Shadows of the Nightmare Realm (SOTNR.PK3)

Alexa Jones-Gonzales started out making vanilla Doom levels for the publicly-released and then rescinded Kill megaWAD. Later, in 2010, she created One Doomed Marine for the Doomsday engine. With 2016's Extreme Terror YukiRaven appears to have taken to roost in GZDoom since this subsequent minisode (and, looking ahead, the next two) is for the popular GL engine. Shadows of the Nightmare Realm is a four plus one secret level experience for Doom II. It technically has a skill selector intro map, too, bringing up the total to six. The work builds on many of the tropes developed in EXTERROR with room-over-room geometry and colored lighting but SOTNR has a very different feel.

The story of the set comes across in its action but Alexa has provided a complementary epistolary narrative delivered through its intermission texts. The written word comes from a therapist who has been seeing Doomguy. The savior of Earth is plagued by bad dreams - and who could blame him? Demons feature heavily but these nightmares have an edge provided by powers who apparently introduce themselves as Elder Gods. The term invokes Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, presumably in the same fashion as id did in Quake by calling their Shub-Niggurath an "Elder Being" and the "Witch-Goddess". The vague veneer of cosmic horror is quickly undercut by your unseen antagonist, though. It's too Sunday morning cartoon villain between the nefarious cackling and commanding minions. I don't often reflect on my time spent playing World of Warcraft but if it was absolutely necessary to give a voice to this particular darkness then I would have stolen from C'thun's quiet and dispassionate invocations of insanity.

There was at one point a pre-intermission that explicitly outlined its malign motivations but the author wisely commented it out. The less information along those lines the better since the setting doesn't adequately distinguish your tormentor from the denizens of Hell who failed to contain you. This can be explained away by the illusionist co-opting the imagery of your most powerful trauma but it might as well be an infernal phantom enacting revenge on a different plane. There is far more meat in the ambient aspects of the soundtrack, particularly the vocal snippets that sound like memories of regretful conversations. I am more interested in Doomguy's depression as a potential evolution of survivor's guilt than a mouthy, moustache-twirling, forward-talking Icon of Sin.

So! Shadows of the Nightmare Realm looks quite beautiful. It's also very dark. Extreme Terror's prolific and many-colored light sources return and while you may still see three or more different shades at the same time I think that they work better against the minisode's earthy and metal resources. They are also usually swaddled in tenebrae so the tinted textures rarely have a chance to clash with their "natural" colors. The exterior areas are shrouded in a suitably alien twilight reminiscent of Nick Laurent's Pinnacle of Darkness from 2015. Most of the levels have a pastel reddish haze that chokes much of the incoming light, shrouding its microverse in perpetual gloom. "In Their Realm" (CORAX02) is more of a smokey blue.

The relative illumination of each level gets progressively darker as you approach the finale, reaching its darkest in "La Kosxmaro Diaj Ludas" (CORAX03). The shadows get to be so thick that you can't see monsters at a distance. Sometimes I was unable to tell the difference between stealth or normal enemies until I got close. Ah, yes; ZDoom's much-maligned reappearing acts feature in a variety of encounters. One of the worst is an arena fight with a pair of ghosting arch-viles but I was also put off by a particular arachnotron. The latter is admittedly a more survivable situation, provided that you don't fall foul of a nearby crusher trap.

SOTNR's atmosphere is more oppressive than suspenseful. One of my favorite moments in the entire set is the opening of CORAX01. It starts out normal enough with you sitting at a remote workstation where your work boots are staged but things quickly turn. No other such excursions exist, though, outside of a callback during the PWAD's finale. The structure of the levels is also oddly mundane and weighted toward rectilinear corridors and chambers. The window dressing is pretty cool but the alien architecture leaves something to be desired in the vein of non-euclidean geometry. Along the same lines, the floating-in-the-void platform after you select your difficulty is a great set piece. Nothing seen during the body of the gameplay resembles it, though. I'd love to see more fakeouts with silent teleporters (re: Impossible), dreams gone sour a la "Drifting Off...", and psychedelic landscapes. Alexa has vastly frontloaded the strangeness of this experience.

