Hard maps with low enemy counts?

Those seem to be rare, probably because it's far easier to make a challenging encounter by just throwing dozens of enemies at the same time. What maps do you know that can kick the player's ass with only a handful of well-placed enemies?

These immediately come to mind :
- SkePLand
- Grime
- MAYhem 2016
- Chord3

Bloodstain

Hell Awakened

While a far cry from slaughter wads these aren't exactly low on monsters but when I think of hard wads these are two that come to mind.

I will just mention some wads, because I can't remember map names right now.

I think Plutonia (especially the early levels) and Going Down have low monster counts, while being challenging, but Going Down also has smaller map lengths iirc.

Swift Death comes to my mind, it has tiny maps and low monster counts but it will kick your ass.

Yeah, Swift Death is a nightmare (on UV, anyway).

You'll be amazed at the level of sadism displayed with just 50 monsters per level. Also tons of stuff by FranckFRAG.

Why do I have a feeling most of these "hard low monster count maps" are just archviles in open fields?

- Lots of Dobu's stuff (Saturnine Chapel, etc.)

- Mayhem '16's later maps (especially m18 and m20)

- The hardest of maps made by Obsidian (Ave Exitium, etc.) 

- Some of Ribbiks' stuff

Going Down is quite spammy within the confines of its tiny maps. I wouldn't classify it among these.

6 hours ago, KVELLER said:

Those seem to be rare, probably because it's far easier to make a challenging encounter by just throwing dozens of enemies at the same time.

Nah, if you know what you are doing, it's easier to make challenging stuff by restricting the player's space a lot and skewing monster placements toward the more dangerous species. Anything with dozens of enemies necessitates more setup time and testing in principle.  

The 'rarity' is misleading. Even big slaughtermaps sometimes have occasional harsh fights with low numbers of monsters. The answer is actually just 'because most people who make and enjoy hard maps tend not to arbitrarily restrict themselves to using low monster counts as often as they just map what they feel like designing'. 

1 hour ago, Battle_Korbi said:

Why do I have a feeling most of these "hard low monster count maps" are just archviles in open fields?

Because you are completely uninformed.

None of these maps are like that. 

Miasma

The Eye

Also, both are reasonably short single map WADs.

No one mentioned Moonblood yet ? Seriously, that's the whole wad basically, well the end gets a bit slaughtery i guess.

@rdwpa I had the feeling that you were going to correct me on something :P

Obligatory E4M1 mention.

SlaughterMAX Map07. If you read the stuff after Map06, this would be even funnier. (Well, probably not that well-placed, I guess)

Some of the later 50monster maps like Map28 and Map29.

E4M2, wait... It's easily done without taking damage though.

I highly recommend Breaking Point

4 hours ago, xvertigox said:

I highly recommend Breaking Point

The Mega link is broken :/ Google only seems to find Resurgence's MAP28.

Emergent

Italo Doom

Download

1 hour ago, A7MAD said:

Italo Doom

Download

Absolutely not. That's a slaughter wad.