[Challenge] [Hard/Lunatic] [Small] The White Spire

The White Spire is a short adventure in which you must find your way up to the top of a sorcerer's tower in order to dispel a very nasty (and visually lacking) eternal night curse that was unleashed upon Juni's world.

It's basically your standard retro-themed challenge level. Two difficulty modes (Hard and Lunatic) are supported, and there are two? different endings you can get.


This level was made for the 2020 Un-epic Level Contest hosted by Purple Ink. It's also the first level where I tried to compose my own soundtrack from scratch (just the main theme though). Hopefully the end result won't make anyone's ears bleed... too much

Thanks for playing (and happy new year!) I'm really glad you enjoyed the song   It's my first serious attempt at making my own game music and I was worried that the PC-Speaker-style beeping would be a bit too overbearing. Apparently that wasn't the case, which is great!

A nice level. Reminds me I really need to play the CGA temple.
The music is great, I love the way it begins.
However, i got stuck,

Well, I played hard mode.

A really nice little challenge level. Particular congratulations for designing a puzzle that uses the detector well.

My lawyers say I don't have a case.

Thanks for the kind words, guys!

@Comhon:

@Talps: Hooray! Good thing my legal team advised me to go with white instead of light gray

I'm always tempted to give the detector a more active role in challenges/puzzles instead of just using it for marking secrets (we need a "Detector Appreciation" thread here!). It's easy to get carried away though, and it's hard to get it to work well with nearby enemies/obstacles that make you glow red.

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By the way, I wanted to say I updated the level to add both a minor bugfix and one of those weird, super-obscure easter egg thingies I personally enjoy probably a bit too much   However, I noticed someone uploaded the level to the archive the day after the initial release. While it was probably done with good intentions, this is something I'd much rather do myself at some point (once I'm fairly sure I won't be including any new content nor bug fixes). I already got it sorted out thanks to J's help though, so no worries

Yesterday I finally managed to finish the level (on hard difficulty). That high jump collecting took a lot of effort. I can't see myself playing the Lunatic variant. Maybe after few years when I now just started enjoying playing hard KS levels. Similarly I wore in my review of Tomatoes Gaiden today, after finishing the level I really enjoyed the ending which was really satisfying after so much effort.

Glad you enjoyed the level! Yeah, that particular jump may be a tad too tricky, especially if you attempt to do it with the umbrella open the whole time (although it *should* still be doable if you hold S to maximize your jump height).

I've updated the level to v1.2, which includes a fix for an issue with screen warps in Lunatic mode discovered by Gliperal, a change to one of the Lunatic screens to "further encourage" one particular solution and a couple SGEs fixed. Download link remains the same as the one I originally published in the first post.

Realised I never commented here! This is a great level. I haven't tried the lunatic version yet but the hard version challenges felt fun and not too difficult. Things were fairly straight forward in how to progress so I never felt at a lose of what to do. Great job.

Hard mode was manageable for me. The jump to the long-jump powerup was probably the most difficult part, and I ended up piecing together that I could wall jump off the side for extra distance, use my umbrella when falling, put away umbrella to double jump, and use umbrella when falling, to successfully make the jump. May be unnecessary but it worked! Also, after struggling a lot at the end, I had to remind myself that you can hold jump to ascend airstreams faster with the umbrella. It was a good length, the layout was memorable, and there were a bunch of interesting platforming/puzzles I hadn't seen before. The secret areas were well hidden, and the bouncy one was awesome! The music fit a monochrome challenge tower perfectly. Liked the little story segments too. Good level

Nice level, and music!
I'm lost with the Lunatic path though. I can't get how to do the very first challenge with a shooting fish, I cheated through it for now, but now I've no idea how get the Eye.

Finally managed to do the Lunatic path from start to finish after returning to knytting.