Boredgasm - Dunkelschwamm

 

    This map is a visual as well as an architectural mishmash. Players must navigate the unusual level design and appearance to find giant floating blue orbs. Collecting ten out of twelve will end the map.

SCMapDB page

Author: Keen

Date of release: 2012

Maps in package:1

Map review of Boredgasm

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | April 16, 2023 | 3390 characters

    Boredgasm is a scavenger hunt map where players search for some (not all) blue orb sprites in a dadaist maze of Keen's nightmares. Memes and internet randomcore plaster the walls in such a way as to evoke seizures if not properly conditioned on multiple tabs of imageboards while mainlining adderall.

    The maze is pretty wacky, with all of the intentionality of the Backrooms. Halls twist and turn, indents and apparent doors lead to nowhere (at least in our playthroughs) and occasionally lead to death traps. To assist in navigation, players are given a near-complete arsenal (no power weapons though, so no tau-jumping to victory) which includes a long-jump, as well as some lowered gravity. Players are also spoiled with some funny friendly NPCs, who are minimally useful.

    The arsenal comes in handy with the occasional errantly spawned high-hp grunt in one of the main halls, but is mostly used for clearing out some vertex-fucked zombies who charge and kill ruthlessly. They line a bunch of the mazier areas, but notably I don't recall them ever actually guarding any orbs, which made fighting them feel pointless.

    Speaking of pointless, the map features many seeming dead-ends which look like secret entrances or closed doors waiting to be opened. If these are opened in the map, we never found out, because we found the number of orbs necessary before they ever opened each time we played. Which I understand that one might think players will find different routes to the end each time with the "you only need so many orbs" philosophy, the end result is just that the path-of-least-resistance orbs are the only ones that are found by players each time. The map felt like it had much more to show, but I wouldn't know, and probably never will, after two plays.

    The bulk of the enjoyment of this map is seeing the different areas. I wish there were more marriage of brushwork and textures, because it really all reads as a big vomit. There are definitely themed areas, with themed architecture function and themed meme wallpapers. However, none of these disparate aesthetic trains of thought ever cross tracks in any meaningful way. This does create a sense that you never know what you'll see next. However, it does also give a sense that what I will see next will be meaninglessly interesting at best.

    Overall, I find the map to be a very functional hangout map until it abruptly ends. The main "game" element of it is pretty flawed and dysfunctional. I think with a lot of people, you can laugh at the sudden zombie rushes and death traps and weird meme shit. So, yes, you can have fun with it for sure. However, I think you could have just as much fun, just as meaningfully, with a random meme generator.

Pros:

  • Lots of of visually interesting areas
  • Variety of tricks and, uh, puzzles
  • Very cute small touches
  • Great arsenal and equipment

Cons:

  • Terrible spawn area that is visually overwhelming, unclear, and dangerous
  • The map ends abruptly when only a certain number of orbs are collected, fucking up whomever is working on other puzzles
  • Lots of ambiguous dead ends which made exploration tedious
  • Lots of areas where you really need to die
Score: 6.4 / 10

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