The game's plot is centered around teleportation experiments, dubbed slipgates, which have resulted in an unforeseen invasion of Earth by a hostile force codenamed Quake, which commands a vast army of monsters.

The game is split between futuristic military bases and medieval, gothic environments, featuring both science fiction and fantasy weaponry and enemies as the player battles possessed soldiers and demonic beasts such as ogres or armor-clad knights.

Online multiplayer became increasingly common, with the QuakeWorld update and software such as QuakeSpy making the process of finding and playing against others on the Internet easier and more reliable.

Due to creative differences and a lack of leadership, the majority of the team left the company after the game's release, including co-founder John Romero.

The fourth skill level, "Nightmare", was described by the game manual to be "so bad that the entry is hidden, so people won't wander in by accident".

The sole surviving protagonist in "Operation Counterstrike" is Ranger, who must advance, starting each of the four episodes from an overrun human military base, before fighting his way into other dimensions, reaching them via the Slipgate or their otherworld equivalent.

After passing through the Slipgate, Ranger's main objective is to collect four magic runes from four dimensions of Quake; these are the key to stopping the enemy and ending the invasion of Earth.

The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, and lava-filled caves and dungeons, with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of Doom (such as pentagrams and images of demons on the walls).

[26] A return to the Quake concept was raised by John Romero in a meeting in late 1994, when discussing the next engine and main project after the completion of Doom II.

By 1995, the outline for the game included a medieval setting, hand-to-hand combat, thrown weapons, an area of effect attack with the hammer, and feeding souls to the Hellgate Cube.

QTest gave gamers their first peek into the filesystem and modifiability of the Quake engine, and many entity mods (that placed monsters in the otherwise empty multiplayer maps) and custom player skins began appearing online before the full game was even released.

[34] Quake's music and sound design was done by Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, using ambient soundscapes and synthesized drones to create atmospheric tracks.

A legal issue that rose late in development with the record company meant that the code to play the audio from the CD was among the final changes made before release.

[41] In late 1996, id Software released VQuake, a source port of the Quake engine to support hardware accelerated rendering on graphics cards using the Rendition Vérité chipset.

[citation needed] To improve the quality of online play, id Software released QuakeWorld in December 1996, a build of the Quake engine that featured significantly revamped network code including the addition of client-side prediction.

Players would experience jerky, laggy motion that sometimes felt like ice skating, where they would slide around with seemingly no ability to stop, due to a build-up of previously sent movement requests.

Previously, John Carmack had experimented with a version of Quake specifically written for the Rendition Vérité chip used in the Creative Labs PCI 3D Blaster card.

[51] Finally in 1999, a retail version of the Linux port was distributed by Macmillan Digital Publishing USA in a bundle with the two existing add-ons as Quake: The Offering.

[56] Sega took the project away from the original development team, who had been encountering difficulties getting the port to run at a decent frame rate, and assigned it to Lobotomy Software.

It also contains an exclusive unlockable, "Dank & Scuz", which is a story set in the Quake milieu and presented in the form of a slide show with voice acting.

[68] R-Comp Interactive published the game for RISC OS as Quake Resurrection in 1999, including the total conversion Malice and expansion Q!Zone, although community-made source ports such as ArcQuake were also available.

[81] In addition to support for modern systems and improved rendering techniques, the enhanced version includes both mission packs, Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity.

The three new weapons include the Mjolnir, a large lightning emitting hammer; the Laser Cannon, which shoots bouncing bolts of energy; and the Proximity Mine Launcher, which fires grenades that attach to surfaces and detonate when an opponent comes near.

[118] Entertainment Weekly gave the game a B+ and called it "an extended bit of subterranean mayhem that offers three major improvements over its immediate predecessor [Doom]."

[119] Next Generation reviewed the Macintosh version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Though replay value is limited by the lack of interactive environments or even the semblance of a plot, there's no doubt that Quake and its engine are something powerful and addictive.

[124] Nintendo Life gave the Switch version a rave review, saying it "wisely avoids tinkering with the magic formula that made the game so great in the first place, instead keeping the look and feel of the original intact whilst carefully adding all manner of modern bells and whistles in a feature-packed port that's an absolute dream to spend time with."

They particularly praised the level designs, puzzle elements, atmospheric game world, and numerous configuration options for the graphical upgrades and multiplayer sessions.

Due to conflicts and burnout, the majority of the staff resigned from id after the game's release including Romero, Abrash, Shawn Green, Jay Wilbur, Petersen and Mike Wilson.

[156] After the departure of Sandy Petersen, the remaining id employees chose to change the thematic direction substantially for Quake II, making the design more technological and futuristic, rather than maintaining the focus on Lovecraftian horror.

In June 2011, John Carmack made an offhand comment that id Software was considering going back to the "...mixed up Cthulhu-ish Quake 1 world and rebooting [in] that direction.