TNT: Revilution (TNTR.WAD)

In 2009, Whoo opened the doors for TNT2, what was to be a spiritual sequel to TNT: Evilution. What followed was one of the longest and most protracted and most importantly PUBLIC development cycles in the community. Somewhere along the way, Steve Muller aka "Kyka" took the reigns of development along with a few other forum regulars who really wanted to see TNT2 make it to completion. I distinctly recall playing a gorgeous TNT2 demo map from Xaser. His teaser generated a lot of buzz for the project, but certain folks including a late-returning Whoo looked at the direction that Kyka had taken TNT2 and were vocally...dissatisfied. Somewhere after all the name-calling and aspersions, when the project heads could speak a bit more civilly in public, there was a project split in 2014, founded upon some sort of a level draft where levels were split up like dividing property during a divorce. A bit more level-headed than the divorces I've heard talk of, really. This is where Revilution's story begins, as a TNT2 spinoff.

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.

Rise of the Wool Ball (ROTWB.WAD)

It took awhile to get there but the modding capabilities of (G)ZDoom have led to a growing number of people making new games based on Doom's framework. Some of these are commercial prospects, the fact of which is great, but others like MSPaintR0cks's Wool Ball series continue the grand tradition of TCs (Total Conversions) in offering novel AND free experiences. Shadow of the Wool Ball, released in 2016, was a snazzy Wolfenstein 3D clone with some interesting environmental hazards. When I wrote my review I was positively anticipating a future iteration that ditched the Wolf3D flat plane of action for something with more vertical depth. Lo and behold, 2017 brought - among other great mods - Rise of the Wool Ball. Prepare to shoot, kick, and now BOUNCE your way through another 18 maps of catastrophic carnage.

lilith (lilith.pk3)

In 2019 I wrote a review for Mark Klem's CRINGE! episode. I namedropped lilith while talking about stuff like glitches and Metroid's bug-derived "hidden worlds". I had not seen much of this 2017 episode outside of screenshots and maybe a video or .GIF that I only half-remember. I knew that it was going to be weird and visually noisy. It would not be wrong, however, to say that I had very little idea of what lilith actually feels like to play. I believe that all PWADs are made to be experienced but there is an inescapable essence to this 2017 Cacoward winner that cannot be communicated over a consumable gif or pithy video. I would even go so far as to say that you should play it with as little foreknowledge as possible.

3 Heures d' Agonie 3 (3HA3.WAD)

The Doom community has several, thriving international scenes. The French have developed over the last few years, spawning some prolific authors as well as auteurs. The front face of the FDC has been the 3 Heures d'Agonie series, which debuted in 2012 and was founded on the premise that all of the submitted maps be built over the course of three hours - give or take a few. These speedmapping megaWADs were conceived as an attempt to rejuvenate their community, which had become burnt out by the now-Quixotic construction of Necromantic Thirst. 3 Heures d'Agonie 3 is the third and purportedly final installment of the series as far as megaWADs go. It is a full, 32 map replacement for Doom II and ought to play well with any source port.

MAYhem 2016 (MAYHEM16.WAD)

The MAYhem series has built a PWAD for every May since 2012 and, starting with 2014, they've all been megaWADs. The project organizers have changed but the general procedure is the same. 1) Pick a texture pack in order to give the set a distinct identity. 2) Decide on some sort of limitation as a gimmick. 3) Kick the event off in May, where the bulk of the level design is (hopefully) performed. In this particular case the merry month was used for planning and logistics while the actual work was done in June. 2016 was really a tale of two gimmicks but you probably wouldn't realize either due to the necessities of the final product's presentation. It's a 21-level mapset for Boom-compatible source ports and, in spite of some promising progress, still drug ass until it was uploaded in early 2017.

