Side Quest

Dang, that was hard! How in the world did you get a BLACK ball? That was a total surprise, and there's also an interesting trick to get him to a lower level when there are no stairs and no ability to jump. Though at first, I was going to label this as unplayable, until that trick happened. Excellent!

Well, I did beat it but I'm still left wondering if that was HOW I was supposed to make it through. It felt like I was using block collusion bugs to complete the level. 2 stars for lack of clear direction.

@Keyfox Yes, you did it right. There's actually even 2 ways to get up there, one was unintentional on my part.

My aim with this puzzle was to not have a clear direction... that's what makes it confusing and challenging.

If you learned something new about the game physics then... mission accomplished.

@retrograde
Bingo!

Ok - i got it! But..

Spoiler

The pink ball up front is total misdirection, right? Cos i succeeded twice using only the black ball up top. Once by leaving it in situ, and again by jumping it out of its home into another - either way using it as a bridge to get to the ledge for B to climb on R's hat. Which way were you intending it as the author? Also, i had no problem going up and down the stairs, to bully R into the corner. Is there a trick that i missed?

@Gepeto @trids This was really my first puzzle level and there were a couple of tricks I didn't yet know about at the time of creation.

Spoiler

The original intention was for the "Rail Lift" to be the only way up to the upper platform. As it turns out, one can get also up via the "Squeeze Lift" or "Focus Lift" techniques. One can too get down from it via the "Focus Drop" trick, where the intention was to the one-use path with the visible ball to get down. The need for the black ball at least still holds up.

Looking back it's quite amazing the number of tricks and constructs that have surfaced over the few months since Mekorama was first released. Certainly more will be found, but I suspect most of the more obvious exploits have been discovered.

@Gepeto It's technically my 4th level, but it's the first one that I employed any real physics exploits. I deleted my very first level as it's mechanics were just too flaky.

I saw at least new 2 physics exploits over the past week (the cylinder-stair drop in Mini Pagoda, the bot-slider gate trick in Final Guard, and maybe the zapper-bot tricks in my Deadly Serious level, though I'm not sure if I'm the first one using them). So the tricks are still piling up.

Some of the newbies definitely get thrown off by some of the tricks. Sometimes they'll ding you stars for that, but whatever. There are a lot a good levels to learn tricks from these days with excellent spoiler clues. Another good way to learn is to posts your own levels and have people poke holes in them using the tricks you didn't know. That can be a bit frustrating for the creator, but also highly instructive. There is a lot of helpful people on the forum too, once the newcomers see that they tend to chillax.

Another tricky one. Thanks!