At first, as RAMP 2025 almost rolled and passed me by, I was unsure if I would be making a submission for the third year in a row. After a bit of indecision and some encouragement, I finally pushed to the side of yes, let’s make another map! Following up on where I felt my RAMP 2024 submission was lacking, I decided to make a map mainly focused on tight combat encounters. Sticking to the standard rogue’s gallery, I experimented with enemy pairings, various spawn triggers and wave encounters.

Despite only having the last week of the RAMP 2025 project to build the map, I am very happy with how it turned out. I achieved my goal of experimenting with varied combat encounters. Balancing the amounts and combinations of enemies while still maintaining a sense of flow wasn’t simple, but a fun challenge.

I found the tight focus also influenced the design of the map itself in a positive way. As the encounters progressed, a lot of the spaces around them grew too, especially in the final encounter. Peeling away layers to reveal more and tougher enemies as well as a larger combat space inspired the map’s final name.