Very cool. Great style and detail. A bit like a Wizard/brick-themed Gloom Keep.

I stole more than a bit from this for Remake Quake. Thanks, tiny old map by obscure author. You rock.

Newbie Quake mappers should be required to scrutinize this under the piercing glance of func_msgboard.

Nur die Harten kommen in den Garten!

Very good.

Fantastic map.

Good playthrough, felt a bit short.

Lovely and oldskool, like a warm blast of nostalgia trickling down one's face.

I have to admit though it's so dreary when you're given the silver/gold key before you've even come across the door, but this was '97 I guess so I'll let him off. (And incredibly, people are still making that error these days...)

Fast paced gameplay. Fun blast. Good scale and architecture. Good monster placement. It reminded me of Id maps.

Well-designed little map with fun gameplay and a few nice secrets, including an unofficial super secret that is quite a challenge to find.

Aesthetically it has not aged well and overall I wouldn't consider it memorable -- but I've probably been spoilt by all the magnificent maps that have been made over the years.

Excellent for a first release, though. I really wish this author had kept making maps. 3 plus.

This is a lovely little map, with very much the feel of the original ID episodes, but done better. For the time, the detail of the brushwork is just superb. My main criticism would be that the progression feels a bit arbitrary -- too much use of teleporters, which really points up the linearity. But still, great fun to play.

I assume the super-secret is found by shooting four near-invisible capital letters. I got three: "U" on the ceiling of the ogre's niche just after you enter the castle's front gate, "A" on the underside of the balcony in the room you emerge into after entering the castle through the sewer, and "H" inside the otherwise-empty hidden area behind the middle stained-glass window on the balcony over where the silver key appears. I assume the last one is "T", to spell out "UTAH", but I couldn't find it. Can anyone tell me where it is?

Also: in the next room after that balcony, three stained-glass windows line the left wall. Behind the third is red armour, and an arrow on the wall pointing upwards. I shot up into the darkness and I know I hit a trigger because there was blood. But nothing seemed to change. Does anyone know what this does?

I assumed at first that the missing "T" must have been in the darkness at the top of the red-armour niche, but I don't think that's it: there was no "only one more to find" message when I shot it.

MikeTaylor (SPOILER alert to everyone else):

Near the silver key door there is a demon-faced, door-like ... thingie, near a lantern. If you push the lantern up, the door opens. Inside is red armour or an invisibility ring or something (I can't remember exactly), and the "T".

When you shoot up into the darkness in the niche with the arrow, the large demon-faced ... whatever on the wall opposite opens up, revealing an even more satanic image. If you shoot that, it tells you that a secret has appeared in the "artist's room" (which you unlock by shooting all the letters). I believe it causes an invulnerability pentagram to spawn there (as one was was waiting for me when I finally found the artist's room).

Let me know if you need help locating the artist's room, as it is also quite tricky to find.

Ah yes, thanks -- I missed the lantern. Having got that one, it was very easy to find the artist's room, at it's in the same empty niche as the "H". Evidently you're intended to find the four secrets in order, "U", "T", "A", "H".

By the way, I entered the artist's room BEFORE shooting the ceiling in the red-armour niche, and the pentagram was there anyway. So it's still not clear what the switch above the red armour does, other than briefly revealing the big demon face. I guess that might be all.

This map is great. It has great visuals and architecture, great combat, great ammo/health distribution, great secrets. There's almost nothing to complain about with the combat, apart from one particularly evil trap where you go up on an elevator and get an ogre right in your face. Not a very nice thing to do to the player (this is an elevator you're required to go up). The secrets are very rewarding to find and really cool. I could easily see this map in the actual Quake, good job Utah, even though you appear to have not made anything else ever. I recommend this map.

Death's Taste on The Quake Grave

It's very interesting that Utah didn't release any other maps because this one is great! It's well paced, has good brush work and detail, has fun traps and offers a decent challenge. It's very much in the vain of being like an id map, so the only real critique I could give it is that it doesn't have a lot of customization that we're used to seeing in todays maps, but this is 1997! It's a great release for its time, and for me, even today.

I think JellyGal said it best above by saying "I could easily see this map in the actual Quake." I could too!

In the readme, the author (perhaps over-modestly) says: "Im still trying to figure out what makes a great SP map."

Same. And part of my own figuring is studying this and other old school id-styled maps in detail.

Very impressive with age in mind. Nice bit of semi-nonlinear gameplay with a super secret to discover!

Good map, although I was a little disappointed that John Romero's head wasn't in the super secret room.

One of the first non-ID maps I ever played, I hardly could tell any difference. Not with the jolly old Quake.exe anyway. Commercial quality certified and only a bit diminished by the increasing size, complexity and techie resources of current maps. Nowadays some details can be pointed out as too cliché and some secrets too unbalanced but the overall atmosphere, monster choices and liquid gameplay make this one a sparkling miniature to preserve in the '97 Hall of Fame.

Phenomenal for a map released in early 1997 and good even by today's standards.

Not much more to say to the previous reviews. Great map for the time, even if some of the secrets are too powerful, especially the early and easy yellow armor secret.

SPOILERS (and a rant you probably don't care about):

I had trouble with the same 'T' secret as MikeTaylor. It took me a loooong time to find the pushable lantern. Come to think of it, I never found the pushable lantern of the original Gloom Keep on my own, until I saw someone get the secret in a playthrough. I guess the wiring in my head isn't made for detecting movable lantern secrets in Quake maps. xD

I kind of hated the super secret. Finding the four letters was hard enough, and then you're supposed to find a completely indistinguishable wall to hit? Sure, the wall opens next to you IF you hit 'H' last, but because I found 'T' last, I spent an embarrassing amount of time finding it. First I tried to hit the 'obvious' targets like stained glass windows and demon heads, but in the end I resorted to cheating and equipped myself with 9999 nails and just started blindly shooting the walls. I think Utah should've made the shootable wall more obvious, such as the stained glass window next to the 'H' window.

Very cool medieval quake map with interesting brushwork and level design as well as plenty of secrets for the player to discover. This map gets a four out of five rating from me and is a highly
recommended map to play through.

The first time I played this map, since I jumped on the water right from the start, if became an ammo struggle since I didn't had any nail gun.

The letters progression was also scrambled. But since it was my choice, it's not a bad thing.

Liked the map, I got a red armor don't know from where, maybe it was the secret in the artists room?

Great map, recommend. One thing that I didn't like, since I was stuck in finding the T letter, everytime I heard a portal sound, I was searching the room for a secret, but it was a monster storage room for teleporting them in the map. Maybe put those cubicles a little bit farther?

Pretty easy but a lot of fun!

This map is satisfying to play thanks to it's tight gameplay and interesting to look at owing, partially, to it's cute use of vanilla textures.