Insurgency: Sandstorm Map Contest Winners Announced news

After weeks of careful playtesting and deliberation by our judging team, New World Interactive is pleased to announce the winners of the Insurgency: Sandstorm Mapping Contest.

Before we dive into the results, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors Intel, Nvidia, Epic Games, and Mod.io. As well as all the players who helped test, provide feedback, and vote for submissions, and of course, the entrants who spent hundreds of hours crafting incredible custom maps for the community.

There were many fantastic entries and only five prize positions; however, all finalists will receive a copy of World War Z - Game of the Year Edition thanks to our partners at Saber Interactive & Focus Home Interactive.

Maps were extensively play-tested and judged based on the following criteria:

• Gameplay (50 marks)
• Visual Aesthetics (25 marks)
• Performance & Optimisation (25 marks)

Winning: $5,000 + 1x RTX 2080Ti GPU(1) + 1x Intel i7 7700k CPU + $100 Unreal Marketplace credit for each team member(2) + 1x Epic Game Store key for World War Z Game Of The Year Edition



Judges feedback: This map has an amazing atmosphere and some great storytelling that blends well with the gameplay. The feel of fighting through a prison is a lot of fun and results in quite intense firefights due to the narrow spaces. Navigating through the map can be challenging, but it didn’t have a huge impact on the fun factor.

Winning: $2,500 + 1x Intel® NUC 10 Performance + $100 Unreal Marketplace credit for each team member(2) + 1x Epic Game Store key for World War Z Game Of The Year Edition



Judges feedback: This Is a very fun map and has a great atmosphere. Firefight is the absolute must-play mode on this map, the firefight design works really well with the more compact size and layout of the level. Checkpoint, however, suffers a bit from the more compact size and doesn’t offer enough gameplay variation to stand out.

Winning: $1,500 + 1x i7 7700k + $100 Unreal Marketplace credit for each team member(2) + 1x Epic Game Store key for World War Z Game Of The Year Edition



Judges feedback: An absolutely stunning-looking map with a great atmosphere! An adventurous experience that offers something new to the player every time. It almost feels like treasure hunting, finding an underground waterfall was definitely one of the highlights in our playtests. Unfortunately for Firefight, the map falls a bit short, it’s too much of a platformer and quite difficult to navigate through. Still a work of art that has a lot of potential for Checkpoint.

Winning: $750 + 1x i7 7700k + $100 Unreal Marketplace credit for each team member(2) + 1x Epic Game Store key for World War Z Game Of The Year Edition



Judges feedback: Overall a great-looking map. The mud village was very well constructed and offered some fun gameplay, especially on Checkpoint. It almost feels like a mini-campaign where each objective offers something different, the larger capture zones are a nice touch and require more tactical gameplay than usual. We had a lot of fun with this layout.

Push Security however is not working so great on this map, the line of sights are too long and we had a difficult time as Security to even exit the start spawn, overall the map just feels too big for Push.

Winning: $250 + 1x i7 7700k + $100 Unreal Marketplace credit for each team member(2) + 1x Epic Game Store key for World War Z Game Of The Year Edition



Judges feedback: This map has a strong visual identity, the spaces have a purpose, like the tank factory, which is definitely one of the visual highlights of this level. The cohesive design and visuals make it feel like a real place. Unfortunately, the realism that was put into this level made some of the spaces less fun to play in. Lacking cover on objectives made them difficult to defend and long travel times to objectives, were things we all noticed in our playtests. Nonetheless, this is a map with a lot of potential.

Congratulations to all our winners; our team will contact you via mod.io to arrange prize distribution and additional feedback over the coming days. Entrants can now update contest submissions to reflect feedback from the community or any changes made during the judging phase.

We hope this was a valuable experience for all involved and look forward to seeing many more community maps in the near future!