I've been out of Doom for a while for personal and creative reasons. My last solo release was a little under a year ago. Recently, I caught the doom bug again and thought about all my past releases. BPRD would leave informal reviews of his own work on his website back in the day, so I thought
I'd do the same. A bit egotistical, maybe, but I thought it was fun. So that's what this'll be, a bit of a looksies-backsies on all of the first season of my Doom works. Maybe it'll help me gather my thoughts on what I want to do next.



~ Crucifix Canyon / When The Canyon Melts ~ May 8, 2023 ~

A canyon, cliff and waterfall map, and also my first level and first Doomworld post ever. I started mapping in UDMF, even though I didn't really need it. At this point I had only played Doom 1, 2 and TNT. I think this level and all the waterfalls and caves was inspired by a TNT map (Deepest
Reaches). TNT has always kinda left an impression on me, it's badass. But I took after Drake O' Brien and this map is overscaled and underclocked. I even had some platforming stuff in there. I was also obsessed with the gray and blue colorscheme, at this time and I would use it at every
opportunity. Now, I think it's a bit visually bland. I also got my friend Pat to do the midi which was pretty badass at the time. It's impressive as a first outing but nothing too special otherwise. 

This map also appeared in NOVA IV as MAP26: When The Canyon Melts, in modified form. The reason I submitted an old work was because I thought NOVA had lost it's identity as the "beginner mapper" mapset. So I thought I would throw in my hat by submitting my actual first map, cleaned up. Give it a
bit of spice and old-school charm. Oh and the reason it's Crucifix Canyon is because the platforms in the first room are shaped like a cross and the platforms in the final blood arena, an inverted cross :)



Crucifix Canyon's Doomworld Thread



~ Archvile Town ~ May 28, 2023 ~ 

Using UDMF, I created a town of Archviles that will talk to you and turn hostile whenever you provoke them. You can either kill 'em all or help the sheriff of Archvile Town destroy a horde of cyberdemons. Kind of ridiculous Undertale humor with the "monsters are human" premise. Stuff like young
archvile couples, archviles watering their gardens and drinking beer. All imaginary and told thru text of course, since I still dont know how to draw sprites. But it was fun, got a bit of traction. The mp3 midi was made by my friend Pat again.e, in no small part thanks to the music and writin
.An "Archvile Town Redux" was lying around in my wads folder for a long time. Added new features like the Strife dialog system, lots of new writing and more dynamic townsfolk. However I ran into a snag with the scripting and abandoned the idea. Really what I learned from this whole wad is that
while GZDoom allows for a lot of stuff, but I like designing levels much more than I like programming. And making Archie Town was 70% programming.  I think it's one of the best and most immersive Doom experiences I've ever made.

Archvile Town's Doomworld Thread




~ Mock 7: General Unintelligents ~ June 7, 2023 ~

The title explains exactly what it is. I forget what Discord server birthed this abomination, might've been Hell Keep before it died. I gathered a bunch of other dumb kids who spoke in memes to make a Mock 2 sequel called Mock 7 inspired by the OG and The Sky May Be. This was a colossally bad
idea for self-evident reasons. The project was a poorly organized mess with tons of creative differences and conflict. The wad is an unplayable, shitpost-y padded mess that you cant even beat without cheating. Though that's true of Mock 2 as well, so I guess we emulated the source material
perfectly. Funnily enough, it's also the work of mine that has probably been seen by the most people considering it's appearance on one of Vinny Vinesauce's Gettin' Doom With It streams. I know a bit how BPRD felt when Nuts became popular, I suppose

In retrospect some of the maps are very cool and could've been fun if the weapons were beefed and in a wad called some thing other than Mock 7. It doomed itself with its name and premise though. I liked working with the Sky May Be textures and goofy premises, like the map I did with a massive
scrolling floor with Caramelldansen blaring in the background called like Mountain Dew Hyperspeedway or something. Some of the jokes were funny, like bananas on the walls and a poorly drawn Romero as a standin for the icon of sin. The one that always cracks me up is the sign in multiple levels
that we put over and over again that simply says "don't step on gras".  If you step on any grass texture in those levels, entire level crushes and kills you in spectacular fashion. One mapper even put grass in the icon of sin room with a bfg on top. Cold. So even though I view it as a complete
creative faliure and something I never should've made, the end product wasn't all bad. Fun for a quick cheat-filled jaunt, I guess.

