The Harsh Winter [Medium Size, Medium Difficulty]

Okay guys, after some wait my level is finally being released to the public.  As of now I believe that all of the earlier problems with the level have been addressed thanks to my various beta testers but if you see any issues feel free to tell me and I'll fix 'em fast.

Also, I have tested the whole level myself and all of the challenges in it are in fact possible.

Thank you Fubaka, RunMan, and Polana for beta testing this level.

Direct Download Link - http://knyttlevels.com/levels/LewisWolke%20-%20The%20Harsh%20Winter.knytt.bin

It's easy for the flaws in this to take all the attention. Your use of ambient sound is, not to put too fine a point on it, bad. Why does the rain make no sound in the forest? Why does the water never make a sound? What is with the freaky silent water in this place?! And why do I hear a creepy electrical buzzing in the village?
Poor ambient sound quickly kills the atmosphere that your beautiful tilesets could have created. Plus your music is too loud - download audacity and turn the volume down on your music!

There are a few points where a lack of attention to detail shows through - I noticed the grass changes on the far right of the village when you enter and leave the house.

The way you combine tricky jumps with monsters in the early parts of the level is just mean. Trick jumps are hard, no matter how good a player you are, and putting a lot of them with tiny landings between saves is just mean. Add the purple water monster and I almost rage-quitted at that point.

What I'm circling towards is that this has a lot of the flaws of a first level. There is no plot, basically. It pretends to have a plot but there isn't one. Your use of obstacles is a little too far on the side of hard in a level that requires so much going back and forth. I'm a good player and I enjoy the challenge but I could feel it hovering on the edge of annoying - overcoming the challenging climb at the left side of the desert only to find I'd wasted my time as I hadn't yet collected a required upgrade to benefit from doing so was irritating. Lack of attention to detail with graphics and especially with sound is a killer.

On the other hand, this is a first level, and I'd be lying if I said I hadn't made most of those mistakes myself in my first few levels, plus a good dollop of ones you avoided. You show promise, so while I know this post is mostly negative, I would stress that you shouldn't quit; keep designing, keep learning, and you'll be really good at this. Your tilesets are fantastic; this is one of the best arrays of original tilesets I've seen in any level and it's clear you have real passion and talent for that side of things.

So while this may not be the fabulous level you dreamed of it being, that doesn't mean it was a waste of time. Its a necessary stepping stone for you to become a great designer!

So if I may, I'd give you the following advice:

• Attention to detail! Especially concerning sound! Water and wind are noisy; putting the right sounds in makes the level engaging while missing them out will ruin a whole level.
• Be nice to your players; remember, as a designer your goal is to let your player have fun, not to compete against them or try and beat them. In your levels you are God, and God could easily beat us puny mortals if he really wanted to. But players don't want to be beaten, and as your aim is to entertain the player, you have to give them a fair bit of what they want!
• Don't pile on challenges to excess. Trick jumps are nasty enough; you don't need to combine them with monsters. And tone down the difficulty of screens and sequences that a player will have to pass through more than once.
• Persevere; you have the makings of a great designer so while I suspect a lot of people will be critical of this, it doesn't mean you should give up. You have to get burned if you want to learn to juggle fire. Cue that inspirational song from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

I, for one, liked this level a lot despite the things Talps mentioned.

What i especially liked was that it had just the right amount of linearity. The way i see it, the layout is a one-dimensional line leading from the farm to the castle, with several small "branches" of less than five screens each. It's pretty much impossible to get lost that way, and you always know where to go, provided you took the time to look what was in that pit, or to the left of your house. (The only exception being the blue key.) On the other hand, it's not so linear that there is nothing to explore, either. The sidepaths, along with the fact that you start off slightly toward the center (with only one way to go initially) give you the amount of exploratoriosity that's needed in KS without going too far or not far enough for the style you went for.

Also, i don't get why it's Hard/Very Hard. I'd say it was more along the lines of Normal, but that's just me.

