08-15-2023, 03:36 PM
Right now my Jack is standing at the exit door of this mansion, ready to finish with $ 31.950 and more than a dozen secrets.
Before I let him do that I like to keep the map of this mansion under my hands to make a review.
The mansion has a small intro outside the castle followed by a gate tower. After a short walk through the rain came the castle with a green lower area, a red upper left zone and a blue upper right section. During play it became clear that Jack had to collect 3 blue keys to open a triple blue door. Two of them could be found in the castle.
So far the mansion felt to me as somewhere between easy and normal. The designer (is his identity common knowledge?) must have known that, since there were only a few shields (average of 1 for every 15 rooms).
What could be expected happened: the castle had dungeons. Immediately game became more intense. Not hard, but Jack needed to be more focused. Play got really interesting, especially since this mostly grey section had nearly the size of the castle itself. To keep things 'normal' the designer offered a few signs with safety warnings like 'mind your head in next room'. For the same reason there were more shields and in my opinion enough saving pedestals.
When Jack left the castle through the triple door he had a spare key and a sign with a message like 'Jack will encounter a lot of troubles in the on coming catacombs'. Those troubles I taxed as work between normal and hard. The area was in a lot of brownish variations and together with a very good spread of a limited number of coloured doors and keys it gave an amazing midnight mansion game feeling. And an other spare key!
The finish zone was a lookalike of the intro: small and with an other gate tower.
About the design there I have nearly no remarks for corrections: a few places where money (bags) could be catched early by jumping from below, one single spot where an insane squirrel jump leads to a half Jack-stuck (forced offer of a life) and one room where sinking platforms were half covering torches.
I have a lot of appreciation for all the work that has been done at the backgrounds. I added a picture of one of the blue rooms to illustrate that.
And now back to Jack. 93 % secrets found (so I know how many he did miss). 31 lives lost, really? He needs to be punished with the hard version!
Before I let him do that I like to keep the map of this mansion under my hands to make a review.
The mansion has a small intro outside the castle followed by a gate tower. After a short walk through the rain came the castle with a green lower area, a red upper left zone and a blue upper right section. During play it became clear that Jack had to collect 3 blue keys to open a triple blue door. Two of them could be found in the castle.
So far the mansion felt to me as somewhere between easy and normal. The designer (is his identity common knowledge?) must have known that, since there were only a few shields (average of 1 for every 15 rooms).
What could be expected happened: the castle had dungeons. Immediately game became more intense. Not hard, but Jack needed to be more focused. Play got really interesting, especially since this mostly grey section had nearly the size of the castle itself. To keep things 'normal' the designer offered a few signs with safety warnings like 'mind your head in next room'. For the same reason there were more shields and in my opinion enough saving pedestals.
When Jack left the castle through the triple door he had a spare key and a sign with a message like 'Jack will encounter a lot of troubles in the on coming catacombs'. Those troubles I taxed as work between normal and hard. The area was in a lot of brownish variations and together with a very good spread of a limited number of coloured doors and keys it gave an amazing midnight mansion game feeling. And an other spare key!
The finish zone was a lookalike of the intro: small and with an other gate tower.
About the design there I have nearly no remarks for corrections: a few places where money (bags) could be catched early by jumping from below, one single spot where an insane squirrel jump leads to a half Jack-stuck (forced offer of a life) and one room where sinking platforms were half covering torches.
I have a lot of appreciation for all the work that has been done at the backgrounds. I added a picture of one of the blue rooms to illustrate that.
And now back to Jack. 93 % secrets found (so I know how many he did miss). 31 lives lost, really? He needs to be punished with the hard version!
