Barbequed Gravy Cakes -
Core:Make a few barriers, fill in the spaces with cores, add incredibly annoying asteroid designs, then make it vaguely tie into the theme of the contest with art that's on the outside of the map, and what do you get? Barbequed Gravy Cakes! Seriously though, this map is a pretty obvious case of Little_Apple not trying.
2/10Brownies -
HTF:Yawn. Did the author even try? Oh well, at least it ends fairly quickly, with a low time and score limit. The best part about this map is the whole "Milk Chocolate vs. Fudge" theme for the teams. Ahh indeed, the eternal question; which do you prefer?
3/10Bubblegum Blitz -
Core (levelgen):To be honest, while I hardly trademarked it, I don't take too kindly to someone stealing my bubblegum theme (Bubblegum Wars) and furthermore using the same color scheme. That's kinda lame. The map is very plain, although it attempts to remove the whole "circle around the core like a douche" tactic by walling them off … however, I feel the author went overboard with just how much they walled off the cores. They are barely exposed, meaning sans the center, the map is very choke-point oriented. Bursts rule the day here. I do enjoy the nifty circling cores in the center in a sort of yin-yang fashion. Finally, the description is amazing. It's pun-tastic and reminds me of some of my own descriptions, in a good, "hah! Why didn't I come up with that?" sort of way.
4/10CandyLand -
Retrieve (levelgen):Haven't I seen this map before? I swear I have. Anyway, it features a rather boring usage of team flags in Retrieve, and a whole lot of pointless space. Let's be honest, the map could be absolutely tiny and it would make no difference, because all of the action will be happening in the center, and nowhere else. There are excessive turrets and projectors to attempt to bring life to a map that is boring and unimaginative with its barriers. Also, how is this Candy Land? I'm not convinced that this is Candy Land. All it has is bright colors.
2/10Chilled Monkey Brain -
BitMatch:A boring map in terms of gameplay, the overall design of the level is imaginative for sure. I wouldn't have come up with something like this, it's just so random. The art of the map is pretty good, with no real accidental asymmetry or any such thing that bothers my OCD. Also, bonus on the X's for eyes.
4/10Chocolate Contest Cookies -
ZoneControl:Another example of very strange but fun imagination. That guy's face is just plain scary, man. The map is a strange Zone Control that automatically includes bots, a SBot and a RepairBot. While I personally do not enjoy bots, and think the concept of forcing the inclusion of bots is awful, it wouldn't be an issue were it not for the center part of the map. RepairBots just sort of sit there and make capturing the zone there incredibly painful. The teleporters in the map are painful, and the inclusion of Engineer is a mistake. At least it plays decently.
6/10Cinnamon's on a Roll -
Retrieve (levelgen):The title and description make for a confusing first few seconds … Like wow, is that grammar awful or what? …Oh wait, I guess it's correct. And then you read it twenty more times to make sure that the grammar is correct, and sure enough, it actually is. You are greeted with the amusing message, "Gentlemen, start your engines" that ties into the theme of the contest. Anyway, I think this one changed like twenty times from when the contest server went up. Horribly buggy at first, it seems to be working now. It is an arena-style map, but is a three-teamed Retrieve. This in itself is surprising, as all arena-style maps tend to be free for all. The map makes the best usage of team flags I've seen in Retrieve yet by giving each team two out of the three flags they need to score a touchdown. In time, the final flag spawns that is needed to score a touchdown, complete with the message "The last flag is in play! Fight amongst yourselves, gents!" once again tying into the "fancy" theme. This level's biggest fault is not in the map, but in the design of Bitfighter. Regardless of whether or not the flag is yours', you will receive an objective pointer arrow towards it. This means you get all sorts of arrows pointing towards flags that you can't even pick up, which makes the gameplay incredibly confusing. I really dig the art of the map, as it is very clean and gets the point across, and the goalzones and loadout zones look very pretty. My favorite part of this level is definitely the cinnamon sticks that surround the border of the map. Unfortunately, while apart from the objective arrow mistake there is nothing clearly wrong with the map, in practice it just doesn't play that well. The map is too open, and combined with team flags in Retrieve, there just isn't that much fighting at all. While it has potential, the gameplay falls flat, in the end. Also, a better name would be "Cinnarena." That would just be badass.
7/10Cupcake -
BitMatch:The art is decent, although only the small cupcakes look very good, thanks to the scale tool. Let's face it, it's a pointless map. And of course, like most pointless maps, the author couldn't be bothered to set a short time limit and small score. Nope, 10 minutes to 15 kills it is. As such the level captures your attention the first time you play it, and then ever after you are incredibly annoyed each and every time it comes up.
1/10Dough -
CTF (levelgen):This one wins best imagination and most ambitious levelgen. It looks halfway decent to boot, although the designer should have spent more time touching up their walls, because there are tiny mistakes everywhere. Confusing at first, the map begins to make sense as you realize that the objective is not to be found in capturing this or that flag, but in the resource items, the "dough." You attempt to lead the dough along the assembly line, opening up gates as you go that require said dough, until you finally get the dough to the oven. Now, the level seems to be a bit broken or incomplete, because scoring seems to be flaky. But given that we have deadlines, I can't fault the author too much on that. I understand the intended function, and it nearly works, so I'm going to ignore that it's a bit broken. Also, the "BakeryFighter" pun is priceless, I question why the map is not also named as such. Good job.
