John Romero’s New Sigil II WAD for The Original Doom’s 30th Anniversary Is Classic Level Design Done Right

Sigil II is the latest episode of Doom created by John Romero, who designed the iconic opening episode of the original game, as well as showing how to do them in a 3D space there wasn’t conventions to follow like there now.

John Romero’s levels in the first Sigil may not have been an intense challenge for players who are highly skilled at Doom, who are used to the brutal difficulty of other WADS, but it was a glimpse into his thinking behind what makes a good Doom level in 2023.

The thing is, some of his levels in Ultimate Doom’s fourth episode were some of the hardest in the original release. Perfect Hatred and Against Thee Wickedly were all vertical, tight levels with pretty challenging enemy layouts.

With Sigil II, what we do get is a difficulty level that goes some way towards satisfying Doom experts, but it’s not the main selling point. The way Sigil II is supposed to play is as if it were a genuine episode of Doom.

It has that addictive ID Software thing to it, where every level feels paced just right; when you play these older games from the 90s, it’s like playing Super Mario Bros levels in platforming, they’re not doing anything crazy, but everything just feels right.

It’s a pure kind of gameplay experience, probably the closest players will get to an official release from ID Software unless a couple of the old guard team up again. Romero doing a whole episode by himself gets to show his take on more open Sandy Peterson style hell-themed levels, and there’s more variety on offer.

Playing through Sigil 2, you always feel led in a direction that makes sense. If you see barrels they will be helpful to use in a fight, if you find a switch hidden it takes just the right amount of searching, if there’s big shoot out near the end of a level there’ll be suspense before. Everything in Romero’s levels flows really well and makes perfect sense.

His form of design is much more about giving a certain feel or flow through the structuring of the maps, and its is as close to storytelling as you are going to get following original Doom design principles.

The fact he is making Doom I levels has annoyed some fans, but I think there’s so much unfinished business in Doom I, and by the time he makes something for Doom II, it will be a similar process of refinement.

Sigil II is best played as part of the Doom 30th anniversary celebration which recently took place on December 10th 2023. There was a stream recently on John Romero’s YouTube channel where he spoke with John Carmack, who designed the engine and co-created Doom, and the two had a lot of interesting stuff to say about tech and gaming, as you would imagine from two legends of the industry.

Sigil II is a free addon for anyone who owns the recent port of Doom enhanced edition, and can be played with open source engines too. It’s made to be more difficult than anything in Sigil I, so it might be worth trying that out first to get accustomed to the type of thing John Romero is making these days, and to see how quickly he’s refining on ideas between the two titles. Sigil II is definitely an improvement on an already worthwhile set of levels.