hwjam4_grue - Couldn't get this one to finish. I jumped down onto the risers down in the lava, fought the spawn-ins, then nothing happened. The book disappeared. Didn't matter where I stood, I was stuck. Even noclipping out of the pit and walking around, the door to the exit was sealed. Using Quakespasm git.

Happy Halloween indeed, and another fantastic Jam to celebrate!

Thanks to the authors for sharing their talents and imagination with us. I had a great time playing these maps and I must say that AD lends itself very well to creepy, Halloween-themed Quake maps.

My favorites of the bunch in no particular order were 'School of Nothing', 'Entombed', 'Cathedral of Calamity', and 'Crypt of the Outsider'.

I absolutely love these projects! Well done, everyone. Very well done! Thank you for your hard work - again! :)

Very nice missions, thanks to all authors !

hwjam4_grue : don't go on the lava platforms, go directly to the book, you have to jump on the big fire 'arch' (it's hard but possible, always aim the center of the arch to maintain balance) to get the extra-life item, then jump down to the book.

As always impressive work and nicely done.

Just one observation for this jam, I found many maps seem to be unfinished or done in a hurry, as there are many gameplay glitches and inconsistencies with which places you can go and how to get back from them without dying or cheating.

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?

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.

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. 1. 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 noclip to get back to the gold-key area and drop down the other way instead. 2. 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.

The pack as a whole is a real winner: not a single map that wasn't inventive and fun to play. Love it!

Greetings from Swamptown! By PQP At the start on right side of the map there is a pot plant of some sort. You touch it and message appears there are two more. Where are the others?

Very high quality pack, loved it.

I accidentally cheesed the first puzzle in hwjam4_riktoi by jumping left through the lava door, over the railing and circling around to the pool area. Only later on did i notice the torch and realized i'd taken a shortcut. That said, there was the nicely placed blocks outside the pool allowing entry, so maybe this was a deliberate path?

@MikeTaylor: In "Crypt of the Outsider", as rot13 would say, fbzr jnyyf ner oernxnoyr.

Thanks for the tip, @jugador!

Hmmm, no ... I'm still not getting it. I can't find any more breakable walls in the end chamber, just the invisible barrier that stops me walking into the exit ... and the poem in the book:

Never felt a reason to leave such a place. The dead were never grotesque. More natural than the living.

If there isn't going to be any more Halloween Jams, I would like for all 4 of the ones currently made to be merged into one pack, if possible.