Free Map - The Video Pyramid

Phew... it's been a long time since I have previewed something new. Have no fear, I have a lot of stuff in the pipeline to start showing you. To start off a new round of maps for the site, I thought I'd go and release a new free map for download.

The Video Maze I posted last year was a big hit and I wanted to revisit that particular genre. The new elevation rules in the 2011 rulebook opened up another favorite classic video game for me. By adding multiple elevations, I now could map everyone's favorite 80's pyramid game.

The original game itself showed the pyramid on an angle. This couldn't easily be translated into a square grid map that was at even angles. The solution was to create two game pyramids and butt them up against each other. So while this map isn't as faithful to its source as the Video Maze was, it really pays homage to the original game.

The new elevation rules also removed the necessity of needing stairs or ladders to represent the area where you could change elevations. This is for me as a mapmaker the best part of the 2011 rules update as it opens up creatively what you can design.

When you first see all these elevation triangles your immediate response should be "@!#?@!" In the original game our hero could jump from any platform to the next elevated platform. To keep that spirit alive, I decided that each square was a point where a character could change elevations. This did create a herculean job of placing all those triangles but I think staying faithful to the source was worth the trouble.

One other neat feature of the original video game was the floating platform you could jump onto to immediately and safely take yourself to the top of the pyramid. This mechanic had to be incorporated into my map. So for this map, the following special rule applies.

When a character is given a movement action, squares inside the border of an orange line are considered adjacent to Elevation Level 8 squares for movement purposes only.

You can download the map here, and if you anyone gets this map printed please email me the pictures and I'll showcase them here.

See you in a few days and thanks for reading!