DEADBOLT News

Hey everyone!

This week we’re covering “Directional Input” by SockPuppet, a part of his “Prisons & Lands” series that aims to explore the boundaries of the editor. It’s a bit of an older map, but it’s no worse off in terms of quality.



Puppet was one of the first, if not the first, to make use of branching narratives as a major element of a level, and this is one of the shining examples of the potential of the mechanic. It doesn’t seem too complex at first, with only two endings (both labelled as “bad”) that both consist of playing a level and a slightly altered version of it.



That is, until…



After finding an alternate path, you’re left to explore all that the map has to offer. Follow clues given in bad endings, keep your objective in mind, experiment, and uncover all that the level has to offer.



And most importantly, don't die.



Play it now!

Hey!

So last week’s DNA may have been a pretty major release, but that’s no reason to laze around, so we’re back to our regular schedule, with “Baskerville” by Tahazzar, whose name should be very familiar to you at this point.

And before you ask, yes, hounds are definitely present in this level.



“Baskerville” is somewhat reminiscent of one of Tahazzar’s previously highlighted maps, “Ghost Recon”, as it follows a similar structure of playing around enemies rather than focusing on combat. This one is a lot more fun, though, as it has plenty of visual clues to enemy locations, an intuitive layout, and requires you to outsmart your foes rather than simply try to avoid them.



This time you’re up against invisible read: super tiny hellhounds, known here as poltergeists. Because of their small incorporeal nature, you won’t be able to shoot or melee them. Your only tools for getting past them are your noisy attention-grabbing revolver, conveniently easy-to-shoot-out lights and even more conveniently placed doors, which they can’t open.



Overall, it’s a fun puzzle level with interesting mechanics.
It’s not every day a custom map introduces a new enemy type, after all!

Play it now!

…and beware of the poltergeists’ more unusual behavior.

Hey everyone!

The time has come, and after all the cryptic teasing we finally present you… Deadbolt is not Available in Your Country! Or DNA, if you’d prefer. A one-man project by Alex Pine more than 9 months into the making, the magnum opus of our community, featuring wacky pop-culture references, community in-jokes and, rest assured, the spiciest of memes.



With 30+ handcrafted endings to explore, you’re gonna find yourselves in all sorts of wacky situations, meeting different characters and getting into ridiculous levels of meta narrative, as well as maybe (just maybe) dying a lot. Though we believe that every single person who reads these is a master at DEADBOLT and needs not fret about anything.



It starts off fairly benign, with the player tasked to play Alex's latest level and review it. But as you give feedback, more and more choices unfold, until it starts getting out of hand and suddenly you're doing GoL-knows-what.
Making friends with an army of household appliances? Solving the trolley problem? Ripping off a popular pixel indie game with moral choices in pursuit of the perfect level? Freezing to death in deep space? Blasting Hopoo Games through the window of a high-rise building? All that and more.



With the plethora of possibilities (easter eggs notwithstanding, and oh boy there's plenty of them) you can expect practically anything from DNA - it's up to you to experiment and uncover all of its hidden secrets.

Even we haven't come close to finding everything at the time of writing, so we urge our readers to combine their powers and inspect every nook and cranny of this behemoth of a level - with a whopping amount of almost 150 .nc files in total, the combined file size of the level is more than 30MB! For reference, the combined filesize of Deadbolt’s entire campaign, including the hard mode variations, is just over 12MB. If that seems too much, feel free to join the DNA Discord server, where people will share the hidden details they’ve discovered.



It’s also something of a love letter to the workshop scene and even parts of the community outside of that. Nerds like us would recognize jabs at the edgy storylines, narratives with branching paths and we definitely can’t forget memes like, well, hopoo's lifelong desire to destroy any and all memes, or the forever-haunting experience of feeling like a villain in this game. While some of these could be very minor, it shows the love and care that were put into creating this, and, alongside laughing and sitting with the widest grin the entire time, we could feel genuine heartfelt emotions while going through this exotic experience.



It feels like we’re running out of things to say, so let’s just do a quick summary.

