William Willing

Downfall Burrows

It's been a long time since I created my last Grimrock-level, but I suddenly got the urge again. This is by far the largest level I've made: more puzzles, more variety, more secrets, more everything! It's also more difficult then the previous ones, so if you've never played Grimrock before, you might want to start with Initiate's Hall and Fort Exodus, or, you know, Legend of Grimrock. And yes, I'm still using Grimrock 1 for this.

 

It took me many, many evenings and weekends to create this game. The layout of the dungeon is much more complex than anything I've done before and the various puzzles tend to interact. As a result, making sure you can't ever get stuck was a nightmare, and I'm still not 100% sure that there isn't some crazy sequence of actions that messes up your game, but I really, really tried. Honest.

Download 

• Download Downfall Burrows (18 kB)

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Gravel Road Challenge: Enough Already

Last time, I had a city that looked like this.

Then I built some more, and now my city looks like this.

Nothing particularly interesting happened on the way here. I gradually added more neighbourhoods, each pretty much self-sufficient. I now have 75,000 citizens and no real reason to continue expanding this city.

The moment I unlocked office buildings, the challenge pretty much vanished. The idea was that high rise buildings would lead to more citizens in a given area and therefor more traffic, but offices get rid of heavy traffic completely, which makes traffic management easy.

Also, you can build offices wherever you want, because they don't cause ground pollution or noise pollution, nor are they bothered by pollution. This makes them ideal pollution buffers, but takes away a lot of the challenge. If you want to try the Gravel Road-challenge yourself, I suggest you add the rule that you're not allowed to build offices.

I'm ready for something new.

Gravel Road Challenge: Disconnected

It's time for expansion. I have buildable space left within the areas I have currently unlocked, but I want to try something different. I'm going to build a new part of town on the other side of the river. Since I can't build any bridges, this means there will be no connection to the highway. I'm not even sure this is possible, but let's find out!

Who needs highways anyway? Guess we'll find out.

The first thing I do is lay down all the roads in advance. The bypass works well in the old part of town, so I'll go with that again.

This road layout was inspired by the cables behind my desktop computer.

This part of the map has almost no wind, so wind mills aren't an option and I don't want to have a long power line. A solar power plant should be more than enough for the entire area, though, so let's go with that.

Why would you build something that casts a huge shadow in the middle of your solar farm?

Okay, I have offices and shops now, but no citizens at all. They probably can't move into the neighbourhood, because they can't reach it by car. Maybe a train station would help.

I also need to import cargo so the shops have stuff to sell, so let's build a cargo station as well. Unfortunately, I didn't think to plan for this when I put down the roads, so I end up with this monstrosity.

If you just don't look at it, you won't notice how ugly it is.

The cargo station works well, the passenger station does absolutely nothing. No one is using it.

My next attempt at attracting citizens is building a metro station and connecting it to the old part of town. Strangely enough, as soon as I do this, cars start appearing on the roads. I have no problem imagining those cars moving through the metro tunnels, but how do they get up the stairs at the station?

Anyway, I now have citizens living in this new part of town as well, but the shopkeepers still aren't happy.

It seems I'm not the only one who doesn't plan ahead too well.

I want to attract more citizens, but I already have a large amount of residentials zones with no houses on them. I try better public transport, but that doesn't help either. Maybe I need to convince more citizens from the old district to come shop in the new district?

No, that's not it, because in the old district shops have the same problem.

Shops. They're empty. It's sad.

It looks like there are just to many stores for the number of citizens I currently have. What would happen if I just bulldoze all the shops in the new district?

If there are more shops than your city can support, get rid of the shops. So simple!

That's it. The shops in the old district are finding customers again and I can fill the empty space in the new district with offices, since those are in high demand.

From now on, I'll go easy on the commercial zones and focus on expanding the citizenry first.

The rest is quite easy, actually. I fill up the empty zones in the new district, making sure that I provide plenty of services. A touch of patience later, the new district is running smoothly and at no point during its development is traffic a problem.

I always thought 'dark blue' meant 'deep water' but apparantly it means 'river of poop'.

Gravel Road Challenge: Rising High

Citizens living in the vicinity of the metro stations are complaining about the noise. I tried to explain to them that if you move into an appartement that's close to the metro station, you should expect things to be a bit lively, but they won't listen to reason.

You have a great view, public transport nearby, a park for a backyard and you complain about the noise? Some people are never satisfied.

So, it's up to me to fix their problems once again. I move the metro stations in the residential areas from the center of the neighbourhood to the edge, dig some new tunnels, and the problem is solved.

