Survivor
Invented by Chiyu, Survivor is one of the better known custom concepts and also one of the earliest ones. The very first level is Chiyu’s “Cracco Lake in the Jungle”.
General Description
Survivor levels have to be hosted in treasure. The host (or whoever wants to control the game) has to go to a seperate room, from which he will operate to start the game once there are enough players.
The point is to stay in the arena as long as possible. Most levels have special features that make this quite hard such as destructable blocks/ground, self-exploding TNT’s/bombs, lasers and other events like winds, belts, suckertubes etc. If they’re not falling by themselves, you have to “fight” your opponents off. You can push them, but you can also shoot them with various ammo. In contrast to most other modes, freezer/frostbiter/gun3 is very useful in this, since you can freeze your enemies while they are in mid-air, thus making them fall down.
Variations
There are two popular variations to the basic idea, known as Ground Force and Air Survivor.
Ground Force: ET came up with a nice twist for the concept: falling turtle shells and explosives, activated by a trigger crate. These traps make it even harder to stay in the arena. The very first GF level is ET’s “Cracco Ground Force”.
Air Survivor: The rules are the same, but this time you’re on an airboard. There is no default pit as with the other survivor levels, but there are plenty of sucker tubes (or no fly zones in combination with warps). Air Survivor is slightly harder because getting shot while flying has a bigger effect, every well aimed shot could be your last one! The very first AS level is Chiyu & Vegito’s “Airboard Pilots”.