The DWmegawad Club plays: No End in Sight

[bioshockfan90]

Magnusblitz said:

Only thing I didn't like was the heavy use of DOORHI for columns and walls, seeing a door texture (it's in the name!!) slathered for walls like that just sets my skin acrawl.

Yeah, that was weird. When I first got in the map I kept pressing use on the DOORHI walls in hopes that maybe there was a cheeky hidden switch.

[Capellan]

I have more time this month, and went through the first four maps in the last hour or so.

PrBoom+, HMP, continuous, no music, infinitely tall monsters, frequent saves.

e1m1
Solid opener. I thought the end arrived a little abruptly.

e1m2
For some reason, it took me ages to find the entrance to the catwalk to the exit. Other than that, this was a fine techbase map.

e1m3
I got to the exit, confirmed it went to e1m4, and went to quickload so I could look for the secret exit ... quicksaved instead. Good at Doom, me! This was okay, though I felt more like I was accidentally stumbling into new areas that actually making trackable progress.

e1m4
I got lost a lot and failed to find any secrets (puzzles are not why I play Doom. Or in fact, any game). Slow-rising floors are the devil, too. I'm sorely missing the SSG/RL at this point as grinding mobs of baddies with the single shotgun is rather tedious, and the chaingun ammo isn't exactly plentiful. Some pretty hectic fights here, which was nice, but far too much groping for a way forward for my tastes.

[NecrumWarrior]

Salt-Man Z said:

Lies!


E1M5: Warehouse
21:22 | 100% Everything

This is definitely on the easier side (maybe E1M1 is easier); playing continuous might have something to do with that, but then I pretty much exclusively used the shotgun until the chaingun room. Secrets were easy enough, too, without being too simple. Just a good, solid, fun map. I only wish the warehouse quadrants would have had monsters come at you from more than one direction for a little more challenge.

I should note that I am not a great Doom player. This is really my first time attempting anything seriously on Ultra Violence. That said, I have given it more thought and I don't think it's the enemy variety that bothers me. I think it's actually the placement of the hordes. I don't personally find it very fun to experience 3-4 large hordes that reveal from a dropping wall as soon as you enter a room. This map really doesn't do anything to shake things up until the very last encounter. It's just putting a bunch of enemies directly in front of you, like you said.

[NuclearPotato]

I dunno if you've gotten that far yet NecrumWarrior, or just playing one level a day, but I think you'll appreciate E1M7 a whole lot.

[baja blast rd.]

E1M6: "Power Core"

I don't really feel like writing stuff, so a FDA. Irrationally aggressive, not caring about secrets or survival maximization. I didn't notice when I picked up the YK unfortunately, otherwise this would have been quite fast/decisive for lacking any foreknowledge.

[NaturalTvventy]

I've been enjoying the comments and the fdas lmps and vids; thanks for those everyone. It's interesting to see so many different play styles.

e1m5

The madness continues with crates in e1. This is the map where I discovered barrels can be used to manipulate floors, which is a trick I expanded on later in the wad a few times. I generally like how this one looks, except for the eastern side of things, which feels a bit weird. The crate maze and the final room feels really good to me.

e1m6

I was running out of e1 steam a bit with this one; it's my least favorite map in e1. The secrets are classic but aren't anything new. Combat intensity is about the right amount of escalation from the previous maps. Some areas look really unconvincing to me. "Good enough" was my general attitude on it. The soul sphere secret I tweaked a few times; from making it way too easy to get to making it a one-time only situation. Now it feels like a one-time only situation, but the yellow key floor re-lowers if you go far enough out of the area.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E1M4: Abandoned Factory

One notable quirk of this one is how it teases the player with hints and echoes of the original E1M4 for its first couple rooms before gleefully going off in another direction entirely, confronting the player with a thematically varied set of industrial subzones to clear on the way to the exit. For a map that doesn't use keys nor locked doors, it does a good job of making the path of progression an involved one, presenting the player with quite a variety of different obstacles and challenges. I like the presence of a door connecting the exit 'leg' of the map back to the start, though I wish it wasn't buried in a secret area; it's a nice anti-frustration feature that deserves to have more attention called to it. The placement of the computer map, just a room or two away from the exit, reinforces that its primary use here is as a tool to tease out any secrets the player might have missed. I'll say that I'm not a fan of the rocket launcher secret, and in general it feels like the map could have used more shortcuts opening up as the player makes progress; navigational challenges that are fun the first time through when packed full of carefully-placed enemies quickly lose their charm when the player has to clamber through them a second or third time to retrace progress after backtracking or missing a step.