Dark Tide (DT-LUTZ.WAD)

DARK TIDE

by Chris Lutz

2017 was Chris's biggest year to date. He could have just ridden the high from having helped to flesh out 2016's No End In Sight but he also finished off his ambitious Hellscape, a re-envisioning of Doom II's final episode. His last surprise was a single level release - Dark Tide. This MAP01 replacement is meant for Boom-compatible ports but as with DHS Lutz recommends an engine that has more complex Z clipping. Vertical mouselook is also a nicety to make the gameplay considerably less frustrating. As far as WADs go, you can't get by with just DOOM2.WAD. DT-LUTZ also requires Team TNT's resource package for The Return.

Hellscape (DHS-LUTZ.WAD)

A large portion of Chris's inimitable career has been spent taking classic Doom themes and rendering them in his particular idiom. This began with his debut, Inferno, but extends to Phobos: Anomaly Reborn as well as several aborted attempts at a similar E2 scenario. Doom the Way id Did's "Lake of Fire" and No End In Sight's "Poison Control" were more id-oriented but the latter's "The Blood Beneath" is a considerable E4 take. I dunno how long Lutz had kicked around this particular idea but The Dying End, its MAP29, was released individually in 2007. Not as a teaser or anything; as far as I know there was zero indication that Hellscape was in development until its public unveiling in 2015. This Doom II episode was finally released in 2017 and replaces MAP21-MAP30, Chris's least favorite run of levels in the original campaign. The bare-minimum compatibility is Boom / MBF but the author suggests using a port with more complex Z-clipping, e.g. ZDoom.

Return to Hadron Episode 2 - The Collider's New Clothes (HADRONE2.WAD)

Matt Powell aka "cannonball" made a splash in 2012 dabbling in both Slaughterfest 2012 as well as some scattered Ultimate Doom works. One of these - his speedy episode 1 - eventually became 2013's ConC.E.R.N.ed, a megaWAD replacing the original trilogy. 2014 drove E4 fetishists wild with Thy Flesh Turned Into a Draft Excluder. DRAFTEX was a leap forward in his craft and while it wasn't meant to be appended to CONCERN he passed the savings on to the player in 2015's Return to Hadron. E1 revisited the locale of his megaWAD's first episode while changing some things up to suit his developing gameplay sensibilities. In 2017 we were fortunate to receive the second part, The Collider's New Clothes. This one replaces The Shores of Hell and should play in any limit-removing source port.

Counterattack (MEK-CATK.WAD)

I have played a handful of Mechadon levels but they were all within the context of community projects. Granted, his outstanding work in larger pieces like Claustrophobia 1024 was why he was chosen as Doomworld's Mapper of the Year in 2009. A large portion - the majority, even - of Brett's material is actually created for multiplayer mapsets. This is a major aspect of his pie-in-the-sky project, Supplice. His single-player solo work is much rarer but he tends to use his powers for good, e.g. bailing out megaWADs in crisis. Counterattack is its own thing, though, a set born from his submission to the first Vinesauce Mapping Contest (this one's MAP02). The rest of the material was built bafflingly quickly and released in early 2017. There are about nine map replacements in all consisting of five normal, two utility, and two bonus. The set is meant for play in Boom compatible ports but the engine has got to pack some horsepower under the hood. It was specifically tested in PrBoom-Plus, ZDoom, GZDoom, and Eternity.

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.

Disjunction (DISJUNCT.WAD)

Disjunction had its genesis in TerminusEst13's Doom Upstart Mapping Project series. DUMP is similar to several other events (e.g. The Joy of Mapping) in that it is all about getting people psyched to make levels. floatRAND was a participant in the fantastically bloated DUMP3, dubbed the BFG edition. His or her three entries - "Felt" (MAP45 there and MAP05 here), "Lambda Base" (MAP57 cum MAP02), and "Electron" (MAP09 nee MAP65) - formed the foundation of a single episode, released in 2017 as Disjunction. The final product is an eleven-map replacement for play in Boom-compatible source ports.

