The Absolute WORST Doom Game EVER

[Chip]

After a while of searching for DOOM 2D in English, I found something that caught my eye. I had never played of it before, and I have certainly not seen it. on the 18th of July, 2019, an odd game was uploaded to Dosgames.com. This game beared the name DOOM! But, in front of it were several odd letters. these letters I had seen before, but I wasn't sure where. I clicked the link, and as I read what this game was, I laughed. You may have played 1337d00m (although I haven't), where DOOM is replaced with ASCII textures. Well, think of an ASCII DOOM game, made for the Magnavox Odyssey. This... is the worst DOOM game EVER!

 

Not much information exists beyond this Dosgames page, and actually, I haven't seen any info about it from anywhere else. A video was provided, and as you can obviously see, the graphics aren't anything great (or anything at all), and there isn't much to do other than run around and shoot something from your something at something with unlimited ammo. The movement is horrendous, as it took me 2 minutes to walk down a hallway that would take 15 seconds in DOOM. The Monsters (or whatever the hell they are) either have unlimited health, or also have 10,000 health on spawn. Either way, I recommend staying away from them, as they aren't much to look at. The description says that you can pick up a gun, but I found another. Obviously, the person that wrote it didn't want to go deep into the game, and probably played it for 10 seconds before their eyes exploded. Here is the description from Dosgames.com

Quote

Oleg Sobolev's ASCII DOOM was apparently made by someone named Oleg Sobolev, although his name does not appear anywhere in the game or in any included files. This is, as you might expect, a 3D shooter-ish game made using text-mode ASCII characters. It's not really "DOOM" in any way but I guess that title gets peoples' interest more than "bad tech demo of a 3D-ish engine in text-mode". You can move around, collect a gun, and shoot, but you can't seem to kill enemies or do much other than explore the small level. Definitely an interesting achievement (see included files for the author's hand-drawn sprites).

so, yeah, not great. It only got a 2 star rating from Dosgames.  The video I was talking about is below, made in 2016, so this game is at least 4-years-old (although it looks pre-Jurassic)

it is only 63 Kb to download, so if you'd for some reason like to play this monstrosity, visit this link. You can also play it on browser

 

I'm not sure what happens when you die, because of the insane amount of health, and that the demons or zombies or whatevers deal only several points of damage per shot. Although, there appears to be a corpse in the folders, so who knows (I didn't look at the image, I just saw its name). It really isn't that impressive, and I just play it because it is simple, but when somebody asks what your least favorite DOOM game is (only evil people would do that), the only words that can be spoken in this order is, "ASCII DOOM."

 

Additional screenshots below. The first one is from Dosgames, the rest are my own.

Look at these zombiemen! They look like rejected Duke Nukem sprites!

this guys preparing for battle, luckily I brought along my thing-a-ma-bob. Also, his face expression is absolute gold!

here is what some of the wall textures look like. Beautiful, I know! I'm not sure what that blue line is, though. I looked more in the next picture, but it disappears at certain angles. There aren't any keys or doors (even though the loading menu says otherwise), so it can't be that. 

Here is a close-up of that blue line. nothing spectacular, but that zombieman looks like a slim jim with a googly eye and a nose stapled onto it.

 

Out of a 10, I'd rate this game a 3. It isn't good, but it's got DOOM in the name, so that gives it a boost of 5 points (still only making it 3). Since this is obviously not by Bethesda, ID, or any good game developer, It might be taken down due to copyright, or forced to change its name to something not with DOOM in it. So, that about sums it up. Try it and tell me how you felt. If you hated it, join everyone else, if you enjoyed it, great for you! Just try not to let this go down in DOOM history (XD). Thank you for reading this, this is definitely one of my longer posts. 

[fufu]

My eyes.

 

I imagine this must be a interesting experiment for people that know more about things like coding, but dear god.

 

Anyway the game wouldn't get in any trouble since it uses original assets and is not making any money from the doom name, i don't know Bethesda/ID policies about fangames but considering they don't have any trouble with mods i imagine they don't care.

[Doomkid]

Well, at least this is kind of interesting on a technical level. There are some Doom and Wolf clones from the early/mid 90's that have no right even existing because they're so forgettable and generic, so this can't be the worst.

