The Lab - A PJBottomz Level

PJBottomz · August 03, 2011, 03:35:42 AM

No Screenshots availible.

Viridian is dropped into a mysterious lab, where a terminal delays a message from Violet, saying that she's in trouble and can't see! Viridian then has to travel the many different paths and attempt extreme challenges to save his crew and escape this tight-halled lab!

This is probably one of my better games, and the trinkets are pretty fun to get! If you find a bug (especially with terminal in the room, "No Violet and Viridigis for you!"), REPORT IT!

Hope you like it!

Doom · August 03, 2011, 04:15:09 AM

Did you play through the whole thing? In "I'll Make This Easy for You", you get stuck in the wall if you try to go back to where you came from, and if you try and get to the warp. Also, the trinkets are surprisingly easy to obtain while Vitellary is trapped in a completely perilous gauntlet. The mazey design of the map is kind of fun, but you should definitely keep tweaking the whole thing.

Blublu · August 03, 2011, 06:04:31 AM

Is the room "Vitellary Ahoy!" even possible to do? It looks utterly impossible to me.

PJBottomz · August 03, 2011, 04:16:49 PM

@Doom

I didn't know that. I'll fix it. As for Vitellary's room, I think I'm going to remove some enemies. The conveyors are enough to mess you up.

@Blublu

I'll fix it.

Stampy · August 03, 2011, 05:28:37 PM

Yeah, I tried it too, and got stuck in Vitellary Ahoy. I actually couldn't get past a single enemy in there, so I'm not sure it's doable. The second row of enemies looks okay, as that's more spaced out. But I'm fairly sure that top corridor is impossible!

PJBottomz · August 03, 2011, 06:46:52 PM

It has been fixed, so now you can cross the top part.

TheoX · August 04, 2011, 03:05:04 AM

I downloaded v1.1 but "Vitellary Ahoy" seems impossible to me. I'm not sure how it was before but there's pretty much no room to get past the enemies.

PJBottomz · August 04, 2011, 03:07:47 AM

To the editor!

Blublu · August 04, 2011, 04:42:32 AM

Here's a good rule of thumb I just made up. If you are having *any* difficulty in completing the room, then it is too hard for everyone else. You will always be much better at completing your own levels than anyone else, so you should aim for making it so you think your own level is pretty easy actually or at least not that hard. Then it will be HARD or VERY HARD for everyone else, but at least not impossibly impossible.

I think if you take more than maybe 10 tries to complete one of your own rooms (when you know EXACTLY how to do it), then that is a signal that you need to consider making it less hard.

I mean, look, I understand you want your level to be challenging so that people don't just breeze through it and think it was a piece of cake, but it's very hard to judge difficulty if you're the only one testing. The best thing would be to get someone ELSE who has never ever seen your level to test it for you and tell you which parts were too hard, etc. And I guess that's what this thread is doing! So it's telling you that that room is unreasonably hard. Otherwise your players will simply quit out of frustration and won't get to play or see the rest of your work.

Your goal as a level designer is not to defeat the player with your uber hard challenges. It is to ENTERTAIN your player so that they enjoy their time.

I'm curious, though... IS that room actually possible? I mean, were you actually able to complete it in your testing?

PJBottomz · August 04, 2011, 05:03:15 AM

I had a friend count how many times it took to get through it. 72 tries.

Don't worry, I'm well on my way to fixing it.