Blood Runners (#BLOODR.WAD)

BLOOD RUNNERS

by "Sphagne"

Sphagne sits alongside Gene Bird and Daniel Trim as an author who published levels prior to Community Chest and who submitted them back when the original CCHEST pitch was something more along the lines of, "Have you ever wanted to see one of your works ensconced within a megaWAD?" Thus far, the five Sphagne levels that I've covered--Simphony of Death, Secret Lab, Death Cycle, Hell Harbour, and The Living End--were not among the three maps that made it into the 2003 Community Chest. Blood Runners, which the author claims was his eighth produced level, became CCHEST's MAP23. It was originally released as part of a batch upload in 2002, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. The author claims that he did not know that there was an online Doom community back when he authored these levels from 1995-1999, so one may assume that it will function in any source port.

The Process (TPROCESS.WAD)

THE PROCESS

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Use3D has been making maps for a long time. So much of his creative energy has been tied up in his two one-man megaWADs, Doom Beyond and Nilla Doom, so much so that he actually jettisoned a number of his oldest maps from Doom Beyond and released them as singular outtakes. I've been covering all of these levels in my run-up to the original Community Chest and will take a gander at Doom Beyond whenever it releases because, well, Mike makes damn good classic-feeling maps. The last batch of Alfredson's outtakes was published in 2019. The Process is the most recent of these, by which I mean it was crafted in 2001 instead of 1997. It's a MAP05 replacement for Doom II, to be played in any port.

KGZDOOM1 (KGZDOOM1.PK3)

Kesler's Still Kickin', released in 2004, seemed to be the last that we'd hear from him in terms of new material. Then, in 2018, he reconnected with Doom and started showing off screenshots of him horsing around in an editor. KMETL 2018 didn't ultimately pan out--Kesler had to back away for awhile and lost what he had been working on--but when he eventually returned he plinked away until we got KGZDOOM1! This is a two-map minisode replacing MAP01 and MAP02 in, you guessed it, GZDoom, released in 2023. We haven't seen another KGZDOOM yet, but we've gotten KMETL14, KMETL15, and KMETL16 so far, so who knows what's in the pipeline?

Garbage (GARBAGE.WAD)

November of 2013 marked the beginning of perhaps Memfis's most productive span of authorship, kicking off with How Eye Killed Time and--apart from a lull in March--built multiple PWADs a month until July of 2014, right after his epic /idgames archive dump in June of 2014. Garbage is the second WAD published during this period, a two-level minisode for Doom II to be played in theoretically any limit-removing port. In practice, you are best to keep to PrBoom-Plus or its descendants like DSDA Doom. MAP01 plays just fine but the very first thing maze in MAP02 is not navigable in (G)ZDoom. If you must insist on playing in (G)ZDoom then you'll have to clip through the first maze. After that, it's aces.

Abyssal Speedmapping Session 7 (ABYSPED7.WAD)

The Doom community has generally had semi-regular speedmapping events in one form or another but in my mind they seemed to get new life in 2013. One of the longer-running institutions--now defunct--is The Abyssal Speedmapping Sessions. The Abyss was a forum that ended up receiving some of the now defunct NewDoom regulars, and Obsidian wanted to bring them together to make some Doom maps. The first ABYSPED didn't have the greatest turnout but they kept it strong, eventually ending at a grand total of 69 iterations. ABYSPED7 is the seventh Abyssal Speedmapping Session, organized in June of 2014. A bunch of regulars from past sessions showed up as well as some, err, new blood, to put out a grand total of 14 levels, replacing MAP01-MAP14.

Invictus (INVICTUS.WAD)

INVICTUS

by Rex Claussen

Wow, it's been a long time since I've played me some Claussen maps. Pre-Invictus, Rex made a ton of levels including a series of partial and total conversions (A Hex On You, Phoenix Rising, Paranoia, Temple of the Ancients, The Darkest Hour). Along the way, while I imagine The Darkest Hour was about a month away from being released, Claussen participated in DoomCenter's E1 Mapping Contest in 2001. His entry, "Invictus" (E1M6), was a break from form in a variety of ways. It included no copy and pasted geometry from his previous levels and tended toward more abstract level geometry based in OG Doom's aesthetic compared to, say, the more Quake II- or Half-Life-esque base and office designs.

