Legends speak of castles, once grand, now ravaged by calamity...
From the might of nature, to the grasp of dark magic...
You must tell their stories one last time, before they disappear forever!
Welcome to Castle Catastrophe, our 4th Official Map Contest!
🗺️ Theme
Castle Catastrophe - You must build a castle that has been struck by a disaster!
Your map must feature a castle within your playable area.
Build an interior or exterior, or a mixture of both!
You can design the entire castle, a portion of the castle, or even just a single room or courtyard - it's up to you.
Additionally, your map must feature a catastrophe.
How you interpret this is up to you! Get creative and brainstorm your ideas before starting them.
Is your catastrophe ongoing, or are you building the ruins following the disaster?
Is your catastrophe a natural disaster, or could it be the work of magic?
🥇 Main Prize | Official Implementation
We are implementing multiple winning submissions into Witch It as Featured Maps, which can be played on both official and custom servers.
While we have no particular number of winners in mind, the winning maps in Castle Catastrophe will be replacing a number of previously featured maps.
All winning maps will receive baked lighting, and will be played for years to come. Many of our previous Featured Maps have now been played way over 10,000 times!
Each contributor in a winning map will also receive:
🔹 The Grand Architect's Helmet for the Hunter.
🔹 1x Witch It Steam Key (giftable)
🔹 Two DLC sets of their choice!
🔹 Your name added to the description of a Creative Mode structure!
🔹 Grand Architect Discord role!
🏆 Additional Awards
We are offering additional awards for 3 different categories.
🖼️ Presentation Award: Awarded to the entry with the best presentation.
To win this award, spend time making your workshop page visually appealing, through screenshots, banners, a video (if you like), or anything else to make it stand out from the other entries!
📖 Lore Award: Awarded to the entry with the best lore.
To win this award, write a backstory about your map and post it in the description of your workshop page!
💥 Catastrophe Award: Awarded to the entry with the most unique catastrophe idea.
To win this award, build a castle catastrophe that is distinctive and unexpected - the most unique idea will prevail!
The winner of each award will receive a DLC set of their choice, as well as their name added to the description of a Creative Mode structure!
✔️ Participate in just 5 steps:
1️⃣ Use Witch It's Creative Mode to build a custom map following our theme, rules and advice!
2️⃣ Upload your map to the Steam workshop!
3️⃣ Upload at least one screenshot onto your workshop page!
4️⃣ Add the hashtag #mapcontest2024 in the description!
5️⃣ Finally, post your entry in #map-contest on the Witch It Discord server or under this Steam announcement!
By participating, you are agreeing that we can use your creation as an official featured map in Witch It.
📚 Are you still unsure what to do? View our detailed participation guide here!
⚠️ [Important!] Rules
🔸 You must build on an empty map containing no structures (interior, town day, island day, town night, ice day, graveyard night, magical forest, desert day, desert sunset, jungle day, or dream valley day)!
🔸 If you wish to build on a default map containing pre-made structures, you must build out-of-bounds!
🔸 You can submit as many maps as you want, but remember: quality over quantity.
🔸 You can either make your map solo, or collaborate with up to 3 other creators - all creators must be marked a contributor to your workshop item!
🔸 You cannot enter using other creator's maps that you are not an original contributor on (we will check for stolen work).
🔸 You must design an entirely original map - it cannot be based on an existing map from another game!
🔸 Offensive/NSFW content is strictly prohibited!
🔸 All users can enter, including Grand Architect and staff members. Users with ongoing bans are not eligible to win.
🔸 Absolutely no AI-generated content (for graphics/screenshots/lore). Be creative!
⚠️ Fairness Change: One creator cannot win the main prize twice in a single map contest - only your best map will be chosen, the rest will not be eligible! This change does not apply to the additional prizes.
⚠️ Switches are allowed in maps.
⚠️ If you're building in out-of-bounds water, the physics of the water do not work properly and therefore will be unbalanced for gameplay. For this reason, please avoid using out-of-bounds water in the playable areas of your maps.
Breaking these rules may result in disqualification from the contest!
Advice
📕 Balance Your Map
Ensure your map is fun to play for both teams by considering balance in your creative decisions. Do the witches have plenty of hiding options? Can hunters check for witches efficiently? Above all else, balance is often carried by map size - too small, and Hunters will find it too easy, too big and witches will almost always win. Try to strike a balance for both teams!
While there is no strict rule on player count for your map, we strongly recommend aiming for a map size that supports 4-10 players. This way, if you build bigger than you anticipated, your map may still be balanced for 8-16 players.
📙 Playtesting Is Key
Round up your friends (or even other entrants) to test your maps thoroughly. A great looking map will be not be approved if the gameplay mechanics are inconsistent or broken. Watch out for things such as stairs that don't work, ladders that can't be climbed, doorways that are too small. Switches are permitted, but not necessary for most maps.
📒 Optimise Your Maps
Optimise your prop and utility use to ensure your map is smooth to run. A well optimised map often has less than 500 props, any amount of structures, no utilities stacked on top of each other (e.g multiple lights in one position), and no unstable frozen props that jump away erratically when touched. If you are building in a map containing out-of-bounds water, the physics of the water does not work properly and therefore should be avoided in playable areas of your maps.
📗 Broken Hiding Spots
Combining structures together can occasionally lead to small gaps which props can fit into. Often, this happens with world boundaries, rocks, and ice structures - but can easily be avoided by vigorously checking intersections of structures (don't forget: playtest!). Even just one small gap in a structure may break your map, as witches can use these areas to avoid hunters with no risk. Please keep this in mind during and after the creation of your entry.
📘 Gamemode Compatibility
Your map must be compatible with Hide & Seek, Mobification and Hunt a Hag. Please consider using a variety of props and gameplay options for both teams, and take into account the skills each team may use.
⌛ Deadline
We are closing entries on Wednesday, 15th January 2025 (midday, 12:00pm UTC)!
Once the contest ends, we will take time reviewing every entry and deciding on the winners, which will be revealed shortly after.
We hope you enjoy Castle Catastrophe! #mapcontest2024