As I continue my game dev journey I play many games, and see many many more. I try to learn something from every game I play, instead of just playing through the game. This week I spent some time playing the newest in the Doom series, Doom Eternal. It was an absolute joy to play though, as it has the most important aspect to creating a game, fun. I feel that if a game isn’t “Fun” why bother making it, and Doom Eternal really capitalizes on that fact. Dashing around a room and being forced to think on the fly about your actions really make doom an enjoyable experience, and also who doesn’t like killing demons?
a small history
The first Doom game came out in 1993 and was one of the first FPS games, and started the trend of people calling games “Doom clones”. Which was actually any term for First person shooter games. It was developed by Id software at the time, after Wolfenstein 3D which was also one of the first FPS games. What was interesting about these games is they looked 3D, however most of the sprites within were 2D which is a technique that I compare to my game as a 2.5D style. As the years pass more and more iterations of the game Doom continue to be made, showing how much a game can be changed throughout its life and still be fun to play almost 30 years later.
current doom
In 2016 the franchise was rebooted by Id software, and while I played the 2016 game, it just didn’t feel the same as Eternal. Showing simply how much they can improve on a formula. Eternal felt more like a platforming game with shooting mechanics then just a first person shooter, and as you progressed through the game the player’s skills had to increase with the increasingly difficult enemies you encountered. It was very well designed and had a very good difficulty curve. This is something that is extremely hard to pull off well, as many games are just known to be extremely difficult from the start, such as souls like games. Doom Eternal wasn’t necessarily the dark souls of first person shooters, as I played on the normal difficulty. This was a great choice for me because I died just often enough that I felt challenged, but not enough that I wanted to switch to an easier difficulty.
But why are you writing about doom here?
As I said above the design of games is very important, because they determine if the game is enjoyable to the player. People enjoy playing games with their friends, so multiplayer games tend to have a lot more playability because of this. Their friends make it enjoyable. However for a single player game, you can’t rely on a aspect like this, and have to create something that gets people talking about your game. Doom does this by being violent, and by being completely absurd. Then people also stay with the game because its fun, these combine to draw people in and create a unique memorable experience. Something that I hope to recreate in my games, but on a smaller scale. The goal would be to find something fun for the players, and give them something to talk about with their friends, that gives games staying power.
Music
The music in doom is very stylized and fits into the aesthetic extremely well, a mix of metal and EDM to create the perfect blend of music for slaying demons.
As always thanks for reading, and if you would like to see more game updates from me that aren’t just walls of text, please follow me on twitter!
Ryan o/
Ventus Games Lead Programmer and Designer
VENTUS GAMES 