Thrallbreak ---------- by DrMelon

Resist the control of The Dread Lord - a map with two endings! Can you escape the clutches of evil?


This is my third singleplayer map, and I wanted to try using the Copper mod. Please install Copper before playing this map, as it does use a lot of Copper-specific entities. The runtime of the map is longer than my previous maps; it's about 6 minutes for me.

This map has two endings - one bad ending, and one good ending. I hope you enjoy finding all the secrets, and I was aiming to refine my encounter design and overall map quality in this release. Please leave me your feedback!

Here's a video playthrough of both endings:
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Submitted by
DrMelon
Downloads
249
Views
862
Release date
Oct 8, 2023
First uploaded
Last update
Rating
3.75 star(s) 4 ratings

Latest reviews

Thank you for the beautiful map. I liked the story very much. The library and the last battle were great. The middle part with the stairs seemed a bit uninspired. But all in all I had a lot of fun. Thank you.
DrMelon
DrMelon
I'm very glad you enjoyed it!
Great fun, nice work! I loved the narrative and replay factor — finishing it by following instructions then seeing from the end screen that I'd only scratched the surface. The writing — what was said and when — was spot on IMO. I loved the design & detail around fighting the incursion — the fact they'd blasted through the door was brilliant. Exploring around that area was very rewarding… which makes the rest of the map feel a bit underdeveloped by comparison? I dunno, not a major complaint.
4/7 secrets on my third try, gonna try finding them all later :p

A few bugbears:
— The denial message at the first door momentarily appears even after you've grabbed the weapon.
— The stairs are very irritating, just big enough to cause a nasty stutter going up and down them at normal speed but also very dense, pokey, untextured and apparently consisting of free-floating extruded squares. I would have filled in the space beneath these, and extended the length of the steps.
— The massive planes of undifferentiated repeating texture are very ugly. Some kind of repeating embossed brush motif, pattern, or more contrasting texture bands across the walls could have done wonders for that.
— The general lack of architectural detail combined with the close vanishing point of the fog made the bits of exposed sky (which is not effected by fog) look very weird — going back up the stairs the map looks bugged. Having said that the brief moment of outdoor space before the final showdown was absolutely beautiful, the architectural vision really came together again for that moment.
— The big confrontation arena has various frustrating issues. The lip at the edge of the platform you land on that screws jumping and will cause otherwise well-judged jump attempts to fall in the lava. I don't know if that's intentional but it's extremely irritating. You can just about use the floating pillars as cover but the space is very tight, it feels like you're cheesing it. If these were slightly more prominent it would feel less like cheating / design oversight.
DrMelon
DrMelon
Thank you for your detailed and comprehensive feedback! I understand and absolutely agree with many of your points, and I look forward to considering them carefully in my future maps! I am glad you had fun nonetheless, and good luck on any future secret hunting!
yo this was fun! i liked the good and bad endings, damn the dread lord and his evil commands. wish the enemies in the final arena were a little more lit up; it was tough to see where they were with the dense fog

also, some of the centerprints were cut off for me (using vkquake), but that might also be my settings? long centerprint text strings tend to not work well on the older engines, so it's something to be mindful of
DrMelon
DrMelon
Thank you for your feedback! I do have a bad habit of using big centerprints - I really should test on more engines to make sure they are legible. I'm glad you had fun!