Brigandine (BRIGANDINE.WAD)

BRIGANDINE

by Aline "Viggles" Bee

Back in 2015, Viggles made an explosive return to the Doom community - after only having released a few deathmatch levels back in 1996 - with the publication of Breach. The first of a two-part series, it began as a single level but had to be split because it was on the verge of exceeding the extended limits of most source ports. Brigandine isn't the fairly-anticipated sequel but it is another MAP01 replacement for Doom II for limit-removing ports, this time released in 2017. Bestor's original conception was a "quickie" given the scope of the work they'd performed for Breach but the end result appears to indicate that every map of them is capable of becoming a long, torrid love affair.

Idle Doom: Tech Breakthrough (IDLEDOOM.WAD)

IDLE DOOM

TECH BREAKTHROUGH

by "Albertoni"

I've "played" a few idle games. Cookie Clicker was my first but I've also enjoyed the depth of Realm Grinder and Clicker Heroes. If you've never played one then you're not missing out on much. The ultimate objective is to earn more of the game's currency. The process never really ends but idlers tend to have some sort of prestige mechanic where you can reset your progress for long-term benefits that accrue over time so you can have days of milestones to reach. This helps to keep at least one carrot on a stick in front of the player at all times. Idle Doom is an interesting experiment that explores the very basic mechanics behind these clicker games within the framework of ZDoom. There's at least one significant difference: you can actually reach an end.

Water Spirit (WATRSP.WAD)

burabojunior's levels formed much of the backbone of the Japanese Community Project, featuring thrilling action on an aesthetically pleasing canvas. I loved the hidden temple aesthetic of "Riminishi Valley", the orbital platform journey culminating in "Escape From UAC Space Base" backed by Stuart Rynn's "Jailbreak", and the puzzle-driven lethal neon of "Resplendent Emerald Green". Water Spirit, a three-level Doom II minisode for Boom-compatible source ports, was his 2017 follow-up and in fact first solo release to the archives. I kind of knew what to expect from its look since I'd seen  few screenshots in its thread but I could not have guessed where the gameplay would head.

Waterlab GZD (NJWLGZD.PK3)

WATERLAB GZD

by Nigel "Enjay" Rowand

The Legacy engine got a lot of interesting features during the source port boom. Some of them didn't even last for the engine's lifetime. One to stick with Scottish sensation Enjay was a warping effect for stuff seen under the surface of water, demoed in a small level entitled WATERLAB. It so intrigued him that he felt compelled to flesh the tech showcase out but in doing so he hit upon the likely cause of its disappearance from Legacy's feature set. When the strain became too much for the engine to bear, he shipped the project to GZDoom. The end result is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II designated Waterlab GZD and if there is any doubt in your mind, rest assured that it is much larger than the original.

Void and Rainbow (RAINBOW*.PK3)

VOID AND RAINBOW
by "Serious_MOod"

Serious_MOod started an authorial career on the unassuming, orthogonal Dark Side of Deimos in 2013. While S_M's following releases weren't staunchly traditional, neither were they wildly divergent from the typical Doom experience, especially when you consider that the alpha textures utilized in Beta Labs and BLABS2 have become a recognized theme in its own right. Color me surprised, among other things, with Void and Rainbow. It's a single level release for GZDoom published in 2017, featuring running and jumping and fighting and humping. Well, mostly the middle two, plus a healthy dash of Roy G. Biv.

Beta Labs 2 (BLABS2.WAD)

There's always been some level of interest in Doom's pre-release history and it's responsible for a fair bit of inspiration for projects in the community. The successful ones borrow the assets and then make regular maps in their own particular idioms (Favillesco, Alpha Accident) while the failures try to fulfill the promise of Tom Hall's Doom Bible. If you're not going to catch a fish, though, you might as well not catch a big fish. Serious_MOod helmed a release from the former category, 2015's Beta Labs, and recently followed it up with the similarly-titled sequel, BLABS2, in 2017. It's a five-level minisode for limit-removing ports, spanning E1M1 through E1M5, concluding on an end credits map in E1M6.