The Grand Escape (4865261)

[jagged blaze]

I appreciate any kind of feedback. This isn't the first dungeon I've uploaded, but it is the first I'm posting here for feedback. I especially would like to know is it fun (player's enjoyment level) and intuitive (player's ability to figure out where to go or what to do next), what could be improved, was there anything that you found annoying to do or deal with, did you encounter any softlocks, and did you find any cheese that you think may not have been intended.

I would like to point out that there are some alternative ways to make progress or solve some rooms, and forced combat is limited to only to the very first room. One of the key elements is exploration.

[small steeple]

Softlocked i think...? picked up the hammer but no way to go back cause the door i came from is closed. Feedback wise its quite a confusing dungeon. I don't mind that but what i don't like is there's alot of walking to an extend i wanted to just quit it. I did like the puzzles though and you can see you put quite some thought in this.

[jagged blaze]

You just need to make sure the pedestal with hammer is empty for teleport to appear. That's why there is one extra empty pedestal if you carry too many tools.

Yeah, I acknowledge that there is some walking around but to ease that there should be some teleports appearing that helps with backtracking. Perhaps I could have made them appear earlier or more easily.

[small steeple]

ah ok thats wasn't clear for me then xD

[jagged blaze]

It's good to hear this kind of feedback because it is really hard to otherwise know how other players think.

I acknowledge that some kind of hint could be useful there, but perhaps I should do something else to ensure that the player took the hammer. For example making them do something with the hammer before a new path opens.

[small steeple]

Ye your right. You have the idea and the plan in your head and that makes sense to you but you never know how other players experience it. Same goes for puzzles

[jagged blaze]

I noticed today that there seems to be a problem with [how shield coins condition works in 0.11.7.0](#1360954678833053896 message) so at least for now there is a room full of combat that is unavoidable.
I'm absolutely sure that this wasn't the case when I uploaded the dungeon yesterday. Just heads-up because this does conflict with what I said earlier: "and forced combat is limited to only to the very first room".

I was curious how long my clear time actually is for the dungeon, and it was about 29 minutes when the combat room was included in the clear time. I think the dungeon could be cleared in about 20 - 25 minutes if you know where to and what to do.

Edit: Oh, it has now been fixed in 0.11.7.1 and the coins work as expected. Now exploration route is available again.

[jagged blaze]

Since the excessive amount of walking was an issue that you raised, I would like to ask a few questions about it if you don't mind.

• How many of the fast travel teleports you unlocked? Should there have been more?
• Do you think more fast travel should have been added sooner?
• Was the distances to walk simply too much that any additional fast travel wouldn't have eased the issue?

I'm mainly trying to pinpoint the root of the problem: Should the dungeon have been smaller, or should it have been easier to revisit places you've already seen before?

I've been making some adjustments, although not uploaded yet, and one of those is more intuitive hammer room, or so I hope.

I remember how someone elsewhere mentioned the importance of getting the map early, so I made some changes regarding that.

I'm also thinking about doing something about potential softlocks, and making it a little bit easier to travel through the dungeon once you've visited both ends of the teleporters.

[small steeple]

i unlocked 3 fast travel teleports, i think the main 'problem' is tat the dungeon itself is already a little hard to navigate. Which on its own isn't a problem but it becomes a problem in my opninion when you have to backtrack multiple times then it can become tedious. I need to say that i found the map half way through the dungeon so maybe it would have helped if i'd find it earlier. Me not finding the map early might have to do with the invisible walls. The point fast travel is introduced is fine.

[jagged blaze]

I've made some changes and uploaded a new version of the dungeon:

• The map should now be easier to obtain early (even before reaching the hub area!), but it still requires player to pay attention and explore. Because of this I changed a few things in a nearby room of the map.
• I redesigned the room where you fall quite early, because it was totally possible to fall down again (and again and again).
• There is also an area where I removed a potential softlock by adding teleporters to get out of the softlock. The teleporters disappear once there is no risk of being softlocked.
• I changed the hammer room a little bit. Now it requires a few more items to reach the hammer. I also made it so that the way out (teleporter) isn't dependant on the hammer's pedestal anymore, but actually using the hammer in the room for pounding. Hopefully that reduces confusion over there.
• Regarding getting around faster, I did add a few more teleporters for extra convenience and a little bit more fast travel, but I can't really do too much about that, because I would make it so that the teleporter appears when something happens, and then it would appear in both places so I need to be careful where I add them.

I think those were the main changes. Oh, almost forgot. I added entirely optional bonus room for those players who happen to find all the sword coins. The bonus room is obviously hidden so even if someone finds the coins, they would need to find the room too. It's just for extra fun, nothing too important in there.

When I uploaded the level, I think the validation time for the dungeon was 18:08 if I recall correctly (18 minutes and 8 seconds) which is about two minutes faster than my previous best time even though I made mistakes on a few occasions.

[small steeple]

Finished it. Got to say i liked it more the 2nd time i played it after improvements 🙂 really liked the hotspring part gj

[jagged blaze]

Great to hear!
I'm curious though, were there any rooms that you thought could have been designed better or that felt boring or not very interesting, and was there anything that you thought was perhaps undiscovered cheese, and did you encounter any softlocks? I'm also curious if you were able to find / get the map earlier after those improvements.
I'd love to hear more about your experience, and if you thought solving or clearing various rooms was too easy, too challenging, or if it was just the right for you.

