#621: Evil Egypt

Early Doomer Board Project has you Dooming like an Egyptian

Initial release: May 1, 2020
Platform: PC (Doom mapset for limit-removing ports)
Developer: Doomer Boards
Mods used: Gothic Doom, Shades of Doom, 150 Skins, Flashlight++ 9.1, Retro FX

Say what you will about the Doomer Boards, but I admire their knack for finding underused or even completely unique themes to map within — everything from cyberpunk, to an unofficial Halloween Harry/Alien Carnage sequel, to steampunk, to a Spaceballs tribute, to even the Doom 3 setting. It’s only natural that they’d do an Egyptian-themed project, given that Ancient Egypt has informed some of the Doom community’s most famous maps — Evilution’s MAP31: “Pharoah”, Alien Vendetta’s MAP20: “Misri Halek”, a sizable portion of both Scythe 2 and Epic 2, among many others. So here we have Evil Egypt, the 23rd entry in the long-running Doomer Boards Projects with twelve solid maps and a final ending map to blow a couple hours with.

Standard mod disclosure: I used Gothic Doom (specifically the weapons module,) Shades of Doom for a more Egyptian flavor to the monsters, Doomkid’s 150 Skins so I can play as the Hunter protagonist I often use, Flashlight++ 9.1 set to a lantern preset, and Retro FX for that slightly more retro/oldschool charm.

Evil Egypt isn’t really much like Serious Sam, despite the similarity in setting. I would say it’s more like an Egypt-flavored Plutonia, mostly in terms of encounter design. Obviously being a glorified speedmapping project means that an accurate comparison is a bit of a moving target, especially with a fully eleven different mappers across thirteen maps. Jon “40oz” Vail is the project leader again, with three maps making him the only repeat mapper for this project. We also get contributions from thegrb (who doesn’t seem to have any other work,) NaZa (mostly known for his leading the Eagle Speedmapping Sessions,) Jack “Jaxxoon R” Stewart (a DBP veteran who has also contributed to the Doomer Bards Krew projects), Fenes “DooM_RO” Octavian (whose resume includes several other DBP entries,) VigilantDoomer (who like thegrb has no obvious resume on Doomwiki,) DBP veterans dmdr, Big Ol’ Billy and the always audacious Ilya “joe-ilya” Lazarev, community project staple James “Phobus” Cresswell, and finally Glen “glenzinho” McColl (who has been involved with DBP almost since the beginning.)

With so many cooks, Evil Egypt is quite a varied soup, from the more abstract offerings of dmdr’s “Phallic Separation” or Big Ol’ Billy’s “Cigars of the Pharoah” to the full-on tomb raiding of thegrb’s “The Tomb of Archvilotep” and joe-ilya’s audaciously-named “Misri Halek Pt. II.” Storyline-wise you seem to be an adventurer of sorts — intermission texts namedrop “Croft” and “Jones” — who, upon exploring an ancient tomb, wind up getting sucked into the Egyptian underworld, which currently seems to be under occupation by the forces of Hell. This mixing of mythologies is weird, but ah well, you’re not really here to debate Kemetism, you’re here to shoot a bunch of demons!

The early maps are probably a bit more difficult than the back half. You’re pretty under-armed for the kind of stuff that gets thrown at you, for example the arch-vile/imp/revenant ambush in “O Isis und Osiris;” by the time you reach the second episode, you should be better equipped, eventually even grabbing a BFG to make some of the more slaughtery encounters manageable or even trivial.

I liked Evil Egypt. While like any community project, by the Doomer Boards or otherwise, it has its highs and lows, Evil Egypt is a pretty solid play through and through. If you’ve burned your way through Epic 2 and whatnot and are looking for more Ancient Egypt-flavored stuff, you really could do worse.

-june❤

Evil Egypt can be downloaded from /idgames.