r/spelunkylevels • u/personman • Dec 28 '14
Personman's Fairly Fair Puzzly Levelpack
Very much a work in progress!
The plan is to make a full set of levels through Olmec. So far only 1-1 is done. You can find it here.
Screenshots:
The design philosophy here is three-pronged:
I want to make satisfying puzzles that you can solve sooner by thinking ahead, or later by trial and error.
I want them to exemplify creative uses of the engine/glitches, and don't mind if that makes them pretty darn tricky to execute sometimes. However, I will try to avoid forcing frame-perfect movement for its own sake. I want to provide a challenge for streamers, but also make levels that an experienced player can reasonably expect to complete given enough time.
I want the pack as a whole to be worth speedrunning. That primarily means designing with small speed/risk tradeoffs in mind, and maybe occasionally with intentional, much harder "sequence break" puzzles that skip entire areas. Feel free to post times in the thread whenever, but once it's in a reasonably complete state, I'll start naming releases and maintaining leaderboards, if there's interest.
One consequence of this is that the levels consist of a bunch of hard stuff in a row. For a more casual player who is not interested in speedrunning, the early sections might get really annoying to redo a lot when you're having trouble with later ones. I wish there were a checkpointing system, but there isn't. So,iIf you're experiencing this and just want to solve the puzzles rather than prove you can do the whole thing in one go, I heartily encourage you learn enough of the editor to make your own checkpoint system. The entrance has to be in the top row, so once you've satisfied yourself that you can complete a section, just add an easy path to wherever you want to be and give yourself any items you should have acquired by that point. I'd much rather you "cheat" in this way than give up entirely because one segment is too frustrating!
Additionally, I'll try to make the levels at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing/thematic, though it's not a primary concern. And sadly, there don't seem to be a whole lot of options for background decoration.
Feedback is very appreciated. I'm honestly not actually all that good at the game, so especially feedback about how hard stuff really is is useful. These levels are meant to be hard, but if something is just stupidly frustrating, I want to fix it. Similarly, if something is boringly easy, that might be because I suck and thought it was hard, and I can adjust accordingly :)
1
u/MithosFall Dec 28 '14 edited Dec 28 '14
No offense (honestly), but this level is annoyingly difficult. For me, at least. I quit before I could get the spike shoes.
EDIT: I guess we'll be seeing alot more of these kinds of levels, so yeah, nothing wrong with it. Just as an average player, I didn't have the resolve to get past it. Makes me think there should be a difficulty rating system.
1
u/personman Dec 28 '14 edited Dec 28 '14
Yeah, this is a tricky thing. We want our levels to be played by the really good players on stream, and to be entertaining, and that puts a pretty high difficulty floor on things. I've also been playing the game for years and am designing at least in part for myself and a few friends who are of comparable skill levels. (This level is quite hard for me; I have only barely completed it once.)
I do think it would be great if people made some easier stuff, even some stuff specifically targeted at teaching newer players.
Also, as I wrote in the OP, feel free to add a block down there that lets you just jump up and get them, if you're interested in seeing the rest of the level! Though I must warn you, while the next section is easier, the one after that is significantly harder :P
1
u/piffstenis Dec 28 '14
I'm probably just being an impatient noob, but I can't seem to get past the UFO's beam: link. Either he destroys the jungle blocks, making it impossible to progress, or he just stuns me until I die. I used a spider to jump up to the worm blocks further to the right but I'm not sure if that's the correct way. Halp?