Map review of Coldburn

by Chimz | November 20, 2025 | 3668 characters

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I played this one back in 2015, didn't have fun. Played it again in 2025, still didn't have fun.

The TL;DR version is that this map has a fantastic atmosphere but fails at everything else.

Long version:
So yeah, this map has got an awesome, eerie, unsettling and hostile sci-fi atmosphere that really makes you feel like the environment is telling you to get out. There place is broken and rusted, a thick fog, there are hostile entities all over and all the while you're constantly taking cold damage. Needless to say it is a crushing atmosphere that is unique.

Unfortunately that's where my praise ends as everything related to gameplay is downhill from here.

Biggest issue is that half the time you're not sure what to do. Developer has not done a good job at conveying where you should go, and since most areas look the same, often times you just find yourself wandering around to randomly find your goal. Even then you're not guaranteed and could find yourself running around for 15 minutes not finding your goal. This creates horrible pacing and breaks flow. After a point I just gave up.

Many areas are darker than they should be. I get it, dim lights help create a moody atmosphere, but that still requires DIM lights, not NO lights.

Couple that pitch black darkness with fast melee enemies who are like Afraid of Monsters twitchers but even faster and it starts to lose its fun. AOM gave you a pistol and automatic weapons. Here you're given a shotgun to shoot at enemies moving 60km/h and in the horrible gldsrc pathfinding way. Actually that pathfinding may be more of bad node placement by the dev than the engine's fault.

One thing that really breaks the atmosphere is the NPCs. Not all but almost a big chunk of the NPCs are colored. What I'm guessing is that the dev wanted to change the color of their armor but instead of using the proper tools and putting in time, he applied a solid color to the whole mode. So a character who is supposed to have blue armor is just blue from head to toe like a Smurf. And that blue is so saturated that it's like Red channel is 0, Green 0 and Blue is 255. It's just bad to look at and breaks immersion.

Finally, the constant cold damage requires you to keep your suit charged at all times and keep an eye on its power level. A fun idea but poorly executed. Instead of a minor but lingering cold damage that makes you feel like your armor level is your oxygen and it could run out without you noticing and dying, the damage value is so high that to compensate, the dev placed batteries all around the map at every 5 meters. So, instead of that minor but unyielding threat being always around the corner, giving you stress, making you keep track of where the last charging station was, it just breaks gameplay as you're running around picking up batteries that shouldn't be there. And well, with so much batteries around, combat loses its danger too because no matter how many hits you take, you know there's always another battery right up ahead.

Overall the map has a great atmosphere that is worthy of taking inspiration from, but everything else related to gameplay is just so badly executed that it takes out all the fun.

Would not recommend you spending your time on this.

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