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Map review of Death-Wish
by Chimz | November 10, 2025 | 4570 characters
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[Updated on 10th of November]
Me and my friend played and finished the map by finding the secret path. This review is based on that gameplay.
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If I had to sum it up, the first third of the game had rough edges but was quite enjoyable. The rest was just painful. Most issues stem from the map not being playtest enough by people outside of the dev team, thus critical feedback was never received. This results in some horribly difficult sequences where you realize the fun had ended 15 minutes ago and now you're just trying to get it over with.
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Taking heavy inspiration from the canceled map "The Room", a big chunk of the design follows the same mentality and while it does improve most mistakes of that map, it still keeps some. You can read about that map's review here for comparison: http://scmapdb.wikidot.com/review:875
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The map leans heavily on atmosphere and environment, in a good way. Map feels eerie, you're not sure what's going on or what's going to happen, you find yourself in a hell both physical and mental that you have to traverse and escape from.
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The map uses no Vanilla weapons and instead uses Afraid of Monsters weapons which breathe fresh air into Sven Co-op's gameplay, really setting it apart from other maps.
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The Room didn't have enough shortcuts which meant every time you died, you had to traverse a long path to get back to the right track. Death Wish has improved this aspect a lot and only in one section did I think respawn would set me back a lot. (Hint: lava kz that requires 2 players, there's already a long obstacle to get there and 1 mistake sends you back minutes.)
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There are lots of puzzles which are quite fun. Since most of them are world-based, you're not standing in 1 place trying to solve something mentally, but rather you have to think and move, making the puzzles much more dynamic and fun.
There is one puzzle however that is nice but is so badly explained that I had to look up the map page's Hint section to understand what I'm supposed to do.
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Currently my biggest criticize are the jumping sections. There's a few long and hard kz/jump sections with high skill ceilings which include platforms that sink a second after being stepped on. Sometimes it's all sinking platforms, sometimes it's a few placed in between. Since their appearance is no different from others, there's no way to spot them without first dying to them at least once.
Because these platforms need to sink all the way to the bottom and then rise back up, having a higher number of players in the map will not help brute force it as everyone must wait for the platforms ruse back up. So, even a 16 player server will find these parts to hinder progression for a long time.
A few sections of the map are locked behind these jumping obstacles and if you're not good at it in Sven (since stats are different than Counter-Strike's kz server's (one example being max grounded speed)), you're going to be stuck retrying for a long time. This is part of the map's design and was intended so, if you're not a fan of jumping, be warned that this map REQUIRES it. It was also one of the biggest negatives in my playthrough.
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Combat sections revolve around being underequipped against respawning enemies. While previously it was terrible, the Developer have made improvements so, hopefully it will go better than you expect.
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Overall the map mostly shines in it's first half and by the time you get to the second half, you kinda just want it over it.
Unfortunately, while some parts can be improved, other parts are part of the intended design, already settled, and too late for change. The biggest divider of the audience will be the kz sections.
While I've criticized many things, I do want to say that I truly enjoyed the atmosphere, the mood, the puzzles and I am happy such a map was added to Sven Co-op's community and hope to see people inspired by it. Developer is a chill guy who is open to feedback and I hope to see more from him.
Pros:
- Good and immersive atmosphere
- Good length
- Use of Custom Weapons which breathe fresh air into Sven's Gameplay
- Puzzles that mix both mental and physical effort
Cons:
- Difficult jump/kz sections hinder progression
- Combat Sections relying heavily on swarming the player and quickly respawning enemies
- High difficulty for 2 players
Review originally from *
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