Having thrown myself quite forcefully into the mapmaking process, I have found myself more and more often providing constructive criticism for others. Having seen threads like these get quite a volume of submissions, it seems clear that many people actively want that feedback. So rather than impose on whichever random thread catches my eye (which as it turns out can be quite the unreliable choosing process), I am posting this to allow people to come to me. I have no references or any credentials to make you think my opinion is valid, but I assure you that I've spent quite a bit of time playing and building adventure maps.
What I would need from you:
Simply, Title: (your map title)
Genre: (your map genre)
Creator(s): (who you would like to be credited as)
Thread: (the forum thread for your map)
And if you happen to break that formula, it's no big deal, so long as I can figure out all that information. I will accept any map type, but I reserve the right to play as stupidly as comes naturally, and I reserve the right to turn down maps that require mods if they give me trouble installing them. Most importantly, if your map thread itself has huge problems with it (like an improperly labelled title, a lack of screenshots, or a broken download link) expect me to comment about it in the thread and not rate your map until the problem is fixed.
What you can expect from me:
1) A quantitative rating out of 30 based on 0-10 points for these 3 categories:
- Function: Does the map do what it was intended to do? Does the map have gaping flaws? Do the puzzles, challenges, etc. work properly.
- Form: Is the map attractive? Do the aesthetics contribute to an enjoyable experience? Does the map look like it could have been made in survival mode unmodded? (Unless it actually was, and then bonus points for you.)
- Flavor: Does the map have a clear theme? Is the theme consistent through the map? Does the internal goal of the map drive the player?
For some reference as to what is good and bad:
0-10: Scrap it, start over, it's wasting the players' time.
10-20: This is an acceptable map with definite problems; I would not dissuade people from trying the map. These errors should be learned from for future endeavors, though.
20-30: This map is something I would encourage people to try out.
(Admittedly, this system is designed for adventure maps, but the first two qualities apply to everything. The third category, flavor, doesn't translate as well to a survival or parkour map, but Donkey Kong was nothing but jumping and that had clear and consistent theme and goal.)
2) A seperate look at the ingenuity and uniqueness of the map.
-Some of the most important characteristics of a map revolve around how much it stands out and breaks new ground. Since the constant waves of new maps consistently copy and obsolete the characteristics of their predecessors, I have decided to seperate these factors into their own scale so as not to compare apples and oranges. I will give a rating out of 5 diamonds ( ) to represent how new and creative the map is. (Alternatively, I will give a to any map that seems to just copy straight from something well known. I hope never to use this option )
3) Detailed explanations for the ratings above.
I will post the review in both this thread and the thread for the map being reviewed.
Full Disclosure: I am a member of Definite and Substantial Buttocks. I intend no bias, but if you want to know what sort of map I work on, go play Deja Vu: The Reincarnation of Steve
If you ask me, the Labyrinth of Irritation is a misnomer. As far as maps go, this one had less in it that irritated me than most of the maps I have played. The map has aspects of parkour and adventure, but its essence is that of a puzzle map. It is a series of loosely collected rooms and challenges that the player needs to weave their way through to eventually craft a diamond pickaxe and break through the obsidian wall in the grand lobby. It is played on peaceful difficulty with no mods.
- Function:
Pretty much everything in this map works flawlessly. It took a little over an hour for me to finish, and in that time I found only 2 bugs. Beyond that, all the content was well designed. The player needs to unlock areas as they go, but the methods to keep you out are mostly unique from each other and are paced extremely well. The pathways knot together nicely so that you are constantly close to the entrance without being able to easily keep track of where you are. The map rarely (only at the very end) punishes you drastically for failure, and the puzzles are just cryptic enough to make you think about what you're doing the entire time. And the mapmaker didn't miss an oppurtunity to incorporate more content; even finding the crafting table once you have your diamonds is its own little challenge.
9/10
- Form:
The visuals are ecclectic to say the least. A room 2 blocks away could have an entirely different decoration theme for no particular reason. Even then, the bulk of the map seems directed towards working nicely than looking pretty, so there are some ugly parts. BUT, I cannot recall a single instance where I stopped and noticed the seam between one theme and the next. It all transitioned smoothly enough to not be distracting from the gameplay. And there are some very nice rooms, like the main lobby, and some very entertaining rooms, like the room end of the map.
7/10
- Flavor:
The map is essentially a puzzle map, so it doesn't do much as far as plot. The goal of the map is stated at the beginning (collect the diamonds to craft a pickaxe and break through the obsidian door), and it carries that through until you get your diamond pickaxe. You understand your goal and the steps towards finishing are paced well enough that you keep that goal in mind the whole time. There are signs from the mapmaker sporadically, but they don't really add or take away from the consistent feel of the map, and that's a good thing. My big issue with the map is that once you have gotten through the door, the map continues without any real purpose. Up to that point it was "get the sticks and diamonds and break through the door." After that, the only answer to why I was still playing was "to get to the other side" and that makes me feel like either a chicken or the butt of a bad joke. The content after that was still good, but it felt purposeless. Even a sign saying "There are great treasures beyond here" could have helped that, if only a little.
7/10
- Uniqueness:
The map doesn't do a whole lot new. It is very much in the style of many classic custom maps. It does, however, have a very individual method of advancement and it keeps you involved in the map without any of the suspense brought on by difficulties above peaceful. And for what it is worth, has the best usage of armor enchantments that I've seen so far. For these, I give it
Overall Score: 23/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- To someone looking for a good puzzle map to play, absolutely.
CUBEception is sort of an escape map on such a huge scale that you can't really call it an escape map. You are the last remaining person inside a giant cube claimed to be the last safehouse of humanity after a cataclysm. And giant is hardly a just description- on normal view distance you can watch the sunrise on the other side of the map because the cube itself is out of render distance and it's just as tall as wide. Of course, size doesn't really matter, it's how you use the space, and this map uses it. The 3 hour run time was spot on for me, and that was only because I stuck the map on creative after 15 minutes so I wouldn't have to die. It is big, and it shows how rediculous maps might become in the near future when we get twice the height to build in. On to the ratings.