Mock 7's Doomworld Thread


~ Man Will Spacewalk ~ October 5, 2023 ~

A moon themed wad, inspired by Lunatic and a StarWars-ish wad called Dark Universe that I really liked around this time. This was my last UDMF wad. After 2023, I switched to MBF21 due to the influence of community projects that were running at the time (I'll talk about that later!). It's only 2
levels, a moon one and a spaceship one. The only thing noteworthy about it is the enemies, which I hacked in from Dark Forces I think. I was just grabbing sprites and the result is very messy. I think my level design definitely matured a bit by this point thouh, I wasn't doing many bland\
hallways and overly square overscaled stuff anymore. I was trying to make a natural moon voidscape and a fun space station with details, not just blocks. It's kinda fun, but I was still very much in beginner mode at this point. Combat's mostly incidental, and I was focused on aesthetics rather
than gameplay, which is a recipe for disaster most of the time.


Man Will Spacewalk's Doomworld Thread



~ 2024: A community project intermission ~

I only had 2 real solo releases in 2024. That's because most of my time was spent doing work for community projects. I started with Amalgoom, in late 2023. Then I did maps for Doomium 2, Doom 2 In City Only (which got rejected!), and a few others. I also got into speedmapping around this time
submitting to a PUSS Christmas project and another one called 2 Hours To Kill. I think my Doomium 2 submission was the best out of these, it was a very exploratory large level inspired by Lost Civilization. My Amalgoom one was ok, though Amalgoom ended up getting released a lot later and gained
a lot of traction, so that was fun. I got to see Vytaan play my map! Dream come true!

I also did a Doomworld Thread where I catalogued me going through EVERY SINGLE wad ever featured on Dean of Doom. That took up a lot of 2024 and really tested my writing skills. 2024 was really the major peak of my Doom addiction.  In May of 2024, I also started my first real community project,
TropicHELL. A project that would sap nearly all my energy to do anything Doom related and that haunts me to this day. But back then, I just wanted to make another wad like Overboard and Rowdy Rudy and have fun with it. I'll talk about my experiences with TropicHELL a bit later. It's a lot.



~ Metamorphosis ~ April 7, 2024 ~ 

This was a map that was mainly inspired by Valiant's first episode. I always loved the green and grey techbase, throw in a little trees and grass and zippity bop bow, you got yourself a nice chicken sandwich of Dooming. It's pretty big, probably my most overscaled map ever, and I was
still clinging on to that gray and blue color scheme like my life depended on it. This is also the first level I did that starts with a boat on a dock, a premise that I would abuse comically in TropicHELL and other wads. Combat was a bit fun, I actually tried to do arena stuff and
balance it rather than mostly relying on incidental combat and never using sound block linedefs. Still, some fun stuff here, finding secrets among the cliffs and trees. Then climbing up to the massive base with the helipad and such, with the massive teleport ambush. I think it's the
first real Doom map of mine that I'm actually still a bit proud of. And yes, in my brain, Archvile Town doesn't count. It's too much of it's own thing. This map was supposed to be the centerpiece of a larger wad. And eventually it was when it resurfaced in Metamorphosis: The Lost Levelswhich was
a collection of maps from 2024 and 2025 that never saw the light of day until the very end of my time in the community. And I don't know why I called it Metamorphosis. Maybe it was a Blank Banshee reference.