Tower of Lies (LIES.WAD)

TOWER OF LIES

by "scwiba"

scwiba got his start in the 1 Monster project, kicking off a career of gimmick-dedicated mapsets. He was awfully quiet for the following nine or so years until 2016, with the Cacoward-winning Absolutely Killed. In the year prior in 2015, however, he published this level, Tower of Lies. It's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in a limit-removing port. Not hearing anything about it beyond its author just about disowning it, I wasn't sure what to expect. On its face, this is a regular ol' climb through a demon-infested tower. It's still deeply invested in being a gimmick level, though, even if figuring it as such involves a deep reading of its level design with respect to its name. It's all in the name, isn't it?

Ruma (RUMA.WAD)

RUMA

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

It's taken about three years to get here since I first played Espi's Barons o' Fun, but I finally made it. Ruma made Doomworld's Top 100 WADs list as one of the entries from 2002. It's a single map for Doom II, to be played in what appears to be any limit-removing port. Historians take note: Repo intimates in the .TXT that this was going to be MAP03 of his mini-episode, with the author keeping the start and exit, intending to build an otherwise entirely new level. I know that Espi had two minisodes in the works, One Hell of a Day (which became Suspended in Dusk) and Rust (which became part of Back to Basics). After a brief scan--and a second scan--I confirmed that the starting area of Ruma has the same geometry as Suspended in Dusk's MAP03 starting area. I guess that this makes Ruma something of a lost level or a Deleted Scene, to crib from Russell Pearson's cut content showcases.

Greymood (GRMOOD.WAD)

GREYMOOD

by "MysteriousHaruko"

Misty has had a healthy community career over the past seven or so years, working to co-host the Pigeon Speedmapping Sessions and contributing to a variety of community projects. She's also had a smattering of solo releases, including but not limited to the 2022 Cacoward HM Caffeine Injection. Greymood is her first public offering, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II published back in 2017 which now feels like a long, long time ago. There must have been some prior shared maps as rd alludes to an improvement over prior works (and the DoomWiki mentions Think about it), but Greymood was the first to find its way to the /idgames archives.

Super MAYhem 17 (MAYHEM17.WAD)

MAYhem is a time when Doomworlders can band together and throw their weight behind an arbitrary set of restrictions. The series had a rough start in terms of meeting its megaWAD goal, with 2012 and 2013 fielding 12 and 11 levels respectively, but it hit its stride with MAYhem 2048, with each subsequent iteration meeting the "megawad" definition (in spirit with MAYhem 2024, which produced 35 segments to stitch together). The 2017-released-in-2018 installment goes by Super MAYhem 17 because the texture theme this go-around was Super Mario Bros.-themed, with an aesthetic that appears to be sort of a mix of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. This is a 28-ish level replacement for Doom II, to be played with Boom-compatible ports, with some fringe MAPINFO perks for ZDoom / Eternity users.

The Living End (#LIVEND.WAD)

THE LIVING END

by "Sphagne"

No--it's not THAT "Living End". This is a level by Sphagne that happens to go by the same name. Sphagne's main claim to fame is having submitted three of his previously-released levels to the first Community Chest: Avenger, Blood Runners, and Afterlife. Pretty much all of his single player maps were crafted somewhere between 1995 and 1999 and then uploaded in bulk in August of 2002. The Living End is purportedly the seventh of these, with four of the author's mentioned 19 levels never seeing publication. Like the rest of Sphagne's released solo works, it's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II.

Computer Station (CMPSTATN.WAD)

COMPUTER STATION

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Doom Beyond started out as a replacement for the Hell levels of Doom II, which Alfredson thought were lacking in Hellishness when compared to "The Catacombs" and "The Spirit World". He seems to have had a sympathetic soul in Chris Lutz, who executed a project similar in sentiment with 2017's Hellscape. Doom Beyond eventually ventured beyond its original scope, however, becoming a limit-removing megaWAD with more or less classic-style gameplay. Along the way he removed some of his older levels from the running and published them independently. So far I've taken a look at Hell Pit, Deep Core 1, Chaotic Grounds, and Temple of Sin. This review is for Computer Station, a MAP04 replacement for Doom II, originally crafted in 1997, that was stationed earlier in the megaWAD along with Deep Core 1. 

