The Shadows Play - A Castle Map with a Twist

[Clownslay]

This map was inspired by a Snapmap I made a few years ago by the same name. You play as Doomguy as he ascends a mountain to track down an immense source of demonic activity. The castle at the top seems simple enough at first glance, but you begin to feel that there is more than what meets the eye.

 

This map is made for GZDoom and is meant to be played with no freelook, crouching, or jumping. This map uses 3D floors and provides players with light puzzle-solving and the opportunity to explore the different parts of the castle. This map could take between 25-55 minutes. I did a lot of testing but please let me know if you run into any balance issues, texture misalignments, etc. Thanks for playing!

 

This map uses custom assets which may result in problems if this map is run with other mods.

 

Difficulty Settings:

 

I’m too young to die – Hey, not too rough

Combat provides a slight challenge and minimal exploration is required. For new Doom players or those who like to keep it simple.

 

Hurt Me Plenty

Combat is challenging and some exploration is required. For the average Doom player.

 

Ultra-Violence

Combat is very challenging and much exploration and skill are required to survive. For experienced Doom players.

 

Nightmare

Suicide.

Update History

Spoiler

Update 1: Added some ammo pickups and demons, aligned some textures, made puzzles more clear to make progression smoother, and nerfed the Obsidian Statues.

 

Update 2: Fixed a bug that made the map unbeatable on Easy difficulty. Added some additional detail to the map. Made several small tweaks to the gameplay.

 

Update 3: Added a custom skybox, title, and made several small changes.

 

Update 4: Added slightly more detail, modified combat encounters and items.

 

 

Last Updated: 6/16/2020

 

File Link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JRVrGHosTXsKxQte7OsvZpLjlQIOMTsP?usp=sharing

 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by Clownslay

[Soulless]

I will play it sooner or later, i like the atmosphere!

Edit: Ive been playing 30 minutes or so, and even though theres some cool dark/creepy spots with the usage of statues and light, the whole map is just too big, in a sense where it feels quite empty, just the 1st area (courtyard) with the imps gives that feel, little buildings, mountains etc would help, even a river. Same goes with the interior, some rooms are dope, like bedrooms etc but overall needs decoration for all that space here and there, and I know is easy to say this, because that would be tons of work but the results would be amazing.

That said, it has a lot of potential really, Ill keep an eye for updates!

Edited June 5, 2020 by Soulless

[Clippy]

Hey bud, I tried. Even though this is not my style of maps I prefer I actually had a good time ... for what I could play. Unfortunately I couldn't seem to proceed after a certain point, I'm sure it's my fault or my outdated source port. But I still present what I did accomplish in your map anyway: 

 

 

 

[Clownslay]

@Clippy Thanks for taking the time to play my map. This map was made specifically for GZDoom so I think the problems you encountered happened because you were playing on ZDoom. Those dark Pinkies that you saw weren't supposed to be Pinkies but were actually supposed to be custom statues, and the part you got stuck on was a puzzle you had to figure out.

Edited June 7, 2020 by Clownslay

[Clippy]

Yeah I got to get a new computer pronto

 

 

[Zolgia108]

ok i finished the map, and got really frustrated. Lot of cryptic progression, tons of unfair monsters, and stuff like that. No bugs found, only some misalignments here and there and lack of detail, but that's probably a matter of taste. I recorded a video of it but i need to load it on youtube, it s really huge, if you want to. it took around 1.30 hours to beat the map.

So... i wasn't frustrated all the time, there were fun moments like with the double cyberdemon fight. but gargoyles are really unfair, and some encounters were as well (as with the arachnotron one), also i hate when i cant kill all the monsters because of ammo balance, how am i supposed to kill the cybers? All this is just my humble opinion.

[Clownslay]

I appreciate your feedback @Zolgia108 and I would definitely like to watch that video to see what other improvements I should make to the map. Thanks for your help.

[Zolgia108]

ok i will load it on you tube and then send the link, it will take some time, i ll tell you once its ready!

in advance: sorry for the audio and for my bad english, im not a native speaker ofc and i wasnt using headphones ;)

[Zolgia108]

 

 

as promised

sorry, towards the end of the map i was getting freaking angry, don't take it as an offense. i babble around during the entire video :)