[Merlijn]

The aliens are trying to steal Stonehenge! It's up to Duke to stop them, unfortunately his ride gets shot down in front of the cliffs of Dover.

Dowload link

Single player map. Started as a spiritual sequel to "Clear the Coast", but became darker and bigger during development. Now it's more in line with Shaky Grounds.
Features the famous white cliffs, dark underground sections, hostile alien terrain, green landscapes and much more.

I had a lot of fun creating it, hope you guys enjoy playing it just as much!

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[Maarten]

Woohoo it's there!
That was a lot quicker to release compared to my map haha. Good to see the fast progress you had going on!

Congrats on the release, going to play the final map this evening or very soon!

@ Everyone: get this map right now! It's a blast!

[Dr.Panico]

Congrats on the release! This map took me 40 minutes, killed all enemies and found all but two secrets.

Very lush and exciting level. The outdoor areas in particular are breathtaking, successfully capturing that typical British moodiness; all while serving as great arenas. The underground sections are great too. Not too spooky, but atmospheric enough. It kinda reminded me of the recently released Down the Upstairs level. I guess you guys were in a "dark green cave" mood for a while.

The battle around Stonehenge is nothing short of spectacular, although the ending confused me...

Spoiler

Did we...lose? From the way the scene was set, I don't know if we took down the alien structure carrying Stonehenge, or if we were taking off on an alien ship and seeing Stonehedge being destroyed for good. I wonder if there's going to be a sequel...

[ck3D]

Stellar map through and through, I have yet to play the final version later but I want to say it's interesting to hear your comparison point would be Clear The Coast with a hint of Shaky Grounds, personally to me this felt like a modern day Red map just four times the size as the JonoF limits would allow. Think I remember already saying some older screenshots had Red 5 DNA but now can totally confirm the whole level does, when you think about it it also follows a very similar progression pattern (start out stranded near water, infiltrate vertical structure, come out on top where big event occurs). It even has the house with the little garden in the backyard, or the pal 25 rock walls. As such it really felt fresh to play something like this in 2026 and feel like a kid again.

Another sign of progress this has over Red other than sheer size is better distribution of space (which walks hand in hand with JonoF limits but never is a given nonetheless), cleaner texturing and now instead of every wall of map being an experimental D3D tile patchwork art piece (which Red 4/5 and the 2000's in general really leaned into, I promise it is a trip looking back) the creativity is lent to better service of the layout and of the mood (not that the extreme colors ever clashed in Red but exacerbated the eerieness in a way a comic book artist would; whereas Shaky Grounds taught elements of stage dressing as an extension of the storytelling). The maturity this map shows also parallels its self-conscious bleakness, with all the neutral greys and cold greens standing in contrast with the boiling hot colors of past works (including Clear The Coast and SG), and interestingly it is especially when they are gone that one starts wondering what happened.

I can tell Maarten's modern terrain style since Woudrichem (but seen as early as Alien Planet X64-2) is bleeding into yours too, but the both of you are executing it differently all the while getting finer at it and so that is just basic reaction to exposure and incorporation of influence, pretty cool that a lot of it probably does stem all the way back to working together on the mission that must have been making Clear The Coast (and before that Roch Island). Now of course CoD (ha) does feel like a spiritual sequel to CtC with a touch of SG-era technique but I wouldn't compare them so much as saying this new map feels a lot like someone put absolutely all of your maps through a blender and then reorganized all of the pure extracts into a sauce that is brand new with some new flavors on top. Even the trademark 'Merlijn road' is cut short here and relegated to bits of punctuation with the occasional path but mostly swapped out for caves and open fields. And with how the story was delivered, it did feel like playing the one of a SG episode 2, which surprised me just as much as it is exciting. Maybe in part because something you started doing with SG is Duke alone vs. big threat, in lieu of how some of your earlier maps were more vibrant with NPC's ("Dear Mary/Bob") and so SG marked that tone shift and this naturally retains it.

Was cool to see you adopt and experiment a little with techniques such as fogpals and sloped sprites too, I think you would have a lot of fun with TROR if you ever bothered learning just simple applications of it, with your style that I know isn't so sector-over-sector based but closer to circuit board type vehicling from pole to pole it wouldn't come down to anything complex (really would only need to learn Ctrl E and Ctrl J) and so in just two minutes you could unlock a new dimension of possibilities in your structures.

Will post an actual review later. Congrats on release and thanks for sharing.

[NNC]

Very fun level, I think the theme of Dover cliffs and the Stonehenge is brilliant, I always enjoyed when people experimenting real life locations (despite not being a fan of overdetailing and overscaling), and Duke assets are clearly there to replicate these two. Another good thing is that somehow the flow was better this time, than in most user levels, didn't have to search for keys and buttons too long. The fogged area also looked very good. Also found the reveal of secrets at the end pretty clever.

For criticism, I'm not sure but I feel these "RED3" fake voices and the mandatory "thriller" elements in these maps somehow got old to me (especially since they have their limitations). I'm not sure if all the maps are in need for that. At one point it becomes predictable. The other thing is the typical issue in most usermaps is the button-respawn-button-respawn nature of the levels. They play fun at the start, but at the end, all the monsters are going all-in, which is a bit tedious. It's so predictable in most levels, when the next wave appears (at keycard places or multiswitch areas). I would love to see a more adventurous way to use the monsters, and less switch hunting would help too.

This last ciriticism is not necessarily aimed at this level, I think there are much bigger prones of this button-respawn-button-respawn issue, just a general advice. I think William Gee somehow adopted a more adventurous style in his later maps like Knee Deep or Lady Killer, so that might be good for reference. The waves around the two cannons were very good though.