Custom Map #535: Walnuts & Chestnuts. By: Sorrontis

[ColonelSandersLite]

Turns out the problem there was my system, not the map.  Fixed.  I've improved my time some, but want to run it one more time before review.

[ColonelSandersLite]

General thoughts:
I think this is a pretty good map.  There's a couple of minor things, but it's really hitting on all 8 cylinders.  The ship designs are good all around, except that I'm honestly not a particularly big fan of the Gulag.  It's not bad, but I just don't think it's all that great either.  Unlike svartmes above, I found the extra ships to be useful.  Specifically, I used them to guard the energy mines scattered around the map.

One of the traps I've seen maps with a similar sort of structure fall into is making the different quadrants of a square play identically.  This is averted on this map and that's definitely a good thing.  There's a lot of gameplay here.

Something I have mixed feelings on is that the energy crystals are pretty overdone here.  They're largely red herrings that hint at potentially different starting areas of the map, which is good in my estimation.  On the downside, they tend to get in the way.  Near the end of my third run, I noticed that you can actually destroy energy crystals, which is a very handy thing to know here.

Spoiler

I think I would have rather seen this map commit to a working totem in the middle, rather than a progenitor.  The player requirements to actually use them is the same, but the totem takes far less time to lathe.

[close]

My Rating:
10/10

My times:
50:47
46:01 (I think, not positive)
39:08

Difficulty:
Hard

Hint:

Spoiler

Don't go out of your way for the totems.
Rock burner is your friend.
The island inside the SE corner of the square is a trap.

[close]

[Lisimba]

This map is severely underrated. It's a great hard mode map.

[Sorrontis]

Thanks!