Thu Aug 20, 2020 1:16 pm by sky_lark
Thanks Quartz for super detailed reviews and Santiago for the pretty colors! Great to hear both your thoughts.
Earlier I made some suggestions for improvements. Now that the revision period has passed, I've made some proper reviews for each level with my thoughts! These reviews include the final versions of each level.
Battering Ram 2
This level got a bit of flak early on, but I honestly didn't mind it. There's some fun strategy with stealing the flag, going into the channel then dropping it, letting teammates on the other side of the testitem grab it. I will say the update makes it much more winnable for an imbalanced team, which is a good thing. It's very simple, and sometimes simple is good!
Bubblegum Wars Two, 2
One would think the two flags would make it pretty much impossible to score touchdowns but actually in all the games I've played, teams have been able to score touchdowns. It's counterintuitive to think about, but I think maybe it lets folks split up the zones, with one flag-runner going after one half of the level with the other going after the other. With this in mind you don't even need to possess both flags for very long, just long enough to capture all the zones in one half. So it's doable, possibly more doable than one flag might be, believe it or not.
There are some interesting subtleties: Testitems fit well into crevices in the walls when shot at by turrets, making it an extra fun challenge to score goals in those zones. I love thoughtful testitem design! The middle is packed with energyitems, seemingly breaking an unwritten level design rule to limit the amount of energy/first aid items in one area. But as it's a heavily congested zone, it ends up being great for flag-runners to stave off attacks by enemies. Levelgen letting the turrets start one way then end up neutral when destroyed is super subtle, and doesn't seem to make a huge impact given the go-go-go nature of the level, but still fun to play with.
Cannons 2
Clearly just a simple novelty level. It's short and a nice break from the competitiveness of most of the other levels. Sure, /idle is a cheat code to win, but it's more fun trying to frantically dodge asteroids while firing them across the way at your opponent.
Castle Lords
Beautiful artistic work here with the edges of the hedge maze in the middle and trees on the outside, the snowflake on-off trigger, and unconventional but pleasant complement of colors. I don't love the Unrestricted aspect as I feel it stagnates offensive attacks from players trying to bust in to enemy bases, especially since players already struggle to advance with the onslaught of resourceitems. The portals in the hedge maze, while necessary given the Unrestricted aspect, lessen the satisfaction of building a strong base and halting enemies. I would prefer to see removal of the portals and Restricted engineer.
Otherwise, the level feels very polished and fun. There's no hunting for a resource item, they're readily available. Getting knocked around by the resourceitems is hilarious and makes for a great equalizer. The hedge maze is a perfect middle: Players can simply bypass it if in a rush, but also take shelter in it if needing to avoid enemies.
Colossus II
Definitely came a long way in the revisions period. The spawns-inside-the-level concept is interesting but not ideal for this level given how much room they take up. The new revisions have made the level much more intimate, with fewer places to hide, and stressed the importance of winning the middle and capturing the loadout zone. The jail is intriguing as a last ditch effort to try to stop core destruction, but it can be easily camped. I'd like to see either more entrances for unlocking or more safety in the unlocking entrance to make it harder to camp. Could also try using thread's on-off gates...
Conquest
Also considerably better after revisions. The balance is flipped now, with the attackers (blue) having the edge against the defenders (red). This is how it should be, with red having quick access to resource items to build extra defenses and level the playing field. There are a lot of interesting strategies that both teams can use to pursue their team goals. The artwork is extensive, but might be a bit too much, and might be distracting. One intriguing subtlety is the tight corridors of much of the level effectively limits where teleporters can be engineered, making it much more difficult for either team to create a long-distance teleporter and gain a significant advantage.
Curlier Q
As Curly Q is one of the better original Zap levels, I am pleased that it received multiple remakes! I enjoy the hostile turrets in the middle and the importance of repairing laserbeams remains critical here. I also like the limited resource items. Ultimately, this level just suffers from its massive size. If players follow the speedzones from start to finish or use the portals then it's not too bad, but if players get knocked off midway due to repairing or engineering then players have to travel quite far. It also becomes quite difficult for a player who died to catch up. Reducing the size by 50% or so could make a world of difference here. I'd also like to see the bases' turrets a little less brutal, escaping with the flag is very tough, more than it needs to be.
Curly-Q-Revue
Where Curlier Q is big and bold, and Mini Curly Q is a chaotic clusterfuck, Curly-Q-Revue is chill and minimal Curly Q. It's a nice, peaceful design with plenty of curves and limited distractions. It has an interesting take on the speedzone design, choosing to stray from the boing-boing nature of original Curly Q into a more straightforward, simple speedzone escape. This is interesting because puts more emphasis on player combat than on repairing laserbeams to stop enemy flow. It's definitely a simple but creative take on the original Curly Q!
