Cacowards 2021 Mentionation Thread

Golden Souls Remastered!

I'll also chime in with a Skulltiverse mention. Unsuspectingly played it with the DWMegawad club and found it to be a great experience with a fair few memorable maps.

Judgment by Rayziik. Looks great, plays great, and feels fresh due to the changes.

On 10/12/2021 at 12:33 AM, edypagaza said:

i dominate my mod Doom Fighters

https://www.moddb.com/mods/doom-fighters

I'll nominate it as well.

Ashes: Afterglow by Vostyok is an absolute no-brainer nomination. It could easily be sold as a standalone game if it didn't use a lot of kitbashed stuff from other games. Its release was also accompanied by a remastered and expanded version of the original Ashes 2063.

Afterglow is extremely polished and just massive. Reminds me of Hedon: Bloodrite - huge semi-open-world hubs with towns to shop and take on sidequests at.

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=69612

I gotta +1 for Heartland, Atmospheric Extinction and Corruption Cards.

Also curious if mods/mapsets that arent mentioned here are actually looked at for consideration or are just lost in the Ethers of 2021?

40 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I gotta +1 for Heartland, Atmospheric Extinction and Corruption Cards.

 

Also curious if mods/mapsets that arent mentioned here are actually looked at for consideration or are just lost in the Ethers of 2021?

From what I understand the point of this thread is just to mention wads hence “mentionations.” So the cacos are going to go to whoever the team wants to give them to, this thread might point them to something they haven’t thought of or heard of, but it doesn’t have any bearing on what’s actually picked.

57 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

Also curious if mods/mapsets that arent mentioned here are actually looked at for consideration or are just lost in the Ethers of 2021?

For the crew specifically, the thread is one helpful resource of a few to help everyone notice everything. There have been some winners (Cacowards and runners-up and other special awards) that got 0 mentions that year. I'm currently playing a couple of wads that haven't gotten a mention yet, which has been typical for me.

So nothing really needs to be mentioned (I'd actually be worried if it had to). But it helps.

More generally, the thread can be a decent way of measuring community hype, which doesn't really shape award placements but can be useful in other ways. And a lot of people use this thread for play recommendations and keeping track of stuff themselves, and on top of that it's simply a good place for being excited about the year's output. So that's why it's still fine to mention things like Heartland, even if it wouldn't be missed if skillsaw posted it only on a random website that looks like this.

34 minutes ago, rd. said:

So that's why it's still fine to mention things like Heartland, even if it wouldn't be missed if skillsaw posted it only on a random website that looks like this.

I miss this school of web design so, so much. Next person to host a megawad on a site like Dino's gets a free Cacoward on me. I'm not even a member of the team but I'll make it work.

Damn, I could go for some pizza piez.

New mention! I updated my older post, but this is totally worth adding even as an honorable mention.

Doom Cube   !!! Yes it finally exists. Based off the 1997 movie from Scifi channel. Contains over 20 different rooms to get lost and die horrible trappy deaths in and a teleporter randomizer script! See if you can beat this true survival horror that has been doomified! Zdoom family wad and written for zdoom 2.8  https://www.moddb.com/games/doom-ii/addons/doomcube

5 hours ago, rd. said:

it's still fine to mention things like Heartland, even if it wouldn't be missed if skillsaw posted it only on a random website that looks like this.

In fact, if the website looks like that, I'd be roughly 400% more likely to find it!

11 hours ago, Master O said:

 

I'll nominate it as well.

Me too... is that a 3d player model? pretty cool!

IT does have a bug when using idkfa though and the lack of any type of shooting otherwise making some enemies unkillable, most beat them ups also have some type of ranged powerup

Ashes Afterglow

18 hours ago, rd. said:

So that's why it's still fine to mention things like Heartland, even if it wouldn't be missed if skillsaw posted it only on a random website that looks like this.

Now we just have to wait to see which well-known mapper makes a late-90's Geocities-style website just to post their mapset.

Another mention for Augur;Zenith. What a wonder of a map set. Loved just looking around!

Just discovered there:

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=68812

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=66635

Why bring Doomguy to Smash, when you can... bring Smash to Doom?

One of the better mods I have seen in development this year: 
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=69883

Cherubcorp has been working his tail off on this anime-inspired mod of angelic proportions. It also has compatibility with several (if not most) other weapons mods including demonic cards as well. 
I really encourage anyone to check out this mod. It's not just the aesthetic, each enemy is unique with unique attacks. The lower tier enemies are my favorite, especially this little shotgun duo that when you kill them her bestie comes up to shank you and you have to kill her too. 

axolotl.wad!

I wish to nominate two WADs whose authors demonstrated truly mind-bending attention to detail:

The first is 3-map mod named Archi-Tek, which is also the first WAD released publicly by the author. Its beta appeared back in 2020, but the final version was released this year in this thread:

And the second is recently released long map for Doom 1 named Command Control Redux. Again there are many little details that help build the atmosphere, and the player actually has to pay attention to obtain better gear. It almost feels like some oldschool RPG games in this regard:

I think these also deserve a nomination :p

- Angelic Aviary

- Doom Fighters

- Descent Doom

- Corruption Cards

- Combined arms

- Time Tripper
 

•@Gaia74's IkaDoom

•Corruption Cards

(No thread made on DoomWorld for this one.)

•Divine Frequency 

(Same as above, it's currently a very long demo but it's really worth to mention this awesome horror mod.)

•Abysm 2

•Vomitoreum

(To be honest I don't know if this can count.)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1549750/Vomitoreum/

•Shrine I and II

Ashes Afterglow

Ps. I forgot about new Wolfenstein :)

V0RPAL's : Wolfenstein X Hearts Of Liberty (Final Edition)

Better than Wolfenstein Blade of Agony. :)

Toby Accessibility Mod deserves a mention. It's a really neat project!

Vaeros's Ad Mortem, a nice and stylish MBF21 set with great maps, great music, and some great new enemies and weapons!

Now that this is fully released...

It certainly has issues and I do have few gripes with it; however it is a great project that combines Doom and Blood
in such way that it doesn´t feel jarring or out of place. It is apparent that a lot of work and care went into this, and it shows.
I strongly believe this one deserves a honorable mention at least.

+Arrival

+Bourgeois Megawad

+Cydonia

+Doom 2 In Spain Only

+Heartland

+Micro Slaughter Community Project

+Tarnsman's Projectile Hell

Well it's safe to say that although KINDa is not by any means a master piece, some things by the author's style really stands out, not to mention, he made a quite consistent 32-level megawad all by himself, so I'd like to mention +TheMightyWhoosh as a promising newcomer.

+Judgment

One of the best Megawads I've played this year, and oh boy, I've played a lot of things this year.