- Function:
The map is mostly parkour based, and good parkour at that. Beyond that, most of the challenge was finding the appropriate levers to continue. It this respect, it was pretty simple; it set up a successful gameplay formula and stuck to it. If I had any complaints about the actual challenges, I'd say that swimming up waterfalls gets a little tedious after doing it so many times, and a sort of learning curve section at the beginning would be nice for people like me who forgot you could do the "jump on a hatch open, then jump on it closed" trick. As far as bugs, I didn't find anything that didn't work as of 1.1, but I have one of the snapshots so climbable vines broke everything and anyone playing this way is held to the honor system. My condolences to the mapmakers if they intend to update this. (But if you do, make sure to get the vines near the end. A real troll piston is the one that you can't avoid because climbable vines reduce your speed when you jump through them. Of course, jumping across the title sequence made up for it.)
9/10
- Form:
This map is just fun to look at. Having that much open space inside a structure in minecraft is just a mindblowing effect. The actual puzzle buildings were all stylized to their stated purpose. I did not notice any instances where there was exposed redstone wiring and shouldn't have been. The map has great gadgets that rearrange hallways or build bridges for the player. And the comment about ladders on glowstone was completely appreciated, but I still didn't notice some of them for a while. Putting objects on blocks they blend in with is a mistake we are all guilty of, but still a mistake. The player spending 10 minutes stuck in a room because they didn't see the button on the cobblestone block is a shame. But those are just being nitpicky, the map is still generally an art piece. And it has an exquisite trailer
9/10
- Flavor:
The story in this map is not just a "forever alone" narrative. It is every "forever alone" narrative at once. You escape a prison alone, in an underground facility alone, following a trail of journals by a mysterious man alone, going through laboratories with old notes from scientists alone. The plot is fairly predictable and only tangentially related to the challenges for the middle 2/3 of the map, but it is shown to the player throughout the map at well placed intervals and is plenty enjoyable. I'm not normally a fan of being given an internal monologue by the mapmaker, but I think this map could have used that. Instead of following the breadcrumbs of the great survivor that's going to save humanity from imprisonment, I'd rather be that great survivor and save humanity myself, and I hope the suggested sequel takes that approach and lets the player be the main actor. Overall, the feel of this map was incredibly well executed, and the time I spent playing, my motive was to escape the cube, not just finish the map.
(I do think putting in SOPA vs ANONYMOUS jokes is tacky, though.)
9/10
- Uniqueness:
I don't quite know what to say here. I've never played a map that did everything quite like this. The combination of both secret rooms and scoring system is nice, and all the challenges feel fresh. But at the same time, 90% of this map is built off of cliches. All the forever alone aspects, the referential names, the internal society that made me feel like reading The Time Machine again. I wanna give it an exact average rating on this scale, but I'll round up because it came out 6 months ago and I may have been more excited about it had I played it then.
Overall Score: 27/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Definitely, and will certainly be playing the sequel.
Title: Levels
Genre: Puzzle / parkour
Creator(s): Kinglau3
Thread: The link is in my signature.
Thanks in advance! Enjoy!
P.S. I'm currently in the progress of making an overhaul of the map. Is it possible that, when the update comes out, you take another look at the map? Thanks!
I can definitely do that. But would you like me to post a review now and edit it later, or wait and post the complete review?
could you pls review my map :smile.gif:
Title: The Beginning of The End
Genre: Adv/Puzz it has some parkour :/
Creator(s): Romin865
Thread: Link in sig
could you pls review my map :smile.gif:
Title: The Beginning of The End
Genre: Adv/Puzz it has some parkour :/
Creator(s): Romin865
Thread: Link in sig
It's in the queue. If not in the next day, I should definitely get to it in two.
Levels is a puzzle/parkour map. It's not heavily stressed in the map itself, but the gameplay is broken down into 3 levels. It's a very simple naming premise, and I like that. It's concise, memorable, and rolls off the tongue. But I'm not supposed to be talking about the name, I'm supposed to talk about the map itself. This review might be a long one.
Preface: I'm going to rant about challenge and motive a few times here. A puzzle needs both things to be enjoyable; a task that gives the player a challenge to overcome and a reason to do it is fun. A puzzle with challenge but no desire to complete it is just testing. A puzzle with motivation but no challenge is busy work. A puzzle with neither is unplayable.
- Fuction:
The map not only breaks down into levels geometrically, it also breaks down easily in quality. The first level is on the lower end of the good spectrum. It's definitely enjoyable gameplay. With the lava maze and the fire resistance potions, some really good tricks could have be played by swimming through lava and I think that's a missed oppurtunity, and I think the maze should have more landmarks within it to help get one's bearings. The premise was nice, the execution wasn't fantastic, so that was nice. Where the path split two ways, they were both just good puzzles, but there was an outrageous difficulty gap between them. The parkour was the highest difficulty challenge I would allow and the pearl throwing was like walking down a corridor (but more fun).
The second level had the worst parts. The first room of the second level was the worst part. First, it tells you to temporarily change all the rules, which just takes the player right out of the game. I had to recheck the sign a few times to see what was cheating. "Dig around in the hillside until you can craft me a button" suffers heavily from the "no challenge" problem. It's busy work and just takes up time and space. This is the same reason people complain about mazes, which is coincidentally the next challenge. The seperation into quadrants gave the nice "landmark" effect, but now there's not the fun twist the lava had. For the purpose of seperating by quality, I'm pretending the second level cuts there.
The last third was the best of it. The soul sand race was well executed, the frogger room was fun, the wool minecraft jumping was the kind of parkour I like: big jumps from big platforms is less difficult and more cinematic. It was one snappy, fast paced challenge after another, then a nice break exploring the tower, followed by a swift ride through to the end of the map.