Metamorphosis's Doomworld Thread




~ Help!! Something's Wrong With My Entryway!! ~ September 12, 2024 ~

This is a joke wad that I did in one day as a forum goof. I thought it deserves a mention even though I don't remember the context of the joke other than people posting ridiculous edits of Doom 2 levels. So I made a ridiculous slaughter edit of Entryway with new puzzles and areas, and posted it 
on the thread as if something was seriously wrong with my Doom2.wad. It's a fun 5 minute joke, nothing less, nothing more. It's only here because it's technically a solo wad that I released. Nice on ya for sneakin' in on a technicality!

Help!! Something's Wrong With My Entryway!!'s Doomworld Thread




~ 50 Shades Taller ~ November 21st, 2024 ~

50 Shades of Graytall is one of my favorite wads ever. The limited texture set leads to a surreal brutalist aesthetic that I'm surprised no one has really followed up on. If you're unfamiliar, there are only 3 textures in 50 Shades, GRAYTALL, DOORTRAK and FIREBLU. In the original, you could only
use one flat but I allowed 3 flats just for more variety. And so, 50 Shades Taller was born, a little speedmapping project I did in between working on TropicHELL, mainly to blow off steam and to fuck with the Graytall aesthetic which I love. The aesthetic consistency and limited timeframe led to
one of favorite maps that I've ever done: Map03: The Blu Tower, featuring a skyscraper that you must ride the elevator to the top of to kill a cybie. It's very much a take on the Black Tower from the Master levels which is one of my favorite 90s maps because of it's creativity and adventurous 
spirit. But I used a lot of silent tele trickery and fun stuff. The only thing I regret is the junkfood slaughter fight at the end which is very much half-baked and something I would not do today.

50 Shades Taller's Doomworld Thread




~ Metamorphosis: TLL ~ June 21st, 2025 ~

About a year and a bit after the original Metamorphosis, I released a 9-level set with it at the center, called Metamorphosis: The Lost Levels. This was composed of a lot of semi-speedmaps and unfinished relics from 2024-2025, which I put into one thing. It's my longest solo wad ever, so it's 
funny it barely received any attention at all, and much less than the original Metamorphosis ironically. It's definitely my most overlooked wad, the thing that I felt disappointment from how it was passed up. Happens to every artist at some point, but it stung a bit. Anyways, this wad was born 
out of three separate wads, Metamorphosis of course, but also Velocity, a semi-speedmap project and Mysterii, a surreal hellish project. I linked them all together and gave them continuity. Though there's a lot of incidental combat, I think this has my finest combat encounters in it. The first 
map I remember being very fun to playtest since it's focused on the chainsaw, which I made twice as effective through DeHacked. Plus the map with the Mastermind shooting you over the dam and you drain the water to kill it :3. This wad is also the final wad where I really abused the blue and gray
color scheme, lots of stone, water and dark blue skies run all throughout this one. There's an underhalls-ish vibe to the first episode, and I think I did a good job with my obligatory tribute to map02. Definitely give it a play.


Metamorphosis: TLL's Doomworld Thread




~ Lily's Epic Techbase of Doom ~ August 13th 2025 ~

I had never mapped vanilla after 2 years of Dooming, so this was something I did in a few days. This is the last non-speed map on record for me. It's really good, and I'm probably the happiest with how this one turned out out of anything here, ironically. No custom textures, no fanciness, just 
Doom. I was inspired by Brad Spencer's Entropy from Alien Vendetta, which I find to be fantastic, as well as Brad Spencer's AV techbases more generally. He's one of my favorite mappers for how he makes incidental combat satisfying and uses enemies as progression gates. I did that in this map, 
where at the start you need a blue key to exit and you see a BFG behind a yellow key door. You can find the blue key but it's behind a cyberdemon in a lab cage, so you can't get to the key, until you get the BFG. You could technically beat the level without the yellow key at all, which you have 
to go searching in muck for. It's also pretty ammo tight. I purposefully make all my levels ammo tight now, because I want players to respect the chainsaw and fists. And I think scrounging for ammo is fun. But that's me rambling. Eventually, you get to a machine that you get to blow up via 
explosive barrels which kills a mancubus offscreen and lowers the floor and makes rubble around the destroyed machine to exit. It's a real fun map and I'm glad I made it. I'll definitely be mapping vanilla again, simply because of how fun this one was to make. 