8/10Fancy Deserts -
Nexus (levelgen):Combine a bad, hilarious pun with a reasonable level and quirky usage of levelgen, and you have yourself a pretty decent map. Fancy Deserts is a Team Nexus map that avoids the problems that usually come with Team Nexus by featuring an oasis in the middle of the map. This oasis spawns flags far faster than your repeated suicide attempts ever will, so it forces players to come out of their bases and fight properly. The author compensates for the ridiculous flag output by setting a high score. All the basics for a solid map are here: Good loadout zone location, a respectable base defense, good spawns. Then there are the little details that make this map stand out: Test item tumbleweeds that are indeed incredibly annoying as they should be. Quicksand traps that are just awesome. Cacti that actually damage your ship upon impact. My biggest issue with the cacti is that the art for them is lacking. While the author could've made good use of the scale tool and made them look properly spiny, they apparently decided it was more fun to spend an hour plus designing a levelgen, while spending about two seconds actually designing the art for their map. Anyway, this one plays good and has fun levelgens. Good stuff.
8/10Gelato -
Nexus:One-way teleporter to nexus? Big time fail. That never has and never will play well. That said, the art is good, and I like the usage of small blocks at the bottom. Most people would just make it solid barriers, and so I feel the blocks are more imaginative. Solid usage of hostile, self-repairing turrets. Seen better, but I've seen a whole lot worse as well. Finally, I enjoy the whole "not ice cream" description, as well. Amusing because I think we've all witnessed people mistaking gelato for ice cream.
4/10Ginger's House -
BitMatch:Now normally this type of map bothers me, but it realizes what it is, and goes with it … a pointless, decorative map that can only really serve as a lobby map. It has a short time limit of 3 minutes and only 8 kills, and the author should be commended for their humbleness in doing as such. Others who make inane maps like this tend to set the time to like, 10 minutes for some godawful reason, which ruins everything entirely. Anyway, this one really does strike me as the good lobby map of this contest. I think the attic is very distracting and noisy in terms of design, but I do like the bats. The gingerbread man is indeed cute and you just want to cuddle him. The furniture honestly looks kind of bad because the author could not decide on a single perspective. Anyway, bottom line: This lobby map is cute.
7/10Oreos -
Core:What is this, Chess 2.0? This map combines uninspiring level design with gaudy colors. Oh also, that last core is just plain ridiculous … did you honestly expect anyone to ever manage to win? Not only is it insanely hard to access for the enemy team, piss-easy to access for their own team, but furthermore the Core is given a ridiculous amount of health. This becomes another tedious map where you wish the timer would be over already. That's no fun at all.
1/10Sugarline -
ZoneControl (levelgen):Okay, this levelgen is just plain awesome. The map makes use of what is, in a sense, a different style of teleporting that makes you sort of relaxingly float along the map. Or at least, it would be relaxing, except this is a competitive game. In the end, is there really a point to using the sugar lines instead of running around the map, quickly capturing the points? No, there is not. The sugar lines can only slow you down, so in the end you are much better off running around as usual. The map is solid, pretty, and has a crazy awesome levelgen, but the levelgen just plain doesn't fit the level. I see its potential lying elsewhere. Still a cool map though.
7/10Sundae -
HTF:Another fantastic example of the author not putting forth any real effort. They came up with a solid theme; a sundae in the center where you scavenge flags, and a neopolitan team color scheme. Unfortunately, they did not bother to come up with any design for the rest of the map, just came up with very crude, small little corners that hardly qualify as "bases," came up with some random, hard to read text to distract you and called it good. Also, two goalzones directly on top of each other? Not exactly intuitive. Overall, the theme is good, the fork joke is a great usage of subtle humor, but the author clearly got too lazy and decided to skip making a worthwhile level layout. Try harder next time.
3/10The Cheesecake* Factory -
Soccer (levelgen):I like this map. The gameplay is decent enough, it dares to be a soccer map in a level contest, and the conveyer belts of cheesecake on the side are a delight but do not distract you from the gameplay. I would certainly vote for this map were it not for the turrets. Let's be clear: Turrets have NO place in Soccer maps, it's that simple.
8/10ZOMG BROWNIEZ!!!1!!!1! -
BitMatch:Whoever made this pitiful excuse for a map should be taken to a firing range and shot repeatedly. Not only is it godawful usage of invisible walls with no real layout whatsoever, the score limit is 50. You expect me to run around zapping people in the dark for 10 minutes and not get horribly bored of your garbage map? Honestly I see this map as a way for newbies to join the contest server, get bored very quickly, and turn their back on the server and possibly even the entire game from then on. That sure is great advertising for our game!
Trolling
can be funny. This isn't. As such I award you my very first
0/10 rating. Congratulations!
Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:54 am 
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