The dedicated Quake community continues its year-long celebration of the seminal shooter's 30th anniversary with the release of "Q30 Deathmatch Jam," a collection featuring 22 new fan-made arenas. This latest project follows a series of themed map jams that have occurred throughout the year, including "Quickie" speedmapping events, a "1024 Jam" focusing on size constraints, and a "Limits Jam" that emulated the original Quake campaign's technical limitations.
Organized by community mappers Annihilazor and Infiniti, the Q30 Deathmatch Jam provides fresh battlegrounds designed for traditional Quake gameplay. The included maps span a variety of thematic settings, from gothic castles and sci-fi arenas to industrial environments like "The Filth Pit," an industrial brown sewer. Notable community designers contributed to the pack, including a collaborative map titled "Overflow" by Mazu and Makkon, known for their previous work on the "Quake Brutalist Jam 3."
Players can experience these new arenas with various modern Quake sourceports, such as Ironwail, Netquake, or Nightdive's Kex port found in the Quake Remaster. To play the maps as a standalone mod, users can typically drop the jam's folder into their Quake directory and load it via the in-game console. For online play using Netquake or QuakeWorld servers, players will need to manually transfer map, localization, and skybox data into their respective multiplayer installation folders.
This deathmatch jam is the latest in a series of community-driven and official Quake content released this year. Earlier in the year, the "Quake Brutalist Jam 3" offered a substantial mod with a focus on brutalist architecture. Additionally, id Software, in collaboration with Machine Games, launched a new episode for Quake titled "Dawn of the Machine" at QuakeCon, serving as a spiritual successor to Machine Games' 2021 "Dimension of the Machine" campaign and further celebrating the franchise's milestone anniversary.