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Eight

Today I present two test chambers and one essay.
Feel free to disregard the latter.
Two times four sectors makes eight in total - the rooms may seem similar, but their solutions are very different.
Music is not custom as the design reminded me of my own Square Puzzle, and I also used this incredible track for that map.
Please try not to use that some fizzlers open and close with some delay - I don't know why that happens and I cannot fix it.
Difficulty: 5/10.

A creator's ramblings

Alright so what follows is just something I've kind of wanted to talk about so I'll just do it. I can hear you thinking: ''Not again... Mikeastro always writes the longest, most pointless descriptions and I just have to sit through it...'' and you would be right, aside from the fact that you can just skip all this if you want to. But indeed I do talk far too much and I'm bad at concisely expressing my thoughts. Heck, I haven't even started saying what I wanted to address, and it's already this long! I just view this description as a medium I can use to convey what's been on my mind and to tell the story behind the map, and that's how I will use it. Maybe I'll just discuss a topic more often; let me know what you think.

First I'll have to make a distinction between a ''map'' and a ''puzzle''. Please don't hold these poorly chosen terms against me; they merely serve the purpose of grossly exaggerating this difference for clarity's sake. Now I'm not referring to the overwhelming multitude of brain-dead items spewed out by a huge and unexperienced community, but I'd like to make a more subtle distinction just focussing on the good stuff.
A good puzzle, at least to me, needs to have an element of surprise. At first it should seem like it's impossible and then when you've pondered on it a bit and understood everything, it should still seem impossible - this last bit is the important part.
There is a huge supply of existing, well-designed maps that are very enjoyable and satisfying to play, but when you really break down what you've been doing over the past minutes, you realise it's for the most part dissecting the design of the map and once you precisely understood what does what and what belongs where, it all flowed naturally since there was only about one sensible thing to do most of the time.
This ''flow'' of events and logic is a dangerous thing. It creates the illusion of ingenuity and cleverness from the player's end - they feel like they are discovering things for themselves, whereas they are actually walking down the path that was most skilfully paved for them by the hard work of the mapmaker. And when you've reached your destination, you come to realise you never really gained new insights; you understood what was desired of you and you executed that flawlessly.
It may sound like this means that the map was easy - that is not at all the case. This process of dissecting until you can see the well-hidden path, which moves are sensible and which aren't, can be quite hard. And if the map is well-designed, it generally is quite hard. But in the end you really only understood that one example of a logical flow; everything was already there and once you knew how to accept it, you could quickly finish the test.
I'd also like to stress that this does not mean that such maps should leave a bitter taste in your mouth after playing them. It is perfectly okay to admire the ingenuity of the mapmaker, how well-crafted the path was and how it smoothly got around all obstacles. Doing that well truly is an incredible and subtle art. But sadly, you should, however much effort it may have cost, not think of it as your own ideas.
These are maps that become less hard to solve if you are experienced.

But there is also this other category, ''true'' puzzles. These are the maps that even when you understood all the connections, angles, goals and subgoals, still continue to elude you for a bit. It feels like you're missing something - it should be right in front of you. For crying out loud, you've seen everything the map has to offer! But still you don't see the solution. Or maybe you are forced to think in a way you had not considered before. You are left to your own devices, as if you were a mere novice at the game.
And then, a spark produced by your own intellect and creativity ignites and suddenly the whole map is clear in an instant. Or maybe you approach it radically differently, or think in new way, and everything suddenly becomes obvious. It might have only taken a few minutes, but to me those moments are always something special. No skilfully designed logic flows, just this one idea or new way of thinking and it all made sense. You came up with this new idea yourself, it wasn't so much handed to you, and it had nothing to do with your level of experience. That is what I yearn to experience the most when playing community maps, yet it only quite rarely hits me. That is something I regret, but it is inevitable.

To return to where I was going, the reason that I'm a bit conflicted is that I enjoy making puzzles more than maps, but naturally not every setup will result in something truly unique. If it doesn't have a vaguely novel idea, any map I publish quickly feels a bit half-baked to me. Sadly this is the reason for many of my multi-chamber maps - I'm just not yet satisfied with it, so I just keep on building until the quantity makes up for the lack of quality in my perception. Perhaps I'm too critical of my own work. Now it would be arrogant of me to judge any other creator's maps as being a ''true'' puzzle or not, and also to point out any of my own maps that I consider being ''true'' puzzles. Hence I will refrain from doing so.
What I long to do is come up with new ideas. To let players experience things they haven't experienced before, or to make them think in a completely novel way. In some crude sense (I could write a whole other essay on this, let me know if you're interested :P), making ''maps'' is easier than making ''puzzles''. But I do want to keep publishing new ideas whenever I have one, regardless of their reception. And thus I will continue to do so, for that is the thing I enjoy the most.
Lastly I would like to emphasize that I don't think "maps" are inherently inferior to "puzzles" or anything silly like that. It's just that I'm a personal fan of small, well-executed clever things. This does also not mean that I cannot appreciate a masterpiece of convoluted logic, but I will like that for a completely different reason, as explained above. All I'm trying to talk about is this two types of tests I enjoy the most, what their difference is and why I can appreciate these "puzzles" so much in particular.
It annoys me somewhat that even after losing a full night's rest trying to mentally explore what the lay-out of this particular map had to offer, I could not get further than what is now the first room. Personally I like the second room a bit more I think, but to experienced players it's probably hardly anything new .

In short, I'm being annoying and I should just stop making such a big deal out of some imaginary concepts I just coined for the sole purpose of writing this essay. Making maps is fine too, and a lot of fun as well in its own right. Though please do know that when I have an idea and I put a lot of time into presenting it in its purest form without giving it away too much, I really am proud of my idea. Even if someone has thought of it before, I still think of it as my idea and I hope that anyone who plays that map considers the idea theirs as well, since they also discovered it for themselves.
And nobody can ever take an idea away from you.
So that's it. Now off to testing...?