One memory that I have that fits this thread perfectly has to go to the "alien invasion" from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Well, I say "alien invasion" but the game never really states what they are exactly, but they are at least and most definitely not from this world. To give some background for anyone that doesn't know and doesn't care about spoilers (I mean I know the game is old but just in case because you never know ) you have to reach Romani Ranch on the first day in order to reunite with your missing horse in order to continue the main game, but a sidequest is offered to you while you are there. The sidequest is to help Romani keep out mysterious creatures that appear at the ranch yearly (the "aliens"). Once you come back to the ranch during the night of that same first day those aliens will appear and start to slowly approach the barn. While the look of these creatures is not the scariest thing ever, it's a combination of the very eerie music that plays during this event, the urgency of the situation as they just keep coming and respawning even if defeated, and the consequences that occur if you fail to keep them at bay that made this a rather memorable and above all scary moment for me as a kid.

Finally got around to trying out these levels on Hurt Me Plenty because I'm not good Overall I enjoyed them very much Here's some more detailed feedback below:

Map 6

I really liked the idea of this one: starting out deep underground and having to battle your way through hordes of demons up a very large elevator onto the surface and leaving the level through a guarded gate which was a very nice touch aesthetic wise and concept wise. It felt very Doom 2 like with its level design (in a good way though). This is the one that I died the most on trying to figure out a good strategy to deal with all the demons that pour out. Fortunately, it wasn't frustrating and it didn't really feel unfair, as there were plenty of places to hide, move around, and many different items in order to deal with everything. The only negative I found is extremely small but maybe worth mentioning: I had a bit of trouble in the large dark room in front of the large elevator. I don't know if it's the level or just my computer's brightness but I had some trouble finding the buttons you had to push in order to set things in motion. It didn't really take that long to find them so it's a very, very small nitpick.

Map 19

This one was my favorite from the two maps! I remember watching you play this on YouTube a while back but I didn't remember the layout at all so it was pretty much blind. I absolutely loved the aesthetics and theming of this one and I really liked the non-linear nature of the level. It wasn't too convoluted, so after a while I was able to figure out where I was and where I had to go without constantly getting lost which made exploring the level very satisfying. Unfortunately, I did have one small roadblock on this level. I couldn't for the life of my figure out how to get the yellow keycard. I had to look up your playthrough of the level in order to figure it out. To be fair the things you had to shoot to get the keycard were yellow so the hint was there, but I don't know if I was just being extremely stupid which is not out of the realm of possibility Regardless it didn't sour my experience on the level at all and I still really enjoyed this one!

I have heard of Nier: Automata but I had no idea what it was or what it was about. Good to know now! I must admit that the whole "nihilism in the media" thing is something I really didn't notice but it could be because I don't really actively watch a lot of things now-a-days and only play a few selected modern day games so maybe that's why. As someone who considers themselves the complete opposite of that philosophy, I actually don't mind it as long as it's used in a way that is in service to the narrative the person wants to tell or show instead of it being slapped on because that's what all the cool kids are doing with no real reason or direction (and to be fair that goes with everything else as well).

Also I've noticed that your relationship to anime is actually quite common among a lot of people I know... it's definitely not for everyone. I'm personally starting to get into it now-a-days because I just like how different and fun it can be such as, for example, the blending of "random stuff" into one setting if done correctly.

Thank you guys so much for the quick replays I will try to check them all out over the weekend and try to get an update out a year later from now lamo next week

Quote from: WillLem
Although the advertised difficulty of this pack is "Easy-Very Hard", I would suggest a rating of "Medium-Advanced", based on this Difficulty Scale.

IchoTolot also suggested this change but I forgot he did and this reminded me of that so I'll go ahead and change it

This is a scrapped level from Lemmings Destination which appeared in the development thread but not in the final product It was actually a design I came up with using another level that was posted on this same thread from Arty, and now I'm giving someone else a chance to use this level in any way they see fit because I couldn't come up with anything cool. No credit is needed.

