Coffee Quake 2: Double Shot

It's kind of hard to figure out how to rate this.

On the one hand I really appreciate the effort of arranging episodes. On the other hand, each episode has a ton of maps which were designed for shotgun start and play worse for the fact that you're rolling into them with RL/SNG/LG.

On the one hand there's so many maps here (with no thread of theme or gameplay progression through them) that at times it feels like it just goes on and on. But on the other hand I enjoyed just always having a little bite of Quake handy to play when I felt like a short break.

In the end, well it does what it is meant to do! The downsides are kind of unavoidable for this sort of project. There's some real gems among the maps, there's also some real stinkers, but in any case you get through a map in a few minutes and on to the next. Absolutely worth giving it a try... and keeping it around for a quick Quake palate cleanser.

I can't thank the makers and coordinators of this pack enough. Between many average maps there are a lot of pearls. By stringing them together, however, an unbelievable flow develops that is immense fun.

so far I am loving this, a brilliant collection of excellent speedmaps from talented mappers. Sure there are some rough areas due to what it is, but it is important in one area.. fun.

I tend to find modern giant maps rather daunting and overwhelming, so this map pack felt just like what the doctor ordered. The game is clearly doing something right for me, if it makes me want to finish a whole episode in a single sitting.

Limiting mappers to two hours seemed to really force them to focus on what matters the most when it comes to Quake, which is gameplay. And as an added bonus, the simple level aesthetics gave many of the maps a nice vanilla look to them. And when you combine that with the fact that the game runs on pure vanilla progs, no Copper mod, no anything, you've got an extra vanilla feeling experience in your hands, in a nice way. (Or maybe I should say, the game feels like drinking coffee all black, with none of that milk, sugar or creamer garbage!) That's not to say there aren't gorgeous looking maps while still not sacrificing on gameplay, which is pretty astounding, considering the time limit.

The episodes feel surprisingly balanced, considering the huge amount of maps and mappers, and the limited overall direction between maps. In addition to having 4 distinct episode themes, there's a lot of variety within a single episode: exploration, experimental gameplay, tightly crafted fights, more easy-going maps, slaughtermaps and so on. This level and mapper variety really helps to keeps things fresh and probably partly explained, why I just kept on wanting to play.

But the very same limits that brought about such invention, brought along its own drawbacks, such as gameplay or geometry that can get noticeably rough and unrefined. Maps couldn't be tested rigorously enough to prevent breaking some combat encounters. And while the overall episode balancing works out surprisingly well, some maps really suffer from the extra equipment the player can carry over from previous maps.

To sum up, this is one of my favourite recent Quake releases. The bite-sized gameplay-focused vanilla-style levels make it easy to approach. You can play just a couple of levels, if you so desire, but if you're anything like me, you'll probably end up going like "just one more level" to see what the episode has up its sleeve next. All in all, I think I'd rate the package somewhere in the ballpark of 4.5/5 stars.

It's very hard to rate this kind of jam -

On the one hand, it's an impressive technical display: 131 maps made in 2 hrs each, most of which are interesting, and some of which are very complex (especially considering the time). (And credit to Spoot for ordering these maps into something resembling a sensible order when no such order was inherent in the design!)

On the other hand: naturally, limiting people to 2 hrs means that not all the maps are perfect given the tight constraints. If you were rating these maps "in isolation" of the constraints, some might well get 5 [there's some very tightly designed maps here], and some might not. Is it fair to mark them down because they're meeting a challenge?

Plus, there's the meta fact that this bite-sized mapping jam has given us the first public maps from some very skilled people new to the mapping community, which is a service in itself.

zaratara's done the itemised list so I don't have to, and I won't.


I think, despite myself, I'm going to give this a 4 because nothing is perfect - and the last few maps in e4 are super hard on any difficulty. (Sorry fw, that includes the end map!) That's a high 4 though, and even the rough spots are only a few minutes long [unless it's the e4 3d maze map that I got lost in for ages...]

This is such incredible work!!!

How on earth did folks coordinate progression?!

