50 Shades of Graytall (50SHADES.WAD)

50 Shades of Graytall is partially a joke. It's also mostly serious. Doomworld Forum superstar Marcake took Gez on his jest, creating a project with an unusual restriction, limiting the available textures to what are widely considered to be the three least attractive options - DOORTRAK, GRAYTALL, and FIREBLU. The end result is an eighteen-level megaWAD to be played in a Boom-compatible source port that attempts to deliver, again, on the promise of the Monochromatic Mapping Project. That is, to create a mapset whose limited capacity for visuals forced the authors to focus on the aspects of level design related to gameplay.

Esselfortium's Birthday Cave (ESSEL11.WAD)

ESSELFORTIUM'S BIRTHDAY CAVE
by Brendt "Megalyth" Pantley

Sometimes, Doomworld members make birthday levels for each other. Sometimes, they get uploaded to the /idgames archives. DTWID alumnus Brent Pantley, aka Megalyth, crafted this level for Esselfortium back in 2011, officially publishing it almost two years later. Titled Esselfortium's Birthday Cave, it is indeed a cavern of sorts, and a MAP01 replacement that should play back in any engine. Birthday levels aren't known for pushing the envelope, and this one isn't any different. It's definitely competent, though, and shows Megalyth as a talented author who must be sitting on like a ton of supercool maps by now.

Lakeside (LAKESIDE.WAD)

LAKESIDE
by Brendt "Megalyth" Pantley

Lakeside is a little Doom II level from TWiD alumnus Megalyth, released in 2013 for vanilla Doom II, replacing MAP01. It's short and sweet and as usual in this day and age lacks any kind of framing narrative, preferring the location and action to stand on its own in tickling the player's imagination. Confession time - I actually played this level probably more than half a year ago, back when Pantley had it in release-candidate status. I sadly missed the release while I was on hiatus. It hasn't changed much, as far as I can tell, though according to the .TXT there have been a few tweaks.

Doom 2 the Way id Did (D2TWID)

Doom 2 the Way id Did is a sequel to, well, the incredibly popular Doom the Way id Did, of course. Headed up by Doomworld forum superstar Alfonzo after the release of the latter, D2TWiD aimed to mimic the styles of the architects of Doom II. John Romero, American McGee, and Sandy Petersen are the headliners, of course. I think Shawn Green and Tom Hall were considered, but if they're represented, it's probably in Tom Hall's sprawling base layouts. As was the case with DTWiD, there is no change in the "story" of Doom II. Just load it up and ask yourself - if one of these levels had shown up instead of one of the originals, would you even have noticed? What if you mashed the two PWADs together - would anything seem out of place?

Doom the Way id Did (DTWID.WAD)

In the latter half of 2010, Jason "Hellbent" Root more or less kicked off Doom the Way id Did, a project that aimed to recreate the feel of Doom's original three episodes by mimicking the design traits of the authors. Mappers flocked to the project, with a total of 95 submitted levels. That's enough for three brand new OG Doom megaWADs! (Still waiting on the official releases of the "rejects".) DTWID represents the cream of the crop, as selected by the project leads. The original aim was that each map could be seamlessly inserted into the running with no one the wiser. Of course, to better flesh out the episodes, beginning and boss maps were created. I feel comfortable in saying that even these well-trodden concepts had some new life breathed into them.