Hello in another Featured Mod episode! Today we are featuring Thanadrax's survival map "Blood Sugar". Make no mistake, as this is no ordinary survival map. It works as a rogue lite, exploration project. The players are free to explore, do quests and fight bosses in a pace of their desire.
The progression goes through 11 tiers consisting of 4 quests each until the player conquers the whole island! There are 100 quests and 31 bosses you get to enjoy. It is possible to beat this survival map. The reason for it being a survival map and not a campaign one is, as mentioned before, to have a rogue lite feeling to it and the players to value their lifes.
Make sure to check the level and the rest of Thana's survival map collections. Also do not forget to read the Basement Chat with Yasen, its a pretty good one!
Link to mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2342502363
BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN
Hello everyone and welcome to the new “Featured Mod” episode! Today in my basement I've dragged a modder with a huge backlog of workshop items. She has made many map campaigns, game modes, and player models, but today we’re focusing on her survival game modes, and she has tons of good ones! Welcome, Thanadrax!
⚪Hello Thana, please tell us the beginning of the journey that led you to have numerous Serious Sam mods. What inspired you to start modding for our games?
Hello! Get ready for a long story, which I'll gladly tell. Since childhood, I wanted to create something like my own world in one form or another. Due to age, I had very low skills in modding. I started from making maps for Warcraft 3 and eventually got to Serious Sam. I always wanted to make a map for Serious Sam, but I thought that it's very complicated and I wouldn't be able to even process how this editor works. Also in the past, there was no proper mapping guide. In 2012, I found out that the Serious Sam series has communities and my very first community was 7smoke. And hey, it was you who found me! I still have no idea how.
I’ve met many awesome people out there and eventually, I started making my first map since I had seen everyone around doing it. I was around 13 years old. Surely I used to have quite explosive behaviour leading to some... incidents, but I'm still very grateful to such people like Noam who led me through the road of map making to what I have now and see me grow as a person. 7smoke Tennis was one of the best ways to start modding, since you felt yourself being a part of something bigger- and it was absolutely fun. Many things happened in my life around nine years after these days, and I can safely say that my main inspiration for the source of modding for Serious Sam is the game itself and its community. It's just what I will always cling to.
⚪I guess I have an eye for people if It was me who found you! I could sense you were once a Warcraft 3 modder. That game was also one of the first communities in which I participated. I used to organise events there, play tons of mods and despite Sam or WC3 being such different games, I think many Serious Sam modders were in some way influenced by Warcraft, it is a game really dear to my heart. I was really happy to see this Warcraft 3 influence in mods of yours, for example the "Blood Sugar" survival map includes Warcraft SFX and also your survival map "Forest Scout" gave me "Enfo" vibes. Are there other games that serve as inspiration for your game mods?
You were right about Enfo's inspiration regarding Forest Scout. That indeed was a shout to this map. Some games which inspire me the most even now are Final Fantasy XIV, Elden Ring, and Binding of Isaac. FFXIV is a great MMORPG that has many emotional stories, some of which I would have wanted to retell in Serious Sam. Mortal Instants is entirely based on FFXIV's OST emotions. Elden Ring is the most recent Souls game, and, as I am a big fan of the Souls series. Its world-building and gross creatures inspire me to do something memorable. Some of my old survival maps for BFE were made with heavy inspiration from Souls games. Binding of Isaac is an absolute RNG fest, and boy this is what inspires me - randomness. Blood Sugar was made with the thought of being as repeatable as possible rogue-like survival. And, well, Serious Sam itself is a big source of inspiration! Emotions you have when you play this game, especially SS4 and SM- that is something I wouldn't have gotten in any other game.
⚪ You mentioned 7smoke Tennis. How does it feel to work on a collab mod? Which are your favourite collabs that you have done and would you recommend to new modders to try work on a collab?