E1

1. Newhouse: Excellent techbase stark darkness. Along with solid simple verticality & sliding walls: welcome Doom vibes.
2. alexUnder: Loved being wrong-footed as to the exit. Getting panic swarmed there was great (again, very Doomy feel — are Rottfish the true Pinkies of Quake? ). Being swarmed underwater is a really special kind of claustrophobia, echoes of Dwell 2m6 but underexplored phenomenon IMO.
3. ChocoHearts: Lovely shape and palette but those clouds are kinda cursed… Echoes of 8 bit Japanese golden age somehow.
4. Mike C: Superlative classic of the Egypt theme for a speedmap. Getting that sense of emergent scale wonderment at this… scale… is a really impressive achievement — it's good to know you don't need to be maximalist to achieve that effect. Makes me realise a couple of things: vanilla knights in pyramids has always irritated me a bit somehow; incline tunnels are a core aspect of pyramid architecture that's vastly underused in the level design genre.
5. Cocorello: Wow. Fiendish concept, extremely unsettling execution. Darkstar Triumvirate levels of Lovecraftian bafflement.
6. arsenalchan: Gorgeous foreboding ruins. Demonstrates some perennial challenges of combat encounter design: enemies that can be prematurely sniped from a safe distance, and otherwise dangerous ballistics arenas that you can simply walk back out of. Still great though, doesn't feel 'broken'. That 'higher ground ogres on either side' thing is harder than it looks, nicely done.
7. Dukeborg: First time I had to strategise my approach after multiple failures. The way the architecture works with that overhead ogres configuration + knights on the stairs is incredibly organic and challenging. Sword-fighting back-and-forth on castle stairs is difficult to get right but also just vastly underdone, so thanks! Feel smug and guilty about sneaky exit run
8. Spootnik: OK swordfghts on stairs are cancelled . jkjksjks. Incredibly oppressive hot start, confounding architecture and extremely cool emergent geometry. Exhilerating feeling of having triumphed over what initially felt like desperately unfair odds.
9. Jaycie: Really neat & short & sweet. Tight corridor plus Enforcer balistics? Very cool. Going from that to the bullet hell arena I felt guilty about trying to cheese it and run past everything … so that Fiend was a great surprise lol. 9/13 kills, I am not ashamed
10. Yoder, Skill Issue: Nicely continuing the theme of challenging me to see how much I can get away with running past everything. Very judicious geometry. Merciless first arena. Shootswitches obstructed by enemies is a very nice trick, gives a much more organic sense of challenge compared to death triggered progression unlock, which is always immersion-wreckingly contrived IMO.
11. Ionous: Sorry, continued my streak of combat aversion and ran past everything, no way I'm sinking all those ogres Loved the long fall into water hot start to give an indication of the map.
12. Mr Taufner: Nice loop, judicious jumps over lava was fun. Thanks for finally extending the arsenal!
13. Niccolicious: A lot going on here! Wind tunnels, ominous cage trap: delightful. Underground arena was an interesting challenge.
14. Pinchy: COOL EXIT TELEPORTER POLYGON
15. Fairweather, Dimensional Fentanyl: I love your egypt maps so much, they're on a level of canonicality (canonicity? canonicalness?) close to id1. The vastness, the dusty haze, the consumate brownness. So impressive you could get so much polish and detail and scale into 2 hours. I particularly loved the zombie placement, very organic.
16. Spootnik, Quovfefe: loved getting the hang of traversal on this. A significant chapter in the long road to rehabilitating the Tarbaby. Neat completion camera viewpoint, I ended up with a cool effect of a Vore projectile swinging back and forth of the viewport Didn't fire a shot, ammo fully maxxed out
17. Zetabyt: Really nice to have big open areas and time delayed mechanism, excellent breathing space after the constant frenetic violence and claustrophobia of the previous maps. Really liked the colour coded switch communication thing above the exit door and the pulsing light teleport. We need more pulsing lights! Overall very soothing and pleasant.
18. Yoder, Vertical Integration: Adore the lighting in the outdoor area! Got confused by the timing and causality of the various initial mechanisms, managed to cheese the sublevel encounter by staying on the ledge when the platform lowered.
19. 4LT: Again it's nice to have the blue sky outdoors, 'light-hearted' egypt to break the gauntlet of dungeon crawling. Nice big chunky fights that recognise the arsenal . Had a bit of difficulty with the exit teleport geometry, I would have made those edges illusory personally.
20. Greenwood: I had really missed zombies knee-deep in blood, it's such a rare treat! Combining that with tech crates was very intriguing… and that needle with a pure fullbright white tip, extremely interesting . Nice to have that mysterious element repeated later as a functional element, very elegant. Techbase egypt juncture is so alluring, and the cyclopean central antechamber with those huge foreboding doors really does justice to the uncanny terror of the theme. Also I got to see a Shambler zap a Tarbaby
21. Spootnik, Beans In A Pod: Brilliant demonstration of how a procedural arena can be spiced up by the addition of asymmetrical debris. Saw a bunch of Grunts kill a Vore
22. Ish: Confusing and delightful geometry. Cosy brutalism.
23. Yoder, A Swim In The Mummy Juice: Really liked the slow lifting of the key cage long after it's been made accessible. More organic mechanical logic
24. Comfy, Transient State: Fiend & Tarbaby excess! Soooo comfy. Loved the exit portal, big Quoth-ish cyclopean cruelty vibes.
25. Fairweather, "The Stultifying MCU-ification of Quake" but enough about Dwell 2
26. Yoder, Can't Stop Me: extra satisfying Scrag swarm rocketing
27. Comfy, Blood Ascendant: F**king awesome. The best gibbing I've ever done. Heroic work.