Still Kickin' (KICKIN01.WAD)

STILL KICKIN'

by Kurt Kesler

When I played KZDOOM7 back in 2016, I had two levels left before I had reviewed the entirety of his output: "Phobos - The Underground Sewer Facility" from Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE (MAP05), published in 2002, and Still Kickin', a solo level released in 2005. I played NIMROD back in 2019, but I wasn't in much of a hurry to play Kesler's final offering. Then, in 2023, it happened: KGZDoom1, Kesler's first published Doom content in 18 years. Since then and as of this writing, there are three new KMETL levels. Will wonders never cease? It feels about time to ride the K train again and close the gap between 2002 and 2023. Still Kickin', at one point Kesler's ultimate work, is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in any limit-removing port.

How Eye Killed Time (KILLTIME.WAD)

HOW EYE KILLED TIME

by "Memfis"

Memfis uploaded some maps to /idgames as he made them, but he waited to upload even more of them until 06/21/14, the day of the great uploading. How Eye Killed Time, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, was apparently crafted early October of 2013 but it doesn't appear to have been stealth-released on the Doomworld Forum like most of the June 2014 uploads that I've played thus far. Maybe he posted it to a different forum, or maybe he just sat on it until he decided to clear out his archives. In any event, the PWAD claims to require Boom compatibility, but based on what I've seen over past Memfis reviews, I believe that the reality is that the only environment this map was tested in is PrBoom-plus using -complevel 9. It wouldn't surprise me if it worked in more or less any limit-removing port.

1 Monster (1MONSTER.WAD)

We are more awash in limitation-based projects than ever, with 10 Sectors capturing the imagination of the community. When 1 Monster was conceived, Dr. Zin had 2 Sectors and Congestion 1024 in mind, though we've since seen 100 Lines and a whole host of resource-economy projects. What you don't see a lot of, though, are restrictions on enemy variety. Enter 1 Monster, a megaWAD where only one monster type is placed on each map. Every member of Doom II's bestiary is represented here, from the lowly zombiman to John Romero himself with his luscious locks of love. The project kicked off at the tail end of 2005 and then changed leads several times before seeing a final release in 2007. In its more or less final form, 1 Monster is a 25 map replacement for Doom II, to be played in Boom-compatible ports.

Laitos (LAITOS.WAD)

LAITOS

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi was one of fifteen different people who submitted levels to DoomCenter's E1 Contest for the chance to get a sweet, signed copy of The Ultimate Doom from the man himself, John Romero. Some of them went on to have rather illustrious careers in the community. Amusingly enough, the contest winner did not! Some of the contestants released their levels individually once it was over. Laitos--which was originally E1M8, not that this technically meant anything--has virtually doubled in size, if not more so. My understanding is that Espi revised this level several times. The final version (v1.4), published in early 2002, is an E1M1 replacement for the original Doom.

The One Level With All Those Teleporters. (TOLWATT.WAD)

THE ONE LEVEL WITH

ALL THOSE TELEPORTERS.

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

I think that there is a tendency in this community to think of classically lauded authors as being beneath a bit of fun like Erik Alm and his goofball Find It. Not everything has to be Scythe II to be worth making OR preserving. In Esa Repo's case, his pre-Suspended in Dusk work is peppered with levels that people perusing his back catalogue might find...questionable. The first of these that we got was Barons o' Fun, so named because it's an arcade-type scenario where you attempt to get Barons of Hell to blow each other up with barrels and even scratch each other. The One Level With All Those Teleporters is not an auspicious name to start things off with, and if you keep reading, you'll see what all the fuss is about. TOLWATT is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released toward the end of 2001. As to why it requires ZDoom, I think that the only reason is because it has a MAPINFO lump. It seemed to play just fine back in DSDA-Doom apart from not being able to play the included music.