Lily's Epic Techbase of Doom's Doomworld Thread






~ TropicHELL ~ August 17th 2025 ~

Blatantly the end (but not technically the end!) of my time Doom mapping. By early 2025 this project was in defacto hiatus and was limping to the finish line. It was only through pushing and burning all of my energy for Doom to get this thing released that I managed to get it into RC. After this
released I stopped playing Doom altogether. Thinking about managing a wad like this makes me a bit anxious. I was an amateur, I was definitely not ready for the amount of work I would need to pour into it. But I did it. The final wad, is kinda consistent but also very clearly a community project
. Has some very cool maps and some cool custom content. Reskins for weapons and monsters and generally a bit more fun gameplay.  I did stuff like the container ship tyson map, the level where you blow up a house on a beach, the friendly Mancubus dead simple arena. ByRntStarOEI did some crazy 
stuff with the under the sea level and the final magnum opus-y level with 1000 enemies. Then lots of single maps by single mappers which flow fairly well in between. Lots of fun stuff, fun midis, good island vibes. The overall product is pretty good even if it still has bugs (to this day!). The 
reasoning for that is pretty obvious, thinking about touching that file again gives me anxiety. But, it turned out fine regardless.
Another reason for my discomfort was the situation with the transphobic, hateful posts about me on Kiwi Farms from one of the mappers. I removed his map from the project shortly after release, but he ended up rejoining the discord server and cause a stink which prompted me to nuke it. It was a
whole mess that gives me bad feelings to this day. Otherwise, despite my inexperience, TropicHELL was a success. It's a bit miraculous actually. However, I don't think I'll be able to attempt a project with 10 different mappers at such scale ever again. 

TropicHELL's Doomworld Thread



~ Nuts 9000: The Final Nut ~ September 2nd 2025 ~

I saw plerbtex and wanted to do a speedmapping sesh with it. It was mostly goofing off with discord friends, but the result was pretty creative and surreal. My heart wasn't in it very much by this point though, and you can tell by the levels. Though part of it can be blamed on the 2 hour time 
limit, I think the stress of TropicHELL got to me. I quit making levels and playing Doom shortly after the release of this level. Which was 9 months ago. Due to circumstances that have happened in my life, it feels like a lot more but hey, the clock don't lie. I actually am going to (hopefully!)
reuse the plerbnuts resource I made for this for a new wad I'm working on. Hopefully you see it before summer's over, if I can find my muse again.
This was the first MESS (Mount Erebus Speedmapping Series) ever, and the second one was just released as MESS 2: Rust Renegades, led by Claire. I hope the series has a long and fruitful history, much like PUSS and ASS.

Nuts 9000: The Final Nut's Doomworld Thread




So that's the end. The last wad I ever made. I haven't touched a doom editor since. I'll end by saying this: shortly after my final levels, in December of 2025, I fell into a deep depression. I almost ended my life. I quit university. I still haven't fully recovered from that day. I'm sad that 
it just ended because of my own personal failings. I suppose it wasn't my fault in a way. Falling in and out of love is part of the game. But in the process, I destroyed myself creatively, and not just with Doom. It happened slowly until I simply couldn't create anymore. Everything seemed naive 
and stupid. I was paralyzed. And forcing yourself to create is sickening. But I feel like I'm slowly recovering. I'm able to write things like this, whereas 4-6 months ago the idea of writing something like this would make me feel ill. Maybe I'll be able to map soon. I have lots of ideas, and 
I'd like to execute them. And I still love this game and the community a lot. I love BPRD, Magikal, Jaaska, mouldy, Eternal and all my other favorite mappers. I'm glad they made things that brought me escape in the past three to four years. I'm glad for Dean of Doom for getting me into this 
community and all the cool people I've worked with over the years. Thank you.