E2

1. Yoder, Dude You Really Need To… Love this, that texture spamming is really effective. Extremely eerie dereliction / hostility. Cursed in all the good sense.
2. 4LT, Are you tired of the bee motif yet? NO! So scary
3. Jaycie, Satan's Dark Roast: Nice breather of very canonical id1 style
4. Zetabyt, Teal Torment: The starting hall is so cool, the silver key arena also nice with the huge bolt-studded girder textured blocks. Key-operated buttons next to doors is an interesting mechanic.
5. Wiedo: Interesting puzzle. Liked the siege defence of the exit. That ground blood sluice stone texture is so great, I love it when you're not sure where or when smooshing might come.
6. 4LT, Riveting: The steps up motif is great, someone should extend that further
7. Yoder, Under the incadescent bulb: I loved this so much! Just perfect geometry, the halls opening up, the right-angled bars, . Great to be grenade-spamming again!
8. SZE: Fantastic fog and lights, great chunky brushes and fights. Love that thing of fighting a Shambler with a runic plate as awkward defence, made all the more dramatic by Knight crowding (they killed him in the end!). The lava here looks really really good somehow … what did you do to it?
9. Juzley: Really solid classic era platforming / wayfinding. Moving floating platforms are great. Thanks for the secret
10. Colossus: I loved gibbing mobs of Death Knights. The lava ceiling motif and bloodied stone lamps are really interesting features.
11. Pinchy: what a stress! Thanks for the health pack at the end though. A knight teleported on my head
12. Comfy, Ferric Injection: Arena was a cruel challenge. Loved the smoosh gallery — grenades bouncing off smooshers and tarbabies getting crushed made things very spicy! The physicality of it is so novel, it felt non-Quake somehow
13. Grue, The Bends: excellent pulsing light winding corridors, nice angles, good misty darkness
14. alexUnder, Rusty Maiden: that is so cool! The switch from closed to open is really delightful
15. Greenwood, Lair of Yog-Sapha: those non-standard textures are hideous I liked the devil tongue brush. Exit kept me guessing
16. Newhouse: Enchanting environments!
17. Riktoi: Love floating rune cubes, simple as . The silver key chamber is so bizarre! Lowkey 1001 nights vibe.
18. Newhouse, Colossus: Nice to see those spikey balls. Liked the opening wind tunnels.
19. Spootnik, McDonalds Lawsuit: I tripped backwards into lava avoiding a fiend. And died. Twice. Love panicking and rushing for the exit before the Shambler can get you, it's an exhilerating gimmick.
20. Grue, Dance With The Devil: Man I just love vast runic brutalism. Huge sheer pseudo-industrial structures. And that secret! The sense of illicit exploration of a thing designed by inhuman minds. Nice strobe exit.
21. Cocerello: Extremely cool concept. Very Alice through the looking glass. Slightly odd thing whereby most lifts seem to trigger before you step on them, also enemies spawning in the corridors such that they can easily be walked past.
22. Mr Taufner, Loop y medio 2: Nice and spacious, good breather after all the oppressive.
23. Yoder, Hot Pan, Cold Oil: The main chamber architecture is sublime.
24. Spootnik, Something Coffee: Brilliant arrangement. So much packed into that one chamber! Uteer chaos of infighting by the time I made it out
25. Fairweather: those poor dogs
26. Zetabyt, Echoes: Love those long corridors. The twist is so joyous, a really riotous vast quad rampage.
27. GrashUriza: Curious little adventure. I like the strange architecture against the vast purple void clouds.
28. Ionous: often confusing wayfinding but I like the big cold blockiness of it.
29. HCM: Cool puzzling
30. Esrael: Lovely concept, short and sweet. Very unusual combat.
31. Fairweather, Cannabinoid-Induced Hyperemesis so difficult
32. Yoder, I Don't Think That's Water I ran away at the end
33. Comfy, The Negative Engine nice void

