Doom Musings: "Gimmick" maps

You see it time and time again, the mapper in question gets inspiration from an original IWAD level from the original Doom games. Or perhaps gets the inspiration from an inspirational PWAD like Scythe. And then you have WADs that are completely out of the ordinary and make you think outside the box in order to beat them. Or think both inside and outside the box and then some more. So that's what gimmick maps do. And frankly a lot more of them are coming into place, either taking the limitations of whatever community project they are in and trying to make them seem interesting in some ways. Again, having played so many WADs I'm so accustomed to seeing these gimmicks more or less. So what do we have gimmicks-wise that I see so often?

Sasha maps

I implore you to look up the author Sasha for this one. Sasha is a mapper who has made the "Tarakannik" series, but also Dance. These WADs all vary but you're gonna be doing some incredible outside-the-box thinking in order to even come close to surviving. This is quite blatant in Dance, which often features monster-less maps that do completely weird things like platforming (although this does take advantage of ZDoom stuff, so it's better than any sort of Doom platforming somehow). Some of his monster placements will exemplify slaughter, which I won't count as a gimmick, while others basically involve staying out of harms way from projectiles that fly and other such weird gimmicks. It's all full of puzzles. Having recently played Doomworld Mega Project 2017, I have noticed that his submission involves collecting all the rockets and then going through some trials. Now I'm not sure if Sasha's mapping actually does have some inspiration (I'm gonna guess no) but damn if I ever found anything as unique as this.

Timed maps

There's actually quite a few good examples of this, the simplest of these basically involves a voodoo doll getting crushed or otherwise killed after a preset time passes. Batman Doom MAP11, Fragport MAP30, Perdition's Gate MAP30, Community Chest MAP20, the entirety of Skulldash. These are all great examples of this kind of gimmick, and you'll be forced to go through several areas in a speedrun-ish fashion. This basically means that the level layouts need to be speedrun friendly as well. A different example is Doom 2 Reloaded MAP09, where you have to speedrun that level, then head to the middle area, after locking the room in, then using the big crusher to crush this normally-impossible invasion force. It's quite snazzy, but there was an issue with the ghost monsters on some source ports.

Stealth maps

Stealth isn't really Doom's thing. You're more likely to run and gun trying to kill everything in sight in Doom. Nevertheless, some maps exemplify stealth in ways. The aforementioned Doom 2 Reloaded has one in MAP18, a warehouse where if you make a noise, a bunch of arch-viles teleport everywhere and the map won't be beatable. Basically you have to run through places, avoid areas where dead marines are, and trap some enemies that could block the way and all. I'm pretty sure there are other examples in this surprisingly uncommon gimmick, the most recent of which I can think of being Entropy with its BFG segment and areas where you can shoot and area's you shouldn't. Not shooting your weapon is generally used even in the original gimmick level Tricks and Traps with the cyberdemon killing all his baron lackeys for you, although in this case it's a lesser example.

Progressive challenge maps

One of my favorite things about certain levels is that the exit is available early. As a completionist, I tend to go for just about everything in a map, but having an exit available early is a great thing for many other players who get tired of a level (especially a long one) and just want to end it. Reverie's secret level Metal Mansion is a good example, the only issue with it is you miss out on the super secret exit of the map. But there's not much effort to get to the normal exit. Solving the metal mansion naturally is a progressively harder challenge, you go around, killing the occasional monster or group, then the outdoor and caged areas are murder-fests. The once-again aforementioned Doom 2 Reloaded has a blatant example in its super secret level itself, giving ways to multiple ways to get certain secrets, plus each enemy is basically progressively tougher. However, each area has a normal exit should you decide you can't make your way to the grand prize at the end. Another completely blatant example is at Deus Vult II MAP29, you can choose to go through the original Deus Vult or you can just leave right away.

"Wormhole" levels

Everyone remembers TNT: Evilution's Wormhole, a map that is the same on two different sides except what's encountered. The levels inspired by it are pretty cool in their paralleling of things, and of course TNT projects like THT Threnody and Revilution love this gimmick. Going Down's Time Warp level also utilizes it to some way. I don't get tired of this one.

Speaking of Going Down, one of my favorite megawads ever, it is built entirely on good gimmicks. As far as I can tell though, gimmick maps are almost always memorable, either using common gimmicks like the above, or other gimmicks like using crushers or damaging floors or starvation or other such things (which are way too common anyways). However, these maps for the most part are both memorable and good. A select few can honestly be crappy.