Epic Mini Soccer
Epic is right. When paired with spybug launches, burst launches, or double tap boost, players go flying! The recycled design of Soccer01 might dock points for originality, but as the saying goes, if it ain't broken don't fix it, right? Simple, straightforward, fun as hell.
Honeycomb Break-in
An interesting re-imagining of the Honeycomb classic! Much like Curlier Q, the issue that pitfalls this level is simply the size. Everything so spread out means attacking players can't quickly return if their defenders needs assistance, and it makes it difficult for a trailing team to catch up. It does mean that once an attacker dies, defense is given a temporary bit of relief, but the lack of turrets or other defenses around each core makes them quite tricky to actually defend. The levelgen, much like Bubblegum Wars, is subtle - the emitters can be removed entirely when destroyed - and presumably to help clear space for engineering objects. A clever touch to make engineering on the fly a little easier.
I would like to see this level resized a bit, as well as swapping out some of the hostile laserbeams around the cores with team laserbeams. That could make defending easier, as defenders could quickly rush to their cores without having to find an open path.
Intermission 3.0
Last contest we had Intermission 2.0, so of course now we need Intermission 3.0! The big change here obviously is the Epic Mode, and it's a good addition since the level itself is not particularly exciting. Mostly the level just serves as a brief opportunity to stretch or grab a snack, so it's understandable that there's not a lot going on inside the level, but I might suggest making it a little smaller so it's more intimate and thrilling.
Mini Curly Q
Another level to receive considerable improvements with the revision period. The craziness was clearly toned down a bit, as well as making it easier to get off the speedzone track if desired. There's still a lot of chaos with the manual speedzone turret and the slip n slide leading into each base, but it's more of a controlled chaos. The strategy of stealing the flag is interesting: Using the speedzone to race into the base takes away some of your control, but it gives you the best chance of not getting stuck or killed on the slip zone if enemy fire pushes you back. The laserbeam in the base blocks the quickest way out, resulting in a decision needed to be made about whether to gamble with the slip zone or try to escape through the speedzone. The level is obviously pretty silly, so folks who prefer calmer competitive action are probably not fans, but for those of us who dig the chaotic nature, it's good fun.
MULTIBALL
Great work by the author to fix this level up in the revision period. As hilarious as the four team madness was, it felt really luck-based, as you never really had a respite from the soccerballs and had to pick and choose whether to try to defend or attack. WIth two teams and a slight redesign it's more feasible to play defense. All of the games we've played on the redesign have been super close down the stretch, which is awesome to see! PS. The stenciled Multi Ball in the walls is slick, that must've taken quite the effort to create.
Pac It In
This level also improved drastically with the revisions period. Soccer balls acting as de facto testitems are an interesting concept, given their smoother and smaller shape. But in the original version there was just too much of them and it resulted in players easily able to burrow themselves away and camp with the flag. With a lot of those removed it's much more feasible to get after the flag-carrier. The automatic loadout switching is super interesting, but not terribly useful in a level like this, so I'd be more interested to see it applied in other types of levels.
The resource items are also interesting, being able to basically engineer obstacles on the fly, but in practice players are too often without energy to actually use them, so I'd suggest either adding more energyitems or just ditching engineer. Could also try making this a team rabbit, but probably with a lot fewer resourceitems. I do think it's important to keep some junk flying around so flag-carriers have a fighting chance to stave off some enemies.
Palaces
Beautiful artistic design and the build-a-base aspect keeps me coming back to this level, but I'm really not a fan of this race to capture 1-2 flags game type. It means that as soon as one team caps one flag, the chances of other teams catching up to them plummet. You have to get both flags, and quickly, both to overcome the scoring difference and to beat out the team who got the first flag from getting the second flag... not terribly likely. I far prefer game modes where you can plausibly catch up after taking a hit.
The fact that it's three teams also adds a bit of luck to the equation: Unless pressure is applied to all bases equally, there's a good chance one base is going to have much more time and energy to build up defenses than their opponents. Or conversely, if one base gets pummeled by both other teams, that puts them at a severe disadvantage. Obviously this isn't a fault of this level -- it's an inherent issue with 3+ teams -- but it does feel especially impactful here given the stakes of being able to build a strong base.
