ZDoom is dead. Lilith.pk3 is alive.

Lilith.pk3 (simply lilith from here) embodies a very important but often overlooked tenet of horror: the concept of wrongness. Cheap horror is easy to make, easy to consume, and easy to identify; all it needs to do is startle you. It needs to make you jump, it needs to make you shout, it needs to stimulate your fight-or-flight response. Cheap horror is often conflated as being “bad” horror, which I think is unfair. There’s always going to be a place for cheap horror, whether it be because we’re looking to be startled or because we’re looking to deride something that thought it could startle us, but the underlying idea of cheap horror is that it’s always kind of fun. We get a thrill at either our own expense or at the expense of the work; we laugh as we come down from the scare because they got us good, or we laugh at the creator who thought their screaming Jeff the Killer picture was going to get us. Cheap horror is fun.

I won’t dare call lilith “elevated horror”, largely because I think that’s a term reserved for exclusive use by Letterboxd users who believe themselves to be above shit like Paranormal Activity. But lilith is a very different kind of horror than we usually see in video games, especially those made by independent creators, and even moreso from those creators who are making DOOM wads. lilith doesn’t try to startle; it tries to fuck with you. It worms its way around the corners of your brain and makes you question everything, knowing that something is wrong but not being able to tell what that something is. The clown-vomit graphics that make it impossible to tell what’s a wall, what’s a door, what’s an enemy — they make you paranoid. You start tilting at windmills. You whip around and blast two shells into a skewered UAC soldier because you thought he was an enemy. An ammo box gets recolored and you have to spend precious time figuring out whether or not it’s safe to touch. Your gun disappears while you’re fighting Revenants. You get teleported into a hall of mirrors and unload minigun fire in all directions in the hopes that you hit something. Nothing works the way it’s supposed to. lilith preys on you, like a malevolent spirit. It drains you. lilith is not fun.

As much love as I have for the original two DOOM games, I never got too deep into the fan scene. I played the official episodes, and I messed around with Russian Overkill a few times, but most of my experience with wads was pretty tertiary. With that in mind, I don’t know if lilith was more or less effective on me than it would have been if I was a DOOM veteran. There’s a lot here that’s clearly broken, that clearly doesn’t work the way that it should, but I’m left wondering if there are even more subtle changes that a layman like myself missed out on. Lost Souls felt like they were taking more damage than they otherwise would have, but I’m not sure; Archviles seemed like they had fast monsters enabled just for themselves, but I’m not sure; certain sound effects like screams would play over the music that didn’t sound like they were in the base game, but I’m not sure. This uncertainty, I think, probably adds a lot more than it takes away. Fear of the unknown is a common element of horror, after all. Is it better that I don’t know?

This might be me editorializing a bit, but I started to get the feeling while I was playing that it was leaning into the idea of the body breaking down; of getting old, of falling apart. You’ll walk up a flight of stairs just fine, only to start getting stuck on the exact same set of stairs the next time you try to climb them. You can make out flashes of Doomguy’s face through the garbled mess that is his sprite every now and then, and it sometimes seems like he’s grimacing in pain even when he’s not taking damage. Splash screens between levels warn you that your files are corrupted, that the emergency help commands aren’t working. Text becomes increasingly illegible the further you get. Textures become even more unreadable than they already were. The game ends with text asking “WHO AM I WHO AM I” over and over again with no explanation for whether those are Doomguy’s thoughts, or if it’s lilith speaking directly to the player. Fans who try to make a “lilith explained” are going to wind up short, largely because lilith is playing its cards close to the chest; again, in an era where indie horror seems almost desperate to have MatPat make a video for them, lilith defies explanation. The closest thing we have to any out-of-universe explanation is a note from the author about how they used to keep magnets on top of their DOOM floppies. There’s something to understand here, something that exists, but it’s unknowable. We can guess, but we can’t know. Nothing is explained. Nothing can be understood.

A lot of rules are being broken, here. One level starts you off in a maze, and as you walk around it, you start being bitten by a Pinky. You look around and you don't see shit. Your immediate assumption is that there's a Specter, so you back up and shoot, and you hit nothing. You step forward again and get bitten again. You look around a second time and notice a Pinky at the far end of the hall biting you from all the way down there because it has hitscan. Imp fireballs will linger in the air where they're thrown, and walking into a stationary one will deal full damage. Cyberdemons and Spider Masterminds shoot massive barrages of rockets and laser blasts, but they travel in slow motion; if you don't keep moving, you'll get rocked by a wall of heavy ordinance. I was going to take a minute to talk about how the maps are laid out, but then I realized that the automaps have been published online and I can just show you some pictures, instead. What is this? What the fuck is this?

