Highlights: Bloodshot, JCR, and Mazu's maps. Pinchy's was too hard for me. I'll definitely replay some of these for secret hunting. Thanks for your great work!

Working my way through these one at a time, and I have to say, I'm already really impressed with Artistical's map. Deja Vu indeed!

Everyone please note that my entry is not actually in there despite the portal bearing my name. It's just a placeholder that teleports you back to the start and will be replaced by a DLC. I plan to have the map finished by the end of this week.

This jam was a BLAST. Twisted Strings is one of the best quake maps I've ever played just from sheer uniqueness. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's the first time I've been creeped out by a quake map.

Twisted Strings is indeed excellent. Bloodshot managed to make a proper survival horror level for Quake. Can't wait to play the rest of the jam.

I've been away from Quake for a while — I got into the BioShock games and then replayed Portal 2 and went through a bunch of community levels. I was delighted when I got back and found there's a jam on one of my all-time favourite packs, Insomnia!

Unfortunately, the first map I played — Artistical's Deja Vu — is a really terrible start. Huge, sprawling and empty, it involves a huge amount of running around, and running back from looong dead ends, but has almost nothing to actually do. It's the one thing no Quake map can ever afford to be: boring.

I stuck it out to the end, relieved to get out even though, having killed everything that moved, I only had 124 of the 167 kills on Hard (and only two of ten secrets).

Let's hope things improve rapidly!

... and sure enough, Bloodshot's Twisted Strings is much better, a genuinely disquieting experience in a complex that is half base, half eldrich nightmare, and half non-Euclidean catastrogeddon. (Yeah, I know, that's three halves. It's that kind of map.) I must have played something like 600-700 Quake maps in my life, and it's rare now that a map makes me think "Wow, I've never seen anything like this before." Twisted Strings made me think that.

Fairweather's The Chiron Conundrum is nicely constructed, but short and a little basic. I enjoyed it, but I won't be telling all my friends about it.

Ionous's enigmatically named Loum is a really fun blast, very much combat focussed but without ever descending into being merely an arena. Very satisfying, especially being reduced to two health (by the spawn ambush) and working back up. I missed one secret and two kills, but had a blast.

I've played half of the map-pack, and I'm really enjoying it so far:

Artistical--While the map's layout is somewhat confusing, its size is impressive, and the empty corridors and corpses strewn around the base give it a great foreboding atmosphere.

Bloodshot--I agree with the previous comments that Bloodshot's map is fantastic. At the beginning, it reminded me of Half Life and the start map in Unreal, but it soon turned into something utterly surreal and unique.

Fairweather--A short, fun map. The texturing is faithful to Insomnia, but the size and straightforward progression make it feel radically different from czg's maps.

Ionous--Not the kind of map I enjoy TBH, the layout too symmetrical and arena-like, but it's technically impressive and looks great.

JCR--An impressive layout and lots of tense combat. The secrets are also pretty good.

Mafon--Progression is choppy and somewhat confusing, but I like the map's mixed textures. In that respect it reminded of Mafon's previous map Intrusion, which I also enjoyed.

Forgot KalebClark's map: another map with lots of arena combat, so not my favorite style of gameplay, but nonetheless it's quite good for a debut. Visually it's quite faithful to the first map of Insomnia.

The teleporter at the center of the map reminds me of both than's "The Dark Portal" and the arena fight with fiends and shamblers in E4M8.

I enjoyed KalebClark's Over Engineered Teleporter quite a bit in an uncomplicated way. It's reminiscent of the earlier stages of Insomnia, but without aspiring to the depth of CZG's levels. Still, a fine debut.

Mafon's Quake Anomaly is the kind of map I find hard to get into, to be honest. A sequence of essentially unrelated areas joined by teleporters prevents me from getting any sense of the geography, and undermines the notion that this is a real place. With immersion broken, it comes down to sequence of combats, and those are not particularly satisying. Sorry to be negative about a debut map.

Is there a legitimate way to get into JCR's map from the start map? The teleporter is blocked.

Use your axe :)

D'oh! :-)

Well, I am glad I went into JCR's An Unending Dusk because it's marvellous, a really unpleasant trek through a weird mixture of mediaeval courtyards and the innards of some giant evil beast. Superb atmosphere, and some really good gameplay too. Eight of the 133 kills eluded me, but then I only took 3 of 9 secrets so I guess some were in these.

Uh, sorry — I meant JCR's Garden of Body and Blood of course.

I've been having a great time with Mazu's The Call From Below ... right up to what I assume is the last-but-one chamber, with the big exit in it and the massive fight with all the shamblers, vores and whatnot. Having won that fight, it looks like I need to get through the gold door to open the exit, but I cannot find the gold key. Am I doing something very very dumb?