That said, I do really respect the strategy thinktank involved. If you focus solely on attacking, you give yourself the best chance to be the first team to cap flags, but you also leave your base wide open for anyone to get flags from you. So you need to build your base up somewhat, but if you focus too much on that then you leave yourself at a disadvantage to getting the flags. It's a terrific, stressful (in a good way) real-time thought exercise. So I definitely want to like this level more!
Personally, I would suggest either switching the game mode to retrieve, or keeping HTF and switching the team flags to neutral flags (just spawn them in the middle). These give more opportunities to folks to catch up after being down initially, so it's not the end of the world if someone manages to breach a weak spot in your defenses and steals a flag. Alternatively, keep everything as is but switch it to two teams. This would require some shifting of the level design obviously, but would alleviate the inherent balance issues of a three team level.
I think it would also help to switch the core timer to an enclosed core with a turret destroying a team laserbeam instead. This has a couple advantages: It allows players to enter and exit the base without having to suicide, and it also means the cores are roughly opening at the same time, instead of opening faster if someone is shooting at an enemy's core.
Pansexual Speed Dating
This level has received a fair bit of flak but to be honest I actually really dig it. Sure, it's a little chaotic, but it's not chaos all the time. There are breaks in between moments of insanity. The circular design is cool, as is the line and nexus art. It's just a really fun level. I would prefer a couple modifications: A loadout zone, so I didn't have to die if I build up a lot of flags and need repairs or cloak, as well as a slightly longer period to cap flags (like 2-3 seconds longer, it's pretty difficult right now to cap flags and that can be frustrating to score).
Revenge 2: Back with a Vengeance
This is one of the few levels that I think actually worsened with the revisions period. The primary mechanic of this level is the craziness of repairing the middle and amusingly blocking your enemies on other sides of the channel. But with the laserbeams no longer being able to be repaired, it's mostly just whoever can get to the middle/other side first. It's just a race and so whichever side has better balance tends to be the side that wins. The laserbeams also take forever to recharge so they're not really that impactful at all. I would like to see this level go back to its roots and return the repairable middle lasers. The burst and external seeker turrets were removed, so it should be easier to get into the opposing bases now than in the original version. Embrace the mechanic!
Revenge for the Emperors Revenge
Much like Conquest, there's a lot going on art-wise, but I think it works well here, given the nature of co-op and being able to go at your own pace. 5 minutes is obviously not much time for an Emperors Revenge level, and this does seem a bit big for the timeframe. So I might suggest axing one or two of the challenges or reducing the amount of distance needed to travel. Using engineer to help with the various challenges is an interesting idea, but in some ways it hurts more than it helps, such as getting in the way of travelers on the wall in the wall-riding challenge. Still, the flexibility of being able to use it in various ways to help defeat challenges or just avoid using it entirely is cool.
RTwP
One of the most popular levels in Bitfighter's rich history gets a sequel! And this is really well designed for the most part. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about six teams vs four teams, but the circular design is really cool, and even though the bases are all actually copies of one another, because they're tilted at varying degrees it makes it feel like it's a brand new challenge every time you enter a different section of the level. It's interesting because with other levels the level being sized large is a drawback, but for here it's arguably an advantage as it gives folks more time to build stuff to defend against incoming attackers.
I'm certainly torn about the Unrestricted aspect. On one hand, it feels rewarding to create an impossible-to-enter base. On the other hand, once you get used to the design, creating an impossible entry is not terribly difficult and can be conducted rather quickly. So then it's just about cloaking and praying an opponent crosses a laserbeam, or using the portal trick to hop on a wall, which to me feels rather unethical for this kind of level. It might be worth giving Restricted a try.
It's also rather concerning since players can be trapped in spawns with the careful placement of just two laserbeams. I never even dreamed about this tactic until bobdaduck and quartz tried it on me and arctic. It's clever, but also pretty problematic. Fortunately there's an easy fix: Just sprinkle some spawns outside of the main base. They don't need to spawn very far, just enough to where trapping all possible areas becomes impractical if not impossible. That, or switch to Restricted engineer.
Sequel! Figure Eight!
Ahh Figure Eight, I had lots of good memories on this level! Great to see it get a sequel. This for the most part plays a lot like the original, but the speedzones to get out of the base are nice touches, and the line art is a nice minimalism. I dig the color scheme too!
I would like to see the portal delays be switched the other way, to virtually no delay instead of a delay. Reason being if someone goes through the portal after stealing the flag they already have a high chance of scoring, and the delay virtually guarantees a score. No delay keeps the portals competitive instead of being overpowered. It would also be nice to get a loadout zone in the middle, to be able to switch up modules quickly, as well as maybe 2 more engineer items, so it's not QUITE as brutal trying to find resource items for creating defenses.
