Blood Moon

Title: Blood Moon
Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1905316863
Author: axingheqquuy
Survivors: L4D1
Notes: N/A

There's honestly not a whole lot to say about this one. Blood Moon is a three-map campaign that seems as though it were a first mapper's unfinished attempt at making something that never got completed. There are developer textures all throughout and the areas are very poorly detailed. The gameplay isn't satisfying and it ends up being a lot of meandering through barren, grey corridors until the maps arbitrarily end. Nothing is placed logically and and nothing feels as though care were taken in any way, aside from perhaps a couple of places that have kind of cool lighting.

The first map starts off rather punishing as it withholds any primary or even weapons from the players while including a tank fight in water, which isn't fun. Otherwise the first map isn't all that memorable, aside from the beginning looking like a rip-off of part of No Mercy, the room with all the generator equipment. It's definitely short but the tank fight and the ugly texturing don't do it any favors.

The second map has a lot more designed for it than the first map, but it all feels like a pre-alpha in that there's kind of the bare-bones ideas of what would later be fleshed out, but in the case of Blood Moon, what's here is finished. There may be a couple of places that have cool red lighting, but otherwise everything leads you by the nose down a single direction. This map feels like it goes on for a long time, mostly there are quite a lot of props placed around large open hallways where infected tend to not spawn. Maybe this could sort of work in a tank mutation, and there are a couple of bathrooms at the end of the map that stand out by actually looking sort of like bathrooms, but otherwise it's incredibly boring.

Up until this point, the maps haven't really been that unfair, just boring and unremarkable. The beginning of the third map is definitely still all of that, even though it adds a few more textures, such as to the floor. The infected are incredibly easy to fight here and while it's clear that this is supposed to represent something like a train station or airport, it doesn't look like either of those, with the exception of having a bunch of chairs and plants without pots. Another big issue is that you can clearly see out of the map by just going through the way you're supposed to be going, so that goes to show that this wasn't proofed.

However, the finale is downright terrible. Not only does the holdout location absolutely suck, it throws way more infected at you than standard finales, and due to the location not being developed properly, they all spawn right out of thin air. The outside isn't even masked by something contrived like steel barricades or buses, you can just see the edge of the world. I think worst of all though is that there's no ammo pile in the finale area, so it's really poorly made because the map is going to be throwing specials and common at you furiously and once you run out of ammo, you'll be up shit creek. Not to mention that the rescue vehicle isn't even animated, it just slowly moves in the air and plops down in the center of the arena and it's over.

Difficulty: The first two and a half maps are either unremarkable difficulty-wise or a breeze, while the finale is an absolute pain, mostly because there's no ammo pile. I feel like that alone would've made things tolerable enough, but the increased infected and the fact that they just appear out of nowhere also contribute to it feeling extremely contrived. It's more annoying than actually difficult.

Final Verdict: This is obviously unfinished and should have never been released if it was never going to have anyone go over it. It's not interesting to look at, nor is it fun to play. It's clearly made by someone toying around with Hammer but didn't have the time or patience to try and develop something. This is the quintessential campaign of everything technically working but being so under-developed that it's just a waste of time. Not recommended.

Rating: 1.15/5.