Wetlands

I've always enjoyed forest themed hideouts, I feel they offer a calm and comforting respite from how chaotic mapping can be. Picking Tawhoa was a no-brainer for me, but unlike my last hideout, I wanted to make this one smaller, and with less doodads for optimal loading time, but also not sacrificing aesthetics. It's hard to balance this, at least for me, I kept adding more and more, and then had to take away more and more, and sometimes, less really is more.

The look and feel of the hideout, while small, has a decent amount of contrast depending on what end you're at. When you enter it is bright and jovial, with a really inviting feel, and where you map, is much darker and calmer to sit and ponder between maps.

Everything you need is very close, but not so close you are misclicking. I disliked that in small hideouts, and wanted to avoid it in mine.

It's modular enough that if you want to take the animals or totems out, you can do that and it will still retain most of its look and feel, though the lighting will feel different when you enter the hideout.

This does not really matter, but I had a hard time with the hideout name. Up until I posted this I was always calling it "Fen". I kept looking at fens and swamps, and with the amount of trees felt it was closer to a swamp, but in my mind swamps are normally not as clean looking as this hideout, so I just went with a catch-all name of Wetlands.

This is my entry for The Trial of the Ancestors Hideout Competition.

I uploaded the version without the animals, so feel free to add them if you want. Since I made that video I have downsized to only using frogs and fireflies, and I think it looks nice.