Growing up, Age of Empires was the real time strategy game for me. For about a year, I played a lot of StarCraft and not because I thought it was a better game. Instead, I just dabbled in user-made maps all day.
These weren’t your typical maps. They were more like mods. Users transformed StarCraft into an adventure game, mini-game collection, tower defense, RPG, arena fighter… The list goes on. At the time, I didn’t think much about it. Looking back, it’s amazing what people made within the game’s limitations.
I can’t speak to the quality of these since I was probably ten years old. But as someone who didn’t particularly like StarCraft, it really helped extend the life of the game. If it wasn’t for those user-made maps, I probably would’ve played it less than a week.
I ended up buying the game’s expansion, Brood War, just to play more of these maps.
(Header Image Source: Liquipedia)
