12 Maps I Loved This Year

32 minutes ago, Maribo said:

Tower of the Night Seer

It's by RonnieJamesDiner. Rest of the credits are found in the OP.

Cool write-ups. Lists are good, espeacially when there are rationales behind them.

The fact that rd made my favorite slaughter map ever in only 3 hours is fucking insane. I am biased obviously but holy shit it's so good.

1 hour ago, Maribo said:

Thank you for making such a good closer, Bobby. 

Thanks so much for the kind words.

Also, thanks @Korp for the perfect midi.

I'll write about my favorite WADs of the year in another writeup thread, I can contribute a map writeup after I'm done :D

6 hours ago, Catpho said:

It's by RonnieJamesDiner. Rest of the credits are found in the OP.

Fixed, thank you for healing my bad memory.

5 hours ago, Bobby "J said:

I'll write about my favorite WADs of the year in another writeup thread, I can contribute a map writeup after I'm done :D

Eagerly awaiting Crackowards 2023!

Thank you for the BTSX writeup!

This is pretty good. Not sure if I have Afternoon, but if I don't, I will :)

<3

Also shout-out to @Korp for my MIDI too! 

I missed out completely on Afternoon, I'll have to check it out at some point. It's insane to me how many MIDIs Korp has created in the past year or so lol. I don't want to write an entire post about it so I suppose I'll say it here that I was quite happy to see El Viaje de Diciembre take one of the runner-up awards this year. The atmosphere it creates really captured me, it feels very lived in, but also like it died long before you ever arrived. Its really inspired me and influenced the current project I'm working on.

Thank you! *happy cry emoji*

In no particular order

"Always Got Her Head in the Clouds" from I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY THING. Part of this might be just the use of "Corridors of Time" but this map is a vibe like little else and what's more, it plays in a manner that's closer to being traditionally challenging, whereas I arguably relate more to the shades of mood in other maps, but they don't play quite as well, imo

"Chicocos S.A" I think Ciudad Empresarial might be considered a little bit better, but the combat here is just refined to a knife point, and barring one kind of odd storehouse room at the exit door, this easily wins out in my mind!

"Jaded" Well, map 02 most specifically, but this is a map one can get lost in for quite a while. The secret fights are a nice supplement, combat is all around solid without feeling unfair, the vibe is depressing but divine, and overall, I can really find little of fault here

"Garden of Plagues" The monster-less beginning might be the best part but the menace promised by the music never really recedes, even in safe areas, and while I can't say I enjoyed this to the same degree as Jaded, it still has its moments, and that last fight kind of just blew my socks off!

The Safariventure Map from DBK03. Probably I'm just a sucker for maps where you ride a boat, but regardless, it's pretty cool how we eventually circle back out from the temple here.

"Temple of the Blood God" from Mysterious Mayan Madness. Mostly the way we end up leaping off the back of the pyramid for the very last key under a hail of fire.

"Into the Underworld" from the same wad is an Indiana-Jones-esque madcap adventure through a series of old-school temple traps I can't really complain about!

"Love" . For a guy who's reportedly lukewarm on the holiday, the various sound and sprite replacements sure feel inspired. It plays quite well too!

"Desecration of Memory" I'll write more about this later, but basically it's a map with a serious creepy vibe, a puzzle or two and a stirring surprise awaiting those who reach the last 40 percent of the map or so. The ending is just flat-out epic!

"Trouble Over the Rainbow" - Might be the best thing released as a single unit on GZ Doom this year that plays like you expect Doom to play, albeit with scripting. If you dislike it, than you're most likely a monster who can't appreciate beauty, just saying

"Witch's Flake Candy" - You really don't have to be familiar with the show this map's based on at all to appreciate the thought and care that went into creating this highly colorful neighborhood. It's just so funny to break into apartments and disturb demons with their eyes glued to the ol boob tube.

Dee Legit's Chasm remake - I think this was supposed to take the structure of the original Chasm but this mysterious and profoundly beautiful crystal cavern is nothing like the original map! The kind of moodiness that to me is just entirely inrrestible/

"The Cognition Engine" - Great concept, great atmosphere and highly solid concept.

"UAC Bioweapons Lab" - The first map more specfically, this is a great rendition of a military base and containing custom enemies that are actually quite well utilized. Also a good map to get lost in, tons of little busy detail can be found here but never in such a way that playability gets impeded.

There are plenty of maps I've played this year that I really liked but I only felt like talking about one in particular

GARY.WAD (single map e1m1) by Gary Kwaak

The map starts you off in a room with 4 weapons (BFG, Plasma Rifle, Rocket Launcher and Shotgun), you continue thru the level until you teleport into a room full of hitscan just to reduce your health a bit, the next teleport you take is where the fun starts, the first thing you see after the teleport is 2 barons that can't move because shotgunners were placed too close to them and they block their AI which means they cannot attack you, your goal with your very limited ammo is to kill only what's necessary to progress, using the stuck AI to kill the enemies that block your path you finally reach a teleport that puts you in a room with ammo and what seems to be a lift but unfortunately the lift doesn't lower so you're stuck there and that's where the map ends without being possible to finish (also there's no reachable exit lines :P)

