The forces of the planet roar to life.

One sleepless night now, ain’t it? With Risk of Rain 2 getting released a few hours ago and this contest ordeal being held, it is finally time to reveal who’ll be spending the next few hours playing Hopoo’s latest hit.

Straight to business, Puddin788’s “The Big Idea” is the winning submission!

This is the part where we fall into the more standard MotW formula, but hey, we gotta justify our choice.

To summarize, Puddin’s submission is a collection of trial-and-error-ish minigames with humorous remarks here and there and, even if the most frustrating, it is perhaps one of the better executed levels in terms of design and pacing, not to mention the obvious criteria – minigames being something out of the ordinary.



You’ll go through a mine-filled dropdown, a scavenger hunt and a trivia quiz, with questions of common knowledge and of concerning insight. I enjoyed it all the way through and was honestly surprised to see concepts like these arise in such a limited environment.




While we’re at it, let’s do a quick rundown on the honorable mentions – or, rather, the four remaining submissions, who’re getting away with a soundtrack code.

Honorable Mentions

Tahazzar's "Lost in Translation" is a puzzle that revolves around respawning with a different weapon each time, allowing you to progress further and further even when dying. The level handles this concept well, and only didn’t win because of its pacing - just as the most interesting part began, it was already over.



Classic_Cheese18's "In the Footsteps of a Reaper" is a heavily story-focused series of levels (six in total) with a bunch of different themes incorporated into it. Each of the gang-themed stages has you going up, down and inbetween two buildings and then lockpicking a safe. It is smart in terms of storytelling and shows that Classic_Cheese18 keeps improving in every aspect (decorations, overall ideas, just the levels being fun). It has some flaws like having too many enemies in a tight space and the fact that the keycard-based objective may get softlocked, but overall, it's so good it had me debating over whether to give this map the first place. Alas, while it does tell the story in a rather creative way, it's nothing super groundbreaking in terms of gameplay.



LittleHorn's "Creativity" (direct file download)

Again, a very promising concept with execution that leaves a somewhat unfinished feel, as so much more could be done with the “make your own level” gimmick in terms of variety and scale. Props for originality though – the approach was very clever and unique.



Taterazay's "High Dracula Nightclub" (direct file download)

While the level itself is pretty neat and the general idea of making a level that's level design is sort of expanding upon the idea of Madam Stela's level is cool, there isn’t actually much that breaks the boundaries or blows one’s mind. The vent system is great though, and it's one of the small number of submissions, so the level gets to be highlighted.



Aand that's it! I know, five submissions isn't a lot, but hey, it's a small community. Thanks to everyone who participated and even to those who were planning to but didn’t make it in time! It was like a breath of fresh air to see all the crazy stuff that you’ve managed to come up with.
Winners will be contacted shortly about receiving the rewards.

Hey folks!

After giving it a bit of second thought and realising that we might've underestimated the hardships of real life, we've decided to prolong the contest until March 28th (same time, 12pm PST).

If you haven't started working on a map yet, then now's the time, and if you have - you can now spend more time on polishing.

Don't forget to submit your maps onto the Workshop with "DBMC" in the title/description or send .ncs into the #contest-submissions channel on the Discord server (preferably both!).

Today marks three years since DEADBOLT’s release, and for a relatively unknown videogame, I'd say keeping its players for so long is a pretty good record.

Last time we hosted a Q&A, and while that was interesting, it felt like we could have done something that involves the community more, so we’ve decided to up our game with…


The difference between a regular MotW and this contest is that here you’ll get actual prizes as opposed to just a writeup about your map and a unique role in our Discord server


The contest’s submission period will last from March 14th, at this very moment, until March 21st, 12pm PST. (or 12:00 by the 24 hour system)

Much like DEADBOLT was Hopoo's attempt at creating a very different experience to Risk of Rain, this contest is focused on creating a level that deviates from the usual standards of level design: turn the Reaper upside down, emphasize verticality in your design, create a devious puzzle – go weird, go wild, and unleash your inner chaos to create something that truly stands out from DEADBOLT’s usual gameplay style of shooting dudes in buildings.

The rules are as follows:

• You are allowed to edit .nc files via text editors.
  
• If you own the GOG version or cannot use the Steam workshop for whatever reason, you can join the Discord server and submit your level in the dedicated channel titled #contest-submissions.
  
• If you’re uploading to the Steam Workshop, be sure to put "DBMC” (short for “DEADBOLT Mapping Contest”) either in the title or the description so that we could find your level among those that are not participating.
  
• You may submit only one workshop item into the final pool. Creating multiple maps (not a series in a .zip) is allowed, but as we said, only one submission actually participates in this.

If there’s any confusion, be sure to contact JAG or Square_Rabbit on the Discord server to clear things up.


I’m sure you’re eager to hear why you should bother entering this contest, and you have good reason to, because the first place winner will receive a Risk of Rain 2 Steam Key!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/632360/Risk_of_Rain_2/

We'd like to note that you'll only get the key on the release date, so you'll have to wait a bit after the contest ends.

We’ve also got 5 codes for the DEADBOLT Soundtrack, redeemable at https://chrischristodoulou.bandcamp.com/yum for runners-up.

If you’ve reached the end here, you’re probably eyeing that Steam Key, huh? Either that or you just really like reading our posts, in which case, thanks! Whatever it may be, you now know that you’re one weird level away from nabbing a free game, so be sure to make us question your sanity with whatever you come up with.

May the weirdest win!

Hey there, folks!

Today’s map had the potential to be featured much earlier as a MotW, but sadly never got the chance, and was forgotten, abandoned by the cruel march of time… until now, that is! This week’s Map of the Week is “Through The Looking Glass” by SockPuppet, though it doesn’t seem to have much to do with Lewis Carroll’s creations, despite the name.



This level may seem like it’s a remake of Vall when you first load it up, but it’s different enough that it’s more a reimagining than anything. It’s much harder than Vall is, with fewer weapons and a wider enemy variety. Nothing’s stopping you from bringing your own guns from your car, though. All the while, a sniper is taking potshots at you, so you know the drill. Stay out of the light, time your movements to throw off their aim.



Going up the elevator, you’ll fight more enemies guarding a sniper rifle that you can use to retaliate against the marksman who’s been harassing you the whole way up.

Once you go back down, however, you’ll find you have the option of going over to the sniper’s nest in search of information, where you’ll encounter a large group of zombies interested in scavenging the place now that you’ve taken care of all the threats present inside.



Yes, the real meat of this map is choice. Keen-eyed players will notice the level transition to the right of the first stage, where you can go to the sniper’s nest early and take them out up close and personal. She’s lost track of you by the time you arrive there, thankfully, so you’ll only need to contend with the guards you were sniping in the other available route.



Having the choice between taking on the enemy from range or up close is pretty cool, and being able to visit the area after you’ve sniped it is an interesting concept. Plus, lazy reapers can just snipe the target and leave right after. Score!

Oh, and also, I just have to mention my appreciation for the level’s name. Through The Looking Glass, as in a sniper scope! SockPuppet should write a joke book or something.

Play it now!

Hey, how’s everyone doing?

We’re reviewing another old map this week, with the blast from the past “To Hell and Back” by Nintee – a rather lengthy story-focused map that’s a part of his “Last Stand” campaign.



The level has a lot of features that were popular at the time – hiding secrets off-screen, decorating stairwells with background doors and, a feature unique to Nintee’s maps, ash piles that show you the respawn location of a recently deceased undead (my favourite type of oxymoron).



As mentioned previously, this level is pretty big, featuring long stretches of rooms in a fairly linear sequence. There’s plenty of weapons scattered about the place, along with plenty of enemies to empty said guns into. Be sure not to forget about your objective, though – you have to burn all the ash caches spread throughout the level, and backtracking in search of one you missed isn’t fun.







After you deal with that, you arrive in a large room that’s suspiciously quiet…



Wait, is that "The Parrot Is No More"? What could be going on there?




As for the rest of the level? Well, I’d rather not spoil it for you – it’s something much better experienced first-hand.

Play it now!

"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!

Hey everyone!

Long time no see! If you were thinking we left you behind and this community would fall into a silent obscurity, think again, because this time we’re bringing something bigger than a usual MotW – instead of highlighting a map, what if we highlight… the entire community? All of the efforts made to spice up the game experience and make DEADBOLT something unique, molding it into what it is today – this New Year’s special is all about YOU, dear readers!



I know we just said we’d be talking about more than maps, but we really need to start with what’s earned the game the most of its longevity – workshop support, and all of your custom maps that come along with it. And oh boy, is there a lot to talk about.

Throughout this game’s 3 years of existence a major sense of community formed amongst the mapmakers – exchanging feedback, experimenting with the editor, eventually taking part in other aspects of this neat little family. Over the time period many great maps and even campaigns, telling their own story (ranging from sequels and prequels to the campaign, to something entirely new), were released – short and long, action and story focused, optimized and laggy – and while what makes a great map can be quite subjective, we’ve decided to include some of our personal picks (hey, we never said this isn’t biased), sorting maps by what they do best in order for everyone to find something that suits their preferences. And hey, if you don't like anything off this list, you can always search for over a thousand maps that there are on the workshop.


While DEADBOLT is usually all about breaking into buildings and wiping out everything that moves in it, you shouldn’t forget that with the gritty and mysterious tone that the game sets, there’s plenty of potential for a story. Perhaps a prequel, delving into characters’ backstory and giving an explanation for the events to follow? Maybe even an alternate universe or a sequel? Whatever it may be, these story-heavy campaigns are one hell of a ride.

Included are “Last Stand” by Nintee and “Cassettes” by kilozombie – a sequel and a prequel respectively.


Tahazzar’s maps are, quite frankly, always a puzzle waiting to be solved, whether it be a cool twist on the game’s mechanics or simply figuring out how on Earth this thing even works, but for now we'll stop on “Ghost Recon” stands out by using a Y-Axis flip on every entity in the level and having two Reapers – one being in some alternate dimension and ours being upside down dealing with not-so-harmless ghosts. Can you figure it out?


If you’re the sort of folk who like when more than two enemies come at you simultaneously, we can recommend “Sinner Dinner” by Alex Pine – a level from his “Deadline” campaign, filled with enemies to the brim. You are given plenty of options for moving around a level and are provided with a powerful arsenal – obviously you wouldn’t go on a horde with just a revolver. Despite that, it doesn’t feel any easier, so get ready for a challenge.


Some folks, like myself, like doing everything quietly without drawing any unnecessary attention. The levels presented here are (mostly) all about sticking to the shadows and avoiding enemies as much as possible rather than getting into a fight – “Bypass” by the ever-so-memorable Tahazzar and the first chapter of the Prologue series by SwamDono.

…oh, huh, what’s this?

Using this special occasion, SockPuppet made a New Year-themed map!
Can’t miss out on that, so go and play it!

As people delved further into the workings of the level editor, many of its secrets, bugs and unintended features were discovered. Some mindblowing and tricky, others… not so much, but each handy in some way – whether it’d be adding unavailable-in-the-editor objects (or even cut ones) or making your cutscenes much more impressive and pretty – for the curious ones, you can read it all over in these guides:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=761140674
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1103643027
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1483500137

And hey, don’t even get me started on how much you can do by fiddling around with .nc files in a text editor.



While we’re on the topic of creativity, why not talk about artists? These folks also spend countless hours to create something on their computers, but rather than figuring out the mysteries of the level editor, they’re figuring out the mysteries of how the heck you draw skeletons or make the stuff in their heads become reality.
Don’t forget that you can always browse the “Artworks” tab in the Community Hub to find something of your personal liking!

One of the first things that comes to mind is the tarot card collection that was released a few months ago. It was even spotted by hopoo himself and highlighted on his twitter! This card collection is a collaboration between twelve artists, each with their own unique and a bit twisted look on things.



Back when the game first launched, one of the more active artists were CrazyCKen and aemni with their super detailed artworks – almost too good to be true.



Among the community’s artists are some of my friends who, perhaps unsurprisingly, also started out as mapmakers – like Nintee. Nintee’s speciality is pixel art – it’s so well done that hopoo even commended it at one point! He helped out a lot on a Nuclear Throne mod which was supposed to bring DEADBOLT into the game’s universe, but sadly that never worked out.





Onto the stuff less exciting but interesting nonetheless.

Although the game only got a couple updates over the course of three years (literally a couple, actually) and doesn’t feature any form of modding support (which has been requested since ror1), there have been times when Hopoo Games tried their best to do only the best for DEADBOLT. For one – the game’s console release on PS4/Vita and Nintendo Switch, attracting a new playerbase and allowing us to smash undead skulls whenever and wherever we please.

Another thing that shouldn’t be forgotten about is the fact that hopoo bit the bullet and recruited a moderator – a mostly silent observer, helping out on discussions, writing “Map of the Week” on a semi-regular basis, and currently writing this very New Year-special post.
Bet this game would be dead without one. :mw:

Heck, while I’m at it, I might as well mention Square_Rabbit – a MotW messiah (the posts wouldn’t be so flashy without him redacting stuff, lads), has the most hours on DEADBOLT (to my knowledge) and probably the one who’s done even more for the community than me. Oh, and he also has several WR speedruns, which is pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXUvvPUAd4

While we’ve moved away from the development topic anyway, it’s important to recall the game’s soundtrack – it’s got a Soundcloud release for all to hear and download, a stem album to remix and research and even a physical release in form of vinyl records with cool design and other nick-nacks!



And we definitely shouldn’t forget the Discord server that’s been running for over a year now and which has everything you could wish for: emotes, memes, complete lack of any seriousness and quick access to discussing all aspects of the game and its community!
Click here to join!


Although the community isn’t all that big and active, I’ve had an absolute blast moderating it for over a year at this point, helping people out in discussions, playing and reviewing people’s maps and just generally having a great time watching as this small community of ours prospers. Here’s to another year, hopefully even crazier than the previous ones!


Artwork by Nintee