(warning: this topic will have spoilers)
Since I recently solved a level I was working on for a while I can relate exactly my process for solving it. And I wanted to discuss this to hopefully better understand how other people solve levels and learn something about creating them.
The level is “Move on in two Separate Groups” (Sunsoft 23) from Genesis. *see attachment
I’m fairly certain if anybody cares to talk about their solution to this level it will be different.
The first thing I did was take a look at the terrain and look for the immediate apparent plausible route. Which I decided was going upward, through the large twisted pillar. I also considered going under that if it didn’t work but noted it would almost definitely take more builders.
You need 100% so the blocker seemed a ruse at first, because I always associate undermining blockers with glitchy behavior (idk really know why, you were required to do it in the first game; it’s a stupid association). Regardless I immediately thought of using the blocker on the left where I could easily free him by bashing under the steps. This takes up 2 bashers however, if I wanted to get a worker on that side, which I thought from early on I really needed one. You can bash right but then too many lemmings clustered out so I was forced the use more than just one builders to prevent them from dying so I pretty much ruled that way out. I found no way of bridging that gap from the other side. This also got me into a habit of using only one builder at the gap and prevented me from seeing the need for 2 builders there early on.
Letting that side go for now, I focused on the upper entrance. From that entrance lemmings will be trapped in the twisted pipe. With no climbers the only way to get them turned around and going left is to use a builder. First I just did that; making all the lemmings fall into the area around the steps and pretty much trapped for now. The fact that just two builders would get them out of that area wasn’t clear to me at all until I tested it out much later. I didn’t even bother testing because it just didn’t look possible. It’s kind of hard to tell but 1 builder will just make it from the left upper steps to the twisted pillar. Eventually I came up with the plan of;
-block on the left, build over that gap. Then free that blocker.
-on the right, build to turn around then when they get down in the small step space bash left to make a path for the left lemmings.
I then gave up for a while and when I came back to this level I first came up with the habit of letting 1 lemming (on the right) fall into the twisted pillar to bash right toward the exit then build above him to block off so I could bash again later to complete that way. This always ended in running out of bashers. Which led me to stop blocking on the left and looking for another way to hold back the left crowd, or just brute build over the gap.
Eventually I discovered you can build once on the right over the crack in the twisted pillar, bash, build and build only once more to stall/turn around one lemming and the way is then safe. There was then only two lemmings that went down to the left. The way was pretty much clear then.
So in the end it seems that a simple miss misunderstanding in the beginning combined with some stubbornness is what kept this level from me.
After I have a solution I can look back and say that the main problem here is that I didn’t test enough. 1 major stumbling block for me was getting up the stairs next to the twisted pillar. However I can say that if the designers purposely made that difficult to see; they succeeded. (If this was intentional or not, something tells me it wasn’t)
Visual elements effect me a lot so it seems.
The hardest levels, I believe, are those in which you need to ‘create a method to solve it’.
A good example is ‘No added colours or lemmings’ from Mayhem OL. the solution is a procedure not similar to any other yet in that game.
Another way is the old; “eliminate whatever is impossible and the solution will present itself”. While I can confirm this worked for me a few times, it’s doesn’t always work so well for me. Simply removing everything that’s impossible just makes it seem more impossible.