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Doom, the Roguelike

aka: DRL, DoomRL

Description

This game is a mix between two classic games: Rogue, the text-only dungeon crawl role-playing game that has spawned a whole genre of games, and DOOM, one of the breakthrough games for 1st-person shooter genre.

The story is the same as in Doom: You are some soldier performing his monotonic duties in a space base on Phobos -- when suddenly your base is attacked. The only way out is through. Equipped only with a pistol, you start to shoot your way through the mazes.

Early versions were text-only: instead of DOOM's 3D environment, the game world is rendered as a 2D grid of ASCII graphics (sound offects were borrowed from the original game). A later update added an optional graphics mode, using tile-based artwork, and a soundtrack of remixed DOOM tunes plus original material.

Apart from the style, this game is a straight Rogue-like dungeon crawler. The gameplay is turn-based, with each action taking a certain amount of time. As in a role-playing game, the character has different stats that increase with his experience -- he can reload faster, do more damage, shoot more accurately etc. During the game, you find different weapons and power-ups, all well-known to doom players (blue sphere power-ups, green armor etc.).

The game is freeware and was written in FreePascal, using the Valkyrie library by the same developer.

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Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

11 People (4 developers, 7 thanks)

Game by
Feedback and Ideas
Simugraph Library
Roguelike Development Site
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Reviews

Trivia

Business model

Although it is listed here as being freeware, DoomRL actually is Donationware -- as all of Kornel Kisielewicz's games so far.

Legal threat

On December 2, 2016, ZeniMax Media, Inc., the owner of the Doom trademark, sent a formal takedown notice to Doom the Roguelike's developer, Kornel Kisielewicz, stating that the website's use of the Doom name infringes upon their intellectual property. Since Doom the Roguelike had been around for nearly fifteen years without incident, it has been suggested that ZeniMax had been prompted to do so after Kornel started a Kickstarter campaign for his new game, Jupiter Hell, which had been advertised as being "by the creator of Doom, the Roguelike" - which might be interpreted as exploiting a trademarked name for monetary gain.

In the end, Kornel Kisielewicz changed the game's official name to simply DRL, and all references on the official website to Doom, the Roguelike were changed to D**m, the Roguelike. The game's source code was also made available on GitHub, which was a move Kornel originally planned to do after the Kickstarter campaign ended.

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 23646

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by General Error.

Linux added by Rola. DOS added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, Sciere, JudgeDeadd, Patrick Bregger.

Game added August 26th, 2006. Last modified February 22nd, 2023.