It shouldn’t go unsaid that this mod made people fucking mad. While I think a lot of people largely just didn’t get it — it’s equally likely that an artsy wad was hardly the thing that some were booting up 1994’s best shooter to play — the most notable person that it pissed off was Graf Zahl. So-named after the localized German title for the Count of Counting, Graf Zahl shit his fucking ass over lilith taking home a Cacoaward. His shitfit was unique, however, because he had skin in the game; lilith relies wholly on exploiting bugs found exclusively in ZDoom, and the mod refuses to run if you play it in any of the significantly more popular and not-deprecated source ports such as GZDoom. Graf Zahl contributed quite a bit to ZDoom, and GZDoom was a fork that he originally made (if you’ve ever wondered why it’s called “GZDoom”, it’s because those are his initials). Seeing someone exploit his old, bad code and get celebrated for it while some of his favorite GZDoom-exclusive wads got snubbed made him so mad that he threatened to quit developing GZDoom entirely. It wasn’t the first time he’d made such threats. The last time he’d done it, he purged his project pages; still, though, mirrors of GZDoom were back up and running within a few days at most, and his absence was barely even felt by the larger community until he returned four years later. Him getting mad again meant that everyone openly mocked him for a bit and moved on, certain that he’d never follow through on quitting or purging his uploads. Some of the co-developers of GZDoom took his threats seriously, but they were entirely hot air, and he went back to continuing his work like nothing ever happened. It’s a strange and funny footnote to a DOOM mod that’s otherwise pretty harrowing.

Far from just being a novelty made to stoke some flames, however, lilith is clearly as remarkable as it is painful to look at. Predating so many of the works that others will inevitably draw comparisons to — MyHouse, Cruelty Squad — this feels foundational. Those knee-deep in the DOOM modding community might get even more out of it than I did. The more that you know, the easier it is to circumvent your expectations. What's here is confusing, frustrating, and a visual feast; lilith is something that you'll never be able to forget.

But something is wrong. But something is wrong. But something is wrong.

I don't remember which state of play this game was first announced in, but I definitely remember seeing this game getting unveiled and being curiously interested for both good and bad reasons. On one hand, I thought that color-based territory and movement mechanics were too cool of a concept to be only used by one particular game series, and I was intrigued to see how this game plays and potentially evolves from other titles of its ilk, especially given how this game has Square Enix backing it up. On the other hand, the CGI announce trailer and character designs definitely gave me very "overwatch SFM" vibes. The art direction and derivative game concept definitely made it incredibly easy to make low-blow jokes online over, that's for certain. And as everyone online continued to make jokes (myself honestly included at that point), this game still remained in the back of my mind until then. That's certainly not a quality most games announced at a State of Play possess.

Some months later, and another State of Play happens announcing an open beta network test to try the game out early, so naturally I had to give it a try and see what the fuck they were actually cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it! Eventually they announced the full games release date and the game remains mostly untouched from the beta with the exception of a few new game modes being introduced (and season pass microtransactions being shoehorned into the game, gee thanks). They even made it free on PS plus this month, so I could just drop right back into the action when the game launched!

The game itself is actually surprisingly not as derivative as I thought it was going to be. Yes, you shoot blobs of color that cover the arenas and can use them for movement purposes, but there's no gamemodes where it's a contest on who can cover the most ground in their color. Rather, the main gamemode is more like the Light Vs. Dark mode in Kid Icarus Uprising, where each team has a life pool that, once depleted, turns a team member into a powered up "star" player, where defeating the opponents star player wins the game. There is also a 2v2-style game mode as well as a payload pushing tower defending mode to add some variety. It makes for a much more aggro-oriented game experience, especially considering the fact that in order to chill (not kill, DO NOT CONFUSE THE TWO) someone, not only do you need to blast them until their health runs out, but also run into their foam-balled up downed form with your surfboard. Running into downed teammates with your surfboard resurrects them from their soapy demise, so the game emphasizes huddling together and cooperating to succeed. The foam can't be used to cover walls and climb them, but rather it clumps up which can be used in various ways like making a wall, building a high ground, ensuring a spot doesn't get covered by the enemy as easily, etc. It's certainly unique. That being said, the bullets being slow bubbles definitely gives the guns less impact and the clumpy nature of the foam can kinda turn the large choke points in the maps into big uneven bumpy wastelands that can be hard to parse, so it's not like it's a flawless gameplay experience. There is a single player mode but its really more just like tutorial stuff so like PS plus is basically required to have any semblance of content out of this game, it sure as hell aint worth 30 bucks for some offline tutorials.

The biggest impression this game left on me though was its environmental design and general aesthetic. The dark blacks and blues of the night sky being contrasted with the glimmering golds of the city and bright pastel neon colors of the foam just gives the game this luxuriant appearance. Some real sophistifuture shit, where the hubworld is a high-rise penthouse, the giant neon LCD billboards play stylish ads for fictional brands, the menus are overseen by a mascot rave DJ, and EVERYTHING is a party of the most expensive caliber. The vibe is certainly strong, and Bath Vegas is certainly a video game place I would want to live in IRL. The game world feels like it is made out of money in such a pompously luxuriant fashion, and the modern game PS5-ass graphical rendering makes every golden handrail and illuminated bubble glow all the brighter. The character designs grew on me and I find their personalities endearing, the 2D CGI art from the story missions have a lot of personality in them. I even like the weird goofy mocapped animations that everyone has in the lobbies, every time I can get a full team of randos to do the doofiest synchronized dances always fills me with raw energy. There was certainly a huge amount of genuine care that went into the creation of this world and its inhabitants, and I appreciate it a lot. Did I also mention that this games OST absolutely slams way harder than it ever had the right to? Like holy shit man I am WAITING for this shit to get an OST release, like seriously dude this shit BUMPS.