E1M5: Warehouse

Generally a solid level, though I was left feeling as though the map was stretching a limited number of ideas possibly further than they could really sustain. The repetitive nature of the warehouse spaces arrayed around the central core, divided by catwalks, was a particular example of this; there are no surprises in the later chambers, leaving the player feeling perhaps more like a workman at a job than a space marine delving into the depths of a monster-infested base. On the other hand, the imp-fested red key area makes excellent use of terrain to highlight the threat and menace of the limited bestiary, and the secret areas in general are nicely done, adding substantially to the map's area and sense of completeness.

[NuMetalManiak]

E1M6 Power Core

A corridor-centric map here. Man those hitscanners can be annoying in these groups here. Some nukage to wade through for secrets, and there's the depression with the yellow key where it is possible to completely miss a secret altogether. Map certainly hits its stride after the yellow door, with the many monsters coming from the many corridors. Despite all these corridors there is a lot of space to move around with so it's good.

[Steve D]

Spectre01 said:

@SteveD: Xaser replied to me on page 1 saying continuous is fine for this wad. Might want to try that if you aren't enjoying the tight ammo balance.

Thanks for reminding me, but I'll stick with pistol-start for now. After all, bitching about ammo starvation is half the fun. ;)

[Steve D]

Salt-Man Z said:

As a fellow keyboarder, I thought it was head-smackingly somple, once I figured it out. (It's a nested secret with the blursphere secret, which I banged my head on for a long time before realizing the trick to it.) Unless it was just the jump from the blursphere to the launcher ledge that tripped you up...?

Oh, I figured it out. You leap from the Blursphere to the railing and then walk along that until you're over the RL and then you drop down. Or is there another way? But yes, leaping to the railing was a PITA. It's easier for mousers because they can apply brakes, whereas I kept overshooting. Now, I'll go along with a mapper who does something clever and tricky like that for awhile, but at some point it becomes self-torture, and I clip my way to the goodies. As I've said before, we only have so much lifetime. Why waste it trying to make an annoying jump 30 times?

BTW, I have a left-handed keyboard coming in this week. This puts the numeric keypad on the left side instead of the right. Since I use the numeric keypad for all movement, and I can't seem to control a mouse properly with my left hand, and I also don't like WASD, I figure this is my last chance at becoming a mouser.

[Steve D]

E1M5 – Warehouse
94% Kills, 25% Secrets, 1 Death

Not a bad map. I ran out of shells twice but didn't have to do a lot of boring pistol work before I robbed some dead Sergeants again. My death came about mainly thanks to hitscanner attrition and getting a bit overconfident with the Rocket Launcher against the hordes in one of the crate rooms. So there you have it, just go ahead and give the player a Rocket Launcher right out in the open, and they'll find a way to "Good at Doom!" themselves to death. There's more than one way to collect pelts. ;D

This map is a bit nicer-looking than most in the episode, with its bridges above the storerooms, but it's still very '90s PWAD in appearance, and not in a Fava Beans way, which IMO remains one of the best-looking PWADs ever, even though it was released in 1995. NEIS still trucks in lots of unadorned corridors – mostly straight ones in this map – with occasional wide spots, though here we do find some nice big crate rooms. These rooms allowed for more and more mixed hordes of zombies, Imps and Demons. As Salt-Man Z pointed out, slaughtering hordes of zombies never gets old, but as NecrumWarrior said, the way the hordes are used in this map becomes rote. Enter room, doors open to reveal mass of monsters, blow them away, rinse, repeat. Salt-Man Z apparently felt the same way. The enemies aren't entirely all in front of you, however, because the placing of the crates allows them to occasionally come at you from unexpected angles. That's how I suffered most of my damage, usually from a Sergeant who came out from behind a crate off to my side while I was engaged with monsters in front of me. Still, not much effort was placed on encounter design. The big battles were all on one plane and needed a vertical element for added interest. Cacos or Lost Souls would have helped, but this is a purist E1 so ledges for snipers would be needed. I'm surprised the tops of crates were not used for this, but then, almost all crates were floor-to-ceiling.

