This "design as hard level as possible" theme is turning out to be similar than "design a level which is solved by 4 people for example", because of the challenge of creating a backrouteless level, and many good players. So, I think, in both cases many people will solve lots of levels, perhaps, and now I find this scoring system appropriate (as I at first maybe thought that I would have liked to see contest levels with moderate difficulties). Now it seems that due to backroutes many people will get full points although this contest was about creating hard levels, but that shouldn't matter too much. So, I think this type of scoring for the main category was the correct choice, and I find this very fun still!
This is why I didn't participate in this. 1. It takes me forever to come up with a hard level. 2. There's bound to be backroutes and fixing them is annoying. (Which is already happening, which is funny )
That said, I definitely find that there is room for different kind of levels by difficulty also. I guess it would appeal a wider audience, if all levels won't be very hard. And I think the affect to the success of the author who makes an easy level for the contest is very little. I'd encourage everyone to join this kind of contest although one doesn't like to create hard levels. In my opinion, the difficulty really doesn't matter! The more of variety of different levels, authors, difficulties, everything, the better.
I've really been thinking what I want to do with my level!
At first I thought that I like to see everyone's solution for my level, and I didn't mind backroutes. Proxima found an awesome solution which I like, geoo's one were against the idea of my level and Pooty backrouted it in the same way I did after I submitted my level. I haven't got Clam's replay to work yet. So, I'd say that geoo and Pooty have backrouted my level so far, but I'm happy to see that there aren't fatal backroutes at all! And I really would appreciate the feedback related to my level from you, because I haven't done levels before. Anyway, I guess I'm still going to upload a second version after a while.
Marble tileset is quite unsurprisingly the most used tileset in this contest with 3 levels. Then there are 2 brick levels, one dirt and one rock level. I give respect for Gronkling and geoo for picking these less used tilesets, which both are known of bumpy terrain.
I was expecting that someone would have made a crystal level (
probably the favourite tileset of the community) for the contest, but no at this time.
I went for brick just because I wanted to make my first ever serious Lemmings level with my clear favourite tileset.
Gronkling hasn't visited in a while, I'm curious of the possible backroute fixes for that level.
Also, I noticed that there are now two topics titled exactly "Level design contest!", hopefully that won't confuse anyone.