It's both scary and intriguing! Well, for the first time. Once you get some experience, you eagerly get to work on your part. It's so much fun! If it is such a collab as Tennis, people are going crazy with story twists and effort put in maps. I will never forget 7smoke Tennis for its "Oh come on not the wake up from the sleep story again!" moments. It was so unexpected and ridiculous. In fact, working on a collab mod is not only funnier but also easier and more valuable. I myself always work in collaboration with Cyborg.SeriousSite and while I work on level design and enemies, he is doing the coding wonders for our projects. Then cool things are born after that. Would I recommend such an experience to new modders? Actually, I'd say that they have to try it out! You can participate in something big and ask others for help, suggestions and advice. This is what usual map-making lacks a lot. 7smoke Tennis 4 was my favourite collab from the past which, despite not being really the best map pack ever, left many positive memories. I want more people to enjoy this experience as much as possible, so now from April of this year I hold Khreth Mapping Challenge- a spiritual successor of 7smoke Tennis with refreshed rules. 17 participants are there. 14 have already submitted their maps!
⚪ Make sure to hit me up once the mapping challenge is finished so we can do coverage of it, sounds really exciting! I'm really happy to hear about more collab events taking place as they really create a sense of community and I think they are the perfect place for new modders to learn and improve their craft, as long as everyone is open minded about helping them. Moving forward now- we mentioned your huge backlog of mods. Which of those hold a special place in your heart and would totally recommend for people to play?
Noted. Can I just say to check every mod of mine right after 2018? I think that 2018 is the year when I started making mods for fun. There are several mods which I would recommend others to play if they want to get to know my mods. Except for 666 Darkness Way. No. Don't play it. T&C Co-Op gamemode is a number one mod that turns every session into a chaotic experience. Grab your friends, start Lobby level, set some options in the terminal and get going. Many possibilities for unique situations and experiences- this is what I always wanted to see in Serious Sam. Then, I want to recommend The Warchaser- a 2 levels campaign for Serious Sam Siberian Mayhem, where I pushed attention to enemy balance and classic formula. And lastly, Blood Sugar. It requires a lot of workshop items to play, but they are used properly - many new enemies are appearing in certain quests to spice things up. And doing quests in Serious Sam is not something you would usually see. There is a magnum opus of mine in the works, which is Project TSIR. I have been making this mod for 5 years already and hope to see it released in... far future. This mod should be my last big mod for Sam, concluding everything I made and always wanted to make. But not the last mod in general! Mapping collabs and survival maps will always be out as long as I have access to SED, haha!
⚪ I'm glad you mentioned those future projects of yours, because my next question was going to be about your future. What can the community expect from you in regard to mods and what are your plans even outside of modding?
It's so scary! The future, I mean. I might disappear for a few months next year, but after that I'll come back and push out plenty of stuff to the workshop. But, anyways, back to the topic. I plan to make more survival maps for Serious Sam 4 and Siberian Mayhem. Gameplay in these two games is just made for survival- it is very fun and just right to spend some hour or two by playing survival! Besides, every year I plan to host Khreth Mapping Challenges for the community to get more into mapping and release big campaigns. And now to the main point... TSIR. This mod, while being in development for a while, is still in early development. It is supposed to be a 40+ levels campaign with hundreds of new enemies, plenty of new weapons, and even skill mechanics. We will also implement an achievements system, but it would stay exclusive to my Discord server, since achievements are stored inside the Discord server channel. Currently, we’ve made around 11 levels, 30+ enemies, and three new weapons, thanks to Cyborg.SeriousSite and Bazar. This mod was supposed to be a remake of the infamous Thana's Insanity mod, but after a few levels, I decided to make it a different thing. Outside of Sam, I plan to make a game based on Blood Sugar gameplay. A recent Microworks release proved to me that it is possible to turn a mod into a game. Whatever else comes to my mind- be assured, I do not plan to leave the community or the game. I've got a job recently, and it's making me happy to know that, after getting back home, I can spend some time in Serious Sam, editor, and aged like a wine Supernatural TV series.
⚪ I wish you all the best in the future and I can't wait to see and play all your future work. We are at the end of this interview. I want to thank you for coming to the basement. I hope you find it good and comfy. For the finale as usual, feel free to share whatever you want with the community or do shoutouts! See you in the next Christmas Special episode my dear readers!
Serious Sam has a considerably small community. Stay together, don't go crazy for little dramas, and let newbies shine like stars. I would like to thank Cyborg.SeriousSite for being my number one person, and also CT Discord, SeriousSite, 7smoke, Khreth communities.
And, most importantly, thank you Yasen! Your basement talks are motivating people to do more original and unique mods. Expect more mods coming soon!