I've taken a look at the solutions Strato's 3 levels now:
MicrocosmThe slider confuses me here I must say. It only really turns around and gets a lemming down twice and that could be easily emulated with a slight level layout change:
Extending the water area to the area where he would land and give him a swimmer. Remove the ramp to the water pit so he can get out and a wall on the right so he can turn. That way it's secured that only the swimmer can turn there.
This would also make 1 builder not nessesary so it can be culled and make the level more backroute proofed.The other 2 turnarounds at the spears and the builder cancel each other out and are just for looks.
Otherwise it nicely shows the spear serving as a ramp to land on for a shimmier.
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The CreationAgain, the slider usage seems a bit basic here as it just turns around a lem 2 times and not even bringing him down on another level.
You also need into invest another builder just for turnarounds! And this results in me breaking the level wide open - attached a replay. I think using another grenader or a well thrown spearer could be more backroute proofed there and you can cull that 2nd builder + the stacker!--------------------------------
Thus spoke ZarathustraThis uses the slider better with the shimmier interaction. In general shimmiers tend to act well together with 3 of the 4 new skills. Although placing the big pillar at the right side just screams "simply glide into it to get down" instead of giving
2 extra shimmiers and the slider! This can be done by 1 glider if the terrain below is slightly extended.
But the slider shimmier transition is still one of the stronger points of the skill in my opinion.
The infinite holding pit at the bottom only would need 1 terrain block at the left and the top slider usage could be emulated with a lem jumping up again when he turned around at the right though.
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All in all, you showed nice tricks with the slider but especially the turning around one has a major flaw in your examples: You need extra skills to make it happen and especially the case of using the builder
only to turn around a slider has so many possibilities for exploits as extra builders are easily exploitable. And the turning around part can easily be emulated by so many other interaction or slight terrain changes. My replay here would serve as an example.
This could be improved thogh: I suggest if you use a skill only to turn around a slider, make the skill do something else on top of that!
This way the slider interaction helps making another nessesary skill in the level even more important!I think this rule could be used to make better levels highlighting the uniqueness of the slider! Again, I take the slider over a new object any day! I just see that it still can easily substituted in many cases by existing behaviors so the better levels will likely find ways to highlight unique features without giving out extra skills that lead to easy exploits. Namida's "Pendantic Phaser" would be a good example here.
Your levels made very good showcases for the spearer and laserer though. Especially in combination with the shimmier.