Quake

Quake marked id Software's leap from the fast but flat graphics of Doom to a fully three-dimensional world with dynamic lighting and simple physics. The player finds themselves in a dark, gothic environment full of stone temples, lava, and organic biomechanical structures, fighting through traps, secret passages, and increasingly aggressive enemies across four thematic episodes. Compared to the studio's previous titles, it added freedom of movement along all three axes, jumping across chasms, and so-called rocket jumping, which quickly became part of player culture and later competitive multiplayer. The weapon arsenal, from the shotgun to the grenade launcher and nail gun, was complemented by grim, almost alien-looking locations blending fantasy and technological elements.

On an average DOS machine of the mid-1990s, Quake was extremely demanding – a fully textured 3D environment with its own software renderer and static lighting system required a powerful processor, and reducing the resolution to a minimum was often necessary for smooth play. The game's music was composed by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, giving the atmosphere an industrial, oppressive edge that stood in clear contrast to the metal-heavy production typical of FPS games at the time, playing more in ambient waves between battles than as a continuous backdrop. The dark, almost music-free passages heightened the sense of isolation in a hostile world, and the sounds of footsteps and monsters became a key part of the player's orientation.

Quake also pioneered internet multiplayer, giving rise to an extensive deathmatch scene, later competitive tournaments, and technologies such as the client-server model that other online games would later build upon. The game's engine inspired numerous other studios, and its later source code release enabled a wealth of mods, technological experiments, and entirely new genres, starting with the early team-based mod Team Fortress. Even today, Quake is considered one of the key milestones of the FPS genre, and its gameplay and gunplay still hold up years later.