Downloading now. 

Excited that everyone else gets to play this stellar episode too! :D 

Wow this is not the same level of "Hard" difficulty that I'm used to, this is one notch above in terms of being unforgiving! But I'm managing for now.

Levels look great and I love the music. 

I'm reminded of the 2008 film "The Spirit" which began as a quite interesting noir-like and then 30 minutes later there was Samuel L. Jackson screaming absolute nonsense in full Nazi SS regalia.

Full points for the atmosphere, established both by the visuals and some unorthodox gameplay elements - felt like "Portal The Way Id Did", or something.

I was enjoying it quite a lot. Up to a very specific point involving a death pit and like 10 Enforcers.

I'm getting the impression that this was originally made for id1, then converted into Copper and not tested too thoroughly after that?

If that wasn't enough, the map then apparently turned into a series of time based jumping puzzles - sorry, but no thanks.

My demos 

I found your playthroughs of the first map pretty entertaining and had similar feelings. I pushed through it, but I must admit that I had to use noclip a couple of times (like that last puzzle that you opted out of ...that one was a real S.O.B! You were wise to walk away from that one, because I almost went insane trying to do it).

Hopefully, the rest handle things differently. I do admit that first map looked great though! 

Since this wasn't mentioned anywhere:

The puzzles' difficulty is affected with skill selection as well and it's distributed into a shared easy/normal, shared hard/nm and coop being the hardest. Coop is arguably the only difficulty where you genuinely need to be quick with your feet, unless you have a mate helping in which case it's super easy. Rhythm is more important in the other difficulties.

The map1 puzzles were designed to NOT require advanced movement skills. Most of it is up to just figuring out how they work, what happens in each step and finding the rhythm in them. 

Missed opportunity to dress the quakeguy up in "color 0 13" in quake.rc and for the trailer.
Will give this a go in a day or so, in a snowy middle of nowhere as is appropriate. Congrats. 

After the first Episode Jam there's always been a bit of a stigma towards these sort of deals, regardless of them being quite common in the Doom community.
Of course there's reasons for this, and I'm not blaming anyone who played a part in making EJ fall through.. it's super ambitious and you need a strong motivation to continue on, one break in the chain and stuff gets hazy quick.
That being said, I enjoyed my time with this pack quite a bit, a really solid new episode for Quake!

W1M1
Valovoimala
by Smileyscythe

While I do think high difficulty and bullshit nature of the map is really fun at certain points, I think for anyone newer to Quake (or even seasoned vets who usually play on Hard) this level of jump-map style bullshit would send them packing on the first level of the episode.
This should have unfortunately either been heavily toned down, or relegated to a secret level.
There's really no place for this among a roster of maps with pretty decent difficulty spread and ramp. Stuff like fighting two Enforcers while you're on a 32 unit wide train over an instant death pit.. cmon bruh.
The area above the laser trap area was also really annoying, worse than being ambushed by 10+ enforcers from all cardinal directions is when they do it for over 2 minutes. That fight could have easily just opened each cardinal in a group with a 2-5 second timer between the openings depending on difficulty, allowing for a fun ramp up of difficulty for the ambush rather than "lol you're fucked." right off the bat.
While i'm here complaining, the shooting within the pillars bit WHILE PLATFORMING is so frustrating it even made me cheat through it. When I finally thought I did it, the silver key door only raises for a second before closing again... thats seriously cruel, especially when after each failure the player has to climb back up the stairs like a kid unable to use the monkey bars.
Other than gameplay, the visuals are really cool- when it wasn't utterly bullshit the cool cargo platforming and how the areas opened up doom-style was sweet.. just yeah, didn't enjoy my time with this given the difficulty early on.


