Everyone wants to get in on the Battle Royale craze. It's hugely popular right now and it totally makes sense why given how big smash hits like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite have become. While a lot of games have started adding in Battle Royale modes to their offerings, the one game you probably didn't think would be on the receiving end of such an update was Doom... yes, Doom. However, it's not the high-end, graphically intensive 2016 reboot version of Doom that has received the Battle Royale treatment. Some modders took some time out of their day to rework id Software's 1994 sequel release with a Battle Royale mode, and it's all kinds of crazy. You can take a gander at the zaniness for yourself.
The near three-minute video gives you a brief look at what Doom II from PC would be like if it were oriented around a Battle Royale mode. The video was posted up over on the Retrodex Gaming channel.
The video starts at a frenetic pace, as is common with Doom. It may be running on the Doom II engine, but the map is an amalgamation of stages from the first Doom combined into one, including E1M1 and E1M2.
There are a couple of things worth noting in the video: First and foremost, there's the chat notification. As many users pointed out in the YouTube comment section, the chat noise can be rather annoying given that it sounds like an old telephone from 1995. There's also the fact that there appear to be NPCs in the map but it turns out that those aren't NPCs at all.
Over on the ModDB page, Retrodex Gaming reveals that when players bite the dust they respawn as zombie dudes, shotgun guys, or chaingun men. This is to keep players active in the match even when they know they can't win. They can still attempt to score some kills and even waylay campers who decide to hide out for the entire match. It's a neat element of subversion compared to the way the traditional Battle Royale modes play out.
There are still a lot of little and big things that need sorting in the mod, though. As explained on the ModDB page, Retrodex has plans on merging five maps into one and create an intertwining flow between the Doom levels in order to create a properly scaled Battle Royale experience, similar to how Fortnite has various areas specifically made as if they were a separate map combined into one, or how Treyarch uses an expanded map in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 for the Blackout mode.
Retrodex also has plans to include maps from Doom 64, as well as maps from the other episodes.
Additional quality of life features such as player-tracking, win conditions, and an updated HUD are also on the table, along with being able to control bot spawns, and a few other features. You can download the Doom Royale mod right now and give it a go if you still have a copy of Doom II