Sharks & Minnows
An interesting twist on the Zombie Survival core team switching concept. I think this actually works even better than Zombie Survival as you don't need to go hunt for cores after surviving a few minutes, they're right there at the end. The revisions also improved this level quite a bit, making it tougher for zombies to camp the laserbeams and changing the zombie spawn so humans have a better chance. Like Zombie Survival, much of the human's chances for success depend on whether they'll fight each other or not. It would be cool to stack all the humans on one team against one zombie, but I figure that might require a bit of levelgen work to make happen. Overall a really fun level that I want to play several times in a row.
Skynet is Pleiades
Huge shoutout to the creator for taking on the enormous task of asymmetrical bases and differing numbers of cores! That's certainly something that we don't see very often in Bitfighter, and it's really interesting and fun. I love all the different bases being different, there are obviously some balance issues with some bases being stronger and others weaker but the team switching helps mitigate those issues somewhat. My only real gripe is the size of the level, as if you end up spawning on the opposite side of where you need to go, it can take quite a while to reach the other side. Speedzones could help with this.w
Spaceship Siege
A futuristic take on the classic Hamster Bridge level. There are a lot of little subtleties about this level that make it unique, but the fundamental concept of enemies snaking through laserbeams while teammates can fly right over them remains. Hamster really was a genius of his time. This isn't exactly an easy level - neither team is going to rack up a bunch of scores - but there are some interesting features within each base that opponents can use to aid teammates and make it faster to enter or exit the base. One minor annoyance is that the levelgen doesn't always seem to take effect right away, and usually needs at least one restart to get working. I'm not sure if this is just a levelgen issue or bug with the game, but it's something to keep in mind for future play-throughs.
Things I would suggest for improvement would be widening the channels somewhat so players can traverse through the laserbeams a little easier, as well as improving the middle of the level. I understand the testitem gimmick is to for players to fly through and force folks chasing them to have to go around, but in practice a lot of times you aren't being actively chased by an enemy and don't really need it. It kinda feels out of place and might be better suited for a different type of level.
War 2098
Much like the original Endless War, there is a constant battle for control of each 'territory'. The HTF aspect however ensures that it doesn't just come down to who flips more goals at the very end of the game. There are a lot of interesting side features on this level: The fight for the middle to open up (or cut off) access to a shortcut portal is obviously the clear attraction, but there's also an interesting swinging gate at the bottom that's controlled by destroying/repairing turrets. Once converted, a player must go all the way to the opponent's base in order to change ownership of the swinging gate. As interesting as this feature is, it's a bit complex, and would probably benefit from changing it to a simple laserbeam control switch like the middle shortcut portal has, to make the objective of the gate clearer for each team.
The asteroid flinger is fun and also interesting because you don't necessarily want to fling asteroids against your opponent's side if that's where your teammates are headed. You might actually want to fling them to your side to make it tougher for attackers to make headway, and just keep the middle shortcut portal open for teammates to avoid travel through the asteroid section. Interestingly, despite the relatively high score, most games on this level have been super close in score, with the very first game we played finishing a thrilling 400-398 to top off a late comeback!
Zombies Survival II
Many levels have tried the Zombie mode over the years, and this is certainly one of the best executed. The core team switching makes it very smooth to switch to the zombie team. It does take a little getting used to to understand it all: You not only have to survive, but you also have to destroy cores once the timer reaches 1:00 in order to achieve true victory. But once you understand that it's a lot of fun. There's some interesting dynamics between humans, as it's in their interests not to kill each other, but can you necessarily trust them from not killing you? That's the question.
One of the strategies I've found most effective is to keep sensor enabled all the time, both as a human and as a zombie. As a human to see the zombies coming, and as a zombie I'll pair it with cloak to both find hiding humans and sneak up on that. Switching out shield is a risky trade-off, but the positives of not being surprised have been tremendously helpful. I'm thankful for this level series for reigniting my interest in the sensor module and have since started using it more and more in other levels, such as when I have a flag and need to survive for a decent bit of time and want to see cloaking enemies before they attack.
I do think the access to cores can be improved to make it easier for humans to win. As it is zombies can camp that side with engineered items and make it very tough for humans to bypass them and destroy cores. I think it could be interesting to have multiple entrances guarded by core timers that lead to portals. Each of these portals can lead to a single, one-time use portal, which then leads to the core destruction room. The core timers would also need laserbeams for each team to ensure zombies couldn't enter. I think this method would make it much more difficult for zombies to camp the core rooms and give humans a great chance of winning should they survive the necessary amount of time.