 

Also, depending on how easily bored you are, FOOM is pretty uneventful. Doom was not meant to be a text-based adventure - either the graphics being displayed as text, or the actual gameplay experience being translated to text!

[Gez]

Okay, the principle is hilarious. The graphics are not graphics: it's all text! And it's not a lame cheat like "draw a sprite using characters, and then scale it up and down graphically", no, it's pure text, using different ASCII art representations of the sprites for different scales. Including some block elements so it's not strictly text text but it's still text. Also, the music is cool.

 

The zombies do not seem to be killable, though, based on the video.

[Eurisko]

1986 wants its game back.

[Dark Pulse]

To be honest, it's actually kind of impressive and charming in its own way. Slow and clunky without a doubt, but it still takes some actual work and effort, and the game does look more or less functional.

 

That's more than I can say for some other games I've seen and played. Let's cue up this classic.

 

And remember, when it comes to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (and you are most certainly over the road... and under the bridge, and over the mountain, and violating the laws of space-time)...

 

[Final Verdict]

I never could enjoy ASCII art games, my eye was always drawn to the letters and symbols and not the actual image they were trying to convey. The only game where I was able to suffer through it was the early days of Dwarf Fortress, before the tileset packs became popular.

[Chip]

I can't tell if this is based off of a map from a WAD or not, or if you can actually finish it. I was playing it for ten minutes when i decided enough was enough. The movement is unbearably slow (as I mentioned in my original post). Has anybody else even attempted to try this "game?" I don't blame you if you won't, it is literally so bad. 

[Archanhell]

Damn, that ASCIIcore music is so cool, that makes this game a complete 11/10, I accept no objections.

[Dark Pulse]

5 minutes ago, Archanhell said:

Damn, that ASCIIcore music is so cool, that makes this game a complete 11/10, I accept no objections.

The soundtrack actually reminds me of Frozen Synapse.

 

 

[Archanhell]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

The soundtrack actually reminds me of Frozen Synapse.

 

 

 

Wow man that track is actually pretty cool, it sended a chill down my spine and left me frozen!

[Dark Pulse]

12 minutes ago, Archanhell said:

Wow man that track is actually pretty cool, it sended a chill down my spine and left me frozen!

The whole soundtrack is good. I'd also recommend "Focus" (which is actually the song I was trying to embed), "The Plan," "A Functioning God," "Switch," "Schism," and "Concentrate." They're in the playlist on the embed.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Dark Pulse

[Archanhell]

25 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

The whole soundtrack is good. I'd also recommend "Focus" (which is actually the song I was trying to embed), "The Plan," "A Functioning God," "Switch," "Schism," and "Concentrate." They're in the playlist on the embed.

 

Oh yeah I listened to the "Focus" one, and it is actually preeeetty amazing! I like that kind of music, also the likes of ones like GHOST DATA

[nname]

Oh boy, only if I could code something like this...

[Chip]

36 minutes ago, xzotikk said:

Oh boy, only if I could code something like this...

I believe a 4-year-old could program this. LoL

[taufan99]

3 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

I believe a 4-year-old could program this. LoL

You're just underestimating this only because of its look and performance. Making ASCII graphics may not seem like a big hassle nowadays, what with such programs letting you do so instantly, but programming something like this, especially from scratch (?), is no small task, even if the end result (in this case, gameplay-wise) is less-than-stellar, and for that I admire the author.

 

Also, I totally agree with @Doomkid. The Pie in the Sky games are especially the worst offender (which is ironic, since the engine started as one for a flight simulator game before becoming an engine for boring or even awful Wolf3D clones that littered a niche part of the 1990's FPS roster).

[Chip]

@InDOOMnesia It is pretty impressive that somebody did take their time to make this, and that it was actually made, I was making a joke about the simple graphics and incredibly slow gameplay, it's still impressive. Unrelated, this was released back in 1999 I just realized. With its low detail, somebody could be able to port it to the NES. 

[kwc]

Spoiler

Infighting, neat.

I don't know why you have to dunk on what appears to be a cool hobbyist exercise.
While it's sluggish and not exactly fun to play, there are some clever and creative things going on here, it's clear there was quite a bit of thought put into this. 
I particularly enjoy seeing the scaled down versions of the monsters to indicate distance, having to be drawn(typed) multiple times. 

