01: Intended.
02: Intended. You actually had the Climber walk up into the Bomber's crater before bashing; the strictly-intended version is to bash while the Climber is still standing on the previous pole, showing that you can actually bash across tiny gaps. But of course, it's not required.
Lots of different tricks here! Mainly turning around one Climber in the other's Basher tunnel, and of course stoning + platforming to connect the bottom with the upper Miner shaft in the absence of Builders. As I told ericderkovits, this is also possible, though not required, on Soft 14.
03: Intended.
04: Intended.
05: Intended. The Climber is a red herring skill. (And the Bomber technically as well, though it should be immediately obvious that it can't be used; it's just there to fill out the classic 8-slot skill panel.)
06: Intended.
07: The intended solution is hard to completely enforce here, but this is close enough for me.
08: A little more skill-efficient than intended. If I'm not mistaken, you might even have spared an additional Basher if you had dug with the Shimmier-to-be a little further to the left.
09: Believe it or not, you're actually the first one to make use of the fact that the pioneer is a Climber.
For some reason, everyone else wasted an additional Builder building up into the niche of that rock before turning around to yet again build over to the ramp that leads up to the exit.
The intended solution sends the Climber down a Digger shaft on the very left side. Some others used the Miner to get straight down into the water. It wasn't worth sealing up the entire right chunk with steel at the bottom, though. This is still just the second rank, so a little more leeway in this regard is fine.
Unless you think the level feels less "rewarding" this way? I'm just asking for your honest opinion here, did this feel like a backroute to you?10: Valid alternative solution; you didn't need the Bomber but that's okay.
11: Also close enough, just a few skills spared and still sufficiently difficult, I assume.
12: Well, I understand your emoji here means you really enjoyed this one.
Some found this level inappropriately easy, but I for one know this is exactly the type of deceptively difficult / seemingly easy puzzle I would have struggled with immensely when starting out.
13: Intended. Yes, that trap sadly looks exactly like the hole in the tree. I even made it overwrite so that it's displayed on top of the tree, so it's not actually hidden behind terrain. So that's indeed something only secondary animations, like red squirrel eyes peeking out of the hole, could fix.14: You didn't use any Walkers, Stackers, or Diggers? Great, that will become another talisman! You're the first one to solve this level with such efficiency!
15: Clear backroute. This one is a gift that keeps on giving. I've already made a bunch of skills pickups; now the Stoner is one as well. I think that one was the major problem (or at least I hope so!).
16: Pretty much intended.
17: More skill-efficient indeed, but this one is hard enough even if you use them. So no changes required here.
18: That was a very clever way of penning in the crowd!
This is what I meant back then when I said that Shimmiers (and Jumpers) would be just as powerful as Walkers in many regards, simply because of their ability to easily cancel skills. Such cleverness should be rewarded, though; I wouldn't call this a backroute simply because you saved two skills. Because you did so by displaying clear knowledge of advanced and creative Shimmier applications, which is precisely what this pack is (among others) all about!
19: Intended. A little difficult to pull off timing-wise, but not as precise as I thought at first, fortunately.
20: Backroute. Welcome to the first clearly unfixable level of the pack. The reason I didn't cut and replace it though is because during testing, I found out that, even though this level is so vulnerable to backroutes,
even those backroutes are actually not that easy to find. In fact, one of my testers got completely stumped by this.21: Backroute. No, the Stoner staircase is not required. The intended solution is far more stupid than that.
This seems to become another thing, though: People find ways to backroute my levels with Stoner staircases and then accuse me of having made a Stoner staircase my supposed intended solution. Fortunately, a little bit of steel fixes this one!
22: Intended.
23: Almost intended. I had no idea it was possible to do it in this order!
That allowed you to not have to use the Blocker at all, instead of having to free it.
24: Almost intended. I had the Basher connecting the two crowds simultaneously cut through the pioneer's Builder staircase behind him, as I've learned it from a level in PimoLems. However, simply connecting the two crowds with the tunnel a couple of pixels below where the Builder even starts building works just as well!
And feels slightly less obscure, so it eases my conscience.
Originally, the Climber was supposed to be another semi-red-herring here as well: Tempting you to isolate the pioneer by making him a Climber, who would then go up into the fire trap. But it allowed alternative solutions too liberally, which is why there is that protruding piece of terrain now to prevent the pioneer from simply climbing out of the crowd. Thus, I'm glad to see this level's solution finally enforced!
25: Intended. The Climber is optional, allowing the player the slight leeway of stacking first before turning around. Being a Climber would then allow him to climb over his own stack (but of course, that comes with the trade-off that if he turns around again, he'll climb back over the stack and drown).
26: You did quite a few things differently than intended here - the intended solution is basically one big exercise in making a Miner go through all kinds of objects (bouncing off Blockers, going through the teleporter, then bouncing off the force field and finally off the splitter, which you have to switch once first). That's why the objects are embedded in terrain, and displayed on top of it so as to not be invisible.
At the end of the day, you still needed all the skills, and the Miner had to go through at least for some of the distance, so this is a valid alternative solution!
27: Yes, this is more of a breather; keeping the crowd contained isn't actually as hard as I initially thought. And the pillars aren't splat height either. The solution is close enough to intended, though.
28: Close to intended, saved a few skills, that's fine. Regarding the order by difficulty, I just wanted the winter level to come right after the "November" level.
29: I've come to accept that it's very hard to enforce the intended solution here... maybe if I make the Shimmier a pickup skill as well. But it will break some of the cool alternative solutions I've seen for this one. This particular one seemed a little bit too straightforward for my taste.
Again, my question to you: Did this feel like a backroute while playing? 30: The main challenge here is the iffy terrain shape.
The intended solution is pretty cool, but once again quite hard to enforce completely.