This map is one heck of a complex project, providing a pretty rich experience, although with drawbacks like having to go through stuff all over again to see alternate routes, but the process is fairly short. It also had brilliant comedic moments that had us laughing at almost every dialogue scene, whether it be simple wit, or references to the stuff that the limited circle of us remembers.



We greatly anticipated this project and thoroughly enjoyed it while testing and writing this here MotW for it, and we’re sincerely hoping that you’ll have as much fun with it as we did.

also hopoo pls play it lol



And that concludes the 50th installment of Map of the Week! One heck of an anniversary for sure. It’s kinda baffling to realize that we’ve reached this number over the course of, like, a year and a half now? And while there are always occasional ups and downs, we are happy to have been at your service all this time and will continue to, as we aren’t burnt out just yet.

And as always,
Play it now!

He̴̵̷̕llo folks!

Today in the spotlight is "Security Shamblers" by Roadman 1 (pvpbendy), which combin̵̸̷̕es the titular zombies with one of the most feared, infamous, and challenging enemies in the game - zombie cameras!



When combined, t̡hey pose a serious threat - the hanging heads now act as shambler heads, meaning they can see and shoot you as well as screaming to alert the entire level if you get too close. If that's not enough, they've also got grenades attached to thei҉̶͘r heads, so don't shoot them from too close if you don't want to be caught in the blast! Thankfully, put toget̛͢͞͏̸her with a generously placed 10mm, killing the shamblers results in plenty̵͝͏̷͡ of ammo being dropped, more than enough to deal with every enemy in the level.



While fun and challenging, one issue I have with this level are the abundance of indestructible lights. While it's understandable that they're there to make the shamblers more deadly - their vision wouldn't extend far past the standard zombie cam vision cone otherwise - but I still wish the solution wasn't to axe shooting out lights entirely.



Despite that, the map's still a great deal of fun. While the grenades may be traps meant for you, you can still use them against your enemies, made easier by the 10mm Pistol provided right at the start of the stage. In the end, Security Shamblers is a pretty decent map with a cool concept from a newcoming mapmaker that’s a lot of fun. I͠ ͝c͟a͠n't ͏wái̧t to s͝eé ͟mor̷e f̧̀͝r̶̛͞o͢҉m̷̀͘ ͜͏t͠h͠e̷̴m̕ ̛̕͟t͢he̵͏ḿ̨͜ t̴҉̷̕h̕e̵̵̛͢m̛͜͞҉͜ ̛ţ̛́h̵́͡҉̢é̶̀͟͏m̨͏̨ ̢̀t̴̢͘͘h̵͜͞͡͡ȩ̷̸ḿ̸̧̀҉ D̵̶̢͞N̷̶̛͠͡A͞҉ ̸͢͡D̡̢N̴͟A̸̡̨̨͟ ҉͢҉̷D͜҉̕͠Ǹ̶͢҉A̴̕̕ ̶͘͝͏҉Ḑ̷͜͝͞Ǹ̴̛̀͞AA̵̵̧Á̴̕͢A̸҉̴́À̷̡͢A̵̧͡Á̴̧Ą҉̢A͏̸̡̛Ą́͟A͜

SeE yOu iN MotW #50

Hey folks!

Today we’re covering a fairly small level, but it makes up for this with the amount of time you’ll be spending on it: “Glass Over” by Tahazzar, a very familiar name at this point.

You’ve probably noticed a pattern by now while reading these or playing Tazz’s map – the main focus is centring a level around one specific idea, somewhat similar to the official campaign maps, and this one is no exception.



In the beginning we’re presented with an opportunity to choose our own loadout without having to use the car, a feature that’s been present in a number of Tazz’s recent levels. It’s handy, because you certainly won’t have the time to casually select a weapon when the next level starts. Choose your loadout wisely, as you’ll want to be prepared for what’s coming next.



It’s a chase level!

With the Nightcrawlers breathing down his neck, the Reaper has to make his way out of this dangerous pursuit, all the while being outnumbered and outgunned. Thankfully, the lighting and cover placement seems to be fairly forgiving this time around, and the Nightcrawlers chasing you have a very limited firing range. Maidens, on the other hand, can shoot you from basically a mile away, so be wary of that.



Play it now!