[nname]

12 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

I believe a 4-year-old could program this. LoL

Great, now I'm scared of 4-year-old kids.

[Doom-X-Machina]

23 minutes ago, xzotikk said:

Great, now I'm scared of 4-year-old kids.

I've always found them to be terrifying.

[unerxai]

That's pretty impressive.

 

As a game, it's better than Duke 3D for the game.com

[A Nobody]

On 8/11/2020 at 4:19 AM, Dark Pulse said:

To be honest, it's actually kind of impressive and charming in its own way. Slow and clunky without a doubt, but it still takes some actual work and effort, and the game does look more or less functional.

 

That's more than I can say for some other games I've seen and played. Let's cue up this classic.

 

And remember, when it comes to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (and you are most certainly over the road... and under the bridge, and over the mountain, and violating the laws of space-time)...

 

Beating on a dead horse I see...

[Aaron Blain]

Wow, this is really cool! Thanks for sharing!

 

I was just looking again at this tutorial on YouTube, by OneLoneCoder, showing how to create a Wolf3d-style raytracing engine in the terminal.

[bfredric]

On 8/11/2020 at 4:19 AM, Dark Pulse said:

To be honest, it's actually kind of impressive and charming in its own way. Slow and clunky without a doubt, but it still takes some actual work and effort, and the game does look more or less functional.

 

That's more than I can say for some other games I've seen and played. Let's cue up this classic.

 

 

 

i don’t see a problem with that game

 

??

[Dark Pulse]

5 hours ago, bfredric said:

i don’t see a problem with that game

 

??

So you missed...

• Being able to drive through a bridge
• No speed limit on reverse
• IMMEDIATE stopping on a dime once you let go of reverse
• Being able to drive through buildings
• Being able to drive up vertical cliffs and mountains
• Being able to drive outside the world and into the void
• Floating tail lights that aren't attached to the bumper
• Mid-2000s Pepsi cans

You're winner, alright!

[Redneckerz]

10 hours ago, Aaron Blain said:

Wow, this is really cool! Thanks for sharing!

 

I was just looking again at this tutorial on YouTube, by OneLoneCoder, showing how to create a Wolf3d-style raytracing engine in the terminal.

The idea of running Doom in a terminal/ANSI color textmode (As opposed to SMMU''s textmode renderer, which is the closest equivalent) is infinitely fasicinating.

 

There are two projects called (FBDoom) (Version 1), (Version 2)  to run Doom on a pure Linux framebuffer. Not the same, obviously, but nevertheless interesting.

 

Personally, i'd love a Doom port that effectivelly utilizes Textmode in the Win32 console properly. There is TextGL based off TinyGL, that enables OpenGL-like functions through textmode, but at that low a resolution, a lot of CPU grunt is available. There is also TextFX.

 

Additional Textmode resources is here. 

[CAM-7EA]

Definitely looks ugly, but most of these sorts of things always look ugly. It seems these are usually more of a passion project for the person(s) behind them than they are “games” meant to be enjoyed by gamers, and releasing them is usually done as a proof of concept more than anything else.

 

Out of all the ones I’ve seen, I think the ZX Spectrum “Doom” was the most well done program similar to this one you posted. 
 

The thing I always wondered was why they didn’t try Wolfenstein 3D instead more often than trying to do Doom. It seems it would fit these types of engines better than Doom, but I suppose the name Doom is much easier to get people to click on, I mean, here we are now. 
 

Thanks for sharing this, I had never seen or heard of this one before. 

[Caffeine Freak]

Okay, this was obviously not meant to be visually appealing. I can definitely see the charm behind something like this: it has a 'stayed up for 3 days straight on a mixture of cocaine and caffeine tablets to finish this final project for my computer science course' look and feel to it. It's sluggish and crudely implemented, but at the same time, a lot of serious thought went into the crude implementation. The way the enemies are constructed of different arrangements of slashes, parenthesis, dashes and underscores that all change depending on distance is pretty trippy.

[doomsucksass]

On 8/12/2020 at 12:49 AM, LiT_gam3r said:

I was making a joke about the simple graphics and incredibly slow gameplay, it's still impressive.

Haha, sure you were...

[Orake]

I do not understand that people do not like this game so much ... it looks like an interesting indy game like undertail and heltaker :3