Hard
I really enjoyed this mansion, and I'm glad I saved it for nearly the end of this round of testing! It was really tough in spots, and I only finished after going back to a few save points many, many times. This pretty much matches the level of difficulty in my head for Hard mansions. I expect to die a lot initially in some of the rougher rooms.
15505 - Good improvement over the last iteration of this room.
15798 - Jack Stuck. The blocks were gold, and I made my way across to solid rock, climbed the ladder, and flipped the switch, changing the blocks to silver. I caught the bat platform over, and botched the jump. This time I was put back to the rock platform at the bottom of the ladder (as opposed to the beginning of 15709, which I thought might happen). [see image - unless I mess it up...]
15709 - This was initially one of the hardest rooms for me in this mansion. I died again and again until I found the right path, and then I still occasionally died on one or two of the jumps which were awkward even though I knew where I was going. I'm just glad it was so close to a save point, or I might have gotten too frustrated with it. At first, I thought this might be too hard, but the more I played it (many, many times), I changed my mind. I'm trying to reserve
too hard
status in this mansion for those rooms that I die consistently on no matter how many times I try.
I do wish there was at least a one-block safe spot on the right side of 15708, because if you die in that screen it puts you back to the beginning of 15709, which is a little cruel.
15913 - I managed to nab the money on the left ledge after two attempts. If a key had been there, then that might have been pushing the difficulty I think.
16301 - That was incredibly sneaky... I think it might be a bit too subtle for being such a critical path forward. Perhaps if that tiny little block next to the vine were a little larger, maybe it would be a more obvious hint. I mean, I get that the whole point is for it not to be obvious - that's why it's hard, but still. I would have expected something like this for treasure or a secret, but not a key.
Also, was it intentional to allow that small space at the top to lead all the way to the ladder? This may end up being affected if Vern decides to prevent ladder access from the middle.
16309 - Unnecessary save point? Don't get me wrong - it's nice, but at the end of the keep there was a save point there, and not a whole lot to die from to get back here (at least not a whole lot that the player hasn't already survived).
16499 - Do the conveyor belts in this room really work the way you intended? I'm fine with the trigger that causes them to start half-way, though it does seem like a cheap trick. What I'm talking about is the combination of the two triggers somehow mean that when you leave the room and return, the trigger that starts the belts never fires again. It would have made more sense that once started, the belts would always run.
In the editor, I swapped the flag
Action is permanent
to see if this would create the behavior I expected, but it didn't. So... I guess I don't understand the trigger behavior here.
16503 - I was also unable to get the money bag on the conveyor belt. I tried from the two left entrances to the room, and nothing.
16504 - Just noticed a possible game glitch that worked in my favor. I was on one of the glowing platforms, and while I was throwing the switch it vanished under my feet. Immediately, I pressed jump and arrow to the left, and as soon as the switch was done, Jack was allowed to jump while there was nothing under his feet except water. Cool.
16706 - It's possible for Jack to climb the far left vine, and jump up into the ledge above completely bypassing the zappers. Unintentional, right? It definitely made things easier. [Looking back at the other comments I see it was the overlapping layer issue, Missy mentioned]
17511 - BBB: More time traveling... 1672 should be 1872 (I think...)
17514 - BBB: truely should be truly
