/vr/ - Retro Games

Voidship
dmvoid.zip (139 KB, 1994-12-08) - Kevin McGrail (HevKev)
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=1117

you have been long-range teleported into a spaceship full of demons to destroy it before it can cross the galactic void and spread chaos throughout the universe! i love the justifications old wads have. this map looks the part, with lots of flashing lights, tech textures, and impressive views of a galactic sky. it probably wowed a lot of people when it was made, if they'd never seen skyboxes before anyway. there is a rather nice floating eye texture used in a few places, and i did like the effect of the ride up a lift under the ship's front wings.

gameplay on the other hand is not great, at least, only for those who enjoy puzzles and clambering around in cramped, dark spaces. the first room has you waiting interminably for slow lifts, four in total for symmetry. then there is this knife-edge thin S-shaped curvy staircase which despite being a feat of map-making of its time is annoying to ascend. we go on through cramped corridors and invisible doors through an especially irksome maze not of walls but of platforms whose height difference is sometimes slightly below and sometimes slightly above 24 units (so the automap is no help). later on there is the observation deck, the aforementioned lift up to the bridge, and a boss showdown. the map then has you return to the start where the exit has lowered.

in summary this strikes me as a map which those with the nostalgia for it would love, and defend to the ends of the earth, but without that, is a bit too much of an awkward puzzle wad to be enjoyable.