Scream Fortress is here!

Scream Fortress has arrived! And technically it’s brought a new stupid event with it! Valve have somewhat kept up with its promises and has announced a bunch of community stuff. Although once again they have completely and utterly failed to scare us to death.

Like Gun Mettle but not at all like Invasion (which will be ending soon), they’ve gone ahead with the contract system, this time called the Scream Fortress Gargoyle. Not the greatest name, but gargoyles are cool so I don’t mind. This time though, rather than weapon skins, you get items from previous events or a chance to get a Gargoyle Case, which contains the 19 year-round Halloween cosmetics made by the community. 19 is not a lot of cosmetics, so here’s hoping there actually IS something for everyone. The Gargoyle though appears to be free, and you only need to buy keys for the crates, which is a big change. I like that.

There are 13 missions total, allowing you to get, well, 13 items. Including the chance to get a crate. Transmuting has also been added as a more generic thing via the gargoyle. It requires 3 items to produce one untradeable one, but the specifics haven’t been, uh, specified.

There are two community taunts too: a new taunt for Soldier and an all-class broom taunt. I can see someone *cough*InstantMuffin*cough* making use of that at some point in the future.

The best thing though is the new map selection. Gorge Event, one of the maps I played and liked, got added, as did two more new maps, a Payload map called Hellstone (the original is Millstone), which has lava in it, and a KOTH map called Moonshine. More importantly though, Sunshine got added! Well, not exactly, its Halloween variant called Sinshine got added, but good enough.

All the other older Halloween events have been re-enabled, alongside the full moon, so they’re all free to play on. I have a feeling that the gifts on each map won’t be available though, instead coming from the gargoyle missions.

There were a few other changes too. Some cosmetic items, including the Grim hatte, were updated, as their contributors’ changes and modifications were accepted, just like the Last Breath was. Halloween unusual effects are also available to be unboxed, but no mention of new effects. There’s probably new ones, we just haven’t seen them yet.

Finally, this year’s stupid game mode is… Mannpower! Yes, that stupid game mode has come out of beta, and with it, it brings the TFC Medic’s infection ability as a power up, unstoppable until you grab a health kit or a resupply cabinet. Will be scary on Bonk! Scouts. A more important change is that, if you are killed, the power up you drop will be for the enemy team only, which makes killing someone with a good power up more rewarding, I guess. A new map was added for the game mode as well, called Hellfire. Which also has lava in it.

There were also a few Pass Time changes, but I kinda honestly stopped caring about that.