zs_vivarium: A simply Garry’s Mod map based on the movie

What is it?

Vivarium is a great movie starring Jesse Eisenberg that was released in 2019. For whatever reason it was only available in Japanese cinemas in mid-2021 (I suppose it took time to subtitle it). Without spoiling it too much, it’s a creepy movie that takes place in a suburb you can’t escape from and everything looks the same (the movie posters kind of give this away already).

Since it was coming up on 2 years since my last release I decided to take the chance to produce a high quality environment based on the street the movie takes place on. Since every house is the same it gave me a chance to really provide a pleasant visual experience inside and outside each house, and heavily optimise in a consistent manner.

Naturally I took plenty of creative liberties and there is no copyrightable material included either, but the final result it an acceptable blend of movie reproduction and gameplay suitable adjustments.

Gameplay

Does it play particularly well? Not especially. These kind of geometric/copy-paste maps rarely do. Even if a house or room is well designed it often leads to duplicating offering no value or placement of duplicates leading to shooting galleries. And if your house is poorly designed, well it just means that every house is equally poorly designed. I knew this project was going to be a tough map for humans to win; the house has 7 entrances including all windows which is far too many compared to what is typical in maps considered balanced.

Nonetheless, it’s playable and winnable, and I am glad I got to finished and release this little homage to one of my favourite cinema experiences to date.

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Garry’s Mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2759148285