Spookhub, Gallery of Spooks by Marisa Kirisame: Love the Thief theme here, complete with footsteps and all. The music sets a good tone, although I'm not entirely sold on being gated through the maps in sets of 3+1. The secret maps are generally easy enough to find, if you're nosy. The second secret level threw me for a loop momentarily because I immediately shoved the barrel into the switch and didn't notice it for a while afterwards.
Spook01, Imperishable Fright by Jaxxoon R: Love the kitty. A nice low-intensity level with a few surprises. Classic Dooming with a few frills. Perfect way to ease into the set.
Spook02, A Baron's Nightmare by Rachael: Starting off with a Super Shotgun is a little surprising! This short map is a little bit cramped in some areas, but does well with the abstract stuff. I particularly liked the way some of the scenery changes on the deaths of certain enemies, and it helps that the entire map is dotted with decorations and small pickups. The portal maze was a neat distraction.
Spook03, Pumpkin Head by Pixel Eater: Not my favorite of the set. After meandering about for a while, I finally found my way into the big pumpkin. Not sure if I am meant to rocket jump my way out or if I missed something particularly obvious. Herding those archviles was... possibly one of the most mindbogglingly not-fun doom-related things I've put myself through since attempting to beat Mock 2 without cheats. Having to herd the lot of them across a pathway where they'll most likely have things to revive within arm's reach? Why. Why would you force anyone to do this. The upside-down fight at the end was pretty cool, however.
Secret01, Uncle Reggie's Basement by Giraffe Man: Well, I wish I had more good things to say. Many of the fights have incredibly little room to maneuver, and the rooms themselves are sparse on detail. I won't comment on the humor. The hurtfloor maze is a bit cruel. Boss fight was actually staged alright, though, so credit for that! This map probably took me more tries than any other in the entire set. The trigger to spawn the spider mastermind in
this room should probably be made into a one-time trigger. I spawned another one after killing the first when I went back to grab the megasphere before just deciding to run past it. Also,
this should probably be fixed.
Spook04, For Whom It Is Reserved by Zrrion the Insect: Really loved the atmosphere on this one. Almost feels more melancholy than outright spooky, with the music and dark blue fog. This is another relatively short and comfortably vanilla map. The archvile encounter seemed a little strange, considering he spawns somewhere you might not even revisit before just leaving the level.
Spook05, The Unpowered Spaceship by CanSteam: Spooky. Love the way the monsters cast silhouettes on the fog at the ends of the room in some areas of this map. This map has some good fights, and uses spectres VERY well. Cramped in some places, but feels more obviously by design. Ammo can be worryingly tight.
Spook06, Avarice by UndeadRyker: Harder than it looks. This map frontloads the player with power, but starves him of first aid. Every mistake forces the player to be more reckless and greedy with his high-powered weaponry. Clever, really. Short and sweet.
Secret02, Bobby by ImpieTwo: It's Clock Tower! What more can I say? Poor lad's a little on the slow side. There's not a whole lot of decoration on this map, but most of the secret maps are a little more unorthodox than usual, so that's okay.
Spook07, The Crimson Flow by Rachael: Well, that sure is a level name/theme. This is a relatively short romp through a foggy and abstract hellscape that starts you off with an SSG. The entire entry floor of the "house" seems a little pointless when you can just dive straight down the stairs into multiple invul spheres and completely assblast everything in the room, but I appreciated the effort spent on the house nonetheless!
Spook08, The Graveyard Shift by Batandy: Lovely map. The combat and power scale escalates relatively quickly. Revisiting the central area with newly spawned baddies and ammo is a neat thing. A very enjoyable and vibrant map, although not necessarily a scary or tense one.
Spook09, Deep Sea by Camper125lv: Holy moley.This map is nightmarishly difficult without saves. It's incredibly difficult to get started, mostly on account of the doubled projectile speed on those imps. I feel it might be unnecessarily harsh on the player, but on the other hand, between that and the flesh spawn, this was easily the most tense map of the entire set. I was constantly on edge, and nearly jumped out of my seat a few times when I got rushed by a group of flesh spawn and narrowly gunned them down. Unfortunately the lattermost part where you leave the base to get the green key is a little tepid compared to the rest of the level, although the boss fight was nice.
This crusher got messed up when one of the flesh spawns was very close to the window.
This spot in the outside area near the submarine towards the end of the map has messed up geometry.
Secret03, Point Motion by Marisa Kirisame: Ah, .flow. Nice and spooky. Some maze navigation in this one. I don't like that the crowbar creatures can end up getting you very easily cornered with bad pathing RNG. I really, really enjoyed this map. Made me want to go fire up .flow and start wandering around again. Really handled way better than I would have expected!
Spook10, Mansion of Despair by QuakeDoomNukem CZ: Not the absolute most polished map, but there's some novel fights and decoration in this map. Could use more careful balancing for fights and arenas for the sake of pacing.
Spook11, Large House of Illusions by Leodoom85: I liked the scripted events in this map. A decent room-by-room crawl, although there's a single switch on the bottom floor that I couldn't find any of the others for. Good use of sound triggers for jump scares. Only thing I didn't like about this map was that the areas to fight the archviles in aren't exactly ideal. Not much cover unless you dip into the rooms, and sometimes those swinging doors can get a little finicky with regards to this.
Spook12, Alone in the Dark by ImpieTwo: Generally a nice looking map, although I didn't appreciate the instant kill door, and I got lost for about 5 minutes before finding out where the actual red key door was. The rest of the map from that point on was alright. Although I should have assumed that I should have saved my rockets to kill the bosshead, I didn't, which forced me to spend another 5 minutes opening the teeth, jumping up and firing a few pistol shots at the head each time, as I ran out of shells and rockets. Whoops.... I slipped into
this room to grab the shellbox before backing out and this door closed, leaving me with no way to get into that room, so I had to start the map over there. Maybe find a more elegant way of closing it off so the player can't do that?
Secret04, The War-den by Pixel Eater: An interesting puzzle map. Robbing the player of their weapons is an effective, albeit somewhat cheap way to create tension. I'm unclear if I was meant to be taking the straitjackets back off of the imps after they fell down that pit, but I didn't see much of a solution to that particular room if I wasn't meant to be doing that. In the final part of the map, it should probably be made more clear that that platform is an elevator, and hitting that switch at the top of it is your goal, rather than restraining the imps simply being out of convenience so you can do so without catching fireballs.
Secret05, Golden Slaughterer, by Marisa Kirisame: That meddling witch is at it again. Wholesale slaughter of goats. What more could I ask? The player should be informed he can headshot things, maybe, because it makes things more fun when the player has something to focus on besides dodging. Surprisingly easy level. I only got hit like 3 times by either type of baddie, but it was a ton of fun juking them. Maybe not spooky, but nonetheless in the spirit of things.
Spook13, Nightmare Fuel Arena by Marisa Kirisame: Here we are, the big angry spellmancer. I love his attack patterns, and I came close to actually dying in this fight. He's good at trying to bully the hell out of the player, and his decoys do a good job of creating pressure. This is a really fun fight, and you can run through those health powerups faster than you might expect to.