I wish the middle third was the same sort of style as the end. As it stands, nothing is broken and the puzzles span from just below averege up to quite nice. I gave you an extra point when I realized that the gameplay area is entirely within rainless biome. I hate rainlag when I'm trying to do timed challenges, so no rain is a great map feature.
7/10
- Form-
The map is another one that has plenty of completely varied environments with pretty much no explanation as to why they are there. There really isn't anything in here that's unpleasant, but the map only really hits stride when the cloth replicas get involved. That is one adorable zombie.
7/10
- Flavor-
This map screams of "built first, planned later." The given premise of trials done to stay alive seems tacked on and irrelevant to playing the map. A story needs a conflict, and challenges need motivation, but the motivation doesn't need to be a story, and it really shouldn't be one if it isn't incorporated into that map. The feel of the gameplay was clearly "here's some arbitrary puzzles and challenges, let's see if you can get through them" and that's what I considered while I was playing. Saving my soul didn't contribute anything to that. Having that hint of drama may do more to hook in new players, but it mildly deters from the gameplay itself. Based on that map premise and grading on flavor, I'd be rating this worse, but the sectioned levels helped bring it back. "can you get through the next level?" does more to help the gameplay here than "can you save your soul?"
5/10
Basically, the quality of the puzzles isn't consistent, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the map seems to have been built as a collection of individual puzzles without too much planning for the overall state of the map. There are even unused structures sitting around, like what seems to be an unattached section of enderpearl maze sticking out of the side of the wall. This is not the death of a map by any means, but for future projects keep in mind that the clearer an image of the overall project you start with, the cleaner the final product will be.
Uniqueness:
No offense, but not a lot new here. It's a puzzle/parkour map with mostly used puzzle types. A map does not need to be groundbreaking to be good, and this map was good, but it was not groundbreaking.
Overall Score: 19/30 and
Would I recommend this?
- Not quite the way it is now, but an overhaul of the map is being done. Most of my comments are too much about the overall experience than individual problems that I don't expect them to be addressed, but I still expect the overall quality to improve quite a bit. The creator shows quite a bit of promise, and it will be interesting to see what they can make with a bit more experience.
MAP FEATURES - Voice Acting / Narration - (by daDonn) - Musical Score - (entirely sourced from incompetech.com and freesound.org and specifically credited in the readme) - Dynamic Locations - (the scenery changes!) - Multiple Endings - (replayability!) - Collectables - (compete with your friends - who can find the most slimeballs?) - Awesomely Epic Builds - (if I do say so myself!) - Lots And Lots Of Redstone - (though none you need to understand!) - Monsters - (who try to kill you!) And much, much more...
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Function:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and (that's 5/10 for your thread list. Completely middle of the road.)
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
Very happy you enjoyed my map tstorm823, and know that I'll be assessing your comments when it comes time to release v1.1 of the map - which I'll work on as soon as Minecraft updates to v1.2.
I think based on your (and a few other) playthroughs I may add an extra hint to the initial minecart station, and perhaps I'll widen the nether tunnel (with the zombies and pigmen) later on - to make it a touch less claustrophobic.
I'll also make the lava parts with the falling tracks a bit safer, with my use of invisible blocks (though the player certainly won't be able to tell this!) - so that they are less likely to land in it. Despite this, if the player does happen to catch themselves on fire - they DO have a water bucket, after all at this point :tongue.gif:. And if you happen to have lost the bucket - there should be PLENTY of iron in chests spread all over the place, and the rules specifically allow for crafting!
Thanks again for the feedback, and I'll definitely be taking note of your points when it comes to the next release.
I'll add a link to your review on the map post, if you like.
I'll add a link to your review on the map post, if you like.
Whatever you wanna do is fine by me. I know my things are a bit hefty, so expecting anyone not involved with the map to read the whole things seems like a high expectation. But of course yeah, I'd be grateful for a link.
Also, as far as me losing the bucket, I'm a doofus and punched a pigman amid the chaos... the death was totally my fault, just having to cheat for that one thing felt bad. And there is plenty of iron through the map, I just happened to efficiently loot it all as I went.
Yo, dawg. I heard you like map reviews, so I took a map and made a review for that guy TheMapReview.
Woolington is a puzzle map, straight forward. It gives you puzzles, you do them, no fuss about it. At one point, it pretends to become a "puzzlemaster trying to kill you" map and then promptly laughs off that idea. It segments itself into color coded puzzle sections, one after another, and promises to add more colors of wool as the creator comes up with more sections.
Function:
All the puzzles function properly. For bugs, the third hole of the slime bowling is glitchable if you happen to trigger the up piston while the side pistons are retracted. There are a few signs with typing errors, though the only one I can think of is the very end where it says something like "for because of people like you." For general construction problems, the long hallways between puzzles shouldn't be there. Having checked outside, you often have plenty of space to work between rooms, and running long, cramped pathways between places is poor mapmaking as an extra annoyance for the player. If the map takes an hour, probably 3 minutes is walking between puzzles.. And the lag reducing switches were a necessary inclusion, and you get credit for them. The puzzles were not inspiringly fun, but they were all acceptable.
6/10
Form:
Solid, monochromatic wool decoration isn't attractive. Solid of any block isn't attractive really. But that was the stylization of the map, and that is certainly the prerogative here. Making it pretty would kill the theme. Not much is done in the way of aesthetics, and at least for right now, the map isn't all that big.
5/10
Flavor:
I did enjoy the acknowledgement of the "tester cutting off the subject" cliche. That was nicely done. The theme was "test these solid wool rooms" and the player does, just with the motive of completing them for the sake of it. There's not much to make it really immersive, but it sets itself up with a simple premise and sticks to it nicely.
6/10
Uniqueness:
It's a puzzle map, but this time the hook is that it goes through different colors of wool. I wouldn't say it's a unique gaming experience.
