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Am I very stupid? I can’t figure out what to do in riktoi’s map. Yes, I read the note that one of the torches seems to be different but I can’t find one that differs from the rest. Help, please?
Unregistered user “riktoi” posted:
Sorry, I made the torch a bit too hard to single out of the rest. One of them has a different colored texture. Depending on the version of the map you have it’s either brown-ish or green, compared to the others being purple.
Thanks, riktoi!
Wow, that’s subtle. For anyone having as much trouble as I had, here is a rot13’d spoiler:
Tb gb gur “rkgerzr urng rznanangrf sebz gur fvtvy” oybpxrq qbbejnl ng gur onpx bs gur tbhaq sybbe. Gjb gbepurf gb gur yrsg bs gurer vf gur bar jvgu n irel fyvtugyl qvssrerag pbybhe – abg va gur synzrf, ohg va gur oenpxrg (juvpu vf cebonoyl jul V zvffrq vg). Urnqohgg gur gbepu gb cebprrq.
Having got past the rather obscure torch puzzle in School of Nothing (hwjam4_riktoi) I found the rest of it fascinating: a whole approach to progression that is radically different from what we’re used to in Quake, and with a consistently brooding, eldritch atmosphere. It’s low on actual combat, and the wide-open spaces don’t really justify their existence, but I can forgive that for the sheer novelty of the experience.
Greetings from Swamptown! (hwjam4_pqp) also has a nice swamphy atmosphere, though I fear it is its fate forever to be compared unfavourably with the transcendent Foggy Bogbottom. I got stuck for a long while after the fight in the stilt-village that contained the jump-boots, expecting to find a gold key in that area as my reward. Eventually I realised that the jump boots were my reward, and that with them I could get up the area with the bell. That’s where the gold key is, something that could definitely be signposted better. Good stuff, though.
Mansion Of Chaos (hwjam4_pinchy) is so nearly brilliant, but doesn’t quite make it for two reasons – one important, the other not. The unimportant reason is that the basement is so bland compared with the rest of the house: it looks rushed, and I guess that’s because it was. The important reasons is that if you take the teleports in the wrong order, you’re screwed. Go to the water one or the one where you appear high up on a crossbeam, and you’re OK: you can just teleport back out and keep exploring. But go to the one with the silver key and the swamp-shambler, and there is no way back uness you have already collected both the jump-boots and the aegis of Chthon. The good news is that this would be really really easy to fix – just a matter of adding one more teleporter. Otherwise, the process of exploring the mansion is really fun. I hope we’ll see a reworked standalone release.
I really liked the ominous ambience and unusual gameplay of Entombed (hwjam4_omni), espeicially the fresh notion of what difficulty can mean in a Quake level. I enjoyed the puzzle-solving at the start and the sense of discovery throughout.
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Cathedral of Calamity (hwjam_greenwood) is a lovely big setting with multiple brutal combats that somehow contrive not to feel unfair. I worked my way through this feeling consistently satisfied by my own performance. That’s a neat trick for a map to achieve. Also: the cathedral itself, one of a long line of Quake cathedrals, is probably the most beautiful I’ve seen.
I think Crypt of the Outsider is, by design, impossible to complete. You stay in the tomb forever, even after opening the door, because … you like it there. It the smallest and shortest of these maps, but also the most atmospheric. I like it a lot, for how different it is.
(If there is way to complete it, though, do tell me!)
Finally, we come to the least Halloweeny of the maps, the inelegantly named Halls O’ Win 2: Sidesteppin’ (hwjam4_artistical). This involves a lot of jumping up and down multi-layered claustrophobic areas with the aid of the double jump-boots, and so offers some unusual combats. I enjoyed it a lot, but I did find it a bit hard to keep track of where I was: some different wall textures or light colours would have helped.
More seriously, there are a couple of progression bugs that need ironing out.
- after I took the gold key and the bars came down, I didn’t take the expected path out of the area available to me, and by falling down a different shaft I got stuck in a loop at the bottom with no way out. I had to
noclipto get back to the gold-key area and drop down the other way instead. - in the end, having gone and got the aegis, it was never necessary for me to go back to where I’d first needed it (button at one end of a lava pit opens a door at the other end) because a different route took me to the area behind the door.
Still, all that side, a refreshingly different Quake experience.
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The pack as a whole is a real winner: not a single map that wasn’t inventive and fun to play. Love it!