Old-school Doom does battle royale with a new mod

A team of modders has ginned up a way to play Doom 2 as a battle royale-style multiplayer game. While the mod, called Doom Royale (With Cheese) is still in development, the eventual goal is to have 64 players competing to be the last marine standing.

The mod is the brainchild of Retrodex Gaming. It leverages the original, 1994 PC version of Doom 2 and loads in as an alternate WAD, the bundle of files used to hold the original game’s levels. The mod is currently in testing, played mainly against bots.

Of course, those who’ve played the original game, especially in multiplayer, know that old-school Doom is a much more fluid experience than something like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Even in Fortnite, often times players are prone to hunker down and snipe each other at range. In Doom Royale, there’s very little cover to speak of. The entire map right now is an interior space, a warren of narrow, dimly lit corridors.

That hasn’t stopped people from trying to stand still. In the latest update on ModDB, the team announced that it has a way “to weed out the new-school campers.” When players die, they will later respawn as classic Doom enemies, including Zombiemen, Shotgun Guys or a Heavy Weapon Dudes.

Right now, Retrodex is still handling basic issues like the shape of the map and the contents of the HUD. Eventually, they say they hope to add additional maps based on other famous old-school locations from the Doom franchise. You can read more on the official website.