What's wrong with this picture?

Before I can do anything else in this town, I have to convert all remaining low rise buildings to high rise ones. I start with one of the industrial/commercial areas.

Low rise residential: light green. High rise residential: dark green. Low rise commercial: light blue. High rise commercial: dark blue. Low rise industy: yellow. High rise residential: ... Well, cyan, of course.

While those shops and offices are being (re)built, people on the other side of town are still complaining about noise. Turns out that my citizens like to live near the shops, they just don't like the shops to be near to where they live.

Maybe they're just complaining about loud billboards.

I try to find a compromise by keeping the commercial buildings a bit smaller.

First, they just chopped of half of the building, but that got a bit chilly, so they decided to build a completely new store.

Hopefully that will help.

The new offices and are coming along nicely, so I turn my attention to a residential neighbourhood and convert all houses there into high rise building. When I zoom out, I'm in for a shock.

Looks like a giant lightning storm.

I removed the houses that connected my entire city to the power grid. Easy to fix, but still a bit of an 'oh no'-moment.

I decide to check up on the new metro stations and discover that no one is using them.

Right now, it's just an expensive hole in the ground.

Well, they are kind of remote now. Maybe no one is using them because they are so hard to reach. I guess I should create a bus line from the houses to the metro station.

I bring up the public transportation map and that's when I discover that I never created a new metro line after moving the stations. Perhaps that's the problem? Yeah, not my finest moment.

The smaller commercial buildings aren't working as I had hoped and by now, my citizens are sick of the noise.

More ill effects of capitalism.

I want to remove the shops from the residential neighbourhoods completely, but the demand for commercial buildings is high.

Let's experiment a bit. I'll turn half of the one remaining low rise neighbourhood into a shopping area. I'll surround the shops by offices; hopefully that will keep the noise away from the houses.

Hundreds of citizens had to leave their homes to make room for this shopping area. They did stop complaining about the noise, though.

This is working amazingly well, but there is still more demand for both commercial and industrial. Well, I guess I can turn the rest of the neighbourhood into a shopping area, too, since I still have empty residential zones.

One thing's for sure: it's quiet here.

Many entrepreneurial souls build new stores, only to find out that they lack just one thing: customers.

Maybe you're just not selling something the people want? Have you ever thought of that?

The shopping area is quite far away from the residentials areas, so I put in a few bus lines to make it easier for the citizens to come spend their money. It seems to help a bit, but the problem doesn't go away entirely, so I build a new residential neighbourhood close the the shops. Problem solved.

I haven't looked at the traffic for a while, so I'd better go check. Sure enough, the roads in between the neighbourhoods are clogged.

A lot of traffic: that must mean the people really like my roads!

Thinking about a better way to structure the roads I come to the conclusion that I don't really know what to, so I just start adding a few extra roads. Can't go wrong right?

Actually, it solves the problem! Huh, what do you know.

I'm suddenly concerned about a lack of road signs. How do you know which turn to take?

So, that's it. All buildings are high rise now. I guess it's time for expansion.

Gravel Road Challenge: Traffic Happens

My factories are demanding more workers. I currently have 5,500 citizens. Only 500 more and I will unlock high rise building, which will solve the problem nicely. Unfortunately, I have no more room for new residentials, which is what got me into this pickle in the first place.

 

Across the river! That's where I want to... Oh wait, no bridges. Would Cims mind swimming to work?

I have a few options. My city is currently built on top of a plateau and there is still some room in the valley by the river. If I do that, citizens who live in the valley need to drive through the industrial district to reach the highway. That seems less than ideal since the area isn't exactly light on traffic as it is.

Expanding to the area at the bottom is also not an option. I can't build an overpass, so I have no way to cross the rails and I'm also not allowed to make a second connection to the highway.

The easiest solution seems to expand into the area to the right. It's a bit farther from the central road than all the other neighbourhoods, but we'll just cross our fingers in the hope it'll turn out fine.

Now that's what I call living on the edge.

That one little expansion is enough for 500 extra citizens, so now I unlock high rise buildings. The rules of the challenge dictate that I build no new zones until I have converted all my existing ones to high rises. I learned in a previous town that replacing all low rise residentials with high rise residentials at once is a Really Bad Idea, so I start out with only a couple of zones.

Don't get used to the peace and quiet. It won't last long.

After a while the new buildings are done...

If the cargo trains start passing by, I'm going to have to build some really high sound barriers.

...which solve the labour problem...

It's dull, it's dirty, and it's dreary, but at least a lot of people work there now.

