Hey everyone!
There’s been a noticeable spike in mapmaking activity lately, with the majority of them being pretty good, which I’m very pleased to see. With this amount of new maps flowing in, it’ll be quite the challenge to pick one to highlight among them all. We’ll cross that bridge next week, though.
Keeping up his winning streak, Tahazzar comes at us with this week’s Map of the Week, “Heads On Prices”.
We start off at the docks with a Silenced 9mm Pistol, and as the limited ammunition and stage title “Silent As A Candle” would suggest, this one’s all about stealth. You need to make your way to the end of the stage, using ammunition as sparingly as possible – there’s many more enemies than you have bullets. Sneaking past them and proceeding to the left will allow us to progress.
The next stage is the main meat of the level – a long apartment complex packed to the brim with zombies. Your main task is to eliminate Shamblers who are carrying keycards, but there’s a catch. The building is filled with dozens of Shambler heads, and only a few of them are actually linked to corresponding bodies. The right heads are indicated by some particular things around them, so keep an eye socket out. There are some spare silenced pistols hanging on the walls, which’ll serve you well to avoid alerting every enemy in the house.
Repaint the apartment bloody red, collect all the keycards, and you’re free to finish the level.
What I liked about this level is something that I see surprisingly rarely for a game like DEADBOLT – an emphasis on stealth. Not as an optional approach, but as the only real way of playing the level effectively, further supported by the dimmed lights and silenced weapons. Also, the fact that this level got away with packing more than three enemies into a single spot while still remaining perfectly playable deserves some praise.