Two and a half decades since the launch of the original Doom, one of the original creators of the game, John Romero, has released a series of nine new levels under the banner of "Sigil." Described by him as a Doom "megawad," it's effectively a mod, or expansion that picks up where the game's original episodes left off, expanding the story and the elements of Doom's world.
Despite it being such a long time since the original Doom game was released, John Romero has regularly revisited his first success story. Often when crafting new games, he first makes a few levels in the original Doom editor to get back into his developmental mindset. With Sigil, though, he appears to have wanted to do something special just for Doom's sake.
"I wanted the levels to feel like they belong to the original game as if they were a true fifth episode," he said on the official Sigil site. "There’s more detail in the levels than episodes 1-4, but not overly so. I believe that people playing Sigil will recognise my design style, but see new things I’m doing because this episode does not take place on a military base—it takes place in Hell, which is new to me within Doom’s design space. There’s a massive room in E5M6 that is the coolest room I’ve created in any map."
In expanding the story, players will have to venture deep into Hell itself, confronting entirely new challenges:
"After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth — you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth’s savior. In summary, rip and tear!"
Sigil will contain nine levels in total and when released they will be playable in both single player and multiplayer modes. They will be released free on the Sigil site in February, although Romero is also offering two options for limited edition physical copies. Buyers will get a floppy disk with the levels on, as well as a CD soundtrack. The super special edition will have a pewter statue of a John Romero head on a spike too.