FrankieSturdust

Sorry, haven't read this forum in a while. Yeah, I'd love to play the full version. Please, send it to me, if you can. :)

Hi! I dowloaded the demo with 3 maps and finished them (slightly less than 20 minutes for 3 maps, 100% kills, items and secrets on UV). First of all, I really dig visual style and architecture of all maps, they look really good, and I agree that we need more maps in this "heavenly" style. :) That was the reason I decided to play this wad in the first place. Great aesthetics. 1 - good short and easy introduction map, no issues with it. 2 - sadly, there are several problems with this map. First of all, I've got completely softlocked in a random room that serves pretty much no purpose (or at least I don't know why it's there... to create another patch to a key? Kinda confusing). I went for the red key first, so I couldn't press the yellow switch when I was near it, as I didn't have yellow key. When I came from the other side with yellow key, I couldn't reach the switch outside to open bars, bars are not interactible, switch and door doesn't work from inside. You're just trapped there... Also, another issue, at some point near the end of the map, at the first area appeared a group of monsters, including arch vile, reventants, and other enemies, pretty significant % of monsters on the map, but I have no idea when and why it happened, and I never had a reason to came back here to fight them, I almost exited, but saw that I had many more monsters to kill and backtracked. If I wasn't a perfectionist, I'd just skip this fight completely. Maybe it's because I did keys in a different order from your playtest, but this fight was skippable. Oh, and I'm really not a fan of fighting arachnotrons with invis, but I know it's intended. But at least it's not cybers! And, I guess, you needed some "harder" fights even though it's RNG. But the core of the map is cool, just I think these issues should be fixed (except for the last one, it's alright). 3 - cool short map, no real issues with it. Looks great as the other maps, decent layout. Maybe you could introduce some fights where you can't just leave and fight enemies from afar/cover, but I don't mind that, a cool breather map. Maybe what I've played wasn't the most recent version and maps are already fixed, I dunno, but decided to leave my feedback anyway. :)

Sorry for bumping an old thread (though, it's february, so playing winter themed wads is still appropriate to me, haha), but I found an issue with this map, below, under spoiler. But yeah, overall, other than that, I loved this map, very fun to play, and looks beautiful with a lot of cool/funny detail and interesting exploration. Good job!

I liked the way this map looks, great architecture, atmosphere and textures, reminds me of Quake. I wanted to play it right after I saw the screenshots. About gameplay: I'm not sure if waking up every enemy at once in the outside area at the beginning is a good idea, because they all come to you, leaving the rest of the map empty, making it slightly boring to explore (although, not that big of a flaw considering it's going to get repopulated later). There was a moment where pinkies spawned behind a monster blocking linedef (at least it seemed like it), making them useless. Enemies love to roam around the map, entering buildings, opening the doors, etc, making the final cleanup a bit tedious for 100% nerds like me. Fights were easy, but that's not really a flaw because it's more of a map with exporation focus, it seems, and I like these types of maps. Most of the damage I was taking was from enemies roaming around and getting behind me, including a fatal jumpscare cyber rocket because I didn't expect him entering the building. Maybe it was an intended design, but sometimes it felt random with all of the roaming around. Also, I know, it was partially my fault, but I didn't find the rocket laucher until the very end and was baffled that you give me so many rockets, but not giving the RL. I even remembered that red door, entered it, pressed the switch, but didn't realise what exactly it did, I missed that little passage with RL (it's kinda small, on the side and doesn't bring your attention to it), and thought it did something else. I found RL when I was looking for last enemies that entered buildings after the last fight. Well, I think that RL should be more noticable, because rockets everywhere can really taunt a player like me that can't find it, but it's up to you. I definitely feel dumb/blind for not seeing it, lol. Also, am I missing something, or you're getting completely softlocked and unable to exit the map if you find a secret exit, make a bridge, and then jump down? Because I can't find any way to access any of the exits now. Obviously, after grabbing BFG, I wanted to use it, so I jumped down, but that bridge can't be lowered, at least I can't find any obvious way to do it. Also, some enemies didn't teleport in and one closet didn't open. And I couldn't find any legit way to get that supercharge (last secret), especially considering the softlock after jumping down. Played on GZDoom. Anyway, my post may sound critical, but I just wanted to provide some feedback for potential fixes, overall I enjoyed playing it and I'm going to play more of your maps for sure. :)

Great map! I love playing halloween-themed wads about as much as christmas-related ones, lol. I agree with TeK (⌐■_■), there were some gaps between these bars that I've noticed but decided to not go through them because it was clearly not meant to, but that was noticable indeed. Also, there was one imp (well, imp replacement) that stuck inside the floor and I couldn't kill him without cheats, but maybe it was a bad archvile resurrection, I'm not sure. I was playing in GZDoom. But yeah, overall this map was really well-done. I liked the enemy replacements, and like most people in this thread, I'm going to praise the mummy-arachnotron, he was very fun to fight/look at.

Valley of Demons was very good. I really dig big, exploration heavy maps with interesting and memorible visuals. When it comes to architecture, it was a really great map. Fights felt clever and interesting, even though they were pretty easy for me. But honestly, I enjoy this kind of difficulty, not every map should be crazy hard, it easier to appreciate its beauty that way. And it's not like the weren't any threats, some good traps and monster placement. Snipers were placed well and applied decent preasure. I really liked that trap when you dropped down to meet an archvile and revenant, because even though I expected an ambush, I did not expect THAT, and it was really cool, I like unpredictable stuff. About secrects: Also, one issue that I found: on Valley of Demons there was a missing texture for me: About MAP06: "Rumble in the Jungle": Even though a shorter map, I still really liked the visual design, architecture and feeling of exploration still was there, everything just looks really good. Fights are good too, harder than previous map. First big fight with archvile in the middle and a lot of revenenants I've done by manipulating revenants to the one side before lowering on the plaform, then killing the archvile, and let the rest infight, while focusing on pain elementals. I've learned to do it pretty consistently. The one with revenants and chaingunners coming out of fireblu teleporters killed me, because I didn't expect an archvile to appear later, there was a long pause so I thought that was it and relaxed. That's unexpected, so it's a good trap. The fight with mancubi you can just cheese. Just use the switch before grabbing the key, run to the elevator and gun them down from above. The fight with cyber is epic, but you have a lot of space to move, so it's not the hardest of that kind. Considering this map has a secret exit, I assume it's at the middle of the wad, so this fight fits as an ending to this map well, no need to make it harder. I like it when the cyber kills the archviles, so, considering there was a space to manevur, I forced him to kill them for me, same with almost everyone else. Somehow, even though I rely on infighting a lot, I was still low on ammo and finished cyber with a shotgun. But I almost never used berserk, so that's maybe the reason why I was low on ammo, cyber also barely took any damage from the enemies somehow. The secret wasn't hard to find for me, but I don't think it should be more hidden. You don't want people to miss a secret map, probably.