Much more effort was placed on the devious secrets. I saved at the exit and decided to see what I had missed. The barrel that prevented the floor from rising was genuinely inspired, I must say. I was mad at myself for not seeing the switch that opened the double-Backpack secret. D'oh! That wasn't hard. Then again, I know from watching livestreams of my maps that many players put zero effort into secret finding and often fail to explore rooms that are wide open for them. At least I tried. :D


E1M6 – Power Core
Maxed, Zero Deaths

I can't believe I maxed one of these maps. NaturalTvventy should hang his head in shame!

In some ways, this is a more "normal" map even though we see a return to the spaghetti corridors, but the wide spots are wider now and some of the areas are better-looking as a result, particularly the exit. Nice texture combinations there.

Chaingun fight is the highlight of the map. A few too many Demons made it easier than it should be by blocking hitscanner fire, but it was a fun romp through the loopy corridors nonetheless. The Blursphere secret was, as usual, pointless for players on a blind run since few players will find it until all the hitscanners are dead. That seems to be the specialty of this mapset, giving you secret items after the fight where you needed them. It says all that's necessary about the emphasis of this episode, and NaturalTvventy's remarks about this map only reinforce this. He said, "The secrets are classic but aren't anything new." He's right, but because the encounters were better, I prefer this map over the more inventive M4. It's all different strokes, of course. IMO, encounter design should be the primary focus in a Doom map, and while secret design is very important, it should be secondary.

This is a solid map. My favorite is still M9, with M2 in second and M6 in third.

[bioshockfan90]

E1M6: Power Core|11:40, 100% kills, 40% secrets|

A lot simpler compared to the rest of E1, but not a bad level in the slightest. The layout is simple, with most of the difficulty coming from hitscanners and lack of ammo. Managed to find a few secrets here as well. An average level, but reminds me more of the DTWID style.

3/5

[rehelekretep]

e1m4 - fda

yeah i wouldnt watch the last 15 minutes of the demo; it features my useless groping around for the rest of the secrets, including me unbelievably fail the rocket launcher secret multiple times, with one particular fail being falling off the ledge in surprise at actually landing the damn thing for once :(
the rest of the map is quite cool - although the masses of imps were making me pine for the SSG and/or RL, which wouldve been fun to really cut loose on the increased body-count.
still feels claustrophobic; im not sure if its the texture choice or just the numerous internal rooms with no window views. we get a look at the sky as we exit the map at least.
couldnt find that 8th secret; going to watch NT's demo :D
edit: just watched the demo; if there was a facepalm smiley i would be using it right now. cant believe i missed the BA!

[rehelekretep]

e1m5 - fda

yes! finally a chance to rocket some spawn! you still have to be mindful of rocket supplies and placement, which i appreciate, but its nice for this map not to follow the same slog-gy path of m4.
the secrets had me completely stumped im afraid; the only one i got was a complete accident.
i liked the central warehouse conceit with the lift-doors, although it did get a bit same-y on the 4th rotation, alleviated somewhat by the chance to explode the groups and shoot barrels :)

[Demtor]

E1M7 - “Bioshpere” by Xaser Acheron
gzDoom - UV – pistol start/no saves


Impressive spiral flowing map, starting at the center and extended outside before winding back in again. So glad to see a map that offers a view inside to places yet to be explored, from the outside areas instead of the normal Doom 1 way of doing things, inside to out. Not so much How do I get out there? but instead How do I get in there! Just a slight twist on that design approach really helped make this one feel different. Quite a large outside area too, with a pink demon horde which threatened to overheat my shotgun, a zombie horde to mow down and a tall tower with shotgunners to snipe at before they get carried away.

Lots of fun puzzling this one together to get from one key to the next. The look of the BK on a pedestal was great. Felt good to finally getting up there later to press that button to grab it. Dropping down with an ambush was decent but expected it to come from both sides, not just the one. In the bottom BK door, there was a dark and then suddenly bright twin surprise attack that really caught me off guard. That was exciting. I had a blast (literally) inside of the giant YK silo. Didn't like that the switch was a bit hidden on the out side of a random column. Glad the gimmick was repeated before the exit. It's damned fun!

Secrets were a lot harder this time around but I managed 4 of the 6. Couldn't figure out what the skull switch did unfortunately but it was a thrill to finding it. Never got that blue armor to drop and was left a bit miffed on what exactly I missed since the computer map showed everything explored. Oh well. Can't win em all.

