Shopping Centre - Dunkelschwamm

 

    This map is sort of a mall, we have a big building with stores, bars, and some sort of storage area. There's a locked door players must find their way behind but beyond that the map is light on interaction and focuses more on exploration.

SCMapDB page

Author: Robootto, RNG, Poka

Date of release: 2007

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Shopping Centre

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | April 1, 2023 | 2901 characters

    Shopping Centre seems to be a shopping mall including some vaguely interesting shops from the likes of Robootto, RNG, and Poka, including the Sushi Shop from Poka and Robootto's collab Indojapan, and some of the stuff from RNG and Robootto's collab Metal Bar.

    For the most part, it's just for walking around. I think there's an interesting sense of discovery, as you find yourself hopping off from high places to find your way around. However, aside from one secretive tunnel which leads to unlocking an only somewhat interesting shop among the rest, the map doesn't really offer a whole lot of value to interactive exploration. Rather, this serves as more of a hangout area with themed areas.

    In that sense, I feel like this map succeeds on a lot of fronts. There's these bizarre liminal spaces, like the strange boat store with with one boat in a filled pool and a strange boat-shaped tower in an empty pool with deep green tiles surrounding it. There's a real culmination of Robootto's bizarre eccentricities and interests in this map coming together to make a bizarre setup most people could enjoy hanging out in. While in the unlockable supermarket, I remarked to my buddy that it reminds me a bit of the Omega Mart art installation. There's very little practicality or complete realism, but it mimics a shopping center in all of the aesthetic ways necessary to create that rubbery façade of a shopping center that feels just a little eerie and just a little irreverent.

    There's some nice touches here and there, like a "reflective floor" in the sushi shop, or some delicious looking brush sandwiches in the oriental mart. That said, there's also plenty of goofs, like those said sandwiches having misaligned textures, or the door to the boat store being so goofily glitched out that it made my buddy laugh so hard it almost feels wrong to hold it against the map. There was another door that's similarly broken, in a far less funny way, simply jutting forward. This one felt more like a legitimate mistake.

    Overall, if you're looking for a funny surreal shopping center to hang out with some friends to kill some time, I guess you can do worse than Shoping Centre. Give it a go sometime.

Pros:

  • The secret to open the mart is a nice interactive touch
  • The boat store is next level strange environment, love it
  • The overall aesthetic and environment evokes a really surreal, liminal pastiche feeling
  • Funny custom textures

Cons:

  • Not a terrible lot of content, and prone to get old to those whom tire of the aesthetic quickly
  • Brushwork and lighting for most of the map is mediocre
  • There's a pit in the boat shop you can get stuck in and I think that's a bummer
Score: 6.5 / 10

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