Stop daydreaming. The winners are in.
The judges and I finally woke up from our extended nostalgia fest, and it’s time to announce the winners.
3rd Place - BRONZE
Rat House was a visually stunning recreation of what seems to be an almost innate want (need) for Unturned players and modders alike since 2015. The want/need to run around as either a tiny rat in a normal house (or a normal blockhead in a massively oversized house). While the map may not be immediately obvious as ‘Nostalgic’, digging a bit under the surface shows that it pays homage to both oldschool ‘Big House’ maps and to the typical cartoon house filled with toys and gizmos. With that said, Rat House, despite having tonnes of effort put into the visuals, left a bit to be desired through the gameplay loop and QoL; with most guns balancing feeling quite off, weapons being fairly expensive and losing weapons on death. In addition, the only exit to extract your loot with at the top of the stairs is not telegraphed well.
2nd Place - SILVER
Unzoned is a total conversion of Unturned, hearkening back to the Roblox predecessor of Unturned; Deadzone. An incredibly faithful recreation mind you,
which unexpectedly played like a quick, fast paced ‘Plug and Play’ extraction style map where the stakes are low but the fun to be had is high.
Everything from the map to the items, the zombies and even your own character are covered in Deadzone adjacent items.
The largest issue we had was the spawn mechanic which was cobbled together to work in multiplayer. An NPC system was shown off but was allegedly broken in MP.
This issue essentially pooled everyone together to the single city directly under spawn.
1st Place - GOLD
Last Bastions was a reimagining of Unturned horde mode in a 2.0 style. Combining horde beacon mechanics with older Unturned stylization and even a relatively simple but very easily understandable
progression system through three micro-maps and upgradable weapons. It was cute, charming, and filled with soul. It’s a fun experience, and even more so with friends. Going through the three levels
was fully engaging, and a very fun challenge. The masochism mode was true to its name and provided a simple infinite endgame for those who want a challenge. Our only gripe was a relatively simple one
which was that the forest map’s borders were unclear. Other than that, it was a spotless map that was a very unexpected but welcome entry.
Comments for the rest of the maps in no specific order:
Towerfy
A great map, hearkening back to 2.0 stylization once more, but with several twists to arena gameplay that made it much more unique. You pick where you want to spawn on the map by physically choosing on a map,You’re left to navigate the map with a physical map in your blocky little hands with only a stick and fishing rod to defend you. Breaking some chests will give you some wooden gear to fight with, from dinky knives and axes to sledgehammers that break your enemies bones. Healing berries are only grown, giving an aura of suspense as your crops are finally harvestable in the fairly small and dense arena. The map surprised us and the community with how fast paced and well it played. Our only gripes were how items were difficult to distinguish between on the floor and while held and spectators could barely see what’s going on in the arena.
Anticosti Island
A very small but well made arena map; technically the only custom content was a couple of billboards and notes, but that doesn’t distract from the fact that it played exactly how we expected which definitely
isn’t a bad thing. Its smaller size lends itself well to quick rounds of arena, and the barn at the farm was a recreation of the main menu barn, too!
Midtown Horde Survival
An unexpected entry in the sense that it outright uses the alpha version of Horde Mode. You pick up a free 1911 and kill zombies to purchase the rest of your gear over waves, seeing how long you can survive.
The map itself was well designed and lended itself well to the gamemode; with multiple flank routes for the zombies and multiple places to attempt to post up against the onslaught of zombies. Stylistically,
out of all the maps, this felt the most like a true to form workshop map from 2015 and would fit right in with the rest of them. Beautiful compound, and all.
Verdantia
A valiant effort, as the map mixes and matches from all vanilla maps to create its own identity- with a bunker, some farms and a city. In some places, it genuinely felt like playing or watching an old video on a 2015/2016 workshop map, all with its unique ideas and interesting execution.
Skypoint
Skypoint is a recreation of Unturned Antique’s (1.0) main map fully in 3.0, and fully using 3.0 assets. It was massive, and definitely shared that feeling with its inspiration. It included custom guns with custom animations which were fun to use and definitely a welcome inclusion, but all in all, we agreed that while the map was well made and the items fun to use, it would’ve lended itself much better to have attempted to be a full scale conversion on both fronts.
House 17410
Very evidently a map based on the creator’s friends and their inside jokes and the times they’ve spent together, it was very interesting to go around and look at the different base structures around the map. What blew our minds were the custom implementations of sentry guns with guns that actually target and fire at you, the makeshift vehicles with barricades already placed onto them, and the storage units that also included items in them.
All in all, the map served more as a gallery of a previous time, and while it did impress us, it wasn’t enough to make it too far. I did personally say it would be a good map for speed-running on. (Sorry.)
Finally comes the community vote! The winner of this poll walks away with the ‘community vote’ banner and an extra set of Bronze Trophy skins. It will close in 24 hours, so get voting!
The poll has been closed and the community winner is…
Towerfy!
An extra note on the poll:
Considering the mismanagement on my end, Instead of restarting the results halfway through I allowed everyone to continue to publicly ask for votes. Next time around (if any) will be different and more thoroughly thought out considering a reward is now on the line.
- Towerfy
- Anticosti Island
- Midtown Horde Survival
- Verdantia
- Skypoint
- House 17410
Steam collection of all submissions.
If you participated in this year’s MapJam and want a badge that showcases that on the forum, you can request it in the comments.
Thank you to everyone who submitted a map, and to everyone who was just spectating!
