09-30-2022, 07:52 AM
BLOG (part 13)
2022 September the 30th
Last night I was witness of a Jack-stuck in MM1 HD - Knight Mansion hard. But this post is not meant as the report of a designing mistake. It is an illustration of the risks while building complex rooms/areas.
On the left image Jack came from the left. Standing on the gold blocks he jumped down to the right. His only way to continue was by climbing the ladder to arrive in the room above (right image).
It seemed to be a dead end street where is only a lever that toggles the grey door below him. After returning down, even jumping into the deep didn't help. Jack reappeared on the ladder in the upper right corner of the room.
Text completed on October the 2nd.
A player who is on the alert should think twice before doing a one way jump down. Since Jack came in from the room above the player could have known in advance that the only way of continuing was climbing up the ladder at the far right that most likely was leading to a forced way of return. And big troubles.
However. Although this is a hard mansion for experienced players, a lack of enough thinking ahead, may never lead to a Jack-stuck and forced aborting of the game.
Now, is the designer to blame? Of course not! The two shown rooms are part of a very large and complex area with gold/silver puzzles. Sometimes in combination with grey or other doors and 'annoying' spiders, birds and scorpions. Out of own experience I know the building of these things is, besides very fascinating, also exhausting.
Good beta testing AND (the possibility of) fixing seem the keywords to me.
Btw, an easy way to fix this Jack-stuck is just removing the upper four gold blocks from the column. Or all five, because that would make the jump back harder.
;D