Sammings 2

[mantha16]

Its here 56 levels of fun I would say very easy to medium. (each rank goes easier to harder, there is little variance in ranks so the difficulty stays fairly even across the whole pack)

Its more variation on a theme you saw if you played Sammings 1.

Hope you enjoy,

[WillLem]

Ah, brill! I'll LP this today

[IchoTolot]

I think I will take a look at the pack after I'm done with the next intro pack update.

[mantha16]

replays for anyone who wants them

[IchoTolot]

Here are my replays for the pack. I think I have found a few backroutes.

What I noticed:

Chalkboard 4+5 have the same level ID.

This is a tileset problem, but still: In the Lemminas tileset there are big steel pipes and thinner terrain pipes. Both have the same color, so I wasted 15mins because I thought the thin pipes were steel in a level. I would choose diffrent pipes like the golden ones from the bubble tileset and use these instead of the grey Lemminas pipes. They should be identical apart from the color and players can then immediately see the difference.

[ericderkovits]

Ok just finished turning green the levels for Sammings 2 from Icho's replays.

[kaywhyn]

Pack solved. Replays attached. Also, in case you're interested, my LP of the pack, but if you're not, that's fine: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbp2m4KlFpJvGHwQGmVzZbThvBu11Yi94. Enjoy!

General Feedback

Sammings 2 is the sequel pack to Sammings, mantha16's first pack. Even though it continues the trend of each rank consisting of levels in the same tileset, with each rank named after the the name of the tileset, Sammings 2 is definitely an improvement over Sammings. There's more variety in the layouts and solutions, and that's an improvement over Sammings already. This is especially true of the later ranks/levels. The first 4 Jade levels have pretty much identical layouts but with a different solution each time, but the second half of the rank at least has variety and diversity in the layouts. Granted, there's still some designs that I'm not much of a fan of, most notably levels with midair exits (only Castle rank, and even then it's only 2 or 3 levels that have that) and excessive repeated same skill assignments (once again, not that many, I think 2 as well, Casino 4 and Casino 8), but that's not a fault of mantha's. Once again, I reiterate that these types of levels are simply my dislikes, but they don't in any way affect my overall impression of the pack. There's also far less of these too, so that's once again another improvement over Sammings.

The pack starts off with a somewhat difficult level despite the extremely limited two skill types skillset. I can definitely see this one catching out the less experienced players. The rest of the levels varied in the difficulties, though in general the levels later in a rank tend to be harder than those earlier in the rank, and the difficulty tends to reset with each new rank. Though most of the levels I found easy, I also found most of them challenging. Overall, this pack is probably only a little bit easier than Sammings, especially as only around 3 levels or so gave me problems. The hardest level in the pack for me would have to be Jade 8, as that one took me the longest out of any other level in the pack. It was not easy to figure out how to get everyone down safely, especially given the very limited skillset. At the same time, I really ended up overcomplicating the solution. The intended solution isn't a whole lot better than mine, but it nevertheless was somewhat more efficient.

Other levels I found hard: Leminas 4, Shadow 5, and Shadow 7 

Every level of the pack has a "Did you know?" pre-text. While some of these I already knew, most I didn't know and I found a lot of them very fascinating. The facts are tied by theme, meaning for the Circus rank it's various facts about circuses, Castle rank various facts about castles, etc. Granted, they somewhat slowed the LP pace, but that's just a minor gripe of mine. Besides, the only other pack that does the exact same thing is Icho's NL Intro pack.

The levels also in general were larger in size. Some of them can definitely work better with a much smaller map size, with pretty much the Jade and Shadow ranks having most of the very tall vertical levels. In particular, the Shadow levels are quite bare in the designs, with a lot of empty space, but decorating and prettying up my levels is something which I tend to struggle a lot in my own designs as well. Jade also has a lot of terrain to destroy and get through, and hence without the time skips they can be quite boring to wait through.

Many of the rank finishers were also appropriately placed, as they were for the most part the hardest level of the ranks they're found in. My favorite rank finishers were Circus 8, Chalkboard 8, Castle 8, Leminas 8, and Shadow 8.

All the ranks are great, although my top favorites of the pack were Circus (one of my favorites from L2), Jade, Chalkboard, Leminas, and Shadow. These were done quite well.

My favorites of the pack: Circus 7, Circus 8, Casino 3, Casino 5, Casino 6, Jade 5, Jade 6, Chalkboard 3, Chalkboard 4, Chalkboard 8, Castle 1, Castle 5, Castle 6, Leminas 3, Leminas 6, Leminas 7, Leminas 8, Shadow 2, Shadow 4, and Shadow 8.

Spoiler

I especially really like the sneaky nuke solution of Jade 6! I could had figured it out sooner due to the very low save requirement, but nope, didn't catch on until a few minutes after playing the level and realizing there aren't enough bombers to complete the level normally, and that's where simulating and making everyone one via the nuke comes in! Nice job here!

Overall, even though you thought I wouldn't like the pack because I would likely find it too easy, I still enjoyed this pack. I think I enjoyed it more than Sammings, though even Sammings is a decent first pack from you. Great in some ways, not so much in others, but it's still a good pack. In contrast, there's way more great things about Sammings 2. Yes, I prefer hard levels/packs, but I personally enjoy levels of all difficulties, even easy/medium ones. So really, thank you for this pack that is on the easier side of things