Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:19 pm by sky_lark
Here are my reviews. There is a LOT of talent here -- do not be dismayed by however the vote turns out! I would strongly recommend everyone take feedback and turn their levels into whole levels, which I think will be a lot of fun to revisit and compare.
» Chill | RET
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 4/5 | Fun: 5/5
Chill is a really cool "narrative" level, featuring a kind of cabin and forest. The neat aspect in play here is the trees and how some are walls and others are lines. This results in unexpected surprises, because it's hard to remember the exact locations of the fake trees and real trees. You kinda remember the general locations but will often bump into a branch, or even worse, an asteroid. The asteroids lasted a surprisingly long time and were really effective at times. The middle base was interestingly quite defensible. The slip zones made it a little tough to get inside, the bouncer turrets posed a strong threat, and the entrance was bottlenecked. My only suggestion here would be to add a loadout zone and maybe change the name to be something more compelling.
» Gift | RET
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 5/5 | Fun: 3/5
My goodness, Gift is a gorgeous level. In ten years of playing this game I may have never seen a prettier level. This is just one of those levels that inspires you! And gameplay-wise, it's not bad either. We had some close games in our session tonight. Interestingly it's hard to defend the zones, but not the players. It seemed the strategy would be to grab flags and hold them, because you could flee around the island barriers and due to the small arena, any reinforcements could kill you off quickly. But once the flags were down they were very hard to defend. Still, it made for a fun and beautiful match! I would love to see this expanded into its own full level.
» Into the Storm | RET
Creativity: 4/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 5/5 | Fun: 4/5
Wow, I love the natural design of Into the Storm. It just feels super clean and smooth. The curved walls are a treat to look at. There's nothing to distract you from the objective, but that is also a downside to the level: It's really hard to score! There are no defenses other than the barriers, and no loadout zones to defend your team with. Nonetheless this remains one of my favorite levels and I was able to adapt it to pretty much every other Retrieve level.
» Judaistic | RET
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 5/5 | Aesthetics: 4/5 | Fun: 3/5
I love the textual design of Judaistic. Someone clearly put a lot of work into carving the texts and menorah perfectly. I like the external fence design, and how the stars jut out into space, although to be honest they also seem a bit wonky. Maybe scale them down a bit? Gameplay-wise, this is one of the best levels in the pool. The base is easily defendable, featuring bottlenecked pathways perfect for mining, and a pair of terrifying turrets. With one defender in play it would take me 5 or 6 rushes just to get out with a flag! Something I would suggest would be to move the spawns closer toward the back of the base, it can be frustrating to barely escape with a flag only to have the enemy spawn in front of you. Great work!
» Protovision | RET
Creativity: 4/5 | Competitiveness: 5/5 | Aesthetics: 4/5 | Fun: 4/5
Protovision is super sleek and minimalist, which I like a lot. It reminds me of a space station! I'm a big fan of this genre. The middle pocket area is very cleverly designed, it's perfect for baiting enemies and darting around them, but it can also be used as a guard-post. I like the asymmetry of the back barrier and smart placement of spawns (they're all off toward the back, so there are no cheap kills). It just feels like a very simple, enjoyable level. I could definitely see this expanded into an asymmetrical retrieve level. Nice work.
» Ring of Fire | RET *levelgen
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 3/5 | Aesthetics: 5/5 | Fun: 5/5
Ring of Fire features a pretty cool levelgen and gate mechanisms, one gate being a sort of maze and the other, a revolving door. The revolving door is super effective and I picked up on it right away! The maze took me a minute to get, but I think it uses the teleporter dynamic outputs levelgen I wrote about before (hopefully the author used my guide! haha). I think you try to get to the teleporter but while only crossing on red, so if you hit white or gray the teleporter output "locks" you out and you have to start over and reset it. This is really cool but one thing I would suggest is to make this function a little clearer, I know I and Little_Apple were confused for a while. With that said, the design is awesome! Super clean and fancy, great job. Looking at the level file there also appear to be some easter eggs hidden inside...
» Split Pea | RET
Creativity: 4/5 | Competitiveness: 5/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
Split Pea is fun to play! It's a little crazy with all the resource items, but those act as helpful dynamic defenses. The spawn mechanic is very cool, and I like the niche aid kit station. It was surprisingly underused in our games! The rounded edge is basic, but rather unique actually. The downside is that this level is also pretty hard. Even with all the resource items, barriers, and turret scurrying into and out of the base is very easy. Fun-factor though, it's a great entry.
