Derceto (DERCETOV3_UDMF.WAD)

DERCETO

by Mike "Impie" MacDee

Mike is more popular for his total conversions that explore a host of other universes, some his own and others from preexisting properties. His earliest efforts plied this same angle but stayed within vanilla Doom II's combat stylings. The references served as springboards for the imagination, allowing you to fill in the details left out by using id Software's stock textures. Derceto is a tribute to the original Alone in the Dark - a landmark survival horror title - and was originally released in 2014. It saw a significant facelift in 2015, though, where Impie gave the adventure a new coat of paint. The original is still available on /idgames if you're curious but this review covers the updated version that can be found on the author's personal website. Both are MAP01 replacements for Doom II. The first release targeted limit-removing source ports with jumping as a feature. The second has a much narrower band as it utilizes the UDMF format. Eternity should still be in the game, then. (G)ZDoom ought to work for sure.

I wasn't familiar with the plot before playing this but Mike has included a little primer that quickly sets up the basic premise. You're an investigator who was hired to look into the suicide of Jeremy Hartwood, a relation of one Emily Hartwood. The latter suspects some sinister involvement in her uncle's demise and has you on the case. You decide to start working at the top of his mansion, beginning in the attic, only to find yourself locked in by the suspected infernal inhabitants. It's a battle for your survival and losing must be worse than death considering that Jeremys confrontation ultimately resulted in him taking his own life.

This is a fairly large adventure map that's divided into three portions marked by the music changes. The meat of the experience occurs in Derceto (the mansion). It's relatively free to explore and has a bunch of micro-puzzles, most of which must be solved in order to gain access to the passages below. The underground caverns are far less complex to explore - in fact, they're pretty linear - but are more resistant to your prying by containing mundane navigational baffles built out of level geometry. Once you complete the second leg you move on to the third portion which consists of a dark maze and an explosive finale, sort of an IOS-lite.

The mansion is pretty fun to explore. Its design sensibilities are very oldschool-ish insofar as the rooms and corridors and doors would feel out of place in today's highly polished megaWADs. The biggest strike players had against it was the instant death teleporter. People who are familiar with Alone in the Dark will realize that this gruesome portal is actually the front door and the lethal hazard takes the place of the "dweller on the threshold". It was a malign malefaction that prevented you from just leaving the original mansion. I dunno how you could open up the door, see the scrolling intestines, and not half expect it to kill you, but I may just be more world-weary as a Doomer.

My biggest stumbling block was the chamber which contains the damaging evil eye. This takes the place of AitD's smoking room. It was quite a while before I realized that you have to do something in the eye chamber in order to open the door to the study. I otherwise I had a great time with Impie's painstaking use of custom textures. Most of the challenging encounters are single shotty vs. revenant fights, like in the dark and claustrophobic library. The architecture in the mansion's larger areas is pretty neat. I really dig the grand staircase room. Mike avoids emphasizing the survival aspect of the source material but some of its tropes - e.g. closets with stashes of ammo and health - remain.

Things slow down once you get into the caves. They're atmospheric but not all that threatening. Most of the tougher monsters are absent with a strong lean toward spectres, lost souls, and imps in the periphery. The emphasis is on more cinematic segments like collapsing bridges (of the non-lethal variety, thank goodness). You could explore the entire mansion and never have to jump but it's absolutely required down below. If you hate platforming then you're going to be in a bad way. I doubt whether you'd be any more a fan of the next bit, though. The third segment consists mostly of a dark maze. It's both hidden on the automap and sparsely populated by a few spectres. The labyrinth isn't complex but the lack of lighting makes it challenging to navigate. Especially since a leg near the end consists of a loop that you could get turned around in.

The finale is the only really sustained encounter, occurring at a twisted tree which represents the spiritual abode of Ezechiel Prezgt. If you've exhaustive in your search then you should be well prepared for the revenants and demons who teleport in. I feel like it's difficult to miss both of the level's BFGs and you can use your leftover scratch to quickly strike down the arch-vile that potentially appears when exposing the heart of the tree. The required sequence is a simple two switch affair but the importance of the altar at its foot may escape less intuitive players. It's also one of the few encounters to be significantly switched up between /idgames and UDMF. The tree originally had an arch-vile protector but he's been downgraded to a spooky scary skeleton.

Derceto was originally made and is still available for play using the game's stock textures. The newly wallpapered edition looks very nice and has a Doom clone feel, which Impie now tends to go for. The gameplay is otherwise the same, though, so you have the freedom to choose between whichever skin you enjoy. The UDMF version has a different soundtrack and changes with area transitions, each bit more or less appropriate for the tone of the section that you're playing through. The first track is appropriately curious and slightly suspenseful. The second is atmospheric and hollow while the last has a pounding thriller buildup. It may lose some of its impact if you spend too much time fumbling around in the maze.

For additional fun the author recommends for you to play Derceto with Pirate Doom. This may be more thematically appropriate since the mansion is being haunted by the ghost of a voodoo-practitioner pirate. The pulse-pounding music for the third segment is at odds with PIRATES!'s purposeful silliness, though. If it weren't for that then it would all fit together fairly well as a sort of "demon pirates invade from mysterious underground cove". It certainly feels more appropriate slinging dynamite instead of the BFG though the latter is far easier to use in the mansion's close quarters.

According to Impie's Doomworld thread the super shotgun should be available on all difficulties but was a nonentity during my UV experience. The lack of both it and the chaingun are just about the only differences that I can see between Derceto on Hard and HMP. I'm also surprised to see how poorly the treasure chests were thought out given the WAD's later emphasis on jumping. There is no safeguard in place should you leap inside before its goodies are revealed. By this I mean that you're going to fall down into the cavity and not be able to get out. The author's choice in which bits of furniture you are allowed to jump on top of feels highly arbitrary, even within the same room.

The overall package works, though, making these fairly minor quibbles. I'm sure that the survival horror doesn't directly translate to Doom II's action but it might be a fun trip down memory lane if you spent a lot of time playing Alone in the Dark. I had a lot of fun exploring the dense-structure-with-a-sinister-secret trope. If you're a fan of this sort of level design then you ought to take a look at Derceto.

I highly suggest v3, which you can download from Mike's personal site.

If you want v2, then you can

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