I live and breathe for the works of Doom modding that transcend being works of Doom modding — the WADs that advance my understanding of what a WAD can even be.
There are plenty of total conversions of Doom, dating as far back as the mid-’90s. And thanks to advanced ports like GZDoom, there’s dozens of completely new games being developed today on the engine. But those projects aren’t what I’m talking about exactly. I’m more focused on what can be done within the confines of Doom while retaining its most basic and core elements.
Unwelcome is one such project.
Rarely, if ever, has a WAD been as transcendent while retaining so much of the Doom DNA. In truth, Unwelcome is the sort of mapset that I dream of making — unabashedly weird, with unorthodox gameplay, and an uncompromising vision straight from the heart. It does what I have so often attempted in my own maps, turning the expectations of the player on their heads, twisting and repurposing Doom’s hardcoded behavior into new scenarios and challenges that were never intended by id.
Plusw poked their head into the Doom community in late 2018 to spring this treasure on us, but otherwise has stayed largely under the radar. A few standalone maps have trickled out over the following years, but none received the same attention as Unwelcome — enough attention at least to earn a mention in the 2018 Cacowards. But Plusw isn’t just a mapper; they also composed the at times whimsical and at others heartbreakingly beautiful soundtrack that takes this mapset to another plane of existence.
It’s the perfect complement to the slightly alien world. Immediately out of the gate, Unwelcome demands that you take it slow and breathe the strangeness in. The forty-two unblinking eyes of the intro screen melt away to reveal a muted opening room and the sound of… not music, but rumbling in your ears. Still, these are familiar sights: Doom’s cement textures, tiled metal floor. A chainsaw. A dead marine. But everything desaturated to within an inch of its life. All your attention is drawn to the flickering, recolored FIREBLU directly in front of you.
Such are the colors of Unwelcome: bright pink, teal… and all manner of others so faded they might as well be grayscale. The desaturation of the world doesn’t cause it fade into the background — rather the opposite, making it stand more stark and threatening. The dark seems darker, death more palpable, and the eldritch forms and growths more difficult even to perceive.
Then the splashes of color can punctuate the experience, drawing your attention where it needs to be, but in a way you’re not used to. Standing toe-to-toe with a smokey-gray imp, its red eyes and tongue licking like flames in the dark; brilliant aquamarine plasma shots streaking across the bleak landscape; the stunningly beautiful burst of color from a dying cyberdemon…
Just like the visuals, gameplay manages to be transformative without really changing much at all. There’s some clear Boom features on display, but for the most part Plusw simply approaches progression from a different angle. You’d not be wrong to say Unwelcome is full of gimmicks, at least in its first half. These are concept-driven maps, sort of along the lines of what you might expect from a modern Mario level or a Zelda dungeon. For instance, map02 has barriers of red and blue liquid, but only one color can be open at a time. Opening the red barriers closes all of the blue ones and vice versa. Map06 revolves around a fantastically intuitive puzzle where you need to travel all over the level to find the color “code” to a combination lock of sorts. Again, it all comes back to those two vivid colors in a murky sea of grays.
What there is of Doom’s basic combat — and there’s a lot of that — is satisfying in the level of challenge it presents. You’ll be fighting decent-sized hordes and springing all manner of traps. Monster closets and teleport ambushes, all the ingredients are here in some capacity, but all in service of a journey that feels totally different than what we’re used to playing.
By the end I was aching for more of Unwelcome’s totally unique world. At the same time, I think it all works so well because of its brevity. Get in, get out, and leave the player clamoring for another map or ten. It’s true that the WAD was sold as an “Episode 1,” but for me that’s a reason for great hope and great worry. When a work is this brilliant, there’s a part of me that wishes it could just remain untouched and perfect forever.
[Following this review, Plusw confirmed on Twitter that no more episodes of Unwelcome are planned.]
Unwelcome requires DOOM2.WAD and runs on MBF-compatible sourceports. If you’re not sure how to get it running, this may help. And for more awesome WADs, be sure to check these out!