I haven’t posted in a while (not at all this year so far) which is time to remedy and what better opportunity is there to get back into dusting off the old blog if not the arrival of Blocktober. Now, since the last time I have published about 4 maps for various games, some of them – actually most of them did not go through an extensive blockout phase for various reasons: either the artstyle was pre-set and solid enough not to warrant it, or I was simply locked-in on a specific idea and went straight for it.

This isn’t necessarily a blockout but just a little diorama of the map I have published for Far Cry 4 last November – as a big fan of this installment, I’ve dabbled in the editor quite a bit in the past but never came to release anything worthy of including on my portfolio. I wanted to change that so after struggling with the editor trying to convince me I’m Swedish for no reason, I came up with this little map inspired by the game’s open world dynamic. The overall layout had a few prototypes, but always meant to be a relatively mountanous area with an open design and an ultimate goal – to capture the fortress sitting next to the mountaintop. I wanted to mimick the gameplay of the base campaign by spawning player with just a pistol and some essential items, and setting them free on the level filled with enemies and wildlife to explore and scavenger better and more powerful gear. In the end I was quite happy with how it turned out. You can find Karash Aarati on PC version of Far Cry 4’s Chronicles.

Next up is more of a proper look at a blocked out mid-development of Cavnas, a wingman map for Counter-Strike 2 published back in December 2025. While the final version wasn’t as polished as I had initially envisioned, and the workshop submission being raided by bots didn’t really help it to catch on which meant the map went flew mostly under the radar, it was still a good project to work on. There were a few layouts I have tested, one included interior of the blue building, and the southern passage used to go through another building that I cut in order to open up the sky a bit more. Other than that, most changes were tied to just fine-tuning certain angles, it would be interesting to see how it played out if more people caught onto it, but alas CS2 workshop seems to be a hellhole of its own. It ended up a fun map regardless, you can find it on my workshop page if you’d like to give it a go with bots or with friends in a private match.

Finally, the latest release for Portal 2: Community Edition – Escher’s Dream. I’ve had an idea for this kind of map all the way back in 2019 when I first published Collateral Damage and planned to create a trilogy of maps out of it. The second map was going to be called Double Trouble and it was going to focus on climbing a vertical shaft where every floor was a puzzle.

It would’ve led to the third map that was the most ambitious, and ultimately what was my target goal so this is one I decided to finally have a crack at when Community Edition for Portal has hit Steam. The general concept was obviously somewhat inspired by the work of M.C. Escher – non-euclidian geometry, looping corridors and such. The original idea I’ve had also took some inspiration from the first trailer for Portal 2 aswell as some of the pre-release media showcasing chambers with dynamic panels, something I didn’t utilize quite as extensively in the final version of my map as I wanted, mostly due to complexity of the geometry and scripting required to pull off the concept I’ve had in my mind when I first thought of this map – that of a fully dynamic test chamber where panels would raise or retract with every interaction to create a sense of a puzzle environment that would actively “fight” the player as they got close to the solution.

Still, I ended up quite pleased with the final result even if it wasn’t perfect. It was an opportunity to make use of the famed Adhesion Gel that P2:CE added to its roser of elements, alongside an extesive use of the world portals. It was never meant to be a regular Portal puzzle, and more of a mind-bending experience that subverts expectations as you progress further in. The negative space was more of an atmospheric break from the mental load, as I couldn’t resist my urge to throw player into slightly uncomfortable scenario of feeling stranded in the pitch black abyss.

That wraps it up for this year’s episode of Blocktober, I think I might have an idea of how the next year’s edition is going to look like already though of course only time will tell 😉 In the meantime, stay safe and thank you for reading!