About 30,000 years ago my ancestors announced on a nearby cave wall an update to Lemmings Destination. It never came and it became a myth, but after all these years it's finally here!

Please see original post for the updated pack.

Backroute fixes and other small changes:

Spoiler

Helium 11: Ride The Nessy! - Turned talisman from silver to bronze and renamed it to "Without Safety Precautions"

Helium 8: Don't Steal Our Honey! - The letter terrain pieces now point to "flopsy_honeycomb_ex"



Neon 6: Moonstroke - Added a talisman ("Stroke-Proof") thanks to Armani's solution

Neon 10: Stack Of Packaged Sand - Altered more terrain a little bit in order to enforce the use of both climbers



Argon 2: Restricted Area - Hollowed out the large platform under the right hatch

Argon 3: Harbor No Hard Feelings - Added more steel over the exit

Argon 12: Jurassic Park - Added a talisman ("Life Finds A Way") thanks to Armani's solution

Argon 17: Periphery Influence - Added a digger pickup skill, removed one blocker, and altered some terrain towards the middle section

Argon 19: Like A True Gentleman - Added some steel on the starting platform



Xenon 2: Snow Patrol - Added a piece of steel on the left hand side

Xenon 3: Security Weak Spot - Shorten platform on the left hand side to prevent a lemming from bashing from it in order to fall on top of the one-way wall

Xenon 6: They Complain About Blockades - Changed the save requirement to 38

Xenon 8: Life With Mystery - Drastic changes to the terrain in the middle. Hopefully the intended solution is worth these fixes

Xenon 9: NessyTV Presents... - Added steel on the tiny light blue platform

Xenon 11: Instant Ninjas - Like a ninja, sliced a big chunk of the starting terrain

Xenon 12: Lem Me Go Next - Made a platform at the center thicker and added another trap in the center near the lizard trap

Xenon 13: Freeze Frame - Added more steel to the left of the exit (Armani's solution was spot on though!)

Xenon 14: Tether Circus Level - Add a vertical pole at the bottom to prevent building

Xenon 19: It Bee Like That Sometimes - Added one more tile of steel under the bottom of the entrance on the right



Radon 3: The Hanger - Removed some of the decorative terrain on the top right to prevent a climber from hitting their head and turning around at that exact spot

Radon 4: Nightcrawler - Increased the height of one of the center towers a little bit

Radon 6: A Mind Of My Own - Added steel all around the level

Radon 8: Suspension Bridge - Pool at the bottom is bigger

Radon 10: The Weirder Side Of Things - Added some water in the gaps that are in the large tower in the center

Radon 12: Pit And Wit - Sliced off one pixel from the bottom of the starting platform

Radon 15: In Case Of Emergency - Not sure how to fix this level so added a trap towards the bottom part of the level and we shall see what happens...

Radon 16: City Escape - Massive terrain change to the platform on the left and swapped a platformer with one more stacker

Radon 17: Dove In An Elevator - Thanks to Armani's solutions was able to raise the save requirement to 58 and remove a bomber which also fixes another backroute

Radon 18: Unbreakable - Raised the ice traps under the left entrance up and outwards and also added some icicles to prevent an unintended splatform at the bottom

Radon 20: Final Destination - QUICK NOTE: This level was not meant to be the hardest level in the pack, but was meant to be a final send-off, so any solution that solves it is perfect okay

@Crane and @ericderkovits both of your solutions are very similar and even though they aren't the original intended solution I like the variation of it (especially since you used all the skills), so it's totally an acceptable alternate solution. Well done

@kaywhyn same thing as above and commented on the LP

What an excellent idea for a thread! I'll take a turn next.

My relationship with speedrunning is actually kind of interesting. I LOVE the concept of speedrunning and I am constantly following a lot of different speedrunners that also talk about the science behind the speedruns of many different types of games. Believe it or not though, I kind of dislike speedrunning myself... the keyword being "kind of".

