Played it through in one session. I must say - I'm very impressed! :thumbsup:
As I was promised by Proxima, there were no X-of-everything levels here, just nice little puzzles. And as IchoTolot said, some were surprisingly hard! In particular, "Snow Apologies" was the first level when I realised that this was not going to be a cakewalk all the way through. Some levels that came after that one of course were easier again.
I guess the reason I'm surprised by someone submitting a rather high-quality pack as their first offering is because very few first-time level pack creators go through the effort of having their packs tested prior to release. This decision was definitely worth it, in your case!
A lot of people seem to sign up for the forum with a pack already in hand (unless they are only here to play, of course). The pack is their way of introducing themselves.
This pack however was different. I think I remember you created a development thread for it first, so you definitely took your time with it! ;)
My only small gripes with the pack are of visual nature:
1) The levels are very small, so I found myself having to zoom in to the maximum possible on most levels.
2) I'm personally not a fan of grouping levels in ranks by tilesets - this is also one of my main gripes with Lemmings 2: The Tribes, where I keep jumping around between tribes for this exact reason :P . But that's just personal preference of course. The subjective impression of the levels being a little "repetitive" is amplified though by the fact that a lot of levels within one rank seem to have been developed from the same starting idea - and then you basically gave us 8 variations of that same core design.
The latter point was particularly true for the Bubble and the Pillar levels; the Snow and especially the Marble levels displayed much greater variety, which I liked! :thumbsup:
The Marble levels also required less zoom. Therefore the final rank was my favourite overall, I'd say.
Because all levels from one tileset seem to be physically related, of course also certain aspects of the solutions repeat. Or maybe they are just skill moves you like particularly much. ;) I've noticed the following tricks showing up repeatedly:
- Stacker-Walker staircases. Only in small amounts, though, basically only as a way to quickly gain a little bit of height where needed. Nowhere near as extreme as other packs, including my own, have taken them. :evil:
- assigning Blockers right beneath the hatch so that they continue walking in the correct direction when freed with a Walker at the end
- turning a worker lemming around with a Walker before he gets to work (e.g. with destructive skills) - because there are only enough Walkers to turn him around once. Thus, he needs to look into the correct direction before he starts e.g. digging, then bashing etc., so that he looks into the correct direction for all the skill performances, instead of having to turn around between skill performances. The latter would consume an additional Walker, because Walkers can always only either cancel a skill or turn a lemming around, never both at once. This is a great thing to keep using, though! :thumbsup: A small detail that can easily trip the player up, and it's always hiding in plain sight!
I'm personally more familiar with a variation of is, which is timing the assignment of a Climber carefully, so that a lemming turns around whereever needed while he's still a regular lemming, until you change his status for good. Official examples of this include "Take care sweetie" from ONML; the epitome of this idea would probably be "Introducing: Climbers" from NepsterLems.
And honourable mention goes to the level "Alas Poor Doric" :thumbsup:!
I didn't know Climbers could climb while in water. :lem-mindblown: I just found out by accident while playing this level.
Although I guess I could have figured it out logically as well, given that I've done the inverse of this on an earlier version of one of my Lemmings Open Air levels: Climbers can climb up terrain that has water trigger areas placed upon it, but only if they are Swimmers. Otherwise, they drown, because the Climber's trigger is 1 pixel inside the wall.
I think in this case, the water trigger area actually only extends up to the wall; it doesn't cover the first row of pixels anymore. Thus, once the Climber is attached to the wall, he technically wouldn't even have to be a Swimmer anymore, I believe - because he's outside of the water trigger area at that point. He just needs to be a Swimmer to get to that position in the first place, because that path leads through water.
I'm already curious to attempt the follow-up pack to this! :thumbsup:
One question though: What is the purpose of the levels in the additional folders referring to other tilesets (e.g. Casino Night)? The files are in there, but those folders aren't listed as ranks, so that the player doesn't include them when playing the pack. Did you decide to cut those levels for good? Or as they supposed to be added to the pack later on? ;)
That's it from me. My replays are attached. Keep up the good work! :thumbsup: