Dogville | Single | Author: Taivo Maripuu | -

Description: KaiseR's first (assumably) public release came to my attention as a surprise. The quality is high - not the kind you'd expect from a first release. The level is a hi-tech map which is located both above- & underwater.

Design: The level takes advantage of Jonof's skybox feature. There are two neat skyboxes to support the level's fantastic design (although it works well without them too). The skybox which is supposed to be an underwater world could look a bit more underwater - now it's a bit too skyish. Design is clean and well textured. Some rooms appear a bit too empty with little details but even so the texturing usually saves the day. The design reminded me of Dani J. Swanson (Fusion) & Daniel Aashage's (One2Zero) maps.

(skyboxes are to be placed in "textures" folder and the definition lines from "skyboxes - readme" are to be copied into your "duke3d.def" file)

Textures: Combinations are kept simple and very clean. There are hardly any altered palettes except for some nice colored lightning. Once again I have to mention One2Zero which shares some of the level's atmosphere. Skyboxes add a very nice touch.

Gameplay: The gameplay is unlinear - so once again not that much different from other Roch levels. You'll have a bunch of buildings to explore - each one of them has a yellow key and a 'dog switch'. Once you have pushed all dog switches you'll get the blue key and run away from the 'first street area'. There's some sewer action in the end and other cool stuff. It's not that hard really although there are quite a lot of enemies. I died once during both playthroughs and it took around twenty minutes (first play: 25 minutes - second play: 15 minutes).

Innovations: Nope - well you have the dogswitches and a bunch of dogs staring at you - scary...

Conclusion: Once again Pascal... Taivo has proved his talents by making a level which isn't like the ones he did before ('Dark Place' -levels). Another great city level (although the guy forgot to give Pascal some credit)!

Rating: 94