Fire Temple - Dunkelschwamm

  

    Welcome to a Fire Temple inspired by the Legend of Zelda. There's lots of platforming here along with a maze, traps, secrets, and sometimes monsters. 

SCMapDB page

Author: Dr.Abc

Date of release: 2014

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Fire Temple

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by dunkelschwamm | May 25, 2026 | 4663 characters

    A masterclass in how small decisions can make a charming, creative map into a patience grinder.

    The fire temple features a series of puzzles and progression which would seemingly help the player become empowered over time. Since the player starts with literally nothing and has to work their way up to the first crowbar, it reminds me of a beginner dungeon in Zelda like the Deku Tree more than a later temple in terms of escalation.

    There are some clever puzzles, like a maze which requires you look out for barely-visible tripwire-like kill barriers. There's a fun bit where you push a block into a slot which triggers an escalating push volume. There's a bit where players must operate switches to help another player move along moving platforms. There's a vertical puzzle with rubies that draw the player toward them making the platforming more difficult. Really neat ideas!

    There are three problems that cripple this map in terms of gameplay: many of the puzzle chambers are frustratingly punitive to traverse, dying means traversing the map far and wide to find the pick-ups again which are necessary for solving puzzles, and there is a lot of backtracking. It's like trying to solve a maze in a minefield where if you step on a mine you have to traverse the maze minefield 4 more times before you can traverse the maze minefield again to progress. At a certain point we decided to cheat and use noclip to regain our lost goods whenever we died so we wouldn't need to spend so much time playing catch-up before attempting progress. When we finished the map there were 7 minutes left on the timer. There is no way we would have finished this map otherwise.

    This is further aggravated by a late-game boss with a Gargantua who requires grenades to kill. If you and a friend go in with a full inventory of grenades, you will not have enough to kill it, and there is no way to backtrack out. That means that you need to throw yourself at the gargantua, do as much damage as you can with the grenades, and if that isn't enough you need to die and traverse the maze again to gain your grenades back and try again. And the gargantua is deep into the map, all of which must be traversed again, including insta-kill mazes and vertical platforming.

    I want to say that all of this would have been fixed with a greater number of opening shortcuts, or placing the equipment at spawn as it is unlocked to minimize backtracking, but I haven't even touched on some of the biggest hitches. How to activate the eyes on the walls is inconsistent leading to dangerous experimentation over lava that got us killed a lot. There's an invisible goddamned maze over lava with multiple exits that, best I can tell, do not all connect on the same path. That previous sentence was the catalyst for us using noclip and is the grounds on which I am ultimately (spoiler) not going to recommend this map.

    Before I come around to the final verdict, I just wanted to say a couple nice things about the map. It's really pretty much of the time (when the doors aren't z-fighting and the lava pools don't resemble a bit quilted lasagna). It pulls off the Zelda vibe really well. The breakable pots, big breakable stone cubes, lava falls- it's really good stuff. I'm in particular impressed by the visual of the vertical shaft through which half of the map takes place over a lava pit. You first see it when walking underneath on a hanging bridge, and later during the final crawl you punctuate each moment of progress by traversing doorways connected along the interior of that shaft. It's a great visual that shows progress as it is happening. I also really like the custom models for the weapons used.

    Overall, I wish I could recommend this map. But it's so, so frustrating. It demands way too much patience, and is at the same time inconsistent with rules too often to earn the respect to make such demands.

Pros:

• Really good atmosphere for the most part.
• I like the look of the ascent toward the end of the map.
• Nice 3d models
• A handful of good puzzle ideas.

Cons:

• Terrible, awful time-wasting backtracking.
• The invisible maze over the lava is infuriating.
• Zero respawn support in the deathtrap maze map with spaced-out weapon pickups required for puzzle solving.
• The gargantua fight is head-scratchingly poorly conceived and results in a player killer.
• Sometimes a clearly visually defined mechanism acts one way, sometimes it works another way.

Score: 4.3 / 10