Let's not beat around the bush anymore though, nobody else really cares about all of that. Despite the beta being loudly announced in a large playstation announcement video I had a hard time finding ANYONE else who even knew about its existence, yet alone was actually PLAYING it. Whenever I would bring it up in various servers I was in, I would mostly get ridiculed for wanting to play "the shitty splatoon for straight people", and to "just play actual splatoon instead", dismissing me the same way they dismissed the game. It reminded me of trying to talk about Yo-Kai Watch back in the day with friends of mine only into Pokemon, they just don't care and only made the same low-effort jokes about something I genuinely liked just because it was similar in the most surface-level aspects. I did manage to convince some of my friends to give it a shot during the beta, and the gameplay left them unimpressed. They likely won't ever play the full game. While the game being free on PS plus certainly gives it solid publicity and a decent starting playerbase, I can't help but feel like a lot of the players trying the game out are going to bounce off of it after only a few hours of playing. In fact, I already have seen plenty of reviews here that are from people that have done exactly that. At least they gave it a try instead of just outright making fun of it without even playing it, i guess... Normally I don't really take very much into account what a games general reputation is, but in something that's trying to be a more multiplayer focused live-service type beat, having the game be such a huge punching bag is a huge problem that's entirely outside the developers control. I've seen more people online compare this game to fucking Morbius than actually talk about the game itself. Searching the game up on youtube brings more videos with shocked clickbait thumbnails titled "will it die?" or "is it ACTUALLY good?" than not. Mainstream gamers don't know the game even exists, and it's a laughingstock to the more core gaming crowd. I'm an optimist, but I'm also a realist; I can't see this game gaining a large enough playerbase to last more than a year because of its reputation.

And that really sucks!!! Because this game is actually really cool and it feels like a lot of work and passion went into this game! It really reminds me of stuff like Survival Quiz City, where much like how for that game the small team of Gyaar studio was able to make it under the funding and publishing of Bandai Namco, ToyLogic was able to make this game with the backing of Square Enix. It has that solid AA feeling that a lot of modern games these days don't have, ironically something clamored by most of the same core gaming audience that dismisses this game in the first place aaaaAAAAA!!! I've been having a lot of fun with it though, and will continue to do so. I put like 5-6 hours into the beta, and have pretty much spent all of my fleeting free time just playing the full game constantly since it dropped, which is saying something, considering the fact one of my favorite games of all time got remade quite recently and yet I play this instead. If you have PS plus to be able to play online, I highly recommend giving this game an earnest shot. It's certainly not perfect, but the game is fun! The vibes are cool! What use would a giant golden festive city be if nobody wants to party in it?

Kaga: It’s not a big problem if some of your characters die in Fire Emblem; I want each player to create their own unique story. Don’t get caught up trying to get a “perfect ending.” Have fun!

Fire Emblem’s synthesis of two core ideas - RPG elements and permadeath - work together as a powerful combination for creating unique experiences. Different units will grow in different ways and between the dicerolls and each player’s personal preference, they’ll end up with armies that look and function largely differently from each other. Throwing an extra curveball in this is permadeath, as poor planning or just plain rotten luck can lead to favourite units dying and being unavailable for the rest of the game, with the consequence usually being to try training a new unit - likely one you didn’t have much attachment to in the first place - bringing further diversity as well as a new story to tell.

Thracia 776 is by far and away the best Fire Emblem game at creating these emergent stories. The first reason is that it’s easily the most freeform game in the series for a number of reasons. Stat caps are fairly low and growths can be boosted by holding Crusader Scrolls, letting just about any character be endgame-viable if you want to put the work in as well as making it easier to train up a new unit to recover from a particularly crushing loss. Other factors like skills, personal weapons, movement stars and FCM, as well as the fabled movement growth, keep everyone feeling unique and give you something to get attached to. All these tools bring the gameplay to feel incredibly open - while Thracia has a well-earned reputation as the “staff game”, as status staves are just as hilariously overpowered as they are hilarious to use, it’s more just the most easily-observable result of this. The game gives you so many powerful tools - between items like insane personal weapons and staves, as well as mechanical tools like Canto and infinite trading - that there’s so much individuality and expression in how you approach a chapter or weasel yourself through tight situations, which is only compounded by how uniquely any one person’s army is going to fall together. Fatigue seems like it would take away from this uniqueness by forcing everyone to use most of the characters across the game, but it makes each chapter’s potential difficulty and solution vary even more depending on when you have access to your strongest units.

The second is its tendency towards surprises, and though the aforementioned movement stars and movement levels, as well as the tendency of crits to skew heavily in your favour, all play into this, its more interesting display is shown through its chapter design. Thracia’s design mentality