The best part about making multiplayer maps are the experiences you create for a player. The moment of pure joy from escaping certain doom, of hitting an insane streak, or of defending your corner of the map in a last stand! As such there are a few key ingredients to use when cooking up an excellent map:

• Balanced teamplay
• Good sightlines for sniping
• Tight spaces for getting the jump on your opponent
• Interesting terrain to approach with guns blazing or creeping up unseen on your opponents

That being said, some of our designs fall short of the mark, so this month we’re revisiting some of our established maps and tweaking them to make them more enjoyable for our players!

In this article we will be looking how some maps came to be and how we have changed them to seriously up their game!

Hatching a Pyramid Scheme

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The original idea for Rameses came when looking at Duel Pyramid and brainstorming how to make it less of a slaughterhouse! The existing combo of tight spaces, difficult angles and small sightlines made Dual Pyramid incredibly scrambler / whipper focused. We always loved the tunnels that run through the base so the solution seemed easy! Let’s supersize that base and create a whole underground chamber (similar to Moonbase) that would act as a conduit. It’s going to be awesome!

In reality, however, the chamber of secrets lost a lot of appeal as the new long sightlines in addition to the four corner bases made for easy sniping and less reason to explore the lovingly crafted inner base. To get ahead, the best plan was to sit in a corner base, guarding your ladder and a 90 degree view. The end result made this map no-one’s favourite… 

Time to change that!

• Each entrance has been “popped out” of the pyramid creating more flat spaces
• Joined each team’s sniping tower, both with each other AND the pyramid
• Added more cover and created more “shade” to approach each tower unseen
• Made the central pyramid a little more open to encourage thoroughfare

This. Is. SPARTA!!!

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The idea for this map came pretty easily through what is arguably the greatest moment in the movie “300”. For those who don’t know, this is where a defiant spartan kicks a warlord’s emissary into a bottomless pit! THIS. IS. SPARTA! Using the versatile blocks from the Dirt map, we wanted to include a central pitt that would be a one way access to the tunnel system and then build up a compelling spartan base around this feature. Although fairly happy with the flavour of the map, it felt a little flat to play. Too few choices in too wide an area rendered it unable to live up to the hype!

• Less long range sightlines: Popped out arches, lowered tree section.
• Bigger Blue Base: Red tower OP, easier access to blue battlements
• Crypt has more options: Rule the underground with the spiral staircase and tweaked corridors

The result is a map that plays as epic as it sounds. We feel the added areas of the map will create a little more stealth plays and areas to recharge when you’re on a tear!  Let us know what you think!

Building a Better Bastion 

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Inspiration can come from anywhere and the basic idea for Bastion was inspired by Apex Legends and the map King’s Canyon. The general idea was to have a large tower in the middle of the map and to have players use the space in front and to the sides to fight it out. This aligned well with a desire to create a team based competitive map for 4vs4 play for the growing Shell Shockers competitive community. 

The result? Well… we learned that sometimes, symmetry sucks. 

Although guaranteeing each team is on an equal footing, the gameplay just fell flat. In effect rather than having a rock paper scissors of strategies, the map could be “solved”. Put an RPEGG on the high ground and protect them and you would win. To address this we made some changes:

• Increased the map area by 120 blocks
• Gave both bases unique advantages that drastically affect how the map plays

We look forward to seeing how this affects the map’s competitive play, and in either case, it’s certainly now a more interesting battleground that we are confident will improve player experience and crank up the map’s possibilities.

The Best Laid Plans…

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Space Arena was one of our earliest duel maps, released in the same pack as Castle Arena, Road, Dirt Arena and more back in September 2019. Although receiving a basement and the legendary moon worm shortly thereafter, the map failed to capture the hearts and minds of eggos everywhere. Something needed to change but the smaller the map, the more radical any change would be! How to make a change while keeping the existing gameplay of the map?

The Answer? Build out.

• Expand the bunker out and around the outside of the map’s walls
• New ladders and staircases connect this larger footprint to the eggsisting map

The result is that rifles are once again viable due to several traversable battlements, while not being OP due to lack of cover. Most of the fighting on this map will now take place outside the main walls, as people wrestle to move inwards to gain control of the high ground! Be careful how you approach – Don’t try it Anakin! 

Drink in the Catatonic

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Catacombs was added to Shell Shockers in November 2020 and is one of my personal favourite maps. Featuring a night skybox, dramatic lighting, hidden occult attic (spectate the top tower) and dark maze like tunnels – the development of Catacombs probably took the most actual edits of almost any other map in Shell Shockers. There’s a lot packed into the space on this map. Gamers love the way it looks but it came at the expense of the favored Shell weapon, the crackshot. Although there was room at the top of the map, there wasn’t quite enough to go on a solid streak, and even if you got on one, any pressure would force you down into the musty catacombs themselves and an inevitable yolky doom. 

The changes to this one are subtle:

• Elongated the upper Floor Sight lines
• Created several sniper nests to defend
• Rounded several corners
• Deepened doorways
• Tweaked the catacombs to make for less symmetry
  

All of these add up to introduce a little bit more ranged into the classically cramped catacombs! Grab a Free Ranger or Crackshot and start chaining together those streaks!

We’ve Got to Break Free

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In April 2020, a new threat to eggkind took over Shell Shockers, EGG ORG. Jailbreak is a recreation of where were held in those harrowing days, allowing eggs to cosplay our escape against the EGG ORG menace. Most players love Jailbreak with its asymmetrical design and lots of interesting areas to explore. Despite this, Jailbreak has long awaited some improvements. These edits give players a little more space to breakout on this map!

The changes will be harder to spot as they are rather subtle but see if you can spot all 10 tweaks we have made!

First person to put them all in the comments will win a Mystery Hat!

Enjoy the Update! 

Wrap it up and let’s play! 

Giving players opportunities for different styles of play on one map can make a good map great. Our Two Towers map allows for fast paced action on the bottom floor, daring escapes in the map middle and slower paced sniping on the roofs. Cluckgrounds gives great opportunities for massive streaks with any weapon, whether sniping in the team towers, lurking the middle halls, or chaining together greedy eggs dropping to the bottom of the orange stacks in hunt of chased prey. Castle offers perfect Team play, balanced in the two distinct bases, allowing oblivious snipers to be caught by ninja scramblers, or enterprising whippers to be cracked on their way up to the ramparts.

Although we aren’t sure of all the ways these map updates will affect gameplay, we’re hopeful they’ll improve your experience! So what are you waiting for?! Start a private server and get some friends to join! Don’t forget to let us know what you like and don’t like about these updates – at the end of the day, it’s awesome players like you that make all the difference in the development of this wonderfully eggy game!