The thrust of the mapset about less disorientation and more smugly fucking with the player by way of traps, MAP03 especially. This fits into the whole Cartesian "Evil Genius" reality that Doomguy is experiencing. Stealth monsters are but one aspect of this dynamic. One of the most memorable instances for me is a room featuring a soul sphere dais. By all rights you should be able to simply run over the gap but you just slam face first into an invisible wall, plummeting to the lava below while being taunted by the signature cackle of the voice of the Elder Gods. Another segment has a relatively innocuous hallway with steel plates in the floor. They give away when stepped on and drop you into an infernal foot bath.

I find that the distinguishing successes in level design are Alexa's implementation of room-over-room geometry. One of the coolest set pieces is seen early on in CORAX01; it's a multi-floor spiral stairwell. Depending on how you approach the layout you can end up fighting your way from either the top or the bottom. I also enjoyed seeing the elevated catwalks in some of SOTNR's larger areas. They go a long way toward closing the distance between Doom and Quake as far as it relates to level geometry that you can walk both over and under. A particular hallway in CORAX03 was one of the biggest surprises. It cuts below the opening corridor in order to access an outdoor area. For whatever reason I was convinced that the path was just going to cut through with the wall opening up as necessary.

The author has included a complement of new monsters to indicate the influence of the Elder Gods. They're mixed with and fight alongside the regular Doom II bestiary. The scrag-like monsters are wicked cool and their occasionally homing projectiles make it similar to but not the equivalent of a flying revenant. The gory heads are super annoying because they are hard to see but they fit the cast in the context of the Nightmare Realm. The satyr feels like a faster, tougher demon which makes for a nice melee monster who is still threatening in solo situations. I like the look of the rictus (beta lost soul) but I didn't get a good feel for its combat niche. The grell has a strong showing in the second level and as usual both bobs ridiculously and slows you with its poison spit.

There are two flavors of cultists. The first is basically an imp but its projectile is a lot harder to see since it's small and blue. The other guys are Hexen's dark bishops, giving you another flying monster with a homing attack but trading durability for an erratic movement pattern. The strongest regular enemy is the Archon of Hell. It occupies the same sort of niche that the Baron used to but it has way more hitpoints, superlethal attacks including fireball waves and a devastating meteor strike. It will neither directly attack nor be targeted by monsters in infighting scenarios. They are generally a pain to deal with, the only exception being a counterintuitively claustrophobic encounter.

Shadows of the Nightmare Realm is much easier on lower difficulties, though. It's interesting going back and seeing how just how fewer monsters there are and other changes like lowly zombies and shotgun guys replacing squads of chaingunners. The sparser population gives it a desolate or haunted sort of quality that more resembles Impie's Strange Aeons (minus the jabbering Elder God, of course). I prefer the depopulated look; the sheer congestion on UV coupled with the corridor crawl delivers an experience not unlike Unloved. I think that BlueEagle's work does a better job of portraying a reality-bending experience marked by decaying sanity. I prefer the architecture and especially lighting of SOTNR, though, and its combat - even at its most difficult - is much better-balanced.

Alexa's soundtrack is perfect for the job. It's not nearly as melodic as the music featured in One Doomed Marine or Extreme Terror. The focus is on a crushing ambience, which accommodates the chosen atmosphere of a smothering nightmare that you are only just barely keeping control of. It also works in the calmer sections, too. I already mentioned the whispers; most of them are indecipherable but you can just about make out some of the phrases. It is in those quiet moments when you are wandering the halls of the Elder World and you aren't sure where the next ambush will come from that the promise of SOTNR is made manifest.

Shadows of the Nightmare Realm is pretty and cool. The care in using colored lighting is so much stronger than in Extreme Terror. I prefer eldritch intellects when they are pulling strings in the background for inscrutable purposes but Alexa went all-in on a gloating, cosmic ham. I respect the singular devotion to its torturous oppression. If you've been writhing in agony since BlueEagle left Unloved 2 hanging then you might find something of a worthy successor here. Those who love the atmosphere of the original Quake will want to check it out, too. I hope that the author brings me back to this world some day... if only for me to drag Doomguy out of it.

