Review - Dunes of Wealth
(Version September 25th 2022)
(Note - Reviewed on version game version 1.36 considering game version changes.)
Description: Dunes of Wealth is a melee map for four players featuring the Barrens tileset mixed with other tilesets, giving it a somewhat unnatural look. There are two Fountains of Health in the corners of the map, but their placements are random, giving unexpectedness to the play. The map is suitable for Reforged game versions.
Terrain: The terrain is a mixture of Barrens and bluish dirt tiles, the implementation of this thematic switch could be better, as decorations other than the groundwork do not follow the same visual aspects, giving the drastic tile change quite a synthetic look. Nevertheless, the terrain is clear and serves melee gameplay well. Having the map border be so abruptly next to reachable areas is also not something desirable to look at.
Layout: The layout is mirrored and can function either horizontally or vertically. The randomness of the fountains gives a nice twist to the game, though their changing placement does not change the strategic flow of the game that much. The open Mercenary Camp in the middle serves as an objective that will create contesting. The Taverns can also cause an early conflict. The expansion sites are very accessible from the main bases, giving incentives to utilize them.
Creeps: The creep camp placement is nice and functions. The placement of green camps near the unguarded Mercenary Camp is interesting. The creep races are quite weird, with a mixture of forest creeps, void creeps as well and constructs. I can't see the consistency in the theme of the creeps. Their strength level and item drops however seem appropriate, with top-bottom expansions having considerably weaker creeps guarding them.
Gameplay: The gameplay is affected by the unguarded Mercenary Camp and the expansion sites, which are differently guarded - this is quite nice and has an effect on the game's flow, depending on how the teams are placed on the map: If the match up is horizontal, there is an incentive to fight for the expansions sites quite early, whereas vertical match-up causes the contesting of the expansions to be pushed later. Nice job. The Fountains of Health do not have that drastic effect on the game's flow (as their position does not affect it that greatly). Their importance is also reduced by their remote placement behind the bases, giving them quite limited usage, which is typically good considering their power. Due to the creeps being placed kind of behind the fountains on camp mode, player units can go quite near the fountains, healing themselves even without fighting the creeps - not sure if this is intended. The green camp placement in the very corners (behind the fountains) can be slightly awkward.

Recommendations:
Overall nice work. I'd recommend perhaps putting one of the creeps guarding the health fountains on non-camp mode (perhaps the dragon) or/and moving the creeps slightly to avoid issues in case they start to block the pathway (I do not see this as a high risk though). I'd like to see more consistency on the thematic elements throughout the map (There are tiles of blue, but no decoration around them seems to carry this "transition" further). At times, especially near Barrens Rock Spires, the visuals can also seem quite empty, especially near the Taverns. These visual elements however do not affect the gameplay.

Further notes: Considering many of your melee maps are made on different versions - varying from the pre-reforged era to the newest versions, I would perhaps recommend adding a note about it in the map description on Hive. For example in this map practically only difference is what units the Mercenary Camp sells - apart from universal changes like item tables, but those should not affect a map's playability on different versions (unless very direct item drops are made, which is not the case here). However, please correct me about the version differences if I am wrong.