Great map with lots of open action mixed in with tighter spaces here and there.

[Salt-Man Z]

E1M6: Power Core
17:36 | 100% Everything

I remember this one as "the one with all the windows". Seriously, so much of this map is narrow hallways with windows into other hallways/rooms that you can't quite reach yet. I remember getting pretty lost my first time, but this time wasn't terribly difficult. Secrets weren't too bad, either, apart from the radsuit cache behind the yellow key door; not sure I would have found that one if I hadn't remembered it from earlier. Speaking of the yellow key door, I love the seemingly-endless stream of low-tier fodder that just kept coming and coming. So much fun. I blasted through this using nothing but my shotgun (barring a brief flirtation with the chaingun near the end to conserve shells.) Super fun map.

[NuclearPotato]

E1M6: Power Core
100% kills, 80% secrets

Not too much to say about this level proper. Lots of criss-crossing paths, lots of low level monster hoards, lotta nukage to cross without a radsuit (though some of the secrets do provide a radsuit for navigation, which is thoughtful of them). Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this level, but it's pretty clear by now why the Doom II bestiary is such a critical addision to the mapmaker's toolkit. There's only so many ways you can throw the same 4 enemy types at a person, and even the chaingunner would spice things up considerably. Negative shout-outs to the soulsphere secret in the blue key room for being unobtainable if you jump in the pit without hitting the switch behind you; I don't really care much for secrets with only one chance to obtain them (the secret exit in E1M3 being a notable exception to this rule).

[Magnusblitz]

E1M7: Biosphere
100% kills, 4/6 secrets

This is certainly an impressive layout, with lots of hallways and windows and such all wrapping around each other. Instead of trying to really find my way around, just pretty much decided to forge on ahead and go where the map took me. Reminded me a bit of "Cakravartin's Miscalculation" from the Japanese Community Project a bit in that regard (though obviously the gameplay and aesthetic is much different). As others have mentioned, I do think that being limited to four enemy types in this episode has started to show its limits, though this map certainly tries to up the ante by putting lots of hitscanners in dangerous spots in windowsills, throwing a huge pinkie swarm at the player, and the two large hordes near the end (which are quite fun to rocket to death, even if they're not actually very dangerous). Impressive map.

[Spectre01]

E1M6 - “Power Core”

"You're not the Powercore. You're a fish!"
Winding hallways is the name of the game here as they snake around various acid pits. Certainly some of the original e1m6 presence is felt here. Pistol Start balance is the strangest so far with the Chaingun appearing extremely late in the map. I was sitting at 200 bullets for a while without a good way to spend them, so most of the map's action involves holding mouse1 down of the regular boomstick. The barrels still make for some amusing encounters but there's only so much you can do with 4 E1 monster types. Next is a Xaser map (what's a Xaser?) which is pretty damn cool and I can see it being an episode favourite here.

[NecrumWarrior]

Okay, so apparently I forgot to post after playing E1M6: Power Core, and I actually forgot I even had played it until I realized I was on E1M8 just now. I actually had to watch the video a few posts up just to refresh my memory haha, I have had one hell of a 24 hour stretch. So I thought it was a really well layered map, if that makes any sense. A lot of areas wrapped in so that you could see the next area you were aiming for, which is a really nice way to enforce the feeling of progression. Otherwise I don't have much to say other than it was a fun map, if a bit unremarkable in some aspects.

E1M7: Biosphere, on the other hand, is my new favorite map in the set. Way to call it, NuclearPotato! I learned something about myself playing this map: I fucking love platforms in the middle of slime pits. I don't know why, but I do. Every room in this wad so far that had either platforms or catwalks over slime looked great to me, it's not something I can really explain but I have a feeling that it's going to worm into my future mapping designs. Maybe it's the implied sense of danger even when there is none, I don't know. I found myself not really sure where I was going for most of the map, but I never gave one fuck because I was having too much fun exploring this rather large facility. And somehow I managed to make progress despite feeling kinda lost most of the time, which is something that I think Doom can do extremely well. The encounters were fun and very multi leveled. I noticed it really early, even though the first such encounter was functionally the same as one large horde, just by putting half of it on stairs and half on a level platform it became a more interesting fight. Anyway, I am rambling now, great fucking map 10/10!