Anyways, I just really liked the idea of stuck monsters that can't attack (only if you're in melee range), low ammo and killing what's necessary to progress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aekJJ6u5ztA (Playthrough of GARY.WAD until the lift)

I haven't played much stuff this year besides whatever you see in my runography from this year, which is mostly non2023 stuff, but some maps did stand out to me from this year:

1x1 other mentions:

suis french name fireblu map by dashie and brendan:

I already professed my love of Fly, and while all the 1x1 maps were excellent, these also stood out to me. Dashie's fireblu architecture and light sequences were so damn good in that map, to me it honestly was about as dazzling as Gateway to Shangri-la (although the helix light sequences in that map are virtually unmatched). The curved light sequences and lines were especially pretty to me. My favorite room in the map is the newest and best iteration on the rev staircase premise I've seen: the room is gorgeous, the architecture and playable geometry is very unique for both rev staircase fights and fights in general, and brendan absolutely nailed the gameplay for that fight. The revs just wash in from the top of the stairs like a slow but insurmountable tide, and there really is no comfortable way to BFG them nor can you spam them down due to limited cells, so you have to let the sniper cybers do the heavy lifting in that fight. The best analogy I can give to the feeling of that fight is being a boat in rocky waters in a small storm, it feels a bit uncomfortable and uneasy but it's steadily thrilling. Brilliant fight and the map as a whole was visually dazzling.

womb etched into time by xulgonoth:

I think I already wrote about this map? it doesn't really matter. The map was definitely an experience to play in the middle of the night on stream, just trying to logic/bruteforce my way through the puzzles. The map is very disturbing and impossibly huge at the start before you've explored all the areas and figured out the other world teleport gimmick, but even after that initial creepy and huge feelings go away, the prevailing sense of place is still there. What an absolutely unique and fresh take on the "inside a fleshy organism" setting for a map. With the SPFACE texture choice and the 1 of 1 idea to scroll the textures the way they scroll, along with the sense of scale, no other map within this setting's category feels like it, you just actually feel like you're in an enormous organism and the organism feels way more real than any other time you've been in a fleshy organism in this game.

ether rain by akolai:

the puzzles were super fun to figure out, even though the board puzzle wing had me going crazy on stream, which is fine because i'm just kind of dumb. It was still a lot of fun. What impressed me the most about the map was the end sequence, the way the light orb things just close away is super super cool, and I'm sure it wasn't the easiest effect to create so that was really awesome to see, I was very impressed with it visually.

redrock map by nef:

i know the title but too lazy to spell it out. The lush lighting with rockred is too good, and I think the balancing of megaspheres in this map is probably the best I've ever seen, I simply played the map and it was perfectly balanced on UV. I liked the circle fight and the black rectangles at the end before the final fight. Very fun map and I'm biased towards breakcore so yea I enjoyed the map a lot.

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D5da3 maps:

I barely played much else this year that also came out this year, but I did enjoy some D5DA3 maps.

Map38 (?) Meme Machine by phoenyx:

One of my favorites from the set, such a mad scramble at the start to get away from the viles. Actually somewhat reminded me of Where's My Water, the levels where acid from the top of the level puts you on a timer so you gotta get the water in the shower before the acid ruins stuff.

Map34 chicken barn farm music map by lonely:

Probably the most unique map in the set from a combat perspective, it is just absolute pandemonium at the start and you'll probably die a bunch before you can luck your way out of it. What sets it apart from another map where you get a similar result (terrarienn's map16) is that that map is a meme (in a good way) and has much more simple dynamics but map34 there's more going on and there's more the player can do to try and get a foothold while the map still pushes back on that very hard. 

Map04:

just a lot of fun and cool riff on the poog31 gimmick dubz established. Very fun for max and pacifist.

Map97:

something about the music and tower defense/plants vs. zombies vibe was really cozy and fun about this map.

23 minutes ago, Kinetic said:

Map38 (?) Meme Machine by phoenyx:

 

One of my favorites from the set, such a mad scramble at the start to get away from the viles. Actually somewhat reminded me of Where's My Water, the levels where acid from the top of the level puts you on a timer so you gotta get the water in the shower before the acid ruins stuff.

Glad you enjoyed it, definitely my favourite too of the five maps I made. Has my favourite MIDI of the ones I made too. I didn't know how well the idea would go down but it seems to have been received pretty well. <3

After realizing that the idea was to write about what didn't make it to the cacowards and looking like a fool LIKE A FOOL

I'll get another pick that matches more with the thread

Exoterrestrial Map05 (Stellar Tides) by NoReason

It's hard to pick a map from a NoReason set because I think all of the maps have their own cool fights and they look super polished, but I'm gonna go with Map05 because the last fight has an amazing arena and a lot of monsters so you can't just beat it with luck, you have to understand how to move around monsters, plan what resources you grab and what resources you save for later. It's hard but rewarding once you feel like you can circle strafe safely without getting blocked by flying monsters the battle is mostly over (unless you're me and you do great the first attempt, die to a dumb moment and you have to retry the fight for like 30 time)

https://imgur.com/a/cQnT357