SHADOWS OF
THE NIGHTMARE REALM

by Alexa "YukiRaven" Jones-Gonzales

Start	START
This is an atmospheric skill selector; Easy, Medium, and Hard. The pocket dimension you travel to after picking your poison is hopefully a portent of strange things to come.

CORAX01

Drifting Off...

A spooky intro into SOTNR's design principles. You're introduced to a number of the new monsters, all of which are quite threatening. The stock enemies who aren't chaingunners seem pretty tame in comparison. You generally have enough space to back up and gather your bearings, though. Of all the fights I think that the spiral staircase room - a neat centerpiece - is the most dangerous. It's cramped, the pillars provide confusing cover for both you and the monsters, and those bloody death's heads are freakin' dangerous. The more room you have the easier things are which is why the mass of skulls waiting to ambush you at the exit is much simpler to handle from the ground floor.

Nostalgia Trip

CORAX31

I've talked about Alexa's Kill before. This is the very first map from the set, made back in 1996. It could have easily been pulled out of a '94-'95 era release. 64-wide corridors, monsters crammed in like sardines, etc.. It's all OG Doom enemies against the shotgun. A lot of the combat is assisted by a copious amount of barrels. It's a quick play and would be a bit more fun if there wasn't so much meat stuck in the hallways that adjoin the nukage atrium to the northern portion.

CORAX02

In Their Realm

This stronghold feels a little more evocative of the Dreamlands. Maybe it's the distant mountains or the cultist ritual going on in the starting room. Alexa gives you a few larger areas to horse around in and some of the fights, including surprisingly the chapel right before the exit, can be crowdsurfed successfully. A lot of the thing placement is perennially awkward, though, and any of the stuff involving the Archons of Hell is an enormous pain in the ass. The splash damage from their mega nukes is enough to screw you up. The first encounter where they feature also comes complete with two stealth arch-viles. Fuck all that. The BFG becomes your big bat but it's still dangerous to use efficiently since the big guys are so nasty at long range. The battle to unlock the red key isn't much better but there is a nearby invul for you to save and which will make it far less troublesome. I like the outdoor wall-top fight. The blue key pool, not so much.

La Kosxmaro Dioj Ludas

CORAX03

Back to tight and corridor- / room- heavy. The big exception is an outdoor area that is as far as I can tell optional. It's fun to maneuver through and has a berserk pack for a reward which serves as a great reset button. The atmosphere is more suspenseful and Alexa's reuse of previously-explored space means that you will be constantly surprised by monsters in places where you have already been. The way the layout intersects in different vertical spaces makes the geometry feel the most modern so far. Big surprise with the moving staircase in the chaingun room; very cool. This level is incredibly trappy. If you hate dick moves then you're going to have a bad time. I got caught by the crusher in the room with the ghost arachnotron and the tantalizing soul sphere which is protected by an invisible wall. To add insult to injury, the normal way of accessing it is a timed sequence including the bridge. If you're too slow then you'll be dead and not even know it. The finale is a neat escalation firefight. The Archons were much easier to handle; it almost looked like they couldn't use their meteor attacks.

CORAX04

Mind Games of the Elder Gods

This is structured like an Icon of Sin level. In fact, you'll see the infamous wall graphic on three separate occasions. It's way more sloggy, though. The monster spawns seem unusually weighted toward Archons, making it a survival game. You can't fight the boss first off but during the struggle portals will open (a wicked cool effect) at the corners of its cage. Jumping into any one whisks you away to a dream dimension. I don't mind the first and third ones but the second - which is a nightmare version of "Drifting Off..." can fuck right off. Having to handle the bloody skulls and scrags in the darkness and then put up with shooting rockets at the Archon guardians is easily the low point. When you free the boss you'll want to have as much cell ammo as you can to speed the fight along. He feels superlethal compared to his Extreme Terror counterpart. The amount of demonflesh makes moving around difficult and all of the Archons that are no doubt still alive will slay you dead if you so much as slip up. The ending is a kick in the teeth considering what you had to do to get there but it's perfectly in keeping with the theme.

NIGHTMARES, SPIRITS CALLING ME

NIGHTMARES, THEY WON'T LEAVE ME BE