Overall Score: 17/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- We shall see how the updates turn out.
Why I have made this thread:
What I would need from you:
Simply,
Title: (your map title)
Genre: (your map genre)
Creator(s): (who you would like to be credited as)
Thread: (the forum thread for your map)
And if you happen to break that formula, it's no big deal, so long as I can figure out all that information. I will accept any map type, but I reserve the right to play as stupidly as comes naturally, and I reserve the right to turn down maps that require mods if they give me trouble installing them. Most importantly, if your map thread itself has huge problems with it (like an improperly labelled title, a lack of screenshots, or a broken download link) expect me to comment about it in the thread and not rate your map until the problem is fixed.
What you can expect from me:
- Function: Does the map do what it was intended to do? Does the map have gaping flaws? Do the puzzles, challenges, etc. work properly.
- Form: Is the map attractive? Do the aesthetics contribute to an enjoyable experience? Does the map look like it could have been made in survival mode unmodded? (Unless it actually was, and then bonus points for you.)
- Flavor: Does the map have a clear theme? Is the theme consistent through the map? Does the internal goal of the map drive the player?
For some reference as to what is good and bad:
10-20: This is an acceptable map with definite problems; I would not dissuade people from trying the map. These errors should be learned from for future endeavors, though.
20-30: This map is something I would encourage people to try out.
2) A seperate look at the ingenuity and uniqueness of the map.
-Some of the most important characteristics of a map revolve around how much it stands out and breaks new ground. Since the constant waves of new maps consistently copy and obsolete the characteristics of their predecessors, I have decided to seperate these factors into their own scale so as not to compare apples and oranges. I will give a rating out of 5 diamonds ( ) to represent how new and creative the map is. (Alternatively, I will give a to any map that seems to just copy straight from something well known. I hope never to use this option )
3) Detailed explanations for the ratings above.
I will post the review in both this thread and the thread for the map being reviewed.
Complete Map Reviews:
CUBEception - by Gustavo Team 27/30 and
Levels - by Kinglau3 20/30 and
The Beginning of the End - by Romin865 15/30 and
Fall of Kingdoms - by rrgg 24/30 and
[CONVENIENCE]Lord of Bloodycross - by daDonn (aka Aramanon) 27/30 and
Woolington! - by TheMapReview 17/30 and
The King Of Hrothgaria - by Haevo 20/30 and
Levi's Nightmare - by Kmilley 26/30 and
Parkour Thief - by Cheesefrycook 21/30 and
Green Hill - by Kerblahh 18/30 and
Quest For Vendria - by TJ the DJ Drummer, Tech Ninjaa, Sammo75, Robo_Chiz 7/30 and [WIP]
Punishment:Parkour - by Dochavoc2 15/30 and
Strange Island Survival - by Zephyron0210 5/30 and
Hold the House - Warhawk193 17/30 and
The Forest of Silence - Fangride 15/30 and
Gloria - ColdFusionGaming Doesn't have a review but you should play it anyway.
Current Queue:
Abstergo- The Last Subject - by BickerCraft
The Syndicate - by Skully068
SlySlasher's Parkour Facility - by SlySlasher
Assassin's Craft: The Secret of Altair's Library - by barteke22
Project Johto - by SPG Doddseyftw jds74 and about 3-4 others (will likely have more specific crediting upon completion)
Sprint-Form - by theZetoranian
Sky Conquerer - by ocomobock
Temple of Ankh - by Sniglett
THANK YOU FOR VISITING!
Full Disclosure: I am a member of Definite and Substantial Buttocks. I intend no bias, but if you want to know what sort of map I work on, go play Deja Vu: The Reincarnation of Steve
by Shredster7
Thread- http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1018953-
If you ask me, the Labyrinth of Irritation is a misnomer. As far as maps go, this one had less in it that irritated me than most of the maps I have played. The map has aspects of parkour and adventure, but its essence is that of a puzzle map. It is a series of loosely collected rooms and challenges that the player needs to weave their way through to eventually craft a diamond pickaxe and break through the obsidian wall in the grand lobby. It is played on peaceful difficulty with no mods.
- Function:
Pretty much everything in this map works flawlessly. It took a little over an hour for me to finish, and in that time I found only 2 bugs. Beyond that, all the content was well designed. The player needs to unlock areas as they go, but the methods to keep you out are mostly unique from each other and are paced extremely well. The pathways knot together nicely so that you are constantly close to the entrance without being able to easily keep track of where you are. The map rarely (only at the very end) punishes you drastically for failure, and the puzzles are just cryptic enough to make you think about what you're doing the entire time. And the mapmaker didn't miss an oppurtunity to incorporate more content; even finding the crafting table once you have your diamonds is its own little challenge.
9/10
- Form:
The visuals are ecclectic to say the least. A room 2 blocks away could have an entirely different decoration theme for no particular reason. Even then, the bulk of the map seems directed towards working nicely than looking pretty, so there are some ugly parts. BUT, I cannot recall a single instance where I stopped and noticed the seam between one theme and the next. It all transitioned smoothly enough to not be distracting from the gameplay. And there are some very nice rooms, like the main lobby, and some very entertaining rooms, like the room end of the map.
7/10
- Flavor:
The map is essentially a puzzle map, so it doesn't do much as far as plot. The goal of the map is stated at the beginning (collect the diamonds to craft a pickaxe and break through the obsidian door), and it carries that through until you get your diamond pickaxe. You understand your goal and the steps towards finishing are paced well enough that you keep that goal in mind the whole time. There are signs from the mapmaker sporadically, but they don't really add or take away from the consistent feel of the map, and that's a good thing. My big issue with the map is that once you have gotten through the door, the map continues without any real purpose. Up to that point it was "get the sticks and diamonds and break through the door." After that, the only answer to why I was still playing was "to get to the other side" and that makes me feel like either a chicken or the butt of a bad joke. The content after that was still good, but it felt purposeless. Even a sign saying "There are great treasures beyond here" could have helped that, if only a little.
