I've enjoyed Twilights Over Driftstone a lot, but it's pretty obvious that the authors have rushed themselves to wrap the mission up for the Speedbuild Jam.

There is a very intriguing map here, with a slum and sewers section that have a very strong Source engine feel! The textures, lighting, brush work and the custom models create a fantastic atmoshphere in these parts. The colors and the overall vibes reminded me of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, by the way. Some readables tease an exciting horror section in the sewers, but it seemingly had to be discarded from the final version, unfortunately. Speaking of readables, I found a good couple of them really-really good!

The other two main parts of the mission are the manor and the City Watch station which are... fine. They are implemented with good effort and there are some nice looking scenery here and there, but the two problems with these parts are: 1. their aesthetic style is completely different from the fantastic slum section, the custom models often look absolutely out of place, and 2. their layouts are... weird. Not Constantine's mansion from The Sword surreal weird, just weird. I often caught myself thinking about how much the manor didn't feel like a manor (I understand that it was intentional to create a gallery/museum vibe though), and how much the watch station didn't feel like a watch station. Maybe it's just me, fortunately though, this doesn't really hurt the actual gameplay, there are plenty of fun routes you can choose from, and I guess that's what matters the most.

One last thing I gotta complain about a little bit: Twilights Over Driftstone is another mission that has its many loot scattered around way too much - and the placement is often a bit odd and random. The secrets on the other hand are really-really fun! I found only 7 out of 13 during my playthrough, but some of them were a good challenge to find.

To sum it up, I think this is a very solid mission somewhat hold back by aesthetic inconsisency, some weird interior layouts and a couple of seemingly discarded parts. I somewhat wish the mission would have been smaller and focused on the slum section - but still, what we got is pretty intriguing, so I hope we perhaps get to see a Twilights Over Driftstone Gold release one day - with the horror section in the sewers added.

It was interesting to read your review Matt and the build process we had was a bit strange as I started building the city and the manor and then shortly after this (maybe a week) it became a collaboration that changed things quite a lot. So the ideas of the slums and sewers came up. The slums are about 50/50 collaboration and then Dale did his magic in the sewers. I really wanted to build beyond the high pressure door in the sewers but it wasn't definitely realistic in this time frame and the mission became a bit too large even now I agree. So, everything isn't as polished as we would have wanted.

Realism isn't my top priority when Dromeding but I've thought about that more lately and trying to take that into consideration. I'll definitely think about these things you pointed out. Anyway, thanks for playing and I'm glad that you found many things likeable in the mission!

If you and Dale did really work on the Slums together (which in my opinion was the best part of the mission), I'd say you should collaborate more often. It seems you two make a good DromEd team together.

"Realism isn't my top priority when Dromeding but I've thought about that more lately and trying to take that into consideration."
If you were addressing the part where I called the layouts weird, I gotta tell that it wasn't about realism. Unless you mean realism = making sense. I've never finished anything in DromEd, but I work as an indie game dev, and gotta tell that the layout of a 3D environment is something I too spend a lot of time pondering. There is no perfect recipe, and neurologically, everyone has a different sense of space, so... hell knows.

But don't take my opinions too seriously - even if they have the benefit of being honest (that may not apply to everyone's).

This was the first time I did a collaboration mission. Even our build styles are somewhat different, we noticed that if one auhor builds first some rough area sketch and then other one continues and this goes on in turns, it had a nice result and the slums is the best example in this mission from that method. Other areas are mostly built by one author and some detailing help from the other author. I also noticed that writing readables can be done as collaboration and it worked quite nicely (Aemanyl wrote the most, but me and Dale also some).

Maybe it can be a blessing and curse at the same time when listening everyone's opinion and I usually try to take every opinion into consideration. The downside might be that author starts thinking too much this way and maybe try to please every person and I honestly think that might not have the best outcome. But anyway, I think your opinions what could be improved in the mission (weird layouts etc.) make sense more or less.

Lastly, I gotta say that honest opinions are valuable because this way author gets proper info about what to improve in the future or at least what to take into consideration next time.

personally im a fan of Mysteries of Tolham type of "weird layouts" you got going on, you don't see anyone else build like that, it's like your signature worldbuilding which in my opinion you should keep rolling with. i loved the mix of Tolham-esque interiors sprinkled into this mission.

so it's all up to you to decide on whatever your heart tells you to do :)

Tolham was a work of passion and a wild mission overall. I'm very glad you liked it! In the future, I think I'm gonna make a bit less weird FMs but the mysterious aspect will always be there. In Twilights the idea was to decrease the weirdness but still leave enough of it to spice things up (sewers, upper manor rooms and some secret areas).

Often times I find myself creating new areas even though it would be best to focus on certain areas more and polish those to make the gameplay as good as possible. It's kinda a battle against curiosity, what could I create here or there. In these moments it's maybe good to stop and think what's best for the gameplay.

| "In Twilights the idea was to decrease the weirdness but still leave enough of it to spice things up (sewers, upper manor rooms and some secret areas)."

it was a pleasant mix indeed, definitely a golden middle ground, fitting for the future missions without going overboard and keeping a neat balance for sure