Unusual gameplay, or: How I learned to love the gimmick

Here's the thing: I love maps that feel different.

I loved Valiant's MAP07, protecting the mancubus otherwise a bunch of Archviles spawn. Absolutely Killed was one of the best WADs I've played. Void and dead.wire are absolutely glorious. Mayhem Mansion was a complete trip. The surf levels in Mandrill's Ass Project were some of the best fun I've had. Zerstörer for Quake was amazing, if dated. Fights in dark room with flashing lights are an IWAD example of fun gimmicks.

I've been aiming to do some sort of homage to all of that with my ongoing Shrooms 2 project, but I'm at a complete blank for ideas. Reducing those concepts to their base forms and mix-matching them led to some great ideas, but... A man cannot live on two dozen concepts, specially when each map uses a dozen of them.

So give me a hand here. What are some things you've seen done that you believe to be fun? What kind of surreal architecture looks good? Who would win, Doomguy or 10000 chicken-sized pinkies? Do you know of any creepy maps like Happy Time Circus 2?

I tried Unloved once. Almost an endless supply of monsters to kill combined with a really creepy atmosphere makes a memorable experience.

Haven't found the wizard in Shrooms 2 yet... 

17 minutes ago, DoomKnight1984 said:

Haven't found the wizard in Shrooms 2 yet... 

Yes, Unloved was unique. Not truly gimmicky, but there were quite a few trick fights, and the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife. I've took a few lessons from it, specially a slowly changing hub of sorts.

If you want some help with finding the wizard...

2 hours ago, Albertoni said:

Yes, Unloved was unique. Not truly gimmicky, but there were quite a few trick fights, and the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife. I've took a few lessons from it, specially a slowly changing hub of sorts.

 

If you want some help with finding the wizard...

  Hide contents

You need to do three things:

 

Shoot the FIREBLU oracle (and get a hint for another level).

There's a weird pillar slowly rising in an outside area nearby the FIREBLU. Use it.

You can jump out of a window near the rave. More than once.

 

That should be enough to find him at the ending of the level.

 

There's also one wall in particular that glitched so much it made GZDoom Builder crash upon loading the map. I had to manually edit the map to fix that. If you use it, you get a message and a fourth point to trigger the wizard. I'll give you one hint for it. Sloped lighting.

 

Finally found all 4 secrets, thanks.

On 4/11/2017 at 8:40 PM, Albertoni said:

Here's the thing: I love maps that feel different.

I loved Valiant's MAP07, protecting the mancubus otherwise a bunch of Archviles spawn. Absolutely Killed was one of the best WADs I've played. Void and dead.wire are absolutely glorious. Mayhem Mansion was a complete trip. The surf levels in Mandrill's Ass Project were some of the best fun I've had. Zerstörer for Quake was amazing, if dated. Fights in dark room with flashing lights are an IWAD example of fun gimmicks.

 

I've been aiming to do some sort of homage to all of that with my ongoing Shrooms 2 project, but I'm at a complete blank for ideas. Reducing those concepts to their base forms and mix-matching them led to some great ideas, but... A man cannot live on two dozen concepts, specially when each map uses a dozen of them.

 

So give me a hand here. What are some things you've seen done that you believe to be fun? What kind of surreal architecture looks good? Who would win, Doomguy or 10000 chicken-sized pinkies? Do you know of any creepy maps like Happy Time Circus 2?

In Castle Heng the entire set is basically gimmick maps, but the most common motif is teleporting Cyberdemons.  The most common use is getting you to chase a Cyberdemon down a hallway or through a series of rooms, with the cyber constantly teleporting just out of reach or into a position where he can blast away at you.  In map 28 or 29 it's used to good effect when you have you jump off a ledge onto an unlit damage sector that funnels you off another ledge, where you land surrounded by Revenants and Imps in a little square area with that teleporting Cyber from earlier on another ledge taking potshots at the lot of you.  

There was also a really cool level where you face maybe 20 cybers but they're all teleporting around the map randomly, so you have to run around like a maniac popping switches and dodging rockets.

I'm also a sucker for maps without enemies or with very few enemies.  To go back to Heng - early on there's a map that has no monsters, just some puzzles.  I love that.  Expanding on the idea, I'd love it even more if there were a handful of monster (viles or cybers) that were within audio distance but deliberately unreachable and just there to leave you anticipating the fight.  Then in a later map you pull the same trick but you have them actually pop out and ambush the player at an opportune moment.

Can't say I've played that one. I'll definitely have to check it out. And that last suggestion is pretty damn good. Definitely adding it to the list.

Unaligned had an E3M1 without monsters, but with six puzzles to solve.

It's not on idgames, I grabbed it out of the "looking for a wad" thread ages ago. It's very 90s, and as far as I can tell doesn't really have any obvious antecedents or successors in terms of Doom maps, other than some weird offshoot 90s stuff.  It's ugly but technically functional.  http://www.mediafire.com/?8v819qqh785509x 

Definitely going to check out that Unaligned map now. Empty maps are awesome.

Thanks, man. Seems to be pretty different, judging from the first 5 levels.