...but leads to some extra traffic.

Well, that was predictable.

Also, shit happens.

I want to wake up in a city that always reeks.

I built a cargo station at the edge of my industrial area, so that my city can now transport cargo by rail. This should get rid of the traffic jams at the entrance of the city. In fact, it does, but I'm not entirely sure my traffic problems are actually solved.

If only we could export traffic jams; we'd be rich!

Oh well, I'll leave it for now. In the meantime, I still have some rubbish complaints.

How many days of piled-up garbage would it take to fill one high rise building?

Nothing an extra incinerator can't fix. I have heaps of cash by now, so I can solve these pesky little service problems by just throughing more money at the problem. Works like a charm!

Soon, I will have to upgrade my factories to office buildings, which requires well educated citizens. I build a couple more schools and a university.

Can someone do research on how to pave roads?

Next up is a metro system. The tunnels have to take a bit of a detour at one point, because the slope is too steep. Apparently, my unadventurous citizens don't like a rollercoaster ride to work.

If the rails aren't laid on gravel, is building a metro system cheating?

It would kinda suck if you take the metro to work and still have to walk a mile to get to your place of employ, so I create a bus line in the industrial area. The road layout in that area is a bit loopy, so I can't cover it all with one bus line, but as soon as I connect some of the factories to the public transport system, the others start feeling left behind.

Yeah, I didn't no what that icon meant either until I clicked on the building.

A few extra bus lines later, everyone is happy.

Traffic at the entrance of the city is increasing again. I also notice that a lot of citizens are walking to work, but they have to cross the road to get there. Of course, they pick the most inconvenient, jam-inducing spot for that. Those Cims are nothing if not predictable.

I bet my law-abiding citizens are all called Murphy.

I can't build elevated walkways, because bridges are not allowed in this challenge. I'll just ignore the pedestrians for now. Instead, I'm going to try to create some better roads for the car.

What if I split the traffic early? As soon as the cars come into the city, the have to pick the road that takes them to the place they need to be: one entrance road for every neighbourhood.

This traffic pattern is called: the hand that feeds.

Going into the city is neat and tidy now, but the problem is leaving the city. I can't build one-way streets so traffic that leaves the city uses the same roads which leads to problems. I don't know if it's worth trying to fix this. I'll just remove this stuff and try something else.

What if I build one long bypass around the city and connect each neighbourhood to the bypass separately? Since the highway connections are one-way, the bypass will effectively be one-way. I ban heavy traffic from the residential areas, so traffic to the factories has to take the long way round. Citizens can drive to work using the central service roads, but if they want to leave the city, they need to use the bypass again.

She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes. She doesn't have a lot of choice, really.

Interestingly enough, I now have a road that leads directly from the highway to the valley, so I guess I could have build houses there after all. Also, while building the bypass, I discover that you can cross the railway at ground level: no overpass required. So yeah, that area at the bottom was also an option. I based my decision on nothing but faulty information. Still, it seems to work out fine.

In fact, this works better than I expected! Services improve and traffic improves, until I discover that donut cars and box trucks are still driving through the residential neighbourhood, even though their destinations are factories. I guess they don't count as heavy traffic.

Can someone explain to these people the difference between the shortest route and the fastest route?

The traffic in the neighbourhood itself isn't even that busy, but the road to the industrial area is completely jammed. I build a second road out of the neighbourhood and now traffic that wants to go north splits early from traffic that wants to go south and that mostly fixes the problem.

There's still a little bit of congestion at the entrance of the industrial area, but I can fix that in the same way: an extra road and the traffic splits early according to where in the area they want to go. All problems are solved now.

Yeah, baby! This gravel thing is easy!

Well, unless you don't like noise.

Sorry, can't hear your complaints over all this noise.

Gravel Road Challenge: Getting Started

A new challenge begins. I don't want to go with one of the standard maps, so I download Tenasi River by Scotland Tom from the Steam Workshop. Mainly because it looks beautiful; what other reason do you need?

Sunrise not included.

I have no idea how to plan for a city that will have only one connection to the highway. I think I'll have some kind of main traffic artery with side roads branching off of that.

This road is clearly a product of arduous and careful planning. It took months to find this design, which will prevent any and all future traffic problems and... Oh, who am I kidding? I have no clue what I'm doing.

The ridge on the left side is good for windmills and of course the water buildings will have to go in the valley, near the river. I'll put some residentials to the right side of the road, because that's where I have the most room to expand.

