Cavern of the Emordnilap (4740093)

[cursive grail]

This was originally supposed to be a troll dungeon but I got too invested in actual puzzles. The plan is to eventually split this into two separate levels (a trolly "collect my coins" type ice cave and a more traditional puzzle block type dungeon) but I'd like to see how folks react to some of the puzzles as they are now. Any and all criticism is welcome.

Known issues:
||Players can get pushed outside of the intended play area in the cool sword room.||
||Cool sword room does not have an organic solution, need to find better method then just having an NPC tell you to do a thing.||
Need more NPC variety, all I have are monkeys and chickens.

[frozen jasper]

This was a fun puzzle! The puzzles in the first and second room (if the first room can even be called one?) weren't all that interesting, but this one took me a minute to think through

[cursive grail]

Thank you! yeah the first few rooms were meant to be an intro to the pushing mechanics in this game for my friends who don't play but you're totally right, there's some fat there that could stand to be trimmed.

[frozen jasper]

I am having trouble figuring out how to progress from here

[cursive grail]

did you ||speak to the pair of twin monkeys on B3? Have they given you any pertinent information||?

[frozen jasper]

||I am aware that there is a theme here regarding semordnilap. The Small Key I got from them got me up here. I might have an idea?||

[cursive grail]

try your idea, if it doesn't work, ping me again, I think I made the overarching puzzle like 30% too cryptic

[frozen jasper]

||This room is highly suspicious but I don't know what to do with it yet. Don't give me the answer yet.||

[frozen jasper]

||Can you confirm that this is B3?||

[cursive grail]

||That is B2||

[frozen jasper]

AHA

I've found progress!

[sly pilot]

it says it

on your map

[cursive grail]

mapless dungeon.

it was a reasonable question

[sly pilot]

oh

why is it mapless?

[cursive grail]

play it and find out :)

[frozen jasper]

It is in fact reasonable for the dungeon to be mapless, except for the fact that it has references to floor numbers without it being obvious which floor is which, so perhaps I'd have a sign on at least one of the floors saying what floor it is?

[cursive grail]

Noted, I'll have to add those if and when I update this.

[sly pilot]

ugh fiiiiiine ill play it (/s)

oh

its ringless.

with ice floors.

[cursive grail]

I am ice physics strongest soldier, if a maker game has ice physics then I'm using it :)

[sly pilot]

whyyyyyy

just let me use grip ring at least 😭

[cursive grail]

I tried to commission somebody to put ice physics in SRPG studio via plugin but he cancelled, saying something about "not wanting to create a monster"

[cursive grail]

||there's not actually all that many slippery rooms in the whole dungeon, it's the first two rooms then like one more||

[sly pilot]

would be nice if what these did was communicated better. i thought the second one would change smth, but they just both lower the bar

[sly pilot]

thank god

why is it ringless though

fucked, maybe???

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

[cursive grail]

I don't have all that good of an idea about what the rings do/what their limits are, didn't want to design a level without knowing limi-

[cursive grail]

so A: spoiler your images please B: ||how the fuck||

[sly pilot]

they're all meant to not change the game drastically; nothing should be achievable with a ring that isnt otherwise (with the exeption of damage stalling

[sly pilot]

got pushed out of bounds by the iron bars

also i think im softlocked

[cursive grail]

||I knew that could happen, it's in the list of known issues, I did not know that you could get back in bounds and reach the cool sword that way and yeah you're softlocked, sorry.||

[sly pilot]

i reset anyway

the iron bars pushed me back in

what are you supposed to do there?

[cursive grail]

||...the bars are supposed to shove you into the cross shaped hole in the ground, but it looks like I need to revaluate my design there||

[sly pilot]

yeah i assumed that was a loss condition

and reset

to avoid it

[cursive grail]

||nope, you go in the hole :)||

[sly pilot]

or, at least, a negative thing if nothing else

still dont see why its mapless?

and its starting to be an issue

[cursive grail]

please spoiler your images.

[sly pilot]

mb

ill delete that one

also, ||if the dungeon is mapless because of the secret rooms, then it doesnt have to be. those wont be shown unless the player has the map item.||

yeah im stuck

got to... i assume its b2?

but idk where to go from there

[cursive grail]

||ohhhh, that's my mistake then. version 0.1 had an invisible locked door (which I eventually decided was too much) that showed up on the map updated veraion will probably have a map then||

[cursive grail]

did you ||talk to the twin monkeys on B3? Have they given you any pertinent information||?

[sly pilot]

yes ik about the ||secret rooms||

b4 doesnt seem to have one

and ive checked every other instance of ||the symbol||

[cursive grail]

|| ||

[sly pilot]

also lack of hearts?

[cursive grail]

ya good point, I'll add that to the list of needed changes

[sly pilot]

thanks

also

there isnt one

[cursive grail]

||uh||

[sly pilot]

????????why would it be there?????????

every other instance has it in a direct line??????????????