7/10
- Uniqueness:
The map doesn't do a whole lot new. It is very much in the style of many classic custom maps. It does, however, have a very individual method of advancement and it keeps you involved in the map without any of the suspense brought on by difficulties above peaceful. And for what it is worth, has the best usage of armor enchantments that I've seen so far. For these, I give it
Overall Score: 23/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- To someone looking for a good puzzle map to play, absolutely.
In the queue. Should be done within a day.
by Gustavo Team
Thread- http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/535944-
CUBEception is sort of an escape map on such a huge scale that you can't really call it an escape map. You are the last remaining person inside a giant cube claimed to be the last safehouse of humanity after a cataclysm. And giant is hardly a just description- on normal view distance you can watch the sunrise on the other side of the map because the cube itself is out of render distance and it's just as tall as wide. Of course, size doesn't really matter, it's how you use the space, and this map uses it. The 3 hour run time was spot on for me, and that was only because I stuck the map on creative after 15 minutes so I wouldn't have to die. It is big, and it shows how rediculous maps might become in the near future when we get twice the height to build in. On to the ratings.
- Function:
The map is mostly parkour based, and good parkour at that. Beyond that, most of the challenge was finding the appropriate levers to continue. It this respect, it was pretty simple; it set up a successful gameplay formula and stuck to it. If I had any complaints about the actual challenges, I'd say that swimming up waterfalls gets a little tedious after doing it so many times, and a sort of learning curve section at the beginning would be nice for people like me who forgot you could do the "jump on a hatch open, then jump on it closed" trick. As far as bugs, I didn't find anything that didn't work as of 1.1, but I have one of the snapshots so climbable vines broke everything and anyone playing this way is held to the honor system. My condolences to the mapmakers if they intend to update this. (But if you do, make sure to get the vines near the end. A real troll piston is the one that you can't avoid because climbable vines reduce your speed when you jump through them. Of course, jumping across the title sequence made up for it.)
9/10
- Form:
This map is just fun to look at. Having that much open space inside a structure in minecraft is just a mindblowing effect. The actual puzzle buildings were all stylized to their stated purpose. I did not notice any instances where there was exposed redstone wiring and shouldn't have been. The map has great gadgets that rearrange hallways or build bridges for the player. And the comment about ladders on glowstone was completely appreciated, but I still didn't notice some of them for a while. Putting objects on blocks they blend in with is a mistake we are all guilty of, but still a mistake. The player spending 10 minutes stuck in a room because they didn't see the button on the cobblestone block is a shame. But those are just being nitpicky, the map is still generally an art piece. And it has an exquisite trailer
9/10
- Flavor:
The story in this map is not just a "forever alone" narrative. It is every "forever alone" narrative at once. You escape a prison alone, in an underground facility alone, following a trail of journals by a mysterious man alone, going through laboratories with old notes from scientists alone. The plot is fairly predictable and only tangentially related to the challenges for the middle 2/3 of the map, but it is shown to the player throughout the map at well placed intervals and is plenty enjoyable. I'm not normally a fan of being given an internal monologue by the mapmaker, but I think this map could have used that. Instead of following the breadcrumbs of the great survivor that's going to save humanity from imprisonment, I'd rather be that great survivor and save humanity myself, and I hope the suggested sequel takes that approach and lets the player be the main actor. Overall, the feel of this map was incredibly well executed, and the time I spent playing, my motive was to escape the cube, not just finish the map.
(I do think putting in SOPA vs ANONYMOUS jokes is tacky, though.)
9/10
- Uniqueness:
I don't quite know what to say here. I've never played a map that did everything quite like this. The combination of both secret rooms and scoring system is nice, and all the challenges feel fresh. But at the same time, 90% of this map is built off of cliches. All the forever alone aspects, the referential names, the internal society that made me feel like reading The Time Machine again. I wanna give it an exact average rating on this scale, but I'll round up because it came out 6 months ago and I may have been more excited about it had I played it then.
Overall Score: 27/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- Definitely, and will certainly be playing the sequel.
I can definitely do that. But would you like me to post a review now and edit it later, or wait and post the complete review?
Title: The Beginning of The End
Genre: Adv/Puzz it has some parkour :/
Creator(s): Romin865
Thread: Link in sig
It's in the queue. If not in the next day, I should definitely get to it in two.
thanks :smile.gif:
Absolutely.
by Kinglau3
Thread- http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/748105-
Levels is a puzzle/parkour map. It's not heavily stressed in the map itself, but the gameplay is broken down into 3 levels. It's a very simple naming premise, and I like that. It's concise, memorable, and rolls off the tongue. But I'm not supposed to be talking about the name, I'm supposed to talk about the map itself. This review might be a long one.
Preface: I'm going to rant about challenge and motive a few times here. A puzzle needs both things to be enjoyable; a task that gives the player a challenge to overcome and a reason to do it is fun. A puzzle with challenge but no desire to complete it is just testing. A puzzle with motivation but no challenge is busy work. A puzzle with neither is unplayable.
- Fuction:
The map not only breaks down into levels geometrically, it also breaks down easily in quality. The first level is on the lower end of the good spectrum. It's definitely enjoyable gameplay. With the lava maze and the fire resistance potions, some really good tricks could have be played by swimming through lava and I think that's a missed oppurtunity, and I think the maze should have more landmarks within it to help get one's bearings. The premise was nice, the execution wasn't fantastic, so that was nice. Where the path split two ways, they were both just good puzzles, but there was an outrageous difficulty gap between them. The parkour was the highest difficulty challenge I would allow and the pearl throwing was like walking down a corridor (but more fun).