I don't want another city with regular grids, so I draw the roads using the freehand tool and follow... the terrain? my gut? my intestines? Something.

Giving directions in this town would be a nightmare.

Industry goes on the bottom left. It's far away from the residentials, so pollution won't be a problem. Another advantage is that it's close to the train tracks, so I can build a railway station later to handle transportation of goods.

Can someone please make a race game mod for Cities: Skylines? This is a perfect circuit.

My town expands quite rapidly without too much trouble. The only concern of note is a recurring lack of power. I will need a lot of windmills.

Fortunately, this time I didn't forget that I can just take out a loan.

Despite the gravel roads, traffic isn't a problem. However, because of the speed limit, firemen don't always arrive on time.

Here's a factory that produces particle effects.

Having learned my lesson from last time, I play at the highest speed, so tax money is coming in at a steady pace. This means I can just build an extra fire station to deal with the problem.

The town is growing quickly now. Traffic is busy, but there are not traffic jams. I have well over 5,000 citizens and enough money to build extra services when needed.

You have to be drunk to find your way around this town.

Industry is asking for more workers and demand for housing is high, but I'm running out of convenient building space.

You can do quite well for yourself in this town by selling those 'workers needed' signs.

I have a couple of options for expansion, but all of them will lead to trouble with traffic.

Gravel Road Challenge

It's time for a new Cities: Skylines challenge. The previous challenge turned out to be not so challenging, but hopefully this one will be better. Here are the rules.

• The only type of road allowed is gravel road.
• You can only connect to the highway at the starting point (since you're not allowed to build new highways).
• You are not allowed to build bridges for cars. Bridges for trains are fine, though.
• You must use highrise buildings for all zones as soon as possible.

As with the first challenge, you can pick any map you want and restarting and savescumming are allowed. It's not a competition, so cheating doesn't get you much. Enjoy!

No Pollution Challenge: Stagnation

Last time I decided it was time for public transportation, so I got to work. I build a metro line, a couple of bus lines, and I expanded the hood on the hills a bit, so there would be more workers for my industry. The result?

Nothing, really. Yeah, I got a few more citizens, but other than that, not much changed. Traffic is busy but managable, industry could use a few more workers but is doing fine otherwise, no major problems. The city is stable.

The best way to move forward now would be to claim a new area and start expanding. I should focus on building a lot of residentials, because I have plenty of room to grow in the agricultural and forestry sector. Thing is though, pollution just isn't a factor anymore.

Jane and I talked it over and she came to the same conclusion: building a green city isn't much of a challenge. You can get by quite easily with just farmers and woodcutters. So, we decided to move on to the next challenge. We don't know yet what it will be, but it will be tougher than this one.

No Pollution Challenge: Expansion

Staring at the roundabout, I ponder quite a few options for dealing with the traffic going into my city. Some of the ideas are subtle, some are innovate, some are quite bold, all are rejected, mostly because they create worse problems than they solve, if they solve anything.

In the end I go with the most straightforward solution, a fly-over that takes incoming heavy traffic directly to the industrial area.

For something that is straightforward, this actually contains a lot of bends.

The heavy traffic doesn't seem to want to use the new fly-over. Maybe the route over the roundabout is shorter. I might have to issue a heavy traffic ban on parts of the roundabout. Problem is though, I haven't unlocked that policy yet.

While I deal with some minor garbage collection issues, a few of the truck drivers decide to give the new road a chance. There still isn't a lot of traffic on the fly-over, but it's just enough to get rid of the jams on the roundabout. This turned out to be less troublesome than I had expected.

Six lanes, two trucks. Clearly a wise investment.

Demand for housing is high again, but my residential area has already been fully zoned. I have a bit of room left, though, so I move the bypass a bit, making the residential area larger.

Wouldn't it be neat if you could build houses in the river? Wet, but neat.

I doubt this will alleviate the housing demand for very long and I have designated most of the remaining free space for farming, so it's time for expansion.

 

Let's build an abundance of highways and then plan our cities around them.

The area to the south (not that Cities: Skylines actually has cardinal directions, but you can probably guess which area I mean) has a lot of buildable land, so that's good. It also has a lot of trees for me to chop down and that's good, too. Also also, I'd have easy access to the highway, which would be mighty convenient. South is the obvious choice here.

So obvious, in fact, that I don't really like it. I'd rather expand into an area that forces me to be more creative. I like the idea of keeping my agriculture and my forestry close together, so west looks good. That area also has train tracks running through it. I'd probably have to cross the river to reach them, but building a train station could be a major boon for my industry. West it is.