[frozen jasper]

I don't know if you completely get the gimmick yet

As for me, I'm a little stuck near the end I think. ||A) I don't know how to get to B5, the existence of which is mentioned somewhere. B) I don't know how to get the nueve dollars, presumably I need a Hammer. C) I don't know where the Shop is on B1.||

[sly pilot]

it isnt communicated well then????

||i was literally told "the symbols mean something."||

and the rest was left for me to interpet

oh

||and that it meant there was something invis||

it was only used in ||square rooms, which had at least one entrance in the middle of a side missing||

[frozen jasper]

||It's more specific than that. The level title is a hint.||

[sly pilot]

so thats what i guessed

[cursive grail]

||Does the symbol appear on B4 anywhere?||

[sly pilot]

well yes, ik that now. but idk how i was supposed to guess that without outside help

not everyone who plays your level will be in the discord

less will talk through it and ask for help

also, fighting with bombs at 1/4th of a heart is quite annoying

and i died.

[cursive grail]

(This spoiler text gives away the overarching puzzle) ||I did post earlier in the thread that this level was like 30% too cryptic, but in my defense, the way you're supposed to tell is through this room, there's a torch here that's giving off light. Every room with the symbol is mirrored.||

[sly pilot]

and again

(died)

[frozen jasper]

||It sure does! It hints towards the shop on B4. It also looks like it could hint towards a third opening on the very bottom, as well as two more above each of those, depending on if there would also be vertical symmetry, but that doesn't seem to be the case.||

||The shop in B4 does reference a "Warehouse South" that "if there's just a Wall, there was another cave in" but I don't know where exactly that's meant to refer to||

[cursive grail]

||hm, that's a bungle on my part, there's only one secret entrance in that room, leading to the B5 shop||

[cursive grail]

||yeah this one was too big a logical leap, you're supposed to bomb behind the shopkeep to get his wares back, I should've just made that wall obviously destructible||

[frozen jasper]

||...Is that room not on B4???||

[sly pilot]

ok now i have to fight a golden shadow

with bombs only

on a quareter heart.

[cursive grail]

||you go down stairs. but on introspection that ain't clear is it, I should fix that then.||

[frozen jasper]

||If that shop is actually on B5, does that not then mean that there isn't a shop on B4?||

||And I'm still not sure how to find the shop on B1||

[cursive grail]

||there is an actual weapon in the B5 shop, I fully admit that my solution there was far to cryptic, just bomb behind the shopkeep||

[cursive grail]

That is another mistake of mine, the "shop every floor" sign was from an earlier stage where that was true, I'll delete that in the revision then, I'm very sorry.

[frozen jasper]

Gotcha

||Confirm, then, that this is about as strong as I'm going to get for this final fight?||

[sly pilot]

ok

so

is the shadow

using a crit ring

[cursive grail]

||yep! good luck||

[cursive grail]

no.

[sly pilot]

why does it randomly instakill then????

and sometimes deal no damage??

[frozen jasper]

btw, I do agree with CatBean that this level could use more pick up hearts

[sly pilot]

also im softlocked

he instakills me whenever i go upstairs

[cursive grail]

hammer shockwave only stuns, direct hit hurts like hell

[sly pilot]

bye chat

im done

[cursive grail]

yeahhh I need to add more hearts. that's my mistake

[sly pilot]

"more"

there are none

in the entire part of the dungeon i played

💀

[cursive grail]

Thank you for playtesting then! Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

[frozen jasper]

Dungeon complete!

The puzzles are fun, I like the theme. The things that have already been mentioned are the most glaringly obvious faults

[cursive grail]

Thank you! I appreciate the compliments and the feedback.

[frozen jasper]

||Also, there are slightly more coins than necessary.||

[cursive grail]

that was intentional, earlier versions had you|| buy a key with the coins|| and I could see people getting stuck|| because of one (1) red coin||

kept it that way to give the players a little wiggle room,|| not everybody goes digging in the corners like me||

[frozen jasper]

||Also, this room is long and snakey for no seemingly good reason||

[cursive grail]

||if it got any closer to the other rooms it would link up and be considered part of them. so I tried to make it seem like a hastily dug mining tunnel, because it kinda is.||

[frozen jasper]

LOL

[cursive grail]

UPDATE VER 0.3
A few minor (and major) changes to make the level more playable

• Fixed ||contradictory and conflicting signs about the shops||
• ||Made bombable wall in B5 shop visible||
• Added significantly more heart pots
• Removed debug switch nobody noticed
• Re-enabled map.
• Added large ring box
• Removed Herobrine

big Mcthankies from McSpankies to @frozen jasper and @sly pilot who's playtesting hopefully made this map actually beatable without a Nintendo Power subscription

[cursive grail]

Known issues:
||Players can get pushed outside of the intended play area in the cool sword room.||
||Cool sword room does not have an organic solution, need to find better method then just having an NPC tell you to do a thing.||
Need more NPC variety, all I have are monkeys and chickens.
First two puzzles are intensely mediocre and quite boring, considering the logistics of either removing them or giving them a lil more spice™

[sly pilot]

couldnt the ||out of bounds issue|| be fixed if you made the iron bars undodgeable?

[cursive grail]

define undodgeable

[sly pilot]

place them in a way that they always ||push you into the pit, and you cant simply avoid them to go get pushed out of bounds later||

[cursive grail]

easier said than done, but I'm working on the design right now

[sly pilot]

if you dont have that done in a couple hours i might hop on qm and make one that works

[cursive grail]

I think I figured out a solution

[sly pilot]

great!