Favorite Maps:
1. E1M7: Biosphere
2. E1M4: Abandoned Factory

[joe-ilya]

E1M7

The sequel to E1M3! Huge map with lots of secrets, non-linearity and monsters, but more open and appealing, you go inside and outside a big sprawling techbase surrounded by caves and landsides, going upwards and downwards through hundreds of heights, it's a journey of a map! The little gimmicks made up for it.

But there are two bugs I found, one of them is a nukage pond in front of the yellow key which isn't damaging, the other one is an inescapeable nukage pit you can fall into through several ways.

4.9/5

[Deadwing]

E1M7: This is my favorite level of the set so far. It's larger, more ambitious while retaining that Ultimate Doom feel, with irregular shapes (remembering some Monti's levels) and non-linearity. Enemy counter is a bit boosted compared with the original Doom, but this is due to the setpieces in the ending, with was a cool cinematic way of ending the level. I've found 4 of the 6 secrets. Didn't found a way to reaching that Soulsphere and I didn't figure out what that switch with the redbrick texture did.

10/10

[baja blast rd.]

E1M7: "Biosphere"

Ah, it's a Xasermap, ey. I wasn't focusing on authorship during play but in retrospect it's fairly obvious. Spirals! Fun map, quicker than I expected thanks to the hordes of rocket fodder.

Layout is cool. I was somewhat worried earlier on, thinking, "Did I miss these keys perched in plain sight because I'm going too fast? Or does the layout loop around to them later?" Despite the spirals and stuff I'm most fond of the irregular shapes of the outdoor yards. Excellent textbook use of block sound lines for the pinky horde.

[NuMetalManiak]

E1M7 Biosphere

Uhhhhh...now isn't really the time. So here's a Xaser map, and after replaying some Xaser maps, I grew to hate this kind of style. The layout is really rough to move around in and then there's monsters fucking literally every corner and snipers just aren't fun here at all. Secrets? Meh, I actually didn't have a whole lot of trouble finding them, it's just figuring out where I needed to go to get the first key. Discovering that I had to go an incredibly long way just to head all the way around a backdoor to the blue key and I was just running across the open outdoors for awhile. At least the kills got fun with the zombieman horde in the way.

Sure enough the blue key was retrieved, and I managed to take even longer to get the yellow key somehow, because I was perfecting a fast route for it for some reason. The remainder of this is dealing with a massive horde in a silo, which is what the rocket launcher can conveniently do. Taking prejudice against hitscanners right now. There's another one of those silos after the red key and in the exit area. I'll give it this, it comes down quick, thankfully, because I would just sleep while waiting for a slowly lowering silo to reveal the enemies. Later maps WILL be a "slog" so to speak, it won't be strange when you realize it. This is just the first of several I thought was a "slog". As I have said at least twice already, you are free to disagree. Also E1M8 is short so I did it too.

E1M8 Enigma

Traditional Bruiser Brothers here, give weapons, kill barons. Alright I'll go ahead and check out E1M0 now.

E1M0 Tom's Halls

So let's start things off with, a 30 second door? That sure is a way to start off a Tom Hall-inspired map. Those monster closets can be painful but the invulnerability I saw prevented further injury. Now it's a matter of finding the keys it seems. Very well budgeted as far as key doors go. It seems you can get the blue key, which is the last one to get, in two ways, but never both. Interesting. Also the end has a starry battle against surprise demons.

[Demtor]

E1M8 - “Enigma” by Emil "NaturalTvventy" Brundage
gzDoom - UV – pistol start/no saves


Quick and dirty. An homage to the original with it's own flavor. Was special then, now it's expected it. I liked that the RL was hidden with no way back if you missed it. The original had 2 Barons with spectres. This had 3 Barons with a bunch of pinkies. Fun fight with a few barrels to dodge. Too bad there wasn't any big outdoor reveal to reward the player like the original. Though I really liked the dark walkway to the ominous stairway to the black death ending.



E1M0 - “Tom’s Halls” by Emil "NaturalTvventy" Brundage
gzDoom - UV – pistol start/no saves

Nooooope. This looks like shit and felt just as awful. I couldn't stomach it. No thanks. Pass.

[NecrumWarrior]

E1M8: Enigma is a pretty cool looking map. The lead up to the boss fight was extremely short. I rather liked how the catwalk dropped down into the slime when you arrived, preventing any backtracking. I was wondering how you would one up the the Baron fight in Doom the way Id Did (which I've been playing at the same time) and I was almost expecting it to just be a 4 Baron fight. I was pleasantly surprised when the Pinkies came rushing out.