The second level had the worst parts. The first room of the second level was the worst part. First, it tells you to temporarily change all the rules, which just takes the player right out of the game. I had to recheck the sign a few times to see what was cheating. "Dig around in the hillside until you can craft me a button" suffers heavily from the "no challenge" problem. It's busy work and just takes up time and space. This is the same reason people complain about mazes, which is coincidentally the next challenge. The seperation into quadrants gave the nice "landmark" effect, but now there's not the fun twist the lava had. For the purpose of seperating by quality, I'm pretending the second level cuts there.
The last third was the best of it. The soul sand race was well executed, the frogger room was fun, the wool minecraft jumping was the kind of parkour I like: big jumps from big platforms is less difficult and more cinematic. It was one snappy, fast paced challenge after another, then a nice break exploring the tower, followed by a swift ride through to the end of the map.
I wish the middle third was the same sort of style as the end. As it stands, nothing is broken and the puzzles span from just below averege up to quite nice. I gave you an extra point when I realized that the gameplay area is entirely within rainless biome. I hate rainlag when I'm trying to do timed challenges, so no rain is a great map feature.
7/10
- Form-
The map is another one that has plenty of completely varied environments with pretty much no explanation as to why they are there. There really isn't anything in here that's unpleasant, but the map only really hits stride when the cloth replicas get involved. That is one adorable zombie.
7/10
- Flavor-
This map screams of "built first, planned later." The given premise of trials done to stay alive seems tacked on and irrelevant to playing the map. A story needs a conflict, and challenges need motivation, but the motivation doesn't need to be a story, and it really shouldn't be one if it isn't incorporated into that map. The feel of the gameplay was clearly "here's some arbitrary puzzles and challenges, let's see if you can get through them" and that's what I considered while I was playing. Saving my soul didn't contribute anything to that. Having that hint of drama may do more to hook in new players, but it mildly deters from the gameplay itself. Based on that map premise and grading on flavor, I'd be rating this worse, but the sectioned levels helped bring it back. "can you get through the next level?" does more to help the gameplay here than "can you save your soul?"
5/10
Basically, the quality of the puzzles isn't consistent, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the map seems to have been built as a collection of individual puzzles without too much planning for the overall state of the map. There are even unused structures sitting around, like what seems to be an unattached section of enderpearl maze sticking out of the side of the wall. This is not the death of a map by any means, but for future projects keep in mind that the clearer an image of the overall project you start with, the cleaner the final product will be.
Uniqueness:
No offense, but not a lot new here. It's a puzzle/parkour map with mostly used puzzle types. A map does not need to be groundbreaking to be good, and this map was good, but it was not groundbreaking.
Overall Score: 19/30 and
Would I recommend this?
- Not quite the way it is now, but an overhaul of the map is being done. Most of my comments are too much about the overall experience than individual problems that I don't expect them to be addressed, but I still expect the overall quality to improve quite a bit. The creator shows quite a bit of promise, and it will be interesting to see what they can make with a bit more experience.
Genre: ADV
Creator(s): daDonn (aka Aramanon)
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/985662-adv-convenience-lord-of-bloodycross/
MAP FEATURES
- Voice Acting / Narration - (by daDonn)
- Musical Score - (entirely sourced from incompetech.com and freesound.org and specifically credited in the readme)
- Dynamic Locations - (the scenery changes!)
- Multiple Endings - (replayability!)
- Collectables - (compete with your friends - who can find the most slimeballs?)
- Awesomely Epic Builds - (if I do say so myself!)
- Lots And Lots Of Redstone - (though none you need to understand!)
- Monsters - (who try to kill you!)
And much, much more...
TRAILER
[VIDEO][/VIDEO]
You have been queued. May the weekend spur me to the end of the list!
Genre: Adventure
Creator(s): Kmilley
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/526227-adv-levis-nightmare-horror-14500-dls-updated-11/page__st__620
Thanks!
by Romin865
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/860920-
The Beginning of the End is a nice, big adventure map. It is clear that a lot of work went into making the map. For it's morbid story of an unstoppable robot destroying the nice pumpkin people, it's pretty light-hearted and extremely interwebz. It is, at least to some extent, one of those "trapped, gotta escape and defeat the villain" maps. And with a title that says both beginning and end, it strangely starts in media res, ends pretty inconclusively, and doesn't feature "The End" at all. The ending doesn't even say "the end," it says "thanks for playing." Sorry about the rant, on to the review.
- Function:
I'm going to pick on a lot of details. There were 2 chests (one for minecarts at a middle-ish checkpoint room and one for boats before the water maze) that were left empty. Speaking of the water maze, if you're confident the player won't like something, probably don't add it but definitely don't tell them ahead of time that it's bad or evil or they'll just cheat. The checkpoint system is almost a great checkpoint system, but the locked door should be on the level side rather than the hub side so that the player doesn't need to ride the minecart to activate the checkpoint each time. And after all that riding, if you don't pay attention on the way back out, you get sent back to the hub because you used levers instead of buttons. The giants didn't spawn at all even though I hung out in that room for a couple minutes. The not lazy walking direction when the path splits seems to be impossible to get through. Starting off the map with about a half hour of maze and cave exploration is extermely unexciting. AND the map, especially the Pixel Art Minecraft Sign room, seems designed to cause gratuitous lag. These are all symptoms of the size of the map. You put a lot in, had a lot of different content, and that is good, but it leaves a lot of openings for bugs and issues to arise. I'm sure you'll be on better alert for such things when you put together the sequel you promised. If there's one thing I can credit you for, you managed to have inconsistent rules on breaking and placing blocks without me thinking about what the rules are, and everything worked. That's good player manipulation.
6/10
-Form:
The map looked pretty nice and had the texture pack to go with it (which from what I saw primary just made the glowstone bearable). The settings varied so that the player doesn't get bored of looking at it, and it all seemed very ordered and stylized except for the bombed town section. The pixel art was random, but it was a nice little touch.
