Blind Alley X., "Forlorn" (BNDALYX.WAD)

BLIND ALLEY X.

FORLORN

by Gene Bird

Gene's main claim to fame is his Blind Alley series, slightly more than half of which showed up in the first Community Chest and CCHEST2. I'm not much of a forum historian but the man himself informed me that his presence in both megaWADs is largely due to the same reason that Adam Windsor has so many "filler" maps in Requiem. That is, people dropped out of both projects toward the end and the kindly authors helped to make them whole. Forlorn, aka BDNALYX, was born too late to make the first CCHEST and I assume that Bird did not think highly enough of it for it to offer it up for the second when his services were required. We are now past the point of there being any correlation between alpha-numeric characters and level slots in the original slot; if there were, then this would have been MAP33. As it stands, Forlorn is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II that was released in December of 2003 - the last of the year, in fact.

Most of the Blind Alley series has some grounding in reality. The idea is that demons attack your town while you're home so you set out to slay them. Its original conception may have attempted to be more immersive given that The Warf immediately follows The Boardwalk. Other sights and sounds include a nondescript Citadel, a Monster Mansion, city sewers full of Nukage, a Pit of an underground installation, corporate Headquarters, and some sort of Waste Processing facility. The later levels kick off with a sort of nightmarish Deja Vu and then become abstract killing fields with the titles of Necrophobia, Redemption, and Retribution. Well, part of that last one has a huge-ass Mesoamerican ball court. Forlorn is just as indecipherable but for the presence of a few classical quotations.

BNDALYX is, to put it mildly, straightforward. Gene's layouts tend to be stringy, with only one path through a series of large rooms and long hallways, and Forlorn is no outlier. The big development here is a long detour that takes you through a few fairly dangerous ambushes before reaching the end of its "blind alley". Bird has provided a handy-dandy teleporter close by in order to return you to the door that you opened, something that he kind of explored with Deja Vu. It's a nice gesture, even if with the other hand he's seeded a small army at your destination. Once you're back on track then it's business as usual.

The combat is not quite as simplistic, however. As you bust through the first three chambers you'll see what I mean. The player is repeatedly placed in situations with monsters on the high ground with other beasties on the low running interference. One such scenario has four caged revenants as the aerial hazards. A much later room even has an arch-vile flanked by two skeletons... on pedestals. I kind of get the feeling that the author had a lot of respect for archies since both this one and Retribution's can (are expected to?) be easily dispatched with crushers. Whatever the setup, though, Gene is consistent in not cutting off the player's retreat. You can always leave out the door you came in through, and when there is no door - like the starting area - the author has provided a sizable alcove for you to duck into.

One of the traps is just plain awkward. There's a narrow hallway about halfway down the extended detour with two waist-high walls that seal off alcoves that sport a mix of, most importantly, chaingunners and revenants. Trying to combat shotgun pop either side is going to put you at the mercy of the other. As GB says in his .TXTs, "The harder you push the harder the map pushes back." This won't be immediately obvious to first-time players but the middle-ground probably involves using the barriers to momentarily lower them and then letting beasties matriculate into your vision. The curved staircase monster closet immediately prior is less cumbersome in comparison.

Speaking of which, Gene namedrops two levels this go around - "Containment Area" and "Command Center" from the original Doom. The previously-mentioned staircase is in fact a quotation from the latter. Of all the things to crib from E2M2 Bird decided to go with the four-columned marble atrium. Weird, but okay. You could do worse than use it as a staging ground for a couple of big brawls. The one thing that I don't get is the fuckin' Nazi eagle from Wolfenstein 3D, seen at the opening of the map and then tucked into a monster-obscuring secret at the very end. Was this supposed to be a nod toward maybe it occupying a secret level slot?

Forlorn is definitely a Gene Bird level in its bones but I can see how different the architecture and encounter design are from his earliest works. It remains to be seen where all of this leads to in Dissolution, let alone CCHEST2's "Desecration", but in the meantime you can check this out for a serviceable blastathon.

I'M ALL OUT OF LOVE