And that ends Episode 1 I suppose. All that leaves is E1M0 which I will play right now.

And I'm done! Tom's Halls definitely has halls. I actually wasn't feeling it at first when I was dealing with the hordes released at the beginning, but as the map moved on I thought it had some cool concepts. Needing the two keys to move on to the end was pretty good for the pacing, and you even get a couple extra spaces just for having one of the keys. I didn't die once so it wasn't super hard. I would say that it was really balanced actually. I look forward to The Depths of Doom.

Favorite Maps:
1. E1M7: Biosphere
2. E1M4: Abandoned Factory

[NuclearPotato]

I guess we're all just rushing to the end of this episode now (not a terrible idea, since there's almost 40 maps in this set!), so I'll go ahead and post my remaining E1 reviews now.


E1M7: Biosphere
100% kills, 83% secrets

Oh BOY. Just when I thought I had run out of things to say about an E1 mapset, here comes Xaser with one of the most bizarre Computer Station homages I have ever seen. Rather than the Romero/Peterson worship seen earlier in the episode, Xaser seems to have taken his inspiration from the countless amounts of narrow, angular mid 90's PWADs, and made one of the most claustrophobic, euclidean maps I have seen in a long time. As a result, the growing hoards that I was just complaining about feeling stale in E1M6 have had new life breathed into them, just from a abrupt change of scenary. Amazing what an author change can do to mix things up, eh?

I'm still finding myself at a loss of words like last review, but that's more due to struggling to find a way to describe this level short of playing it. It's exactly as confusing and illogically layed out as something out of Maximum Doom, but Xaser found a way to make it all FUN. It all comes to a head with not one, but two of the largest groupings of enemies seen so far in the WAD, apparently specifically designed to part you from your rocket launcher ammo, and boy was I happy to part from them. Got nearly all the secrets (still not sure if the last one involves the blue armor back in the large nukage area, or a hidden room behind the teleporter near the yellow doors), killed the shit outta everything. Let's move on to E1M8, and wrap this episode up.

E1M8: Enigma
100% kills(?), 0% secrets

A moody and desolate E1M8 map. Does the empty atmosphere part well (Sign of Evil never fails to conjure that kind of atmosphere in a competant mapper's hands, however), pretty standard otherwise, with the only noted wrinkle in the formula coming from there being three Barons instead of two. The staircase leading up to the usual ambush was pretty cool, and the outro text was amusing.

E1M0: Tom's Halls
99% kills (one stinking monster!), 66% secrets

Well, I guess we know now why this map is accessable by warp only. Unremarkable gameplay-wise, hilarious texture-wise. Not very Tom Hall-ish at all. Decent key door usage, though. I liked how the doors wrapped around on themselves.



E1 overall had some very strong maps at the beginning, with Xaser's map coming in at the episode's climax, just as one would start to tire of NaturalTvventy's style. Here's to E2 being better in every way, with the introduction of the rest of the regular roster.

[joe-ilya]

E1M8

Boring map with no inspiration, too easy of a boss fight too. I guess I could give this map credit for using barrels in the arena, but that's where it ends, weak.

1/5

E1

A rather good episode, but when it's time to fill in an establishing map slot it gets uncreative and does nothing.

Top : M7, M3.
Bottom : M8, M1.

[rehelekretep]

e1m6 - fda

this was a lot of fun - lots of mooks to mow down, lots of windows and views through to the outside (what a difference this makes somehow, is it just me?), and a intuitively traversable level, even for me.
a shame that the RL is tucked away, continuous players probably had even more fun :)
the secrets were all pretty cool; i was very happy when the ascending floor turned out to be retrievable - i thought id screwed it up on the first go around.

[Magnusblitz]

E1M8: Enigma
100%ish kills, 2/2 secrets

The "Barons at end of E1" is certainly one of the design bits about Doom that has aged least gracefully since 1993, so I don't want to be too hard on this map from that angle. But even with that in mind, this map still feels like it plays it too safe and could've done something a bit more exciting. Three barons and some pinkies in a smaller arena is not too captivating. I squeezed some fun out of it by getting the barons to blow up the barrels and rip each other to shreds, though.

The word "monologue" is misspelled in the epilogue text.