7/10
- Flavor:
As stated, the title is hardly related to the map, but I don't blame you because the story is a little unrelated to itself. You started off trying to escape from GLaDOS knock-off 1200 (which you could have just gotten out of the minecart after the first room and said "hey, I escaped!") and by half-way through the map, S.H.R.O.U.D. (I'll give you 3 points if you can tell me what that stands for and have it make sense) is uninvolved and is just repeatedly mentioned by each NPC as you organize the pumpkin family reunion picnic. Somewhere in there, you decide you need to destroy the robot, so you go to the nether to say hi to pumpkin Dad who tells you to forget about that and go build a house in a quaint village for fun. And inbetween you do a bunch of puzzles that just happen to be there. When people are saying the story is confusing, it's for good reason. For your next map, try and have clearer player motivation.
2/10
Uniqueness:
Almost no uniqueness at all. Even the fun little pixel art was screaming out with referential humor. It's not as though you were shamelessly trying to rip off something successful, but it also didn't manage to do anything new. Not to mention it starts off as portal and ends with "Still Alive." Therefore -
Side comment: If you have any interest at all in making a serious project with a story, do not troll the player. Things like "should you break this white wool" or the big pixel art trollface may seem cute and humorous, but it makes you seem intentionally irritating and makes issues like the checkpoints that send you back if your not paying attention seem intentional. Those things are perfectly appropriate for certain maps, but not a long, serious, story-driven adventure.
Overall Score- 15/30 and (that's 5/10 for your thread list. Completely middle of the road.)
Would I recommend it?
- Not really. It's an impressive build that I'm sure took a lot of effort, but it's not any more fun than many other maps, and for it's long time duration, it doesn't give too much sense of accomplishment.
by rrgg
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1018613-
Fall of Kingdoms is an adventure map on the shorter side of things. You are some combination of traveller amnesiac warrior (I don't actually remember the exact backstory) but you wake up at the start of a great battle between the good kingdom of snow golems and testificates and the fearsome forces of mobs led by evil pigmen. To get straight to the point, the map abuses the hell out of spawn eggs in some very entertaining and cinematic ways.
Function:
The bug report is short. Beyond the doors doing that detached top and bottom half glitch which has nothing to do with how this map works, the only thing that broke was the ending where a sign said die die die and a structure in front of me had already exploded, triggered by a random mob spawning there. Such is the danger of timing triggers with pressure plates. In general, the timed and triggered mob egg usage worked really nicely, and this map shows off the new technology in great fashion; I'd only suggest that there are some balancing issues with the amount and rate of mob spawning in this map- sometimes the mobs basically kill themselves, while other times there is close to no chance of survival. There are enough contingency plans in case of death, but inevitable death in something you need to complete somewhat kills the fun. The interactive battle is great fun, but the amount of mobs, drops, redstone triggers, and projectiles flying tends to lag up the game excessively and leave you that much less capable of defending yourself against the creepers and blazes in the netherrack room...
7/10
Form:
The map is sort of bland- a lot of generic minecraft stone and wood, followed by generic nether red blocks- but everything is very clean and inoffensive to the eyes. The real aesthetic accomplishments are in the timing. The opening battle sequence is very subtle and brilliantly planned. As far as impressive to watch, it's really the high point of the map. There are also nice funny touches in the way the gameplay is set up, like a zombie birthday party or "hacking" the system. Playing the map does make one quite happy. (I'm taking an extra point off of here to account for the relatively short map duration.)
7/10
Flavor:
The map had a story about epic battles between good and evil (or atleast between good and maliciously selfish), and the map content was epic battles! The evil forces are coming through the gate, and lo and behold the gameplay is mob hoards coming through the gate! The connection between the story and the action itself is tangible at all points, and the story is understandable and self-contained. You know what you're aupposed to do (fight through the mobs) and why (because they're evil) the whole time. If there's any more I could ask for from this flavor-wise, I'd have liked a clear introduction to the identity of the villain before the very end of the map. But I don't think I can dock a point since that could just have been a legitimate stylistic choice.
10/10
Uniqueness:
It seems a little like cheating to abuse a new minecraft mechanic and count it as a new adventure map technique, but this map does use spawn eggs in a very new and very enjoyable manner. I don't think spawn eggs are the death of fpawners in adventure maps by any means, but this map shows of the power of the new technology into how dramatic and controlled mob usage can become in present and future adventure map. I would definitely recommend that people looking to start making adventure maps should check this out, because even in a map with limited combat, the techniques used here are worth understanding.
Overall Score: 24/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- I'd recommend playing it, and sooner rather than later, because the content here is very new and best served fresh.
by daDonn (aka Aramanon)
Thread: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/985662-
Lord of Bloodycross is a story-based adventure map where the player takes the role of a protagonist without many memories going through a fortress with a town attached. If that sounds cliche, it's because the rest is too heavy with spoilers for even me to shamelessly ruin. The map has features such as "voice acting/ narration," "dynamic locations," "multiple endings," and "awesomely epic builds." I quote these things because the creator said them himself, not because they aren't accurate. They really are accurate. It comes with sound files to listen to as you play, which is the best use of sound in an adventure map that I've seen since you can just put the playlist in whichever music player you use and use the function keys to pause and play without tabbing out of minecraft. The map admits completely that inspiration was drawn from Eronev Mansion Adventure, but instead of having the branching landscape replicas at one point near the very end, the map runs through (unless I'm missing one) 4 different complete replicas of the map area with different levels of destruction, and with little exception, does so with amazing smoothness. The map pulls some rabbits out of its hat, and players who aren't really looking for it are going to go through at least one of the tricks without any chance of noticing the flip.
