostly not interesting in any way. Level 70 is probably the only level where I've been stressed with the time limit.

Other than that, my favorite item in the game so far is the hook, though the level it was introduced in wasn't exactly the greatest

[mobius]

I've gotten to level 90 something. So far I'm loving it! From a level design standpoint as a whole I think it's a big improvement over CC1. There have been very few levels I did not like, and only 2 level I skipped just because it was sort of tedious and I didn't feel like doing it at the time.

My favorite levels so far were:
Rail Bowling
Sauce for the Goose [i love the title too]
Lights Out

No Turning Back
I liked most of the hodge-podge levels like Monty Haul

I haven't solved Strict Process yet; it frustrated me a little. I can't seem to find the patter that thing [whatever it is, I'm guessing either a mimic or teeth] needs to follow.

I think the bummer sound is even funnier than CC1's
I agree that the sound effects are too loud on a whole, compared to the music. But even without music if I try to play music in the background the sound effects are still too loud. Yet the sound for sliding on force floors is really quiet.

I really like the controls. I haven't had to do any intense dodging (nothing like custom levels) yet but compared to Microsoft CC or Lynx tileworld I like these controls better.

edit: I'm momenterily stumped on "Crazy". How can a 5x5 sokobon be so hard?

[Pilosus]

I do like it, but there are some things I will have to mention.


It could have used a whole lot more polish. Choice of support functions (options/etc), having a bare-bone GUI for almost everything, a few minor bugs here and there, Scott Joplin music rather than original tunes, sound effects with unbalanced volume... I beta-tested the CC1 levelset in CC2 a week prior to release, and in fact the game did not get looping music untill just before release day!


In my opinion, the game would problably had benefited a lot from a few more testers, and quite a few more feedback sessions between the testers and Chuck. While a programmer thinks "functionality", a designer thinks "experience", and it's very easy to forget or de-prioritize the later when having to both code and design everything yourself.


When it comes to the levels, I did not like the slow phase in the first 1/3 of the game. I did neither like how diverse they were, as this makes it feel like just a bunch of random individual levels tucked together in a set.* This feeling is strengthened even more by the inclusion of a few very weak levels. Again, more testers/feedback would have benefited here.


But gameplay is what I bought this for after all, and it's amazing! It absolutely feels like the Lynx version of CC1, but just with a whole lot more.


*(I, for once, liked the homogenity of the levels in CC1. It made the game feel more consistent.)

[AdrenalinDragon]

I enjoyed it. Solved all 200 levels last night and raged a few times as expected. Level design is less consistent compared to CC1, but the new tile elements make up for it. My biggest complaints are the tight time limits for some levels and the level editor window being very small to work with. The difficulty is varied and goes up quite a bit in the last 50 levels or so, but nothing quite the hardest of CCLP3 thank goodness! My favourite puzzles were usually the ones involving the Doppelgangers or Chip and Melinda having to work together. Level 115 in particular is a real standout for that, while the smaller 9x9 (10x10) levels such as Levels 186 and 197 were also excellent and fun to work out. The levels become a bit CCLP3-ish near the end (especially Level 199), but there's enough smaller levels scattered around them to not make it not feel you're doing one long puzzle after another over and over again. Overall, I'd say it's a little weaker than CC1, but for a fiver it's easily worth your time and money.

[mobius]

I'm guessing that because of the situation revolving around this game that they didn't get to polish it up as much as they liked. I agree somethings seem very odd to me, the game almost feels unfinished. I mean if the game was made in 1999 and now they're releasing it in 2015, maybe they had to do a whole lot of recoding to get it to work properly on modern computers?

But idk that could be wrong; that's just the feeling I got.

Even so, I very much enjoyed it. I like the diversity of levels a lot; it made the game more interesting for me than CC1.

I also agree the editor could use a few upgrades. Being used to the newest CCEditor makes me pretty spoiled; that has some awesome features. The biggest thing is the window size.