Sven Co-op Map Reviews

      Fight a neverending horde of enemies in a small city block. The slice of city is very simple with nothing much else to see, although the tallest building is almost entirely destructible and will fall apart. SCMapDB page Author: Killer99 Date of release: 1999 Maps in package: 1 Map review of City (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 29, 2023 | 2198 characters      City is a horde map wherein soldiers and xenian military (vortigaunts and alien grunts, specifically) are teleported onto a small block with one destroyed building full of soldiers, one strangely shaped building with a sideways vending machine in front of it full of aliens, one near-fully destructible building with lots of soldiers, and one tall building that vortigaunts are always on top of.      Players are given a few boilerplate weapons to deal with this, but most notable get grenades and a tau gun. Their power really helps prevent any of the enemies from being far too spongey.      I d

      Fight a neverending horde of enemies in a small city block. The slice of city is very simple with nothing much else to see, although the tallest building is almost entirely destructible and will fall apart. SCMapDB page Author: Killer99 Date of release: 1999 Maps in package: 1 Map review of City (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 29, 2023 | 2674 characters      City is a fairly standard arena horde map, this time based on a simple city street. We have some multi-story buildings scaled way down to be simple boxes with only enough room for windows and stairs. Vortigaunts spawn in clumps staggered with clumps of alien grunts and human grunts, who do shoot each other when they spawn in together. The weapon selection isn't bad but it is very medium. We get an mp5, shotgun, crossbow, gauss gun, grenades, and a single satchel charge in addition to the standard pistol, medkit, crowbar.      The moment the map starts players are taking damage. We spawn in t

      The sequel to Breakfree is more of the same. We don't have to go back down the elevator and there is now a boss fight! Unfortunately the biggest obstacle is still the elevator mechanic itself. SCMapDB page Author: Beather Date of release: 2004 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Breakfree 2 (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 29, 2023 | 2270 characters      Breakfree 2 is the sequel to Breakfree. Visually, it is a huge upgrade with liberal use of Sonic 2 textures and an Eggman model for the scientist to match the Sonic 2 music. The music is the exact same.      This time around the map is split into two parts: the annoying elevator part, and the annoying boss part. The annoying elevator part is somehow more annoying than the previous map, offering large brushes that shoot from out of unpredictable places in the wall at a faster speed than players can dodge. There are also similar grinders and rotating brushes that the elevator passes over and obscu

      The sequel to Breakfree is more of the same. We don't have to go back down the elevator and there is now a boss fight! Unfortunately the biggest obstacle is still the elevator mechanic itself. SCMapDB page Author: Beather Date of release: 2004 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Breakfree 2 (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 29, 2023 | 3293 characters      I'm getting something of a crisis of conscience with the Breakfree series. I just played Break Go, which was inspired by this series, and gave it a higher score than the original based solely on how much I exploded on the elevator. Elevators in Sven Co-op are very dangerous and throughout this map we were constantly exploding for no reason.      So I'm going to try to judge this map without taking into account how many times I was randomly killed by the floor. We start off and the map is fullbright, just like the first one. We hit a button that is hard to discern against the background that

      Inspired by the very similar Breakfree 1 and 2, in this map players ride an elevator up through some deadly obstacles. Elevators in Sven Co-op are prone to killing players so only the luckiest folks will make it to the end. SCMapDB page Author: Zorak Date of release: 2009 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Break GO: Game Over (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 29, 2023 | 2424 characters      Break-Go: Game Over is a map inspired by Breakfree. I would characterize it almost like a fanmap, for how much of Breakfree's gimmick it apes. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it does feel pertinent to point out as it very succinctly characterizes this map.      Much like Breakfree, Break-Go features a floating loser pool which players respawn in and which moves parallel to the main gameplay elevator. The elevator houses the players, goes up, and stops at the top where players can kill a scientist and flip a switch to end the map. The sci

      Inspired by the very similar Breakfree 1 and 2, in this map players ride an elevator up through some deadly obstacles. Elevators in Sven Co-op are prone to killing players so only the luckiest folks will make it to the end. SCMapDB page Author: Zorak Date of release: 2009 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Break GO: Game Over (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 29, 2023 | 2321 characters      This map was inspired by Breakfree, and right when the map started I thought that maybe I was playing the next map in that series. But no, this map was made by a different author and does a few things differently, but it's also mostly the same.      So the whole premise of the map is that players are on an elevator going up through a shaft filled with obstacles. We have lots of rotating brushes that will splatter incautious players and dead players get stuck in a viewing room where they can only watch the live players finish the map.      Now elevators are finni

