First and foremost, I had to edit this level again to prevent another backroute, this time involving the Slider. What we need to keep in mind is that now, when providing Shimmiers in combination with Sliders, 90° angles are suddenly Shimmier-friendly.
However, while the Slider is a permanent skill, every 90°-transition from Shimmier to Slider requires another instance of a Shimmier to transition back from Slider to Shimmier once he reaches the next 90° angle. So this is how you can keep those paths in check.
I've added a steel square to prevent the Slider shortcut; nothing that inteferes with the intended solution nor either of the backroutes.
- Make a thin floor with water below so that an explosion too close will lead to death.
- Make a few zombie prison cells a bit upwards over the supposed basher tunnel in the block so that the bigger explosion will dent+release them.
Those are good suggestions, IchoTolot - indeed I've seen these applied a couple of times to fix Bomber backroutes. Or at least "Bomber backroutes that only continue to work if you can make the lemming a Climber before" (like the example with the thin floor and water underneath).
With the Grenader, however, because you can vary the height of the impact depending on from where you throw,
it's more like the player always has the choice between "walking Bomber" (=grenade close up to the wall) and "climbing Bomber" (=grenade thrown from further away).The Zombie approach would require the Zombies to be inside the one-way wall, at such a height that indeed the grenade would free them but the Basher wouldn't. Since that is going to look quite ugly, and the Zombies will be completely irrelevant to the intended solution, I would consider this another "last resort" on par with making the Grenader a pickup skill.
In this particular level, one could not make all Grenaders a pickup skill, because one is required right at the start. However, of course some of them could be made into pickups.
It actually doesn't work to have the Slider land on the left side first, then throw the grenade himself to break through the ground, and continue sliding - because once he reaches the bottom, he immediately turns around and faces the fire trap already on the very first frame of being a Walker. Great way to enforce throwing from afar!
As I said, I'm not even that strongly opposed to the current Grenader crater size and shape (funnily enough, in this level I noticed that when you throw strictly from above and hit the ground with the grenade, the crater does actually look pretty circular already).
Personally, I would still accept the Grenader as it is right now and be perfectly happy about it.We just need to be very aware of its dangers, and that indeed, such "last resort" measures as almost making Grenaders pickup skills by default on most levels where they appear (which would at least be in-flavour, gotta pick up the grenade before you can use it
), or placing Zombies at awkward spots, might be required more often than not to keep those levels backroute-proof.