"Twisted" by Stalefish

[stalefish]

Download: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10510048/twisted.vvvvvv (updated)

A 5x3 level. I think it's towards the difficult side of things, but it's so hard to tell having played it so much. In any case, It's pretty hard, but I've tried to be fairly liberal in checkpoint use.

[Arkatox]

Omigosh that was so fun! I think this has potential to be featured!

The difficulty was above average for custom VVVVVV levels, but it was wicked fun! I couldn't get all of the trinkets, but at least I beat the level.

A couple things I liked about it:
-The room names that weren't actually "room names"
-The jukebox

[flarestar]

That was really fun! I found that the trinkets were really hard to get but not an impossible challenge! I like the level design and how you did the names as well.

What I liked more is how you had the doors stay unlocked!

~Flare*

[TheoX]

Rating #022
Enjoyment: 6.5/10
Aesthetics: 9/10
Novelty: 7.5/10
Difficulty: 9/10
Room Names: 7/10

Gonna start this one right off with a rooms list:

Rooms I liked:
"Staircase" - very slick design, how the slow slope loops to the other side.  Just about the right difficulty for me, too.
"Jukebox" - Nice idea!  I picked "Piercing the Sky" the first time and "Paced Energy" the second time I went there because it felt like the level was getting harder, and I associate that song with hard levels thanks to Golden Spiral...
"Repeat","Wrap Around","Resolve" - this sequence was REALLY cool.  I had fun figuring it out.

Rooms I think need improvement:
"Bait & Switch" - that trinket is a friggin' nightmare to get to.  The first precise jump is ridiculous, because you have to skip two spaces across and somehow not slide into the spike after the landing.  I did it ONCE and then got killed immediately afterward in the extremely tight spike spacing.  I think it should be lightened up a little bit, call me a wuss.
"Pipeline" - though the room looked very nice, I had issues with this one.  The trinket is a bit of pixelly-perfect obnoxiousness, but the checkpoint is really close so I have no real qualms with it.  My real problem with this room is that it leads into not only one, but two immediate death traps in a row, which really isn't fair to the player.
"Love" - Actually, I didn't play this room at all.  I thought it was the real way to go, because it apparently lead to another room, so I went the other path thinking that led to a trinket.  I quickly got immersed in the other area (the actual real path), and completely forgot about the trinket.  Perhaps make it more obvious that "Love" leads to a trinket?  I never even saw the room after it so I can't say much more about it.

Overall, this was quite an interesting, novel, and (very) good-looking level, but the solid wall of difficulty made it difficult for me to love it.  I'd like to though, it's very well-designed for the most part!

Status: Completed (no trinkets )

[bigkahuna]

This level was very nice, very polished, and also very difficult IMO. Mostly around the trinkets.

The 1st trinket (Bait & Switch) I could not get, as I could never time that last jump right. I'd like it if you could remove one of the spikes from around the trinket to give the player a bit more leeway.

The 2nd trinket (Pipeline) was fine. Had a lot more of a twitch factor than other jumps, too.

The 3rd trinket (Love, Deuce) I was able to obtain, but it was extremely difficult. I think it would be good to add a checkpoint next to the terminal in "Deuce", or at least add a way for someone to chicken out if they make it past "Love" and realize that they aren't skilled enough to complete "Deuce".

Besides that I enjoyed the level! Very challenging, almost a bit too challenging at some parts, but very fun.

[stalefish]

Thanks a bunch for the feedback, I'm glad you liked as much as you did!

I've updated the level with a few changes based on what you've said you didn't like: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10510048/twisted.vvvvvv

The main change was to move the difficult bit of the Bait & Switch trinket nearer to the checkpoint, so it's still a challenge, but it's hopefully less frustrating to die at the beginning rather than at the end. Plus I changed some of the flips so holding right for too long after the flip is less of an issue.

I've also done a little bit of tweaking to Love/Deuce, adding a second checkpoint nearer to the terminal in Deuce and making the initial corridor out of Staircase that goes through Deuce and Love take longer, so hopefully people take a longer look at the two rooms as they go past and realise they're purely trinket rooms, and that the checkpoints mean you can't get out of them once you get too far into them.

There's also a tweak to Pong so that you don't need to react so quickly, a signpost terminal so that hopefully nobody thinks Love/Deuce is the main path, and probably some other tweaks I've forgotten.

[Terry]

Ah, this one's very cool Too hard for me in general, but I liked it a lot of the ideas in it - particularly the frequently overlapping challenges and the very neat way you did roomnames!