#610: Sanguine Holy Land
Bloody good gothic Dooming
Initial release: April 13, 2024
Platform: PC (Doom mapset for limit-removing ports)
Developer: Doomer Boards
Mods used: Walpurgis 0.99 (playing as Crusader); Merciless Monsters 1.0; Flashlight++ 9.1 (set to lamp preset)
Plenty has been said about the Doomer Boards, that illiberal, anarchic last bastion of the Doom community’s misfits, but however you might feel about them or the idea that the Doomer Boards Projects are intended to whitewash their reputation, there’s no denying that the DBP series has been a showcase for some real talent. With nearly 70 releases across six years, DBP has earned a reputation for bite-sized, uniquely-themed (sometimes bordering on partial conversion) episodes. Not everything can reach the dizzying heights of AUGER;ZENITH or Zeppelin Armada, but one thing’s for sure: there’s always something new around the corner every month or so.
Take Sanguine Holy Land, for instance. For the sixty-fifth entry in the series, project leader BiZ wrote the following prompt: “ornate marble shrines and blood sacrifices.” The folks at Doomer Boards certainly delivered. While in terms of actual styling, Sanguine’s texture set is yet another variant on the well-loved gothic theme, but this one leans towards a delightfully contrasting red/black/gold/white color scheme. The end result is quite striking: sprawling temple complexes against a blood-red sky and a deep red autumn theme, like a much more stylistic version of earlier DBP Morbid Autumn.
(Disclaimer: I played through this using the excellent Walpurgis, playing as the Crusader with Dimensional Instability mode turned off and using the Merciless Monsters mod which replaces the vanilla monsters with tougher, more fantasy-themed variants, as well as Flashlight++ 9.1 with the Lamp preset. I did watch a vanilla playthrough on Youtube to get a better sense of how the wad plays on its own.)
DBP veteran BiZ (also known as AskYourDrAboutUVFast) is in charge as the project lead this time, contributing three out of the fourteen maps (all of which include the interesting feature of a desiccated corpse that calls you “guv’nor.”) Other DBP regulars include Sergey “SilverMiner” Burow, CittyKat112 who has grown tremendously as a mapper since Havoc in Creation, thehockster, and Rancid Sam (who seems to like Puella Magi Madoka Magica if the automap art on MAP11 I found is any indication.) We also have maps by relative newcomers suzerduzer, derblanca, RastaManGames (who had quite the lengthy resume even before signing on with DBP), Async Unicorn, and Shiroi.
While DBPs have traditionally been a bit uneven — they are, after all, glorified speedmapping events — Sanguine is a very solid play. With thirteen maps plus a credits map, it’s a bit of a longer episode than usual for the Doomer Boards; most of the maps lean very much into the high quality we’ve come to expect from projects like this, though SilverMiner’s maps are more abstract, straying away from the gothic temples and castles to manifest as more of a sort of red Plutonia. I don’t think there’s any real stinkers in this map at all, in spite of some technical issues that might be due to my setup (doors not opening when they should.)
If you’re playing straight vanilla, the monster roster is basically the same as ever, but with some cool changes. The spiderdemon has been replaced with another, weaker cyberdemon, this one with gold guts rather than red. (This might be why I kept running into issues with Merciless Monsters’ cybie replacements getting stuck.) The zombieman and shotgun guy have had hooded reskins, the cacodemon is more of a gold color, and so on. It’s well-fitting with the bloody gothic theme.
I had fun with Sanguine Holy Land. I wouldn’t go as far as to say this is my favorite DBP, but if you’re looking for a different spin on the gothic theme, with some fun choices for music, you could do worse. It’s a bloody good time.
-june❤
DBP65: Sanguine Holy Land can be downloaded at Doomworld.
