DEADBOLT News

"A moderator is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to!" - JAG

Sorry for the delay with this one! Let's not delay this any further and get straight to business.

As fun as long maps can be, sometimes we just have to take a break and enjoy something shorter and simpler – like with today’s “Fish Out Of Water” by RodigroW.



This level has us infiltrating a nightclub to assassinate a target – a Patriarch who, ironically, is the least dangerous threat in the level, as it’s packed to the brim with all sorts of far deadlier enemies who can actually open doors. The map’s very close-quarters, so aiming for the heads as enemies run at you can be challenging.



You can’t exactly just skip past everyone either – there’s a vent system you can take advantage of, but every exit is in clear sight of every enemy, meaning that using vents without taking undead out or distracting them is a huge risk. You have to think carefully about every move you make.



However, the only objective in the map is to kill the Patriarch, meaning if you’re good enough you can eliminate him while leaving the other half of the club untouched. The level’s a little linear, with two main routes that lead to the target, but it’s still a very engaging level that can provide a decent challenge without being a massive time loss if you die, like with bigger levels.

Play it now!

Hey everyone!

Today we’re exploring something a little bit experimental with Tahazzar’s “Show Who’s Boss”, which aims to create a sort of pseudo boss rush.



The concept of a boss rush, which is essentially going through several bosses consecutively, is somewhat troublesome to imagine working well in DEADBOLT’s environment – making it a series of levels (especially if you just put a bunch of levels from the game’s main campaign in a row) could be dull and tedious and if you choose for it to be a single level, you can run into trouble of just having too many enemies in one spot, and powerful enemies at that.

Tazz decided to go with the latter but, fortunately put all the bosses in one large building, sparing a lot of space between bosses and enabling for somewhat fair one-on-one encounters.



As you could tell by looking at previous MotWs, I like hard levels, maybe even too much. And while this one, contrary to what we’d usually see from Tazz, doesn’t have any flashy decorations, it sure as hell delivers on the difficulty and the fun factor, having us face our arch nemesis like Madam Stela with her phylacteries and endless shotgun ammo or Amber & Evelynn with their harvest babble and many alike. No Timur though, darn.



Sure, there’s a lot of space between the bosses, but that space also happens to be filled with other undead. If you’re not careful, you can quickly find yourself out cornered by hordes of dogs and vampires coming your way. As always, the best strategy is divide and conquer.



It’s a nice, simple level that provides a fair challenge with thoughtful enemy placement and just the right amount of guns littered around. While “Show Who’s Boss” isn’t unique with its story or visuals or even anything gameplay-related to begin with, I can still commend it for just focusing on the level design and succeeding in that regard. And hey, at the end of the day – it’s a really fun level.

And what else do you really need but a fun, well designed level?

Play it now!

Hey everyone!

As finals are approaching, and as this moderator is in fact a real existing person, we occasionally need to delay the MotWs for their sake and outs – but fret not, we’re still silently keeping watch for cool new maps to highlight (among other community-related tasks, of course)

This week’s spotlight is on “Search and Rescue”, the third installment of Classic_Cheese18’s “Diner” series. A great map packed with all kinds of undead (except for zombies – no one likes the Kingz, I guess).



From the opening shot alone, one can get intimidated by the sheer number of powerful enemies that you’ll have to tackle with such limited weaponry, which upon closer inspection isn’t too big a problem considering how you can flank and avoid large groups of enemies, keep to the darkness, and abuse stairwells. With that, the map manages to keep the player on their toes and punish careless actions, yet doesn’t feel like an insurmountable task, with occasional room for error that lets you retreat and rethink your strategies.



As for the level design, the map’s fairly linear – the vent network doesn’t allow access to the top floor of the building, and the two halves are separated by a blocked pipe you’ll need to open to avoid being forced to use the elevator. The decoration is also very praiseworthy – while not being all super flashy and picturesque, each room has a specific theme and has just the amount of details to tell you what you need to know.



Overall, a very impressive map which most certainly overshadows the previous two maps in the series. It’s always a pleasure to get to review maps made by someone other than the-most-popular-mapmakers (you know the ones), even if this isn’t the first time one of Cheese’s levels have been featured here.

Play it now!

Hey everyone!

Welcome to the first MotW of 2019! New year, same old MotWs! Even down to whose levels we’re highlighting, as this week’s spotlight is on “The December Mixup” by Nintee – a collection of levels that reimagine maps from DEADBOLT’s main campaign.



Unlike the remakes we’ve covered in the past, however, this collection focuses on swapping around the details of maps without changing the layouts. The Dredged warehouse in Horror Show is now a vampire nightclub (appropriately named “Horror Show but with Vampires”), and Puff’s building is now a Demon owned one, with a sniping section where you assassinate a Patriarch in Roland’s building.



With eight levels in total, this campaign allows you to go through an alternate storyline, filled with familiar locations and familiar people, with slight differences in the specifics. What faction owns what, how enemies are laid out, what events take place in each level, all mixed with Nintee’s unique sense of design and, sometimes, humour.



As you could expect from a DEADBOLT campaign, the collection’s got a pretty grim tone and, as the game warns you each time you launch it, contains topics of death and suicide, touching upon them in the same manner as the original campaign. But we’re not all here for the story, many of us are just here to make undead heads explode, and this campaign sure as hell delivers on that.





Play it now!