Indojapan - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Indojapan is a strange map where players progress through thematically disconnected rooms in a big loop. It's difficult to tell where the map is supposed to begin and end since players spawn all over the place.

SCMapDB page

Author: Robootto

Date of final release: 2007

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Indojapan

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | January 7, 2022 | 3290 characters

    Big seizure warning. This map has an entire section that is just a big ol' strobe with noisy textured walls while attempting to navigate many headcrabs. I have no propensity toward epilepsy and it gave me a headache.

    Indojapan is a Robooto map outside of his typical flavor of utter nonsense and more in line with a secret map. Searching for out-of-place brushes which might be teleports or breakables which are very hard to discern from nonbreakables and have way too much resistance to damage is what makes up the map's gameplay for the most part.

    You begin in a sushi restaurant. After a clever little puzzle involving a breakable which requires waaay too much ordinance to break, you can find a teleport into a room with an elevator which takes for-goddamned-ever to ride. From here, the map becomes a lot of what you'd expect from Robootto's more fleshed out maps: long, dark hallways; haphazardly placed monsters; areas which seem to almost half evoke a real location while simultaneously being unrecognizable, and just general weird shit that I'm unsure about whether it is supposed to be funny or not.

    This map has a lot of stuff in it, which is more than I can say about a lot of Robootto maps. A lot of it is bad or boring, but some of it is intriguing in a way- there's a shotgun made out of brushes at one point, there's a lot of just odd architecture comprising the outdoor area, the reflecting floor in the sushi bar is interesting, and there's a pretty cozy computer room behind a destructible door at one point.

    Eventually you kill a Gonarch, but I don't think that's the end of the map. I think, according to the description, that the ending might be when you reach the outdoor area. At least, that's what I treated as the ending.

    Noclipping around my friend and I found some areas we weren't able to find during our travels through the map. I don't know what to make of them, and though they seem mysterious and strange, they don't seem any more so than the weird shit everything in Robootto maps always get up to.

    One final issue is that the map spawns you just all over the place. My friend spawned in the outdoor area- what we presume is the end of the map.

    Overall, I kind of respect this map for having a focus and progression, but I don't respect that it was mostly miserable to play every step of the way. For a Robootto map it's so functional, but it's just not fun in any way. The combat is mediocre when it shows up, the puzzles range from frustrating to bland, the scenery ranges from bland to blinding, spawns are messed up, and the ending isn't signposted very well.

    I don't recommend this map for your server or to play with friends.

Pros:

• It's expansive and varied
• There's a couple areas with interesting brushwork
• There is a definite progression through most of this
• Cozy computer room

Cons:

• Eye-demolishing seizure room
• Breakables that take forever to break
• Most of the map is just aimless wandering or waiting for stuff to not take so long to do
• Pretty crummy combat when it shows up
• Not sure when it ends

Score: 3 / 10