Esselmap I: Testing Facility (TESTFCIL.WAD)

ESSELMAP I:
TESTING FACILITY
by Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso

The mere existence of this single level for Doom II, circa 2006, must gnaw away at Esselfortium's cold, black heart. Testing Facility is her earliest released work, a fairly large level for limit-removing ports that draws a lot of its aesthetic from Knee Deep in the Dead. It's actually a pretty cool MAP01, loaded with intricate secrets, some of which I think (related to the plasma rifle) are a one-time affair. Anyway, while it's for Doom II, it's largely in the style of the Phobos episode as far as textures go, though not exactly in architecture or anything. It also doesn't have a story, not that you really care about the .TXT files that come with Doom PWADs... or do you?

Vaporware (VAPRDEMO.WAD)

It's been a long time since I said I'd play the Vaporware demo. And, well, here I am! The only time I've used the Eternity engine in the interim is to check bugs across different ports in a few isolated instances, which after playing this seems like a gross misuse of a fantastic product. Vapordemo won a Cacoward in 2011, in part due to the belief that this was about as far as the project would ever progress. I sincerely hope that isn't the case, because this single excerpt from Vaporware (sadly the only Eternity Engine project besides Mordeth I can even name, excepting a few dual-compatible projects and the canceled TC) is a simply fantastic yet all too brief offering from Sarah "Esselfortium" Mancuso. When it was done, I wanted more, so at the very least it's fulfilled its basic criteria insofar as it's designed to get me interested in the full release.