Function:
All that flipping and player guiding goes off with complete smoothness. As far as functional scenery, this map is close to as good as it gets; it shows off the mixture of power and subtlety good scenery rearrangement can have. Moreover, in the few hours of gameplay this map takes, I didn't find any outright bugs in the mechanics of the map. The map was not very dense with puzzles or challenges; there's nothing wrong with that as the narrative through minecraft was still well worth the experience. The real issue is that the rooms with challenges were the low points of the map. The extra unlock lever to get underneath the chapel was unnecessary and unintuitive. When the entrance was already a hidden secret, having the lever to open it further is redundant and feels like it isn't worth the play time to have. The minecart starting room is miserable when you get to it. It locks you in a room until you guess the approriate combination of buttons and pressure plates with just the vaguest hint, and it doesn't help that the right answer seems to do nothing and the wrong answer seems to do something. Much later, when the minecart tracks give out from under you, that room has issues. First, if you fall into lava, you're dead. Second, getting through that amount of zombies and pigmen is very difficult, especially through corridors that are one wide and you have to push the pigmen out of the way. Third, one of the jumps in there is so close to impossible that it takes a few extra minutes just to get past it. And all this is going on while you are trying not to lose the bucket you need to complete the next task. (I lost that bucket). Making the player hold onto a specific item and then sending them through lava and pigmen puts one unfortunate lagspike between smooth gameplay and obligatory cheating. And I'd bet you didn't imagine someone would be dumb enough to lock the front gate at the start and then walk through to see if it actually works, but I did exactly that. So there were some problems in the map, but they weren't in the maps primary goal. The primary goal of this map seems to be story conveyence through scenery, and that went off flawlessly.
7/10
Form:
It's beautiful. It changes to represent the story events. The sound files worked really nicely. From clicking play on the trailer through to the credit sequence, this is the closest I've seen a minecraft map come to movie aesthetics. The product was finished, polished, and pleasant to be inside of.
10/10
Flavor:
This map is really all flavor. Everything built into it aims straight at telling the story, the player is given the right motivation at all times, and the story even has a twist I didn't predict halfway through the map, while at the same time not pulling the twist entirely out of nowhere (not to say it was shocking, but it wasn't super predictable and that is great.) The feel is very serious, and it sticks to that nicely (meaning it doesn't break it's tone to make poop jokes). The map just creates a very immersive atmosphere.
10/10
Uniqueness:
As I said, this is as close to movie aesthetics as I've ever seen in minecraft. It doesn't just drop some tnt and say "there, I made the scenery change." It really carries you through the story progression, and it does this without the player really noticing. This map is on the current frontier of player guiding and manipulation. With methods like this uses, along with the timing technology of my last review (Fall of Kingdoms) or the location changing technology of my own map (Deja Vu), it's only a matter of time before a map comes out that makes the player second guess that it's even minecraft. This does largely build off of mechanics introduced by other minecrafters, but it's mostly the freshest mechanics in the mapmaking world used in the most professional package around.
Overall Score: 27 and
Would I recommend it?
- Yes, and yes. Narration through minecraft at its finest.
I think based on your (and a few other) playthroughs I may add an extra hint to the initial minecart station, and perhaps I'll widen the nether tunnel (with the zombies and pigmen) later on - to make it a touch less claustrophobic.
I'll also make the lava parts with the falling tracks a bit safer, with my use of invisible blocks (though the player certainly won't be able to tell this!) - so that they are less likely to land in it. Despite this, if the player does happen to catch themselves on fire - they DO have a water bucket, after all at this point :tongue.gif:. And if you happen to have lost the bucket - there should be PLENTY of iron in chests spread all over the place, and the rules specifically allow for crafting!
Thanks again for the feedback, and I'll definitely be taking note of your points when it comes to the next release.
I'll add a link to your review on the map post, if you like.
Whatever you wanna do is fine by me. I know my things are a bit hefty, so expecting anyone not involved with the map to read the whole things seems like a high expectation. But of course yeah, I'd be grateful for a link.
Also, as far as me losing the bucket, I'm a doofus and punched a pigman amid the chaos... the death was totally my fault, just having to cheat for that one thing felt bad. And there is plenty of iron through the map, I just happened to efficiently loot it all as I went.
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Map Review: Woolington
by: TheMapReview
Thread:http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/998574-
Yo, dawg. I heard you like map reviews, so I took a map and made a review for that guy TheMapReview.
Woolington is a puzzle map, straight forward. It gives you puzzles, you do them, no fuss about it. At one point, it pretends to become a "puzzlemaster trying to kill you" map and then promptly laughs off that idea. It segments itself into color coded puzzle sections, one after another, and promises to add more colors of wool as the creator comes up with more sections.
Function:
All the puzzles function properly. For bugs, the third hole of the slime bowling is glitchable if you happen to trigger the up piston while the side pistons are retracted. There are a few signs with typing errors, though the only one I can think of is the very end where it says something like "for because of people like you." For general construction problems, the long hallways between puzzles shouldn't be there. Having checked outside, you often have plenty of space to work between rooms, and running long, cramped pathways between places is poor mapmaking as an extra annoyance for the player. If the map takes an hour, probably 3 minutes is walking between puzzles.. And the lag reducing switches were a necessary inclusion, and you get credit for them. The puzzles were not inspiringly fun, but they were all acceptable.
6/10
Form:
Solid, monochromatic wool decoration isn't attractive. Solid of any block isn't attractive really. But that was the stylization of the map, and that is certainly the prerogative here. Making it pretty would kill the theme. Not much is done in the way of aesthetics, and at least for right now, the map isn't all that big.
5/10
Flavor:
I did enjoy the acknowledgement of the "tester cutting off the subject" cliche. That was nicely done. The theme was "test these solid wool rooms" and the player does, just with the motive of completing them for the sake of it. There's not much to make it really immersive, but it sets itself up with a simple premise and sticks to it nicely.
6/10
Uniqueness:
It's a puzzle map, but this time the hook is that it goes through different colors of wool. I wouldn't say it's a unique gaming experience.
Overall Score: 17/30 and
Would I recommend it?
- We shall see how the updates turn out.