    Let's buy some boxes over at the box store! The buying process actually works, players have to earn score and use that to buy boxes. Stealing is not allowed. SCMapDB page Author: w00tguy123 Date of release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Box Store (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 29, 2023 | 2853 characters      Box Store is exactly what it says on the tin: a store where you buy boxes. It's like a clicker, but in Sven Co-op. There's an invincible "hostile" scientist outside named "shoot me for money" or something which you do to increase your score, which you then exchange for boxes in the box store.      The real charm of the map comes from the interactions with the store. The boxes themselves are mostly very Half-Life-cute, tiny versions of the boxes from Half-Life. There's some which are different funny cubes, like a clock cube, or a glass cube, or a meat cube. They have cute names, and are mostly fairl

      Let's buy some boxes over at the box store! The buying process actually works, players have to earn score and use that to buy boxes. Stealing is not allowed. SCMapDB page Author: w00tguy123 Date of release: 2016 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Box Store (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 29, 2023 | 2612 characters      The Box Store featured in this map works just like a store, with boxes for sale and a whole system to buy them. We bought them all and the map ended. It's great.      So it starts off with my teammate and I standing in front of the store with an invincible hostile scientist named "shoot me for more money". You don't have to tell me twice. The store sits on a square of land floating in the void. Strange nonsensical signs are plastered over the front of the store. My teammate informs me the music we hear is from Sonic 3, it's pretty good music.      After boosting our scores from emptying our SAWs into the scien

      Battle exactly one boss in an well made arena using barnacles to fly around the arena and summon bombs. The map ends when the one boss is dead. SCMapDB page Author: Streamfox Date of release: 2017 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Bossbattle (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 24, 2023 | 3350 characters      Bossbattle is a battle against a boss. Which boss? Why, the gargantua, of course! How are you going to fight the gargantua? Why, with a barnacle and timebombs, of course!      The setup is pretty simple: a big indoor arena sizeable enough for a player to maneuver around a gargantua, complete with grapple points for the player-held barnacle. Press buttons on ceiling-bound grapple points when they highlight to place bombs directly beneath, then lure into gargantua into said bombs when they go off. The buttons are chosen seemingly at random, at which point it's up to the players to grapple up to it and press it. This can be a chaotic frenzy as t

      Battle exactly one boss in an well made arena using barnacles to fly around the arena and summon bombs. The map ends when the one boss is dead. SCMapDB page Author: Streamfox Date of release: 2017 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Bossbattle (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 24, 2023 | 2817 characters      The entirety of this map is one boss battle in a fancy arena. Players have barnacles only and must press buttons on the ceiling to summon bombs, and then lure the gargantua boss into the bomb. It's a really short map with only one thing going on, but it is done really well.      Players get dumped in a spawn zone with a little rack filled with barnacles, not the enemy, but animated models that actually grant us barnacles. A lives meter is on one wall and the gargantua's health is displayed on the other, there are also boss health meters inside the arena. Floating health symbols of various colors (showing various amounts of health regained) l

      The original Half-Life: Echoes mod was released in 2018, and one year later the Sven Co-op conversion came out. It's a more modern conversion of a more modern mod. It's got striking visuals and great sequences and the converter did a great job making it ready for cooperative play. SCMapDB page Original map author: James Coburn Conversion author: kmkz Date of original mod release: 2018 Date of final Sven Map release: 2019 Maps in package: 15 Map review of Echoes (originally posted on SCMapDB)  by dunkelschwamm | April 21, 2023 | 5248 characters      Half Life Echoes is a mod for Half-Life which is ported here to Sven. Having just played through it, I think this whole 14-map extravaganza can be broken down into the following: set-pieces, environmental art, gameplay, and story.      The set-pieces of Half Life Echoes are mostly pretty good. There's long-form puzzles, like a giant grinder that needs multiple explosives shoved into it, or leading enemies into one

      The original Half-Life: Echoes mod was released in 2018, and one year later the Sven Co-op conversion came out. It's a more modern conversion of a more modern mod. It's got striking visuals and great sequences and the converter did a great job making it ready for cooperative play. SCMapDB page Original map author: James Coburn Conversion author: kmkz Date of original mod release: 2018 Date of final Sven Map release: 2019 Maps in package: 15 Map review of Echoes (originally posted on SCMapDB)  by GrandmasterJ | April 21, 2023 | 4696 characters      Buckle up for a long cinematic adventure, we have a highly praised Half-Life mod converted for Sven Co-op and it has been lovingly ported. This mod has some great production and we start off strong with a cutscene and voiceover that all players can see! Cutscenes often leave players out but that doesn't happen here and that indicates the quality level of pretty much the whole map series.      I can see right in the fir

    The title gets us ready for boss after boss in some sort of a rush, but instead we have a bunch of teleporters to arenas filled with normal enemies with lots of health. There is also a button that needs two people to press it and that completely neuters the map. SCMapDB page Author: enuze Date of release: 2017 Maps in package:2 Map review of Bossrush (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 17, 2023 | 4119 characters      Bossrush is two maps: the bonus map, and the map that is not the bonus map.      The map that is not the bonus map gives the player 10 boss battles: 8 to choose from a grid of portals in any sequence, and two at the end. These boss battles take the form of enemies with extremely high HP in cube rooms fought with shotguns, MP5s, pistol, and revolver. Sometimes a clever spin is put on the battle, such as some invincible enemies aiding the main target enemies. For the most part, though, fighting comprised of running backwards from enemies wh