W1M2
Pakkasherran Palatsi
by Newhouse
Wow, what an amazing level.. seriously one of the best sandy-esque levels I've played. Areas feel like little nonlinear puzzle boxes, unwrapping around you in interesting an unforeseen ways with each key found, each button pressed. I'm a sucker for a tightly built level which utilizes all of its concepts to the fullest and I think this one really nails it, excellent visuals that stay coherent and understandable while keeping a strong colour and material theme throughout, while striking that precarious balance between an ID style maze map and more modern 'realistic' fantasy settings.
I wish I could say more, but I'd just be repeating myself.
Really wanted a Grenade Launcher the entire time though, I might have missed it D:

W1M3
Teräksen Arvoitus
by VuRkka
Really neat remake! I liked the green-tinged visual style of it all and how each area felt close to the original but with it's own flair. What I didn't like however was all the gameplay mirroring going on in the Silver Key area. Jumping puzzles can be fun a single time, but doing them over and over again when they're devoid of any challenge and also very slow to perform isn't cool. It might have been worth extending a bridge after each wing had it's button pressed, neutralizing walk-back time. Also the fact that the encounters were literally copy/pasted from each side felt utlra cheap, the first HK monjump with Scrags was really cool, and I was hoping there'd be more like that.. but alas I just kept getting served the same desert to the point of annoyance :D
The same can be said of the area directly after that too, I was expecting more walls to suddenly open with a larger variety of monsters, maybe some suprise spawns from the lights on the walls opening up, or a shambler finally breaking open the trap door and opening up on you.
I'm really started to feel the burn of not having a Grenade Launcher in the early parts of that level.. I feel like there definitely should have been one non-secret in at least late map 2 with how readily we've been spamming high-HP monsters (especially fiends and hell knights). 

W1MS
Keskiaikainen Painajainen
by zigi
I am starting to sense a bit of a theme with the Finns, and it's a love for Sandy style absurdist architecture that lends itself first and foremost to gameplay. You won't find me enjoying low gravity levels very often, but this one scratches some kind of itch I cannot even explain. It hits everything for me, well executed traps, ingenious func-filled encounters with lots of interactivity, button shooting and air-strafing platforming madness. I don't want to say much more and ruin it for others, but this one is a gem. Well done.

W1M4
Ylä-Tornio
by Ukko
Mind-blowing theme, shows just how much can still be pulled off with the stock textures. The sense of scale was immense, and while the gameplay felt more relaxed and laid-back, that wasn't unwarranted given the onslaught of long and difficult maps beforehand. A great intermission piece.

W1M5
Maahan Riivatut
by Naitelveni, VuRkka & NewHouse
Once again, really loving what's going on here with the texture and brush work. The gameplay ended up feeling a bit limp however, I ended up skipping a large portion of this map with a single grenade jump.. but I felt a bit guilty and went back to do the rest. Really good stuff, just a bit too rough around the edges gameplay wise for me.

W1M6
Pimeyden Kartano
by Ing-ing, uKKo, VuRkka & NewHouse
The influences are strong in this one, but Newhouse's chops come back up to the forefront for me, I can tell instantly with how the gameplay is set up that it's him, re-using motifs from the previous map and his other entries in map packs previous.. I think i'm falling in love with this nu-house style :D

W1M7
Unhola
by Mazu
I will write a review for when I play this... what the fuck Mazu :D 

Woah, didn't know there were this many active Finnish mappers going about! O: I like how you named the maps in Finnish; kinda reminds me of Noita in that regard, how it has its enemies in Finnish, too.

Onneksi olkoon urakan päätökseen saattamisesta! :D 

...is awesome. The nonlinear game play, the atmosphere, the ability to explore around via multiple routes. It paired great with Immorpher's track too. Fairweather's correct that it's a great intermission piece, since it's not so battle ladened. 

An update to the link is coming as soon as possible, all your feedback & demos are greatly valued and will be taken account.

-smej crew 

I disagree with Fairweather completely. That specific puzzle was really great and flowed excellently, just like something out of Portal. A series of skillful maneuvers as if doing a dance. It really wasn't that hard, I did it after the second try. The whole map has several moments like that.

If this map was bullshit then by that logic most of the complex maneuvers in Portal are bullshit. On the contrary, these require real skill with timing, platforming and aim. Those shooting + jumping + turning + etc puzzles are a really satisfying thing to overcome. 

Those shooting + jumping + turning + etc puzzles are a really satisfying thing to overcome.

