Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This map was made for the Castlemania 2024 contest held on SeriousSite.
I'm in awe of this map. It's a visual masterpiece with tons of exploration and cleverly hidden secrets to unveil, and this is for sure the strength of this map. Combat I found to be a bit of a mixed bag... A lot of it was really fun and well thought out, though there were a few fights that overstayed their welcome and difficulty spikes were common. Speaking of spikes, without a doubt the worst part of this map is a gauntlet of traps near the end which can instantly kill you; it's definitely not the kind of thing I'd want to have to deal with in a no-save playthrough.
Issues with combat aside, something this map does brilliantly is pacing! It's definitely one of those maps where secret hunting is strongly encouraged to stand a fighting chance, though sticking to the normal route provides enough supplies and weaponry upgrades to keep things feeling fair. Something I was pleasantly surprised with were all the small puzzles and platforming sections; they fit in naturally and didn't feel like a chore to complete.
Last thing I'd like to draw attention to is the amount of creativity this map has to offer. There are quite a few jump scares, interesting scripted sequences, unique areas, fun logic puzzles, and tons of other surprises for the player to come across. One final critique is with performance. Obviously the map is insanely massive but the starting area in particular has some downright horrible performance issues. Thankfully the interior environments don't suffer as much but even then there are some random slowdowns and stutters that can cause some frustration to players on lower-end PC's.
To summarize, this map is exquisite. If the area with all the traps can be reworked to be a bit more fair and if the difficulty spikes can be ironed out then I'd say this map is easily a masterpiece. Regardless, this is a must play!
I need to give a huge shoutout to @riba4ok13 for recommending me this mas as well as for showing me how to navigate through SeriousSite. There are a ton of maps on there which I haven't seen in the Workshops so I'll be sure to do more videos covering what I can. And of course another huge shoutout goes to Symptom99 for making this awesome map!
Thanks again for watching and as always, stay Serious!
How to Install:
1. Go to https://www.serioussite.ru/forum/33-3981-1 and click on the "Snow Castle" thumbnail to download the zip file
2. Go to wherever Siberian Mayhem is on your computer (usually "Steam, steamapps, common") and go to "Content, SeriousSamSM"
3. Once inside the "SeriousSamSM" subfolder, extract the "Snow_Castle" .gro file from the zip download and simply drag & drop it inside
4. Launch Serious Sam SM in modded through steam and enjoy!
This map was made for the Castlemania 2024 contest held on SeriousSite.
I'm in awe of this map. It's a visual masterpiece with tons of exploration and cleverly hidden secrets to unveil, and this is for sure the strength of this map. Combat I found to be a bit of a mixed bag... A lot of it was really fun and well thought out, though there were a few fights that overstayed their welcome and difficulty spikes were common. Speaking of spikes, without a doubt the worst part of this map is a gauntlet of traps near the end which can instantly kill you; it's definitely not the kind of thing I'd want to have to deal with in a no-save playthrough.
Issues with combat aside, something this map does brilliantly is pacing! It's definitely one of those maps where secret hunting is strongly encouraged to stand a fighting chance, though sticking to the normal route provides enough supplies and weaponry upgrades to keep things feeling fair. Something I was pleasantly surprised with were all the small puzzles and platforming sections; they fit in naturally and didn't feel like a chore to complete.
Last thing I'd like to draw attention to is the amount of creativity this map has to offer. There are quite a few jump scares, interesting scripted sequences, unique areas, fun logic puzzles, and tons of other surprises for the player to come across. One final critique is with performance. Obviously the map is insanely massive but the starting area in particular has some downright horrible performance issues. Thankfully the interior environments don't suffer as much but even then there are some random slowdowns and stutters that can cause some frustration to players on lower-end PC's.
To summarize, this map is exquisite. If the area with all the traps can be reworked to be a bit more fair and if the difficulty spikes can be ironed out then I'd say this map is easily a masterpiece. Regardless, this is a must play!
I need to give a huge shoutout to @riba4ok13 for recommending me this mas as well as for showing me how to navigate through SeriousSite. There are a ton of maps on there which I haven't seen in the Workshops so I'll be sure to do more videos covering what I can. And of course another huge shoutout goes to Symptom99 for making this awesome map!
Thanks again for watching and as always, stay Serious!
How to Install:
1. Go to https://www.serioussite.ru/forum/33-3981-1 and click on the "Snow Castle" thumbnail to download the zip file
2. Go to wherever Siberian Mayhem is on your computer (usually "Steam, steamapps, common") and go to "Content, SeriousSamSM"
3. Once inside the "SeriousSamSM" subfolder, extract the "Snow_Castle" .gro file from the zip download and simply drag & drop it inside
4. Launch Serious Sam SM in modded through steam and enjoy!
