Have you ever thought to yourself, "Yeah, Quake is great, but it would be even better as a top-down action game?" Probably not, I'm guessing, but if you have—or if you're just curious, now that I've brought it up—then this new mod is worth a moment of your time. It's called Top-Down Quake, and that's exactly what it does.
in case first person shooters make you motion sick, try playing quake like this pic.twitter.com/h4NzAohbmdFebruary 15, 2021
As with all good mods, this one requires a little bit of effort before you can make with the shooting, although it's quite simple to install compared to some I've played with. You'll need Quake, obviously, and the FTEQW engine, which supports the features required by the mod—get it here and extract the executable into your Quake directory. Put the mod's "topdownquake" directory into the Quake directory as well.
Once that's done, right-click the FTEQW executable and create a shortcut, then right-click the shortcut, select "Properties," and add "-game topdownquake" (without the quotes) at the end of the Target field, so it looks like this:
(You can also just run FTEQW.exe with the "-game topdownquake" launch arguments if you prefer, but making a shortcut is worth the slight extra effort if you plan on running the mod more than once.)
When you run Quake with that shortcut, it will initially appear in first-person, but right-clicking will change the game to the top-down perspective. Default movement controls are the same as they are in first-person, and the map can be rotated with the Q and E keys. All told, it actually works really well: There's no getting around the inherent limitations of such a dramatic change of perspective (you're occasionally going to get shot by things that are out of your field of view or hidden behind architecture) but that also forces a slower, more deliberate approach to the game—at least until you're practiced enough to effectively run-and-gun from this new viewpoint.
And if you find yourself stuck somewhere, there's an escape hatch: Holding the right mouse button will temporarily put the game back into first-person perspective, so you can blast your way past whatever's troubling you the old fashioned way.
Top-Down Quake is compatible with other Quake mods, according to mod creator Shpuld—you can find out how to make it work on concert with others, and dig into the source code if that's what you're into, on Github.
