Underdark Cove, Adept

I'm back this week with the Underdark Cove (35x35), a small underground bay map that's a little more complex than many of my recent maps, featuring a decent stretch of water, narrow tunnels, and mushroom groves. In fact, nearly everything here would work pretty nicely in a swampy environment (if you can explain away the cave walls), so I whipped up a swampy variant for you! Perhaps this is just a particularly swampy cave, or maybe it's found underneath a massive stone archway, but either way it sounds pretty cool to me.

 1. As you can see, I had pictured something with a slightly different vibe for this map- the sandy shore was going to be a sort of rocky drop-off and there originally weren't going to be any mushrooms. And all the ledges and little islands too, don't forget those. Essentially I scrapped everything except the basic shape of the map, which honestly is a solid layout with plenty of space to work with.

 2. That's just how it goes sometimes though- occasionally I work on a map for 2 days and realize that it could be way more useful/enjoyable with a few major tweaks and then have to consider if I have the time and willpower to make the swap. In this instance I felt that a sandy underdark beach would be way more fun and interesting here than another rocky ledge, and frankly sandy shorelines are a lot easier to draw than little rock ledges so the deliberations were short. After that I had a much easier time visualizing the space in my head and could build on it in a way that would develop the environment into a more 'complete' map- adding slopes, giant mushrooms, and a small clearing in the center until it felt full and more real.

By the way, this whole process is way easier when you have a pile of pre-drawn assets ready to go from previous maps; I wouldn't have considered swapping anything out if I couldn't bring in some old mushrooms, rocks, and rock walls at a moment's notice.

 3. Colors, nice and shadowy so the glowy mushrooms can stand out. I think I like where I landed on the colors here, though maybe the grass was a little too pinkish in a few places and the shadows too deep in some of the little tunnels. Other than that, I feel good about the base colors, especially the water, sand, and rocks all feel great together as they're all slight variations on each other.