Woooooooooooooooooooooo I finished it!
There were still a couple of places where the lack of a savepoint within what felt to me like a reasonable number of screens made me gnash my teeth at having to run thru those same screens (between savepoint and deathpoint) again and again, but for normal difficulty, I'm presuming -- especially taking into account others' comments -- that in general you've struck the right balance between 'savepoint here because otherwise it's sadistic' and 'savepoint here would make this area less challenging than it should be.'
Much of why I couldn't get past where I'd last saved before upgrading to v1.3, I discovered once I noticed the mention of it in the walkthrough, was that I had not recognised the door by the Machine Room portal as being a door. It looked on my screen almost exactly like the grates elsewhere in the area; it never occurred to me to try going thru it, so I was stuck in the past. On the one hand, I found some things rather out of order, like the pumping room & aquifer access, and one toast... but then on the other hand I didn't yet have the powerups to be able, with my lack of gameplay skills, to get anywhere in those areas.
I even managed to get all three endings, an eventual grade of A (not A+ yet but much better than my initial D grade with the first ending), 6/10 delicious Easter eggs, and 16 out of the 24 'secrets and missables' you listed on the walkthru. I may or may not try to find the rest of the toast before the Easy version comes out.
There are so many things I loved about this level. I honestly think it's good enough, in enough ways that are unique to it, that it's going to change KS and the way people design for and play it, from here on out. First and foremost -- even beyond the awesome things you did with the background graphics and the cutscenes including the ending-continue options -- is the way 'A Knytt in Time' really is a Knytt
story.
Many levels
have a story
line; and many levels
suggest or
evoke a story as one plays them; and some levels tell
small, discrete stories
within their overarching story
line (think of Gaia's Library). A few excellent levels have all those story-related features. But AKiT is the only level I've seen that is
telling a story which
the player-character is part of. (No, even Nifflas's levels don't quite manage this. Though 'A Strange Dream' comes close.) The storytelling aspect of the game is actually right in line with the best of Interactive Fiction -- the all-grown-up name for those olllld-school text-adventure games like 'Zork' and 'Adventure' -- and may, if we're lucky, draw some talent from the still-thriving I.F. community, which would be a win-win situation for everyone, really. I sincerely hope we're going to look back at the release of 'A Knytt in Time' as a watershed event in the development of KS levels.
Your beautiful (and amusing -- please don't take all my praise of other aspects of the level as giving the humour scattered so liberally thru the level short shrift) cutscenes contributed so much to the story aspect of this level. Someone said just recently, elsewhere in the forums, that cutscenes are overrated; I can't imagine that whoever said that has played 'A Knytt in Time' yet. In fact, I took a screenshot of one of the early cutscenes back when I first started trying to play the level, for the express purpose of pointing to its awesomeness here on the forums. (I then got so distracted by skill-fail-death frustration and being 'stuck' that I forgot about it entirely, but that's another Story.) It's attached at the end of this comment, as it really is Teh Best Screenshot EVAR.
I also threw in a screenshot that's one of many, many screens in the level, chosen at random from among my favourites, which I found strikingly beautiful, aesthetically speaking. I often paused when passing thru screens like that just to admire them. So often you could have just put in the necessary tiles and that would have been sufficient, but you optimised many, many screens for aesthetics. (N.B. I would love to see you do an environmental. The LoCP version of AKiT will nearly be one, but I mean as your second -- or third or fourth, I'm not greedy -- level.)
Just to be clear, I am
still very very much looking forward to the LoCP version! Maybe we'll make you an honourary member...
edited because --hunh. The Save button doesn't even look anything like
the Choose File button. Well, this is why posting when one is on the verge of falling asleep is a bad idea. Second screenshot attached now, and also I mentioned everything I meant to... for now.edited again to hide the screenshot Egomassive felt was too spoilery for the first 10 minutes of the game -- oops! Now spoiler-tagged.