» Terrible Trio | RET
Creativity: 3/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
Despite its name, Terrible Trio is not terrible! I was at first disgruntled by the speedzones because I thought they exploited the defenses too easily. My play session earlier tonight disproved that. The speedzones were perhaps the most integral parts of the level! They allowed us to very quickly reach the enemy base and add pressure. The laserbeams located just inside the speedzones meant that if repaired, they would prevent enemies from wreaking havoc with the speedzones, which was cool. It was still a little hard, since once the laserbeams were destroyed the enemies could exploit your own speedzones to get away quickly, so I might recommend adding some more defenses. But it plays surprisingly well overall, so good job!
» Yellow Dog | RET
Creativity: 3/5 | Competitiveness: 5/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
Yellow Dog really nailed the strong base concept. It's certainly one of the most defensible levels in the pack, and is a good mix of cover for both offense and defense, but is not overwhelming. The goals are close enough together that they can be guarded by a single player, and the barriers are tightened to not allow the testitems to float freely, which I really like. It's fairly barebones, but that's not necessarily a bad thing! It's clean and plays well. I could see this expanded with some kind of middle area layout and be pretty fun.
» Ball Pit | CTF
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 3/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 5/5
Ball Pit is a silly level! But it's actually quite clever too. The resources item act as an ever-shifting defensive set, with the burst turrets constantly shifting everything around. With a chasing defender it can actually be quite difficult to get in and escape successfully. No clue about the text, I imagine it's a reference of some kind haha. The purple color is also pretty unique, not a lot of levels changed team color. Of course, the best part of this level is destroying all the lasers and letting the flood of resource items out. That's not particularly productive but it's certainly amusing...
» Snowball | CTF *levelgen
Creativity: 5/5 | Competitiveness: 3/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 5/5
Snowball is the other level that utilizes levelgen aside from Ring of Fire. It's a pretty crazy script, too! Players get (a) unlimited cloak and (b) a manned turret firing resource death items. The turret is pretty overpowered, but boy is it a cool script! I definitely had a lot of fun reigning terror upon my intruders. The level also really captures the title well which is nice. Probably one of the more creative levels in the pool, very solid job!
» SnowFlake's Wild Ride | CTF
Creativity: 3/5 | Competitiveness: 3/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
I want to get off of Snowflake's Wild Ride! Just kidding, I couldn't resist the reference. This is actually a pretty decent level, despite being barebones. The defenses are its strongest aspect, if repaired to their fullest they can post a serious challenge to enemies. The teleporters get to circumvent the laserbeams which I don't like, but they also funnel enemies right into a crossfire, so they're not all bad. As far as the CTF levels go, this one plays pretty well too! It does feel a little empty to me, and the teleporters ought to be reworked, but it's certainly not a bad level either.
» Speed Tech | CTF
Creativity: 4/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
Speed Tech is a cool, futuristic type of level that plays around with traffic control. Players spawn on the polywall then move off to the side to access the level. They can only move one way off of the polywall, then can use three channels but due to speedzones are encouraged to use the external channels for outgoing traffic and inner channel for incoming traffic. It's a cool idea and might work better on a full level, but for most of the level halves players seeking the flag could outrun someone who spawned on the polywall and had to race in the opposite direction to get off of it. Opening up both sides of the polywall might improve this. I do like the atmosphere of the level and sleek design, and something that happened by accident was a bunch of resources flooded the half. I actually think this made the level better by adding friction to the tight channels. It was pretty fun to push around and get pushed around by waves of resourceitems. Nicely done!
» Spinners | CTF
Creativity: 3/5 | Competitiveness: 4/5 | Aesthetics: 3/5 | Fun: 4/5
I think Spinners is the "Airlock" of this month's contest! It's received a lot of playful jabs for its, ahem, bizarre design. While certainly unconventional, it's fun to play! The lasers are damn tough to breach given their short regen time, so you pretty much have to surrender yourself to the blender if you want in. I had fun looking around for the most vulnerable locations in the fence and reformatting my gameplay intentions. I also like how the level could work in both retrieve and CTF, I chose CTF since there weren't many CTF levels submitted, but props to the author for coming up with that idea.
Last edited by
sky_lark on Wed Jan 14, 2015 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
DISCUSSION: December 2014 Level Design Contest