I don't really need a lot of extra industry right now, but I want to see those lumberjacks at work, so I quickly build a small piece of land and zone some forestry. After I provide some electricity and water, which I initially forgot, my new business soon takes off.

 

Those aren't just any old trees. They're business trees!

It doesn't take too long before it becomes clear why industry wasn't in high demand: my city doesn't have enough citizens to wield all those woodchopper's axes. I zone a small plot of houses near the forest and it takes care of the immediate problem, but it's clear to me that housing is going to be a problem.

Most of the land in my new area is filled with forests and I don't want to give that up if I don't have to. There is a spot, though, across the river, that has neither trees nor fertile land. It's on top of a hill and it's quite hard to reach, but man, does it offer a beautiful view of the city. Who wouldn't want to live there?

 

The view is gorgeous, but did they really have to paint those dashes all over the countryside?

The shortest route to the hill would be from the agricultural bypass, but I don't really want to build a bridge directly between the farms and the hill, for no other reason than that I don't really want to, so I take the long way round. 

The view isn't too bad from here, either, and it's a lot closer to work.

Building on the hill poses a few minor challenges with regards to electricity and the water supply, but nothing that a lot of money can't fix. I now have my first hill street.

 

I'm thinking: soapbox race.

Is it just me or are those houses looking a bit shabby? I should definitely try and level them up, which means providing education. I build an elementary school and a high school and then nothing happens, because education takes a while.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the city, water and sewage are becoming a problem. It's easy enough to build another water station and drain pipe, but I wonder if there's a better way. Farms use more water than regular industry, so maybe setting a Water Usage policy for my farmers, in order to get them to consume less water, would cost less money. A couple minutes later, it turns out that it doesn't. 

The relevant number is at the bottom right, next to the pop-up, in case you're wondering.

For the first time since I started this city, I'm losing money. In fact, I went from a weekly profit of 4,723 to a loss of 207. The Water Usage policy cost me 4,370 per week which is almost as much as the income of all my industry combined. It's my single highest expense by nearly a factor of two. It does significantly increase water availability and sewage treatment, but still its effect is less than half that of a new water pumping station and a new drain pipe. The water station and drain pipe would set me back 5,000 plus 560 a week, so if I build them and disable the policy, I would earn back my investment in less than two in-game weeks. You must be a zombie to do it any other way, because it's a no-brainer.

Industry is complaining about a lack of workers again. I guess those jobs are a bit hard to reach when you live all the way out there on the hill. Also, with the increase in industry, the roads are starting to clog up again. 

Now, what did I tell you about those lanes?

It's time for public transportation.

No Pollution Challenge: Loose Ends

Now that I have a bit of farming going, it's time to get rid of the filthy factories of yesterday.

This just won't do.

I replace the industry on the left with shops and the neighbourhood on the right just has to go. It seems one factory doesn't really get the message, but whatever. 

Roads? Where we're working we don't need roads.

Apparently, I need more schools if I want residences to grow, but agriculture is run by uneducated workers, so I don't think I'll bother right now.

 

I'm hoping my citizens are too dumb to realise education would be good for them.

Things go surprisingly smoothly. The farms are flourishing, the polluters are disappearing, and new citizens are settling in. I even have enough money to build a large park. You know, for happiness 'n stuff.

 

That is one great park. I'm the best mayor ever. Also, it's a "no thanks" on the babies.

While my farmers are perfectly happy employing workers who can't read, shopkeepers insist that their people need to be able to add two numbers on occasion. I guess I'd better build another elementary school.

 

Just scan the barcodes. The computer will do the rest.

Unfortunately, educating people takes time. Nothing I can do about that, so local business will just have to wait. Or fold.

 

Of course, you could have educated them yourselves. Just sayin'.

There's one more item on my checklist that I need to take care of: the bypass. I have enough money to build it now. I do need to move a couple of windmills out of the way, but that's easy enough.

 

Look at that bypass! It just looks so... functional.

It seems that I inadvertently allowed some generic industry to be built. I'm not cheating, honest! I simply forgot to expend the farming district. It's easy enough to fix, but it will take a while for all the ground pollution to disappear.

 

I sure hope those farmers don't mind growing their cabbages on a bit of industrial waste.

I build some more farms, add more residential zoning, and put down a couple of parks. The town is now big enough that people start dying, so I add a cemetry. Money isn't really an issue at this point. It seems everyone is happy. The shopkeepers even stopped complaining about the lack of education.

And then, just when you think you have everything under control...

 

Just take the other lane, for god's sake!

Traffic jams!