E3

1. Juzley, Ranger Danger: consumate by-the-book classic tech base. Impressive for 2 hours.
2. GrashUriza, Void Passage: curious puzzle, greatly befitting the theme. Nice to see Koohoo + void. The Fiend gibbed itself in the void
3. Burnham: very odd geometry
4. Zetabyt, Jungle Bungle: love the saturated green. Pit teleport beneath water level is cool.
5. Grue, Lambs To The Slaughter: infinite flows of blood Koohoo… Quoth Koohoo?
6. Ionous, An Endless Twilight: I loved the secrets and the slow vastness. Echoes of Fhtagn-Nagh
7. Zetabyt, Bungle Jungle: Solid fun
8. Juzley, Koohootenanny: Exhilerating. Nice to get some Koohoo slime sewers but the whole unlock / exploration / combat loop was so tight from start to finish! Masterpiece
9. Zigi, Reek of Putrefaction: Temple flicker lights?? Love the key through crack in door
10. bmFbr, Wading in Dark Waters: delightful loop
11. Riktoi, Temple for sale, cheap: Love that teeth texture. Tight, urgent puzzling.
12. Pinchy, Swamped with Clag: Temple feels really warm, comfy, organic for a change. Verdant not bilious. Love the water passages.
13. Zigi, Wet Shoes: I loved this! Absolutely chaotic infighting. Really fitting Tarbabies. Great ambience.
14. Yoder, I Can't Believe: Consummate Koohoo. Love the chunky blocks.
15. RickyT23: Loved it! That bit near the beginning where you have unreachable higher ground over Death Knight, Ogre, and then Fiend, then Death Knight… is a bit weird. But the sequence is really strong, I love the very definite parts of the adventure. Ogres blocking passage up stairs with a whole host running after you is great fun. The bridges across the courtyard, the flights of stairs. Just great stuff.
16. Niccolicious, Down The River: Nice progression through layers of discrete envirionmemt.
17. HCM, Lovecraftian Flush: nice to be pushed about a bit without all the blood
18. Ish: fun secrets
19. Comfy, Sleep Paralysis: gorgeous. 5/6 secrets Very proud of myself for turning back at the end and deciding to get at least 1 kill or secret it's great to be pushed to confront fears
20. Fairweather, I did it all for the Koohooie: can't find the secret. Don't think I'd have encountered that Shambler unless I backtracked after exit unlock… Perfect starlit atmosphere. That sky!
21. Spootnik, Stinks and rhymes with Koohoo: bish, bash, bosh
22. Esrael: Liked the chunky ruins, a bit mehhed by the fact you can snipe out the Vore & Shambler at a distance without putting yourself in danger.
23. Chocohearts, Way of the Serpent: I rushed by everything and I exited without realising it will come back and re-examine later. Very nice rune usage… Intriguing palette, very distinct take on Koohoo. Fresh and refreshing.
24. Spootnik, Rotten and Forgotten: Intense combat, nice wooden beams
25. Ish: Secret Shamblers! Delightfully hectic. Found the Quad last
26. Colossus & Newhouse: Brilliant hectic combat encounters, the push traps were nearly impossible but I loved the atmosphere of that room. Bit rude of it to steal all the fog & lighting though.
27. Cocerello, Green Foetid Wind: Very ingenious mixture of spatial disconcertion. Those bars 'holding up' the moving stairs were IMO narratively redundant and practically very difficult to parse and navigate. Covering up the lava for the final encounter was a brilliant twist!
28. Greenwood, Subterranean Slimehold: Brilliant classic Koohoo structures emerging from acid depths. And again with the old tech-base incurssion Enjoyed the mild puzzling / pathfinding at the end. Realised on finishing that a bunch of knights had appeared at the lower levels (??)
29. Ish: brilliantly confusing (but never obnoxious) architecture for such a small space. The cells & rocket traps were fantastic. Tarbaby was cruel
30. Riktoi, Iron & Steel: Nice smooth moodiness. Good to get a sense of scale again after the cramped theme running until now. Very Doom feel.
31. Fairweather, Bono: Lovely spiral geometric logics. Enemy spawning logic around the lightning gun and silver key seemd off. Nice horde-ish feel. Took me a while to realise the exit (beautiful) had opened.

