The winner takes it all! (But not really. It’s just a lyric.)
After lots of testing, our judges are walking out of the Arcade as the sun sets on the boardwalk behind them. Are you ready for the results?
3rd Place - BRONZE
At first glance, we all had the same fuzzy feeling looking at this map. Cozy and charming, it reminded us all of a TF2 trade server, someplace to virtually get together with friends, talk, build, race or fight over glowing crystals as ninjas. With lots of various details around, The areas felt alive- but they could’ve been even more alive if they had more ambience/audio. The console in the living room offered some semblance to it, but an example of things that could’ve been added are trickling water in the shower, a calmly blowing AC in the living room, or even some music blowing out of a stereo. We did get pizza and sodas though, which some gluttons needed a couple hundred slices of. All in all, the map served as a hub with literal minigames in it, and while it was missing some world building in it’s small setting, what was there is awfully endearing.
2nd Place - SILVER
Reminiscent of a fast-paced HL:Deathmatch lobby, Knockout offers three different arenas to brawl in, and each one is a treat with special care put into it, a kid’s bedroom, some form of construction amid a literal skyscraper, and an abstract formation of slippery platforms allowing you to jump through the air like a little baby with wings. Besides the locations, the map also includes NPCs guidance, or to unlock a new secret weapon! As for the weapons, they could arguably be the most eye-catching thing within the map. They move! And open up! In Unturned! Is that legal?! They are seriously something special to witness and use, all very satisfying and almost begging you to try going for wacky kills on your friends.- And they aren’t a set roster, either- each arena hands you a different set of weapons to use! With all that said and done though, it being a deathmatch map fought with guns, it had to be excellent, and while it was fun, it didn’t bring anything particularly new to the table in terms of gameplay besides hyper mobility.
1st Place - GOLD
When presented with the prompt of ‘minigames’, it’s fairly easy to go ahead and make a deathmatch with guns and have a properly fun time playing it- but Operation Skyfight is different. An incredibly fun experience based solely around dog fighting in Unturned. A very simple concept, yet still very novel to Unturned, and stupidly fun. But not only that, it crams details and easter eggs around the lobby with a fairly good looking environment to gawk at. All made by one person, nonetheless! The only issues noted were some people having to up mouse sensitivity to properly control the jets, and a lack of proper hit detection- both fairly minor. The only major issue was being able to camp out the beginning of the round or somehow land on one of the islands, but that can only get you so far- As for ‘requests’, the ability to choose your jet would be interesting, regardless, We look forward to seeing this map receive an update to those little flaws being fixed.
Comments for the rest of the contestants in no specific order!
CRYSTAL DEFENSE
An incredibly novel concept for Unturned, bringing back a form of horde mode in a way similar to Bloons TD! We had high hopes for it, but what held it down was sadly the lack of custom content, but more so, the intense difficulty of it. Even the first stage of it was incredibly difficult with 4 people, Weapons were expensive, ammo was scarce, and zombies were too tough to fight in hordes as their health would skyrocket disproportionally to the guns provided. Even just lowering the price of weapons and damage/health of zombies would make it more bearable. Assuming it’s based through horde beacons, they scale damage with more people, and there’s a way to disable that ability through ‘Enable_Participant_Scaling’- that would help immensely. In general, it had some questionable balancing, but an excellent concept.
WOODSIDE
A deathmatch gamemode map taking place in the middle of a sunny forest, while not very novel, it still had a good amount to offer. Custom guns, well written descriptions and metadata, and a very well made environment with secrets scattered about. The problems mainly stem from the lack of spawns and odd weapon balancing, making playing it on a bigger server much tougher since you’d instantly get spawncamped. While it is counted as a deathmatch, it did have an alt-gamemode of a biking event way into the woods, however it’s quite hidden and isn’t the main focus of the map, using vanilla bikes which are quite sluggish to race. In total, it’s definitely playable, but has a few major, but simple issues to fix with weapon balancing and spawns.
RALLY RACE
Another fairly novel idea, not properly done before with custom assets, Rally Race aimed to create a simple race track with rally cars zooming through a wooded forest. Unfortunately, after a couple of attempts, we couldn’t get the submission to properly work, we explored the environment and liked some of the details, but eventually had to leave as it didn’t function correctly. With some more fixing and learning, it could definitely be something more special.
LANTSIUH
If deathmatch could be compared to Quake, this is the closest thing you could get to it without including that iconic three line logo. Lantsiuh has a very simple but appealing level design, hinging on bare geometry with minimal design, gray plastered across the map, but done in a way that you can’t get tired of. The weapons are fun to use, and jumping about and slapping some poor soul with a shotgun while their back is turned is satisfying. Gun balancing isn’t perfect, but overall it doesn’t suffer greatly from it. A way to speed up the gameplay even more with movement buffs and health regen would’ve been a welcome addition.
As for a community vote, I was initially not going to do it, but some were curious.
What was your favorite submission?
- Operation: Skyfight
- Knockout
- Warm Isolation
- Lantsiuh
- Rally Racing
- Woodside
- Crystal Defense
0 voters
Steam Collection of all the submissions
Thank you to everyone who submitted a map, and to everyone who was just spectating!
