In 2000 there was a contest to create a multiplayer level in Unreal Tournament with only 5 cubes. I thought this was a really fun and interesting challenge so I started on it. He specifically didn’t put any limitations on the meshes you could place in the map though… and since I tend to like finding ways to exploit my limitations I came up with what I felt was a novel way to approach the map.
I used my 5 cubes to create a large box that was the main space to move around in. On the main subtractive cube was grass on the floor, stars on the ceiling, brick walls on two sides and a distant skybox texture on the other two. The remaining 4 cubes were used to create two very large (relative to the player) wooden boxes (the box and the inside carved out of them.
I then populated the rest of the map with over sized plants and barrels (which had proper cylindrical collision) which gave the actual game space a lot of geometry to play in. The boxes weren’t even necessary and it could have simply been a 1 cube map… but they were there to truly be 5 cubes. The map was pretty fun and a good addition to the “miniature player” theme.
Of course these days maps are consistently built without any BSP geometry (or very little) so the approach wouldn’t be anything interesting now. At the time BSP was everything though, so it was fun to attack it from a different direction.
I admit that it somewhat counterfeited the spirit of the contest, which is why I didn’t feel bad when I was disqualified.