[small steeple]

No softlocks. I actually finished it without the map (not intentional tho). The room with puzzles were good i liked them all. Well thought out. Only the room where you have to use the cloth glider to get the star key was maybe a bit cramped (tight spaces/ not much room to move). But that wasn't rly a problem. Also in the room where the blue shapekey is in. The part where you have to hookshot north to eventually get the blue shape key is just out of the screen. Might not be so obvious to some people that you have to hookshot there as you can't see the pole. And the room north of the room where you put all the shape keys in ( i think it was the living quarters or barracks or something). Not sure what u had to do there or if there was something to unlock there (i think i saw a big chest on the map in that room). I tried filling each pedestal with a weapon and maybe unlock something but nothing. Also not a big problem cause it's skippable

[jagged blaze]

I'm glad you overall enjoyed the rooms and didn't find softlocks. I mean, if you had found softlocks then that would have been great for locating and fixing them, but obviously not great for your experience.

The room with three pedestals (living quarters) is connected to getting the green shape key without having to fight slimes for it, and what I call "exploration route":
||1. You open two little chests in the room which opens up a path elsewhere.||
||2. A newly opened path is a hidden room where you get a shovel, and would typically require gloves for 2x2 rocks. There is a invisible closed door (opens when two chests in the living quarters are open) in the room that leads to another room. You can skip the entire block pushing if you have feather and sailcloth.||
||3. In the hidden room there are a lot of sword and shield coins, and also some small chests. Collecting all shield coins in the room spawns a big chest. What's in the chest is less important, but when you open the chest it triggers something.||
||4. When you return to living quarters you'll see three big chests, and one of those holds a green shape key.||
The pedestals are partly for decoration, but also for practical use. Even though I give the player an item that allows holding two tools at once, I thought it would be nice to have some empty pedestals where they can put their tools they don't need at the moment. It could be a nice idea to have something on the pedestals, for example a blue shield coin on each pedestal, so that they would serve another purpose other than just a place for the tools, and if they all were already filled with something then it could imply you don't need to refill them after picking up what's on them.

[rustic haven]

I finally completed it. Before everything else my clear-time is 1:48:04 with only one short toilet break.

What can I say - I love puzzles and the whole exploration part with meteroidvania elements is my thing. Still my clear-time is horrendous and I try to explain why.

The main idea is pretty well explained. You get the map, you find the hub area with the 4 pedestals and understand that you go gem hunting.

I loved the non-linearity of the dungeon. You find plenty of keys and can choose where to go. This part - at least for me - worked about have the dungeon. Eventually I just had tons of keys and they became somewhat pointless. But that's not a bad thing! It's some kind of progression where your resources are scares at the beginning and get easier to come by over time. Still unsure if someone will ever buy the skeleton key cause I think once you have that many coins you're already stacked up in keys.

All in all I have to give a huge compliment that the dungeon "worked". With that many tools it's pretty much impossible to predict what shit the player might try that could frick her up in unforeseen ways. I avoid feather and grappleshot pretty much all the time cause I can't get my dungeons cheese and soft-lock free with them at all.

So, what are my biggest concerns?

1. When I eventually found the pouch I felt like crying from the relieve. I was cycling tools non-stop and spent much time trying to figure out where I left specific ones.
   Tbh: I realized quite late that I could use the quarters room with the beds to store tools on the 3 pedestals. But even then I was running around confused a lot.
   To make things worse - I almost quit when I realized I lost my bombs for good and thought I was soft-locked without them. What had happened? Due to tool restrictions I had left them in the pool area chest when getting something there and could not get back there cause the color switch status had somehow blocked the entrance to that area. Luckily I managed to carry a bomb-vase through half of the dungeon to save the run.

2. Like MonKNL I didn't realize I could grappleshot north for the blue gem. I only got there cause I eventually searched the map in desperation and grapplehooked pretty much everywhere.

I think the dungeon might have wanted to do "too much".
Figuring out what to do next it fun, but it can lead to frustration and eventually players might start to try stuff randomly which can lead to even crazier soft lock situations.
Still a huge, fun project. Fun puzzles and great ideas how to combine mechanics. I learnt A LOT interactions I had never thought were possible.
A clear like and keep going 🙂

[jagged blaze]

Wow! Thanks a lot for positive feedback.
I'll admit I encountered some of the same problems that you mentioned while making the dungeon: Having to swap tools, forgetting them in various places, and those were some of the reasons why I added empty pedestals in the living quarters and added the pouch in one of the chests.

I made each area with the thought that you would either be able to clear it with nothing but boomerang, or need to find an item from somewhere else first, for example sailcloth before feather or grapplehook before Hermes boots. I actually had to swap the location of a few items before first upload, because I noticed I was trying to give the same item twice in different locations, and I also had to keep tool limitations in mind.

I wonder how that color switch status was blocking the way. Did you use a teleport to get out of the pool to the hub area? If you unlocked the teleport in the first room in the pool then you should have been able to use it to go back. The first room in the pool should only have color switches that require manual actions from the player so I'm not sure how you'd be able to get out there while doorway is blocked aside from using the teleport, and there shouldn't be contraptions that would change it when entering the room. I'm glad to hear that you were able to use bomb-vases as a replacement.

Are you able to describe the place for "grappleshot north for the blue gem" more closely? Just in case if I'm thinking about wrong place.

Honestly speaking I didn't bother to fully test the dungeon with every possible number of combinations for what actions a player might take. I tried my best to provide necessary tools and resources in order to avoid softlocks. You are right that the skeleton key is likely unnecessary, but I suppose I wanted to provide it just in case the player would miss most of the other keys.

I'm glad you had fun and enjoyed the dungeon, and were able to complete it.