Skaarj City

As the 6th single player release (released 2 days before the Christmas of 1998) of David “DavidM” Münnich, Skaarj City is still one of his early newbie maps. At the time the author was apparently releasing new SP maps every few weeks, but this speedy work took its toll on quality. In fact, the map doesn’t seem to show much improvement over Traptemple, another early release of his two months earlier. It is hardly more than a room-corridor-room map (made of simple boxes) ending abruptly and without a story and goal in mind, or even just a final boss fight.

But as with other maps, the architectural quality and gameplay awe (and atmosphere, fun factor, etc.) is not the only reason why we think they are important to preserve. All these newbie maps, especially ones from the very early days of Unreal, have their own value as a piece of Unreal history, each one of them a small step in the evolution of UnrealEd mapping.