“The Game Master’s Lair challenges the player with three “Classic Game” Puzzles inspired by Milton Bradley”s Simon Game, ATARI’s Breakout, and the game show “Let’s Make a Deal”.
The Level is intended to fit within the Half-Life universe, but showcase unique gameplay atypical of a combat oriented First Person Shooter. The player is armed with only the basic physics cannon and must solve each puzzle to advance. The level’s difficulty must be accessible to all skills levels.”
Basic Details
- Title: Game Master’s Lair
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-game-masters-lair.7z
- Size : 10.4Mb
- Author: Todd Gorang
- Date Released: 08 February 2010
PlanetPhillip Download Servers
Installation Instructions
- Copy TGorang_GMLair_v09.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- Launch Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Open the console and type map TGorang_GMLair_v09.
- Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
- Play and Enjoy.
Mod Of The Year 2010 Award Nominations
None
Resources
- PDF Design Document
- YouTube Video Walkthrough
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Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 800 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
Total Downloads
Please note: These statistics are valid from December 2010
Meta Review Data
Statistics based on 1 comment(s) with meta review data.
Installed:
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Manually: 1 Users
Time Taken:
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Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 5 Mins
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 1 Users
Time Taken:
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Longest: 0 Hours, 5 Mins by Hec
Total Time Played: 0 Hours, 5 Mins
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As with many Guildhall maps, this one is focused on demonstration of a particular design aspect, rather than trying to be an out and out action map.
The map is puzzle based with some combat, but the puzzles aren’t hard, so don’t worry about that.
My only real problem was the colour and speed of the screen text. I noticed in the video that the text is blue and that helps. Not only that but it disappear too quickly. Whilst the voice might say exactly the same thing, because it’s text not subtitles I feel obliged to read it in case it offers more information.
Regular readers will know I really dislike on screen text, as I think it’s a design flaw. I prefer text on walls, that can be read at leisure etc.
So, the puzzles were fun, especially number two and three. Number one should have contained more than four progressions, with the option of being random each play through.
Puzzle two was well constructed but maybe the floor panels were slightly too far apart.
Puzzle three should have had four doors for three questions, so the last question counts.
All in all, it was fun to play. Normally with maps like these I give them a Maybe recommendation, simply because they may not appeal to everybody. In this case, It’s short enough for you to try without wasting too much time if you don’t like it.
5 Words Or Less Review
Simon says make it harder
Very entertaining!
The puzzles are easy enough even for this combat dumbo. Combat? Sort of.
The voice over was brilliant and the highlight of the map – if there’s a MOTY category for this, it needs listing for sure.
A welcome rest from combat. A bit of R & R.
Very definitely worth a play. A nice piece of light entainment
I agree fully with Jasper above, My kids and I had a “Simon” and had alot of fun with it!! Too bad it wasn’t longer! BTW, Phillip, I couldn’t log in for the recommendation thingy, but I’ll give it a
“Play it Now” anyway!! 😉
the mad sientist voice acting was top, puzzle were simple and not frustrating there was also always a punishment if you don’t succeed witch force you a little more to be “eyes open” short but weel worth through it’s particular approach
This was 5 minutes of good fun. Some easy puzzles with a deadly reply for wrong answers. Great voice acting. In case you play through with no wrong answers, a replay with wrong answers is recommended for a little extra mayhem.
While it’s a well done map, I always use Phillip’s recommendations at face value; as recommendations to other players rather than estimates of the quality of work done in a mod or map by the author. There is a clear difference between something that is Play it Now “drop whatever you are doing so you can play this” and Play it Later(or as I prefer – Play it Soon) “It’s worth putting in your queue to try when you’ve finished any other mods you’re playing” It’s definitely enjoyable, but not so much that you should drop what you’re doing.
As for the quality itself, I do have a few things that I feel could have been done better, for nearly each section of the game, some of them might be too difficult to script, but I think most of them should be doable:
Game 1) Much like Phillip pointed out, the game needed to go on for a few more rounds and offer randomized patterns, rather than always being the same. I also think this should have let you activate the colored button to start the game before getting to the door. I think instead of the square buttons on the floor, I would have used projectors in the ceiling opposite of the corner of the floor that they beamed the colored light into. (if the beam of light is shining into the west corner of the floor, then the projector would be just a little bit east of the center of the ceiling, aimed down and to the west. If the north corner of the floor, then the projector would be just south of the center of the ceiling, aimed north) This would allow you to be able to see and keep track of all colors from nearly any place in the room, and not having to worry about having one color behind you at any time.
Game 2) Problems galore. Having only 3 positions to put the paddle in made the game entirely too frustrating, even with how easy it was. I would have rather seen 2 laser sensors on each end of the paddle that beamed into the room you had access to, which would move the paddle in the direction of the laser whenever the path of the laser was broken. You could even have a second set of lasers that were set even further to the outside edges of the paddle, and have the inside lasers move the paddle at walking speed and the outside lasers move the paddle at sprinting speed. This would allow a much more finely tuned control of the paddle and allow you to simply move and have the paddle match your position. To get out from between the lasers you would simply need to duck and walk under them. Giving a curved surface to the paddle would allow better aim, and making it so that the energy ball didn’t ever dissipate would have also made the game more enjoyable. Another thing that the laser idea would have included is that there would be a small gap in the wall to allow the lasers to shine through into the room you are in, which should be large enough for the energy ball to go through if you happen to miss it with the paddle, allowing the ball itself to be a punishment for not being successful.
Game 3) The only real problem I had with this level is that to select a door, all you needed to do was bump against it. This made it far too easily to accidentally set a door off while fooling around. It should have been set to trigger a selection when you used the “use item” button on the door. I also would have liked a few more doors along with a few more questions, but it’s not easy to come up with new riddles that all follow a single theme and aren’t completely obvious or completely incomprehensible.
Ending) When I successfully completed the game, I used a shovel to block the wall from coming back up and trapping me, this seemed like the only rational thing to do in that situation and I would have liked to have seen some recognition for keeping myself from being trapped. Not really something I expected, but it would have been a nice easter egg.
While I applaud the author’s ettempt to create something different, the puzzles were either simplistic or (in the case of #2) poorly implemented. The voice acting was good, though.
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Best part…
“No.. no, you’re doing it wrong…”
Very short, but entertaining in that way that it seems like one of those characters Valve would put into the Half-life 2 storyline, much like Father Grigori or GlaDOS.
I thought this was fun.
I agree that the first puzzle, especially, should have been longer. I had enough problems with the second one, guys, it doesn’t need to be harder… And for the third one you should have had to “use” the door to answer the question–I accidentally bumped against one of the doors and accidentally answered a question.
If you want something different, this is worth playing for 5 minutes or so.
This was like… BAH!!! Very clich concept and the whole thing feels so rush I didn’t have time to enjoy it… maybe some more interesting puzzles and not quite obvious (you know this guy voice acting literally tells you ALL you must have to do!) come great at times.
I understand this was a guildhall release, but definitely some others are better than this one.
I guess the whole thing feels more like a Play it latter…
Manually
Medium
5 Minutes
Very nicely-crafted map! The gameplay was nice and the concept was original, as far as HL2 maps go. However, the gameplay was WAY too easy and the combat was very cheap. There is also some custom voice-acting, which caught me by surprise, because for a single map, that’s quite an accomplishment.
This game has some fun in it and it’s very easy and simplistic. Too bad it’s short, I wish it could’ve been longer.