Anyway, I really enjoyed Naitelveni's In-Der-Welt-Sein, which has a unique atmosphere. I didn't go in the area with the choice of three stashes until right at the end, and actually that work out well: it meant I had ammo-conservation issues through much of the level. It does fall down in three ways, though. First, while the opening section is very non-linear and offers lots of opportunity for exploration, from about half way in it becomes a linear sequence of set pieces. Second, there are a lot of locked doors that never open, and no way to tell them apart from openable ones. And third, the map feels underpopulated, as though it could sustain a lot more combat had the auther taken the time to put the monsters in. Anyway, it was nice for once to finish with all kills (101) and all secrets (six).

Newhouse's Byzantium Ohm Quantum is refreshingly different, with its labyrinth of long, twisting blood-filled tunnels and its ample fiends. I never found any nail-based weapon, but I assume there is one since I found some nailes (I got 3 of the 5 secrets, and I assume that rocket-launcher that I could see but not reach is one of the missing two. Also, all 71 kills.) I was glad I saved the quad, in an early secret, till the final battle!

And so we come to Filtration Station by Pinchy Skree — which I believe is only his second map outside of speedmap packs.

Well, this is just marvellous. It's a sort of base penetration map, but with a sufficiently wide open geometry that it's really really difficult to make headway without getting picked off. I spent the first two thirds of the map constantly low on health and ammo, trying desperately to figure out tactics that would enable me to clean out sections without getting sniped from above, below or far away. It's a pretty much totally unique experience in Quake, and while it was frustrating at times, I loved it.

OK, the last part is a bit anticlimactic, after you've got the silver key. I could have done with more repopulation at that point. But overall, it was a fascinating experience, and my highlight of the pack so far.

Strangework's Eyes of Carbonado is neat, but limited. After the epic scope of Filtration Station it feels like a good 1990s map in comparison. I enjoyed it, but it was very easy and could really have done with at least double the density of monsters.

Ukko's Mtal Keep is really beautifully designed, with a lovely sense of place and a distinctive twisted character to the architecture. The gameplay lets it down, though. Not only is 90% of the combat against the same two enemies (enforcers and fields), but there is a single long route that you have to travel, and you have to repeatedly go back to the very start to get more supplies and re-run the same route over and over. It's a real shame that more inventive use isn't made of the space, and that nearly all the supplies are at the start rather than being earned along the way.

Still, this is Ukko's first non-speedmap, and I think it promises great things.

We finish with Yoder's sewers, strange map that alternatives between very easy sections and very difficult ones, and that frequently puts you in a position where you can't backtrack to pick up supplies that you earlier decided to save for later. It was fun, but in the end I began to feel that suddenly being trapped with a bunch of fiends was getting a bit old.

Looooved this four maps: - Filtration Station by Pinchy Skree - Byzantum Ohm Quantum by NewHouse - In Der Welt Sein by Naitelveni - The Call from Below by Mazu

@John, did you find the gold key in The Call From Below? I never did.

I don't remember, I will have to play it again and let you know. :)

There's too many maps with wildly different styles to really judge without going into every single map one after another. One problem that cropped up a few times where important switches or weapon pickups would just not be lit. This was in multiple maps, so people must not be listening to enough Valve commentary tracks.

There's a bug in the progs.dat that affects item collision in some maps in this pack. You can download a fix here: http://www.quaketastic.com/files/singleplayer/mods/JamXprogsfixfor_items.zip

Sorry for the inconvenience!

<p>Oops <a href="http://www.quaketastic.com/files/singleplayer/mods/JamXprogsfixfor_items.zip/" title="Here's the fix.">Fix</a></p>

JFC

Sorry for the markdown parser messing up URLs with underscores :(

I hope I manage to post it, with backslashes before the underscores:

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/single_player/mods/JamX_progs_fix_for_items.zip

An awesome jam! All the maps in the pack keep up with the ominous atmosphere of Insomnia really well, but of course some of them are a step up from the rest. The ones I enjoyed the most are:

• Bloodshot's 'Twisted Strings', thanks to its great usage of scripted sequences and survival horror vibes,
• JCR's 'Garden of Body and Blood' for the best visual appliance of the theme and overall gameplay,
• Mazu's 'The Call from Below' for being a 'stock-monsters yet non-boring', 45 minutes long base run with lots of exploration and secrets and its interconnected layout that opens / links up with progression.

Artistical's, Ionous' and Pinchy's maps were enjoyable too, in their own right.

I'm really frustrated with Artistical's map. I have no idea where to go next. I'm going to look for a walkthrough video...

All in all, this was an excellent pack.

Did Mugwump ever finish his map? If so, where can I find it? Thanks!

Really cool. All maps are great. JCR's Garden of Body & Blood reminded me of Clive Barker's 'Hellbound Heart' & later sequel 'Scarlet Gospels'. The ionous idea of Shugurath origins fascinated me at readme, but well... it was a good map nevertheless! All maps were really. THANKS

I'm particularly impressed with Bloodshot's "Twisted Strings", it really shows off what a modern Quake engine can do.

Twisted Strings was great and Metal Keep I enjoyed despite having to go back to the beginning on a regular basis. The other's I just didn't think were very good/Too difficult or both sorry!! As a map pack goes just 3/5 for me.