Corrupted Cistern (CIS-LUTZ.WAD)

CORRUPTED CISTERN

by Christopher Lutz

2016-2017 was a banger of a year for Chris Lutz. No End In Sight saw its final release, with three awesome levels from the author in the four-episode package, including the stunningly gorgeous "The Blood Beneath" (E4M5). We got a similarly fabulous Hellscape, reimagining the original Doom II's Hell episode with forbidden, Stygian vistas and built around his previous The Dying End. Later, we saw the super-fun and super-huge Dark Tide, a late entry in TNT's sort-of-series, The Return. Now, in 2022, we get a new evolution of Chris, an ultra-detailed level in GZDOOM: Corrupted Cistern, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Be still, my beating heart!

Psychic (XA-PSYCH.PK3)

PSYCHIC

by Xaser Acheron

My reintroduction to Doom is tangentially related to Psychic. A friend gifted me a Something Awful account back in '09 and one of the forums that I gravitated toward was the Let's Play forums. They had a Doom mods thread going on at the time and I think that they were playing a combination of Psychic with B.P.R.D.'s Equinox. I saw so much cool stuff going on with Doom (my previous dips in user-created content being limited to whatever I found on my Dad's Doom 1 & 2 Collection shovelware CD as well as Kaiser's Doom 64: Absolution TC) that I wanted to dive right in. Of course, if you're a long-time reader you know that I don't spend a lot of time playing gameplay mods, but fourteen years to finally load up Xaser's Psychic seems, in retrospect, a bit excessive. At least I had planned it out back in 2019 to play it after The Abyss! That's got to count for something, right?

Hell Harbour (#HHARBR.WAD)

HELL HARBOUR

by "Sphagne"

Sphagne's main claim to fame is submitting of his previously-released levels to the original Community Chest. Like his contemporary Gene Bird, Sphagne had been crafting maps since the mid-90s only to start publishing them later in the early '00s. Hell Harbour is Sphagne's sixth level but a portion of his maps were apparently not deemed fit for release. Of the seventeen or so works whose existence is confirmed, #HHARBR is actually the sixth. Like the rest of these single map publications (Gene Bird's and Alex Parsons's), it's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. It was published in 2002 but the story of its creation suggests that it ought to work in vanilla given that Sphagne "did not know about Doom communities accessible via internet", which sort of precludes source ports.

Temple of Sin (TMPLOSIN.WAD)

TEMPLE OF SIN

by Mike "Use3D" Alfredson

On the subject of Use3D's rainy day classically-styled megAWAD, we don't appear to be any closer to seeing a full release than we were when I posted my review for Chaotic Grounds. However, Alfredson DID see fit to grace us with a stealth-release of Nilla Doom's second episode (MAP08-MAP11)! That's awesome! I don't think that this, Temple of Sin, was cut from that project, but rather a megaWAD that was originally, nominally based on the story of the Doom II: Hell on Earth novelization. It's a MAP21 replacement for Doom II that should theoretically work in any source port given that Use3D tested it in doom2.exe.

pus06 (PUS06.WAD)

pus06 is one of those PWADs that Russian author Memfis published to little or no fanfare via a Doomworld thread, first debuting in July of 2013. It didn't make it to /idgames until about a year later in June of 2014 during the great uploadening. Memfis crafted a ton of small-scale releases from 2011 to through 2014, but he refrained from publishing more than half of them on the archives until mid-2014. From what I gather, this was due to a variety of factors, but the end result was an epic Newstuff flood that scifista42 took ownership of. pus06 is a two-map minisode for Doom II and its target port is prboom-plus -complevel 2, so... limit-removing.