E4

1. Newhouse: finally, some nourishing cute
2. Ionous: sooner or later the 'Eldritch incursion' excuse for boxes obstructing corridors is going to wear thin . Nice having a bite-sized shout back to E4M1 though
3. GrashUriza: the unusual geometry made the Fiend fight surprisingly challenging! Nicely ambiguous architectural verve
4. Spootnik, this ain't a V60: Brilliant! So ominous… There's no way I can do this! … or maybe …
5. alexmmx: Loved the left room with the spiral staircase, extremely obnoxious getting the jump to the button platform though
6. Esrael, Unfathomable Emptiness: Sublime. Those long right angle corridors and the one-on-one combat encounters were so accentuated in their simple brilliance by the strangeness in between. Dunno how it happened but seeing that Fiend come in to the far end of the tunnel towards me…
7. 4LT, Spawning Season: I need to go and lie down. Fantastically executed challenge, thematically exquisite. The ultimate essence of E4 minimal reduction.
8. Khre, Pink Maze: Very tight little box of challenges. I like that the spike ball is being used with canonical purpose (great combo with Tarbabies!)
9. Jaycie, Dark Toast: You're so good with the simple geometries of encounters. Getting the armour was such a genteel delight.
10. ChocoHearts, Altered Altar: Nice seeing myself teleport out
11. Newhouse, In The Dark Of The Night: Cruel and unusual, .
12. Zigi, Hall of Ydnas: Savescummed and cheesed every encounter except Tarbabies vs Shambler (which is my new favourite thing). Very E4 indeed
13. Spootnik, Decaf Debugging: Lovely corridors, sliding pillars were very very cool.
14. Zetabyt, Topsy Turvy: Liked the unexpected mirroring through the 'exit' teleport
15. Aesop: Lovely palette & atmosphere, such a breath of fresh air. The void section in particular was a beautiful little set-piece, but the way you used the bricks for the initial stairs geometry too.
16. RickyT23, Unholy Hovel: I ADORED this!! Great to get some organic brushwork and a consummate holistic environment in. Sprinting round the Shamblers to grab the Quad then ploughing through the maze on the timer was exilerating.
17. Greenwood, Cobalt Compound: Great lighting. Like the unusual extraneous flourishes.
18. Zetabyt, Teal Torment: Ran past everything, no regrets.
19. Grue, Eerie Atelier: Slightly annoyed by being given invisibility only to find some enemies will just block my passage down the corridors. Nice mechanism though, good colour-coding.
20. SZE, Fiendish Souls: Great fog / skies / atmosphere. Knowing some kills are necessary while others can be avoided is good logic.
21. Colossus, Espresso Palace: Better than the vast majority of the last Quad Jam lol
22. Pinchy, Is It About My Cube? Cool setup but felt awkward gameplay wise. No sense of direction & enemies at every corner to start with, followed by very linear forced encounters. Great environment though!
23. Dukeborg, Mad God's Sanctum: Really cosy, beautifully put-together places. Neat secret. Stumbling back into water in panic when fighting Shamblers is a new experience! Liked the non-obvious push-button progression, that can work at this scale.
24. 4LT, Fiendzoned: I'm scared. Taking a break. […] Brutal, unnecessary
25. GrashUriza: Nice, this is a really suggestive little model. Kinda symbolically suggestive of Chthon in the circuit with parrallell buttons with timed outputs enabling further buttons. I wonder how this might be extended
26. Wiedo, Anticarnist: lol somebody needed to do the long confusing blue corridors
27. Comfy, Lemon Stealing Vores: I just kinda ran past everything. Interesting to see a deeper-hued monochromatic take on E4 though (can we go bluer??)
28. Yoder, What Would Sandy Do? Ajar door secret is a bit cruel because by the time you see it it's too late to make use of it.
29. Newhouse, Halls of Nirvana: Excellent use of the suspended liquid volumes! You did some great work on that in Spiritworld but I've never seen it put in such an explicit puzzle before — and the drowning / invisibility mechanics bouncing you back to the chaos below, really good stuff. Was only once I'd finished it I realised what the door design was doing
30. Colossus & Newhouse, Bridge of Doom: Could maybe have done with not coming so hot off the heals of the previous (quad carnage + puzzling), nice pattern-matching Where's-Wally effect though.
31. Cocerello: Spent a good 7 minutes on this but ended up cheating and rocket jumping to the exit
32. Colossus, City With No Name: Exit shot is nice
33. Comfy, The Tangent Universe: I liked being snapped into the void repeatedly, also the tall passage to unlock the door. Colours were ugly though.
34. HCM, AQ2 is Flecking good: Thought the button puzzle was a bit obnoxious at first… Quite a lot packed in here though.
35. Zigi, Cult of Dagon: Cruel! Annoying! The water thing is fun though.
36. Spootnik, The Whispers of Elder Souls: Nice idea but just very annoying.
37. Fairweather, Welcome to Shubbucks: Thank you! ☺

In the context of these being 2 hour speedmaps this is a solid 5/5 to me. There are plenty of interesting smaller maps with cool designs and bigger maps with cool layouts. Fun variety.

NICE Work