Oh boy, where do I start? This project was something else for me, I must say. When the competition was announced, I thought it would be a cool opportunity to create a Half-Life map, specifically a Black Mesa map. The deadline for the project was one month.
My original idea was quite ambitious. I envisioned a plot twist involving a time loop, beginning with a cutscene where the player receives a pistol from someone before jumping into a portal. The player would traverse Xen or some sort of "Black Mesa backrooms," eventually discovering that the person who gave them the pistol was themselves all along. It was a time loop. The map was initially called "Recursion" because of this concept.
As you can guess, the idea didn't work out as planned. Creating a detailed cutscene was challenging, and I got stuck on the portal room. After deciding this wouldn't work, I changed the plans. The new idea was a cutscene of the player running from the HECU. Cornered and out of ammo, the player would be forced to jump into the portal. I nearly went with this idea and even created an audio track for the cutscene.
However, after testing it, I felt it was quite awkward. Forcing the player to jump into the portal felt unnatural. I ended up scrapping this idea as well.
And just like that, I wasted 15 days, leaving me with only 15 days to finish the project. Back then, I had a full-time job and freelance work, plus I was working on a big college project. I decided to go into crunch mode to finish this project. I wanted to prove to myself that I was capable of creating something worth people's time.
The final fight was the excuse for the 'escape' theme After some thought, I realized I was wasting too much time on the first portal room. I chose to make a simple flyby cutscene with some easy-to-do text on the screen. Later, I discovered it was a good idea to keep things simple.
With that out of the way, I decided to work on the finale. Yes, I had the start and end cutscenes finished before anything else in the project—judge me. Everything after that was an afterthought.
I think it shows because everything after that was half-cooked. I came up with the idea of a central hub with three main puzzle rooms and an obvious progression system. Find a crowbar after the first puzzle, break wood planks blocking the entrance to the second puzzle, find a long jump module so you can jump a pit and access the third puzzle room. Very straightforward.
The first generator I made ended up being used in the third room. However, I wasted a lot of time working on the first puzzle room, more than I would like to admit. The first idea I had for a puzzle, the cables and plugs puzzle, was the one I went with. It was fun, and the logic was not too complicated, but it was quite buggy. After extensive testing, I decided to add an emergency "skip puzzle" lever in the corner of the room. This proved to be a wise decision because the puzzle broke in numerous ways for many people, even after some patch fixes.
The entrance of the first generator. Anyway, after completing the first puzzle, tick tock... I had only three days left until the deadline, with no second or third puzzle room ready, I went mad. I scrapped everything and made simple rooms with cool visual gimmicks. The second room featured a cool water section with a mysterious flooded parking lot—done. The third "puzzle" room was a giant "dam" structure, inspired by an artwork from the manga Blame!, with some easy parkour platforms. Finally, there was a rush for the exit of the facility and a "new" plot twist at the end.
I think now you can understand why I didn't work on this project after finishing the first beta for the competition, I was exhausted. Nonetheless, it was quite worth it, as the map won 3rd place.