I’ve never had the pleasure of watching the ’90s cult flick The City of Lost Children, but having played the Doom WAD inspired by it, I really feel like I should. The City of Damned Children is a 2020 community project, part of the long-running Doomer Board Project series, in which Auger;Zenith was a later installment. I’m hard-pressed to think of two mapsets more thematically at odds. Zenith was all bright colors and wicked fights, lots of in-jokes and silly references, while Damned Children is more sedate and moody; not easy on the combat but certainly more concerned about establishing
Author: scwiba
100 Line Massacre
I ask you, dear reader: what greater joy is there than a 100-linedef map? ‘Tis a bliss like no other, whether in the playing or the making. Thank our lucky stars that Arsinikk and NinjaDelphox have blessed us with a Doom II WAD full of them, here at the end of all things. I really didn’t expect to be writing about any 2022 WADs in this last stretch, but what else could I do when a brand new, 32-map linedef limitation project comes out? Make room in the docket — that’s what! 100 Line Massacre is the work of two
The Montiverse
You knew this was coming. How could I ever, ever end this column without taking a look at what Nicolás Monti has been up to lately? Some time in 2018 was the point where I started paying a lot less attention to Doom WAD releases. That was coincidentally around the same time Monti was taking a break from Doom. Even still, in the time since my review of Mano Laikas: A road to Gamzatti in 2017, our benevolent mapmaker has graced us with no less than ten new WADs. I’ve caught up on most of those and now I have
Unwelcome
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.
Auger;Zenith
I only learned of the Doomer Boards Project series shortly before the release of DBP26: La Cité des Enfants Damnés, The City of Damned Children. DBP26 came out around this time last year, and already we’re on to DBP38. I can’t fathom how they do it, but the virtuosos over on the Doomer Boards crank out one of these things every month — honestly deflating my ego a fair bit over the release schedule of my own UnSeries. A megaWAD made in just a month? Cool, cool; now do twelve of those every year. In any case, the Doomer Boards
rf1024
With over a year between each of these last three updates, I think it’s about time to admit that this column is reaching the end of its days. I’ve had a specific end in mind for years, actually, though I expected to get there much, much sooner. Between focusing on other projects (mostly WADs of my own), and the dreaded Real Life taking up more and more of my time, even plans of ending What’s Awesome, Doom? had to be put on the back burner for a long while. Now, though? With other chapters of my life coming to a
Five Mapping Lessons From Knee-Deep in the Dead
Seven years ago, I had this idea of cataloging my favorite WADs from Doom’s entire history. When I first set out, that history already spanned 19 years. Now we’re at 26 — and I’m looking back to realize that the most obvious WAD of them all still isn’t on this list. Over the course of 50 episodes, I haven’t at any point talked about the one WAD that kicked this thing off; I’ve never reviewed DOOM.WAD. Of course, everyone else has. In the Year of Our Lord 2020, you can probably find a thousand discussions, reviews, essays, and videos on
Doomsday of UAC
Any discussion of the history of Doom WADs eventually arrives back at a single map from 1994 called Doomsday of UAC. But you might know it better simply by its filename: UAC_DEAD. Leo Martin Lim’s Doomsday of UAC is one of the earliest and most famous WADs ever made. If you can put on your 1994 glasses, it’s not hard to see why. The Doom community was ravenous for good custom content in that first year after the game’s release, and Doomsday was probably the best you could find. It towered, head and shoulders above the crowd, with a combination
The Revenant Problem
Presented without comment: The Revenant Problem requires DOOM2.WAD and runs on Boom-compatible sourceports. If you’re not sure how to get it running, this may help. I’ve also reviewed some other WADs if you want to check those out, I guess.
Mutiny
I have a problem right now: I can’t stop playing awesome Doom WADs. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to check out Mutiny, the 2016 community project that aims to revisit the glory days of WADs like Dysphoria 3, Perdition’s Gate, and my forever-favorite thing in the whole wide world, STRAIN. I’m about two years late to this party… but hey, at least I’m here now. There was a certain flavor to WADs like Dysphoria 3 and STRAIN that just isn’t seen anymore in the world of Doom WADs. I’ve heard a lot of folks call it “cyberpunk” (though