Yes they are, if you don't go insane in the process. Even if you figure out the mechanics of the puzzles and secrets it's still a huge challenge. For example there's a secret that involves pressing+shooting a sequence of 4 triggers which opens "something" out of sight. If that wasn't enough, the whole thing is timed so you really have to haul ass. peRRRRRkele!! 

mieli = puhalettu 

...So I just downloaded and fired up first map. Got to the second blue key.

Uninstalling now. 

Sounds like smej crew will dial it back for the rest of us who are used to and/or prefer id+ game play. For now, just noclip past to the 2nd blue key. That last door, shooting past and blocking the last pillar, drove me nuts too ...and I really tried.

Besides a few of these instances, Smilecythe's first released Quake map (let that sink in) was pretty impressive. The ending animation was really clever, it was nicely put together (looks great), and it had some inventive (albeit difficult) puzzles.

I'm sure they'll tweak it nicely! 

... but even the second map did not do anything for me, sadly... 

I finished the entire fucking thing and am speechless.

Will post demos and writeups in a couple hours. 

That climactic last map. Jesus lord, what a cool ending. My favourite was probably Ukko's for the atmosphere and exploratory gameplay. 

Amazing episode. Personally, I really dislike the platforming and gameplay in W1M1, so I ended up skipping it and using the console to load map 2. That said, W1M1 is really well-made, detailed and has lots of nice ideas, so it's kind of unbelievable that it is Smilecythe's first release.

Anyway, from there on I loved everything. I think my favorite map from the first play through is Ylä-Tornio, which btw is a place I often visited as a child. It isn't as cool in real life though.

Also, Immorphers music and sounds are just brilliant and fits perfectly both with the episode and Quake.

I also ended up finishing the end fight on godmode, but that's OK as the episode has so many secrets and stuff I missed the first playthrough, so I'll surely replay it several times - and I will persevere w/o godmode next time. Hopefully.

Kiitos to all involved! 

Oh, and the last map is insanely good and epic. 

Thank you guys for great release. I passed all of maps instead of w1m2 and w1s1, because of crash-on-save issue. Please fix it. I had the same in "Of Three Plantagenets" by Ubiquitous and he found a solution in this post: http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61759 

I had the pleasure of binging the whole pack yesterday, with many of you watching.

--> SMEJ Full Stream <--

You will find my commentary there, but I do have some final thoughts:

w1m1 - Brilliant map, I really enjoyed it. Jumping puzzles are always fun for me. I thought it was a bit too challenging for map1 of the pack, would've served better later in the pack.

w1m2 - Oozing in style, and lots of interesting encounters and areas. It was a bit easy to get lost, but nothing that wasn't manageable.

w1m3 - Nice use of familiar set pieces with a twist! I was warned that I should be careful not to miss the secret exit, and the way you have to pick where to use the silver key to either get the secret exit or an early GL was pretty awesome. The map also communicates to the player whether you found or missed the secret exit nicely with a sudden exit.

w1s1 - Great lowgrav map! I thought it was well executed and the extra wide platforms for jumping around helped in this regard greatly.

w1m4 - Strongly reminded me of Shadow of the Colossus; you have multiple paths to take and everything feels like a secret passage. Beautiful detail and a nice breather compared to the more intense maps before and after.

w1m5 - Felt like a nice continuation of the previous map,an excellent followup and the fact I managed to find some secrets was nice too :D

w1m6 - Lots of neat encounters here, I really liked the Quad damage jumping secrets although it was possible to hoard them until the last encounter and totally nuke the final fight.

w1m7 - What the hell, this was intense. I will have to go back and play on hard for the full effect. The lighting was dramatic and the encounters were tough, but there was plenty of health/ammo to keep you going.

What I think is also awesome is how many damn secrets you all packed into this. I had a hard time finding many, but it will surely keep secret hunters busy for a little while. Nice work everyone and congrats! 

From what I've played of map 1 this is incredible. However, skill 2 is kicking my ass so I have to start over. I'm not used to Copper Quake's approach to difficulty yet, but mainly it's the puzzles. I'm really glad difficulty settings impact those.