Apex Legends Skulltown Map Design

     I’m Baerutt, and I wanted to talk about the Apex Legends map Skull Town that reappeared during a new mode called Gun Run. In this special mode, you have unlimited ammo and heals. The goal is for your team to kill enough people first to win, and each time you get a kill, your gun changes. Each time you die, you respawn in roughly 7 seconds. There are several maps, but the one I played on was called Skull Town. Here’s a look at it. 

The map has the feel of a sandy, deserted desert town. With the oldish looking buildings, sand dunes and a giant skeleton of a giant snakelike creature, the atmosphere is set, and looks perfect for a squad face-off in a FPS.  

    The actual map for Skull Town’s Gun and Run play mode is interesting gameplay wise. This map was included in several different types of game modes, including a part of the bigger Battle Royal map, but for this game mode, it was just the town.

Skull Town starts the players out on the edges of the town and have players make their way towards the inner part of the map where the buildings are. The lack of cover on the outside of the map forces players to head towards the buildings to hide and use their cover to take advantage of the terrain. 

The map is pretty symmetrical in its pinwheel shape, but it has its flaws. Some spawns are further from the center of town and the giant skeleton, giving certain advantages to teams despite its almost symmetrical shape. This type of design bolsters a specific design of play. The gameplay loop of Skull Town is to reach the rooftops or skull and gain the high ground. The normal way to get there is through the insides of buildings, which is some of the only vertical on the map., However, this type of play is very slow. Legends that allow the player to move faster and access higher heights like Valkyrie, Pathfinder and Octane are always played here, without exception, as they allow players to get to high ground faster and easily. The flow of Skull Town is a mad dash to the center of the town or the bones where players can get to the high ground and snipe their enemies. Many players still use the buildings on the ground to gain height and stay safe, but by using the buildings, it makes it hard for you to shoot other players and inhibits you from scoring kills and winning.

The size of the map is not too large, but players rarely learn the exact layout even with multiple respawns because of the 2 simple playstyles of the map: “I need to get back to my teammates” and “I need to find high ground”. In addition, all of the buildings look too similar, so it’s harder to differentiate where exactly you are on the map. Lastly, there is little to no learning on the map, especially in this game mode. In Skull Town, the players learn to either go high risk high reward, or low risk low reward. This normally isn’t a problem, but unfortunately, the “High Risk High Rewarders” always win on the map because the high ground they get is an incredible advantage. I really do like the theme and setting of Skull Town, and I think it could’ve been a good map, but unfortunately the map became abusable. However, fans do like it, so it is brought back for many events in Apex Legends. I believe that is because of the nostalgia for the map and that the abusable strategies are fun for some people. In addition, it’s like trying a food you know you don’t like but want to like. You say to yourself, “maybe my experience with it will be better this time”, and then it isn’t. Overall, I really enjoyed the aesthetic of the map and it was decently fun to play on, but there were many times that I played on the map where it felt unfair.