Head over Heels - Dungeonalia entry

One of the things I’m really quite enjoying about making this game is putting some thought into the different “puzzle rooms” – especially those with items the player really needs to collect, in order to win the game.

In the original game, players had to collect items like a hooter (to shoot doughnuts) and some doughnuts (to shoot at the baddies) and a handbag (to be able to pick up things) as well as little fluffy bunnies that might give you extra lives or limited shields or extra-high jump abilities.

Many of these things could be optionally left out, and the game still completed. But one thing you couldn’t leave behind was the crowns needed to liberate each planet.

Crowns were invariably up on high places, and usually the player had to work out how to get to them. So I quite enjoyed creating this room.

Unfortunately, since I’ve invented the puzzle, I don’t quite get the same enjoyment as someone else, who would have to work out how to collect the crown without having the solution to hand

spoiler alert, it’ll require Head to stand under the blocks to the right, for Heels to jump on top of Head, then from there jump up onto the floating blocks and collect the spring (since there isn’t room for both to jump up onto the floating blocks combined, and Head can’t collect items). Then Heels will need to jump up the “stepping stones” to drop the spring on top of the other floating blocks. Then place Heels on the floor, in front of the floating blocks, have Head climb/jump up and push the spring on top of Mr Heels’ head. This should place the spring high enough that Head can now jump off the spring and on top of the crown.

Phew! Talk about team work makes the dream work!

Anyway, a big feature of this (and probably many other) room(s) is the big chimney stack that the crown sits on.

I couldn’t find any rounded chimney bricks across the interwebs (ok, on Cults3D and myminifactory) and the few “well with bucket” models I found didn’t really stack well on top of each other.

So I hit Blender, learned how to bend a cube-shaped brick around a curve, and set about building my own rounded wall section(s).
I was quite pleased with the results (though on seeing the chimney pieces printed, I think I should have made the mortar between the bricks a little deeper).

I’ve already magnetised the wall sections, and I love the way everything snaps together and holds firm, even if you’re a clumsy oaf like me and regularly jog the table.

So in the top and bottom edges of each chimney piece, I placed a small round holder, just large enough to glue a 3mm x 2mm neodymium magnet.
Ensuring that the magnets have the right polarity at the top and bottom now means I can build a nice, tall chimney structure and not worry about it falling down.

(since I had space on my build print when printing the chimney pieces, I also printed out a couple of “lava craters” but we’ll cover those in another post. Today was about making my chimney. And so far, it’s been a blinding success!