The Abyss (ABYSS.WAD)

The Abyss was rescued from... the abyss of time. It's crazy to think that the primary reason we have The Abyss right now is because one of its creators, J.M.P. van Waveren ("Mr. Elusive"), toted a copy of it with him when he started working at id Software. Otherwise, who knows? This megaWAD was released over several iterations, eventually crystallizing in 1995 as a 24-map replacement for Doom II, not counting the placeholder "THE END" levels. Miklos de Rijk ("H2SO4") and van Waveren originally published The Abyss on a more localized BBS in The Netherlands, but there's no digital record of anyone acknowledging it. de Rijk and van Waveren went on to significantly more acclaim with their Omicron Bot for Quake, notable for its apparent ability to function on "the jankiest, boxiest of community maps". This apparently got Mr. Elusive a foot in the door at id, where he worked on Quake III and subsequent projects before following Carmack to work on the Oculus.

Reanimated (REANMTD.WAD)

Karthik Abhiram officially kicked off his authorial career when he was 19 years old with Ick. His brother, Varun, kicked off his own career the same year with The Anomaly: Part II, when he was around 13 years of age. The siblings had some sort of dialogue with each other when it came to mapping for Doom, but they didn't really collaborate in level design until 2004's Reanimated. This PWAD, whose name and level titles are inspired by the Linkin Park remix album, Reanimation, is a two-level minisode for limit-removing ports. Apparently the genesis of their inspiration came when they downloaded some Linkin Park MIDIs off the internet. If that doesn't sound like a time-capsule of the early 2000s then I don't know what else would.

Linna (LINNA.WAD)

LINNA

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

(based on Come to a Head by "Deadnail")

In June of 2001, Deadnail uploaded his only single player level to /idgames, Come to a Head (SP_DN01). It was a weighty techbase map with grueling thing placement, best enjoyed on HMP and even then you'll likely suffer without knowing the level's five secrets. Nine days later, Espi renovated the level and uploaded Linna, a MAP01 replacement for... whatever the confluence is of source ports that are Boom-compatible and also allow jumping. GZDoom and Zandronum ought to work, Eternity, Odamex, Legacy, and idk, Risen3D? I know that I'm selling someone's favorite source port short right now, I just couldn't tell you which one.

Come to a Head (SP_DN01.WAD)

COME TO A HEAD

by "Deadnail"

The next PWAD on my itinerary is Esa Repo's Linna, but as it lines out in its .TXT, Espi actually based it on a level that had been released by another person earlier in the year. Deadnail appears to have been primarily an author of deathmatch levels who played in what must be a now-ancient version of ZDaemon. At one point, however, they aspired to make some singleplayer levels, and Come to a Head is the fruit of this practice session. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 2001, and is specifically designed for ZDoom. I'm not sure if there's anything going on under the hood that requires it besides maybe the particle fountains, but in terms of gameplay, jumping is required in order to complete the level.

Bloodworks (BLUDWRKS.WAD)

BLOODWORKS

by Bob "brad_tilf" Larkin

Bob Larkin is the webmaster of the Doom Wad Station, one of the oldest hubs of Doom diaspora still knocking around the internet. He also has his own bibliography of PWADs! Back before I wrote any reviews I think that I had randomly picked his Endgame project to try out. I was... deeply confused. If you ask him what his best WAD is, though, he'll almost certainly say Bloodworks, and probably give a shoutout to Mitnal. BLUDWRKS is a MAP03 replacement for Doom II. I think that the source port recommendation basically boils down to "limit-removing". The GL ports of the day didn't know what to do with the software renderer tricks, I guess, but times have changed and this looks pretty much as it was originally intended in GZDoom as well as ZDoom.

Tangerine Nightmare (TN.WAD)

The French Doom Community celebrated in 2024 with a huge win, finally pushing out a release candidate of their Necromantic Thirst megaWAD after years of development. They didn't get there by just chipping away at their mega-project, though. franckFRAG and WH-Wilou84 fostered a creative community through their 3 Heures d'Agonie speedmapping project, which got sequels in 3HA2 and 3HA3. This seemed to activate authors like Datacore, who has since become one of the most productive authors of their subset of the Doom diaspora. Tangerine Nightmare started as a Datacore-led project with an emphasis on an orange color scheme. At some point, and I can't exactly tell by reading the development thread, franckFRAG sort of organically became the lead. What started as a vanilla adventure became a (mostly) limit-removing episode for Doom II, finalized in early 2018, replacing MAP01-MAP10.