So here's the thing: it's not a matter of time or skill but I just seem to dislike having to play a game over and over again in order to grind for a better time. I know that's kind of stupid because that's what speedrunning is all about. You get on the grind so that you can get better at the game and get a better time, but it's just not fun for me and I would often times just get frustrated and unmotivated with it. Considering that I do this purely in my free time, I decided to hell with it. I'm going to have fun going through a game as fast as possible, and everything else will be secondary.

So that's exactly what I did. I would look up some speedrun strats in a game that I could realistically do in a run that are at my level, practice them a little bit, and then just go for it. Sometimes I have a LiveSplit timer going to track my progress but sometimes I don't even have a timer and just being able to beat an entire game in one sitting using cool looking, unintended strats is satisfying enough for me (the latter is actually more rare because I like having some type of idea of how fast I went).

One of the first games I tried to speedrun was the Any% categories of Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, but I never came back to them. In the first SMB game I think I got something around a 5:35 with a successful 4-2 wrong warp which made it more of a highlight for me. However, given how short this run is having to play the first level hundreds of times after a mistake was just annoying I might try doing a Warpless run in the future though. The SMB2 speedrun is one that I actually did stream once, but once again I just got tired of playing the same levels again and again and wanted to just take a break but I ended up never coming back to it after that stream.

A recent one I did try to speedrun last year was Super Mario Bros. 3 in the Warpless category (Warpless because Any% was too many autoscollers that weren't balanced with the non-autoscroller stages in Warpless). I ended that run with a time of 1:26:52. I actually really liked that category and I might actually make a more serious attempt at it in the future. The movement of that game can be extremely fast and fun especially when people can master it.

Another area I dipped into was speedrunning Mega Man games, mostly the first two games of the classic series and some fangames. Those speedruns would start off extremely fun but then become extremely unfun towards the endgame given the insane difficult of the later stages of these games. My solution to this was actually simple: I would only speedrun the robot master stages. This would also allow me to throw in the extra challenge of running multiple games in a mini-marathon where I must destroy all the robot masters of, let's say, the first three games. This was way, way more fun for me and something I will probably do A LOT more of in the future.

This idea of playing through multiple games but not all the way through is actually an idea that came to me recently after watching a race where speedrunners had to play through 20 NES games but instead of playing them all all the way to the end they had to complete certain objectives in them. For example, in the Legend of Zelda all they had to do was clear Level 5, in Metroid they needed to get 6 energy tanks, and in Super Mario Bros. 3 they only had to clear three fortresses. I loved this concept. It's something right up my alley and something to consider in the future!

@Armani

Your solution is actually intended but it seems to have been a bit more precise than my solution. Basically, the release rate and terrain width was set in such a way so that you can do that trick with the blocker right from the start and then use the bomber to free the blocker and get a climber at the top of the level. But I'm not super picky about the way you did it though because the main idea is there so well done good sir

A Rock and a Hard Place V3!

- Moved a piece of terrain in the middle wall one pixel to right to prevent a backroute.
- Extended the crystal wall in the middle to the ceiling to prevent more backroute potential.

A Rock and a Hard Place V2 solutions are still backroutes, but a little bit more on the right track Might have to slightly tweak my solution to get a V3 fix working... although after testing, it actually allows the whole solution to flow much better so that's awesome.

A bit late to the party but every solution posted on here related to my Rule 1 level has been a backroute. I have updated it now

I finally got and started playing Spelunky 2... like a lot... a lot. It definitely is way harder than the first game, but fortunately I managed to score my first main game win a couple of days ago The next thing I want to aim for is the second ending win which I feel like I can realistically do. However, the third ending looks like it might be way too brutal for me personally I'm curious if anyone else on here has managed to complete that final world and get the third ending?

But in other news I'm more than ready to get back into Lemmings. Not playing levels... but actually making something new after doing some overdue updates on my previous works

Thanks @namida for that info

An update on my return to Spelunky HD

I have managed to reach Hell a total of two times now (one time during regular play and the other time during a Daily Challenge) but being too unfamiliar with the hazards has left me unable to get pass the first level in that world so far

A bit late to the party but a big congratulations to IchoTolot for a well-deserved win

Also congratulations to Armani for two well-deserved runner ups as well