Feedback on Pipe Dream (2nd map) from Rikus (never played Lemmings)

[Simon]

Hi,

I've mentioned Lix to Rikus, and he gave the singleplayer a shot. Rikus has never played Lemmings before, we know each other from speedrunning Titus the Fox.

SimonN: hah :) yeah, if you've never played Lemmings, feedback will be even more valuable
RikuS: I've never played Lemmings. Anyway, the first map showed pretty clearly what to do
SimonN: that's good. I've feared that the first map is too hard or too scary because lixes die when you do nothing, but it's proably fine
SimonN: it's a game after all, player are eager to do something with the world :)
RikuS: The second map is harder already. Instead of getting to know one tool a time the player has to choose between 4 that it barely knows anything about. So first few attempts are actually used to get to know them
SimonN: yeah, and lower routes, which arise from experimenting, are nastier to execute than higher routes
RikuS: Found that out. Try to keep as high as possible xD
SimonN: the designer of that map wanted to stick close to a design in original Lemmings, maybe I should still make the map easier by adding some ramps halfway through that to raise lower routes again
RikuS: So far only 4 levels behind, but I can already say this has been fun:
RikuS: The maps are real game levels instead of 'do one trick and you're done'
SimonN: cool, yeah, the first maps shouldn't feel repetitive
SimonN: eventually, since it's a puzzle game, there will be occasional small maps where your task is to find one single trick
RikuS: I'm actually interested to see more about this game. Also, the baseball bat xD

Emphasis by me. The feedback is: The first few attempts on Pipe Dream fail. But the Proxima-style maps are a big hit.

Are the fails on Pipe Dream acceptable, or shall we guide back on track a few more of these failed attempts? The attempts tend to fail because it's extremely hard for newcomers to raise lixes in miner pits, and it's tempting to assign miner at least once.

Ideas on how to fix:
pipedream-raise-miners.txt
Picture of these changes with all changes marked:

(1) The most egregious change: Make early miner behave the same as early basher.
(2) Can ascend here, but not go back down.
(3) Touching chains of balls, such that a basher will always survive.
(4) Can ascend here, but not go back down. Walkers can traverse the balls.
(5) Can ascend here, but not go back down. Walkers can traverse the balls.

Comments? I'd rather make the map too easy by accident, it's only the second level. On the other hand, one-way traversable terrain is already a complicated gadget.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely don't want to complicate the map with tiny passages (the player hasn't even learned the walker mechanics at this point) so I've had a go at my own fixed version. I've erased some terrain around 688,288 to allow the lix to regain height, and the exit is at the bottom so you can take a low route all the way if you like.

[Forestidia86]

RikuS: So far only 4 levels behind, but I can already say this has been fun:
RikuS: The maps are real game levels instead of 'do one trick and you're done'

You should have asked what Rikus meant with "real game levels". (My fascination with Lemmings as a little girl was the explorative sandbox aspect of the early levels rather than the puzzles. I only realized and value it as a puzzle game since lately.)

[Simon]

I agree with Proxima's changes, and that one-way ascend gadgets are too complicated.

I'd still like to remove the brick at (1212, 727) and make the ball slope (where this brick sits on) traversible. And I'd like to make the ball chains at (3) in the original post touching.

Re Forestidia's question:
RikuS: I mean the maps feel like little adventures with different possibilities. It's a different thing to complete a map with bridges and tunnels and to think also during the possible solution, than to dig one tunnel to the end
RikuS: Maybe you had a very good point by removing the tutorial maps. Realized while typing the elaboration
SimonN: yeah, that captures the feelings of the maps

-- Simon

[Simon]

Here's the map so far. Unless more criticism appears, I'll earmark it for the next release.

Proxima removed the miners, which looks smart. The terrain encourages you to bash high several times, even when you choose the lower path.

-- Simon

[nin10doadict]

The original Lemmings game introduced skills one or two at a time, and it was pretty easy to figure out within a few seconds how each one worked. That's certainly one way to do it, but it also makes those early levels rather dull because you don't really have any options and the puzzle is very easy.
Giving the new player more options means you're giving them more ways they could potentially screw themselves over, so trying to design levels around that so the player doesn't feel restricted or discouraged is certainly a challenge. I can say for sure that the Lix levels waste no time in getting to harder stuff when compared to the original Lemmings, which makes sense because it focuses on puzzles whereas Lemmings was more of an execution challenge.

[Simon]

Definitely hard to create good first levels, yes.

The early maps should provoke creativity and experimentation, and they should be solvable with most methods that you find. This means that we shouldn't make them trivial. On the other hand, I don't want a single experimental skill assinment to kill a solution. In 0.9.7, Pipe Dream gets nasty when you open with a miner.

Rikus has played about 20 maps while I was sleeping earlier today, and already found the framestepping useful.

-- Simon

[Proxima]

It should be noted that, except for the very first level, the early levels were not designed with the specific intention of appearing so early in the game and being the player's first introduction to skills. We just arranged them afterwards because they were the best we had and we didn't want to throw out any more levels than we had to

Still, I'm pleased with how it's worked out. Level 2 is a decent basher introduction (which is why it was a mistake to overcomplicate it by keeping the miners; I'm glad that's been corrected). Level 3 introduces the building skills, and Level 4 puts them together. Level 5 introduces blockers and imploders; Level 6 introduces the single-lix control skills; and so on.

Level 13 (Let's block and blow?) is an example of "do one trick and you're done", but I think this was necessary to introduce the fling-exploder. Due to a limitation of the game engine, the fling-exploder is the only skill that's normally not present on 20-of-everything levels, and very few Lovely levels include it at all. So the player really needs a level where the fling-exploder is the only thing you can possibly do, to make sure they get the chance to observe what it does.