I quite enjoyed this level. I especially liked the catchy music and the interesting jumping challenges (for example, x996 y996 made me scratch my head for a while).

I do have a couple suggestions:
It wasn't always clear to me which way to go, and it was annoying to backtrack once I realized I didn't have the right powerup. (I ended up using God Mode to jump around the level because of this). Making it quickly obvious that a powerup is needed (like Nifflas does in The Machine) makes the level more fun.

Second, while the tilesets looked great, the environment had a feeling of sameness to it. Most really good Knytt Stories levels have a feeling of tension or mystery to them. Adding dialogue, story, and atmospheric sound can help. Also, for me, placing the setting of the level (largely) underground or inside makes everything feel a bit more surreal.

One last thing: I saw a winter version of much of the level (which was really neat!), but there didn't seem to be anything new in it. It would have been great fun to find a secret in some corner of the winter version of the level. Did I miss something?

Looking forward to your future levels! 

It wasn't always clear to me which way to go, and it was annoying to backtrack once I realized I didn't have the right powerup. (I ended up using God Mode to jump around the level because of this). Making it quickly obvious that a powerup is needed (like Nifflas does in The Machine) makes the level more fun.

This is my biggest complaint. Having to go backtrack because of inconvenient powerup placement, bleh 

I agree with the most the criticism and nice tilesets only get you so far. bad ambiance, surreal layout and some unfair lack of checkpoints.
Though I think the plot you have is ok. A level doesn't need to have an involved story and some really do better without them, this is a good example of that and I like it just fine.

I also think the winter part is too short, I just run right past it. It feels like there should be more screens here as it has its own music and the level is called the harsh winter we see awful little winter. Also, a transaction between desert canyon and winter woodland is kinda strange.

I liked it. Lovely graphics.

Gorgeous level. I was really impressed by how you handled building interiors. The challenges were all very well designed, to me they felt often very difficult, but always fair. You did a good job reducing the possibility of death by random annoying projectile or timing issues. Slightly more save points might have been nice, especially with rooms like x996y995 (presumably the one millsmess meant to refer to) as I had to die there several times to figure out the right approach.

I personally think the level fell short of having "just the right amount of linearity". I was glad you left both alternate paths open (and able to be traversed in both directions) but whether the player reaches power-ups in a quick and fulfilling order relies heavily on luck. I didn't have a problem with the area transitions.

Overall I liked it. It wasn't too difficult or unfair, and there were only about 3 places I would've added an extra save point.

While I understand the criticism of having to backtrack because you didn't have the correct power-up, I sort of liked having a somewhat "open" world. It goes back to the basics and made me think back to Nifflas' first levels, which is a good thing.

I also liked the Birch, Winter Birch and the underground/interior areas. Very nice. Your challenges in the castle I thought were perfect.

I thought the Desert and Farm areas were a tiny bit boring, though,

Your tilesets are simply beautiful.  Some of the best I've ever seen.  And I LOVE the music!  Several of the challenges were tough, though I wouldn't label it as "very hard". 

QUESTION:  I won, technically, by dropping off the food and making it winter on the land, but I never found the red or purple key, the eyeball or secret-detector.  Are they in your game?  I've been running around the winter landscape and the other tilesets for a while but simply can't find anything.

QUESTION:  I won, technically, by dropping off the food and making it winter on the land, but I never found the red or purple key, the eyeball or secret-detector.  Are they in your game?  I've been running around the winter landscape and the other tilesets for a while but simply can't find anything.

AFAIK there are no ghost blocks, detect target tiles, or red and purple locks, nor is there any secret ending. Not having the powerups is completely normal for this level. Sometimes it just isn't beneficial to have certain powerups, depending on the level design.

This is quite a nice level, the only thing that made me really scratch my head was the jump on the way back from collecting the crate.

It's the first level that made me realized Juni's double jump goes higher with the umbrella closed and actually made me use that to clear a gap.

Good job.