Status Update: Riverwalk L4d Campaign

Unfortunately, it seems my Riverwalk Left 4 Dead campaign has some troubles.

I did some playtests that resembled the kind of layout/design I wanted to give my Left 4 Dead campaign which would be heavily based on the Riverwalk.  To be honest, it didn't work out.  The long river makes it incredibly easy to avoid Zombies and many of the areas were "fish in a barrel" moments which is kind of fun but stops being fun when survivors quickly realize theres nothing to be afraid of.  To make matters worse, optimizing the Riverwalk test maps were a complete hassle due to the long visibility of having such a long gap.  The water slowing survivors sounds like a neat element but overall, most players hate this mechanic.  Think about it.  The least favorite campaign is Swamp Fever in Left 4 Dead 2.  Long story short, I decided to quit the campaign idea.

Of course though, that doesn't mean I'm not going to be working on a Left 4 Dead campaign.  Much like a phoenix, this canned project brings life to a new project which I hope will address the main lesson I learned from my previous project.  Specifically, I want to focus on gameplay more.  The whole Riverwalk idea was cool in my head, but wasn't exactly fun.  Because of this I want to focus on designing levels/layouts that are actually:

A. Fun
B. Awesome

If I can achieve this with the layouts, I can work on the aesthetics of the map without worrying about if it clashes with the main gameplay elements of Left 4 Dead.  So I'll be posting more information as I work on my Left 4 Dead campaign project and hopefully I can get work done on it much more efficiently.