Campfire - Dunkelschwamm

  

    This is a beautiful map inspired by the famous mod (and map set ported to Sven Co-op) They Hunger. It takes place in a forest filled with derelict buildings, now that I think about it I don't think there is a campfire in this map.

SCMapDB page

Author: cyberdaemon

Date of release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Campfire

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | June 19, 2023 | 3387 characters

    Campfire is a zombie (and occasionally baby garg) walkthrough map wherein players use limited firearms and mostly crowbars to maneuver through a rural forested area. Explore abandoned houses, rock mines, explosive minefields (??????), and forest while being ambushed by suddenly spawned zombies, headcrabs, gonomes, and baby gargs.

    There is a curve to campfire. Early on, players have a handgun with very limited ammo and so spend much of their time crowbarring zombies and, unfortunately, gonomes. In worst case scenarios, you need to crowbar a baby garg. This is especially egregious early on when gonomes rush spawn before players have come across enough handgun pickups to not just spawn-grind ammo to overcome the gonomes. Really rough start.

    However, as the players start coming across more ammo stashes, but retain their respect for ammo with the sparsity the map has previously enforced, the handgun starts feeling like a precision tool for deleting zombies. The following areas of the map become more about environmental hazards and ambushes, in particular mines and, later, a single wire tripmine. I really liked the combat at this point, but the mines can frankly suck it. Straining my eyes looking for small discrepancies in the grass so I don't suddenly explode isn't my idea of fun.

    There's a lot of fun blowing shit up with plungers and, later, shooting crates. Shooting crates is actually a somewhat confusing solution, as we unloaded some pistol and crowbar to no avail. There's a hidden shotgun halfway through the map and, best we can figure, that's the only way to explode these crates. I'd say that thankfully neither instance of these crates were necessary for progress, but I think the first one was supposed to be but Sven Coop's climbing mechanic allowed us to sequence break.

    The map ends when you find your way to some mines and there's a big white wall of tofu. Touching the tofu ends the map. What can it mean?????

    Worth mentioning, there's a lot of fun bits where tunnels and such open up to connect later parts of the map to earlier ones, opening the whole thing up and letting respawning players catch up to the action faster. This was much appreciated.

    By the by, the map is very pretty to look at. I think it takes a lot of cues from They Hunger's rural environments, particularly those in the third part, but does enough different that I think campfire earns its own distinct memorable personality.

    I think campfire is worth checking out, especially on spooky nights like Halloween. Lots of zombies, minimal equipment, and mines to jumpscare you.

Pros:

• As things pick up fighting the zombies in the dark was actually pretty fun
• Great environments
• Fun explosives
• Really great backtrack accessibility as things open up

Cons:

• Perhaps too much resistance early on for such light equipment
• The exploding mines can suck it
• The ending definitely feels like the mapper shrugged and said "I'm done making this now :)" which, like, fair, but I can't not call it out in a review
• The shootable exploding crates were strange in how the mechanic was handled, or maybe we're just dumb? I don't get what happened there

Score: 7.9 / 10