      The title gets us ready for boss after boss in some sort of a rush, but instead we have a bunch of teleporters to arenas filled with normal enemies with lots of health. There is also a button that needs two people to press it and that completely neuters the map. SCMapDB page Author: enuze Date of release: 2017 Maps in package:2 Map review of Bossrush (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 17, 2023 | 4276 characters      The whole idea behind this map is fighting a handful of enemies with really high health and that's pretty much it. After all the enemies are dead we get to fight some boss waves before the map ends. There is also a bonus map, I think we can get to it via a secret in the first map, but we didn't find it and instead manually changed level to it. The bonus level is much the same as the first, but all on one flat expanse of land.      So players start out in a room with a hallway we can't enter with a button above the doorway, and a

      The stated goal of this map is to test the team strength of the players. This is done by putting a monster with a lot of health in a big box and then having players shoot them repeatedly. SCMapDB page Author: TheAmateur Date of release: 2010 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Boss Test (Team) (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 17, 2023 | 3958 characters      Boss Test Team is, as its description suggests, is a boss map intended to test team strength. If that is its objective, I can tell you right now this map fails at its objective. However, it is a fun little boss map. Let's dissect a bit.      There are four bosses: a garg, an apache, a voltigore, and a Tor (with a second Tor, I think, that gibbed almost immediately at a headshot from a mounted turret I was using). These bosses operate by being normal versions of themselves, placed in arenas that do little to emphasize the strengths or dynamics of the battle, injected with thousands of hit poi

      The stated goal of this map is to test the team strength of the players. This is done by putting a monster with a lot of health in a big box and then having players shoot them repeatedly. SCMapDB page Author: TheAmateur Date of release: 2010 Maps in package: 1 Map review of Boss Test (Team) (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 17, 2023 | 4547 characters      This map is made just to test 'team strength' if the map description is accurate. The very first boss to test our team strength was a gargantua stuck behind not one, but two tiny ledges which made him easy prey for us. Seriously, the map loads us up on rpgs right before this, we are sitting on a pile of ammo shooting a gargantua outside of its range. My teammate said something along the lines of "what a test for our team".      I guess I should back up and talk about the weak class system. Players spawn in a room with a scientist and an HEV suit behind glass. The scientist's na

      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 scaven ger 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 con ditioned 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 weap

      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 GrandmasterJ | April 16, 2023 | 3211 characters      This map has a lot of author credits and is labelled as unfinished. Plus the main author, Keen, is known for his wacky mish mash of artstyles. The result is a crazy melange of twisty hallways, secret doors leading to secret areas, and some unique and tasteless art.      We start off more or less in the middle of the map, from the map description I know we have to look for blue orbs and press on Picard's face, but none of that is communicated in-map. We spent a good long time exploring all the crazy nooks and crannies and finding orbs before running out of places to find and pressing on Picard'

      This map touts many puzzles and platforming, some of it is even decently clever. The visuals are trippy and interesting and I just now learned from the map description that the whole thing is fullbright, it looks great for fulbright. SCMapDB page Author: TheBard Date of release: 2009 Maps in package:1 Map review of Braindrain (originally posted on SCMapDB) by dunkelschwamm | April 16, 2023 | 2757 characters      Braindrain is a platforming puzzle map that pulls some intelligent tricks, some bullshit tricks, and does so with eye-blasting visuals and some fun audio.      First of all, the texturework is great. There's a good number of visual effects that go on in this map, some of which I rarely see (like distorted perspective stretching in a hallway) and the fun looks carry the map. Between every puzzle is a cute little interesting area, and each area is interesting in itself.      There are some really fun puzzles. The map begins with a grid you must fall through

      This map touts many puzzles and platforming, some of it is even decently clever. The visuals are trippy and interesting and I just now learned from the map description that the whole thing is fullbright, it looks great for fulbright. SCMapDB page Author: TheBard Date of release: 2009 Maps in package:1 Map review of Braindrain (originally posted on SCMapDB) by GrandmasterJ | April 16, 2023 | 3604 characters      This map has a variety of non-combat challenges. It advertises itself as a puzzle map but I would say it has just as many platforming elements to it as well. There are a couple areas that are annoying and tedious that I cheated around but I[m having trouble feeling guilty about it.      So my teammate and I start the level and we are at the top of a big room filled with red gridlines. We are standing on transparent floors that have light red gridlines on them and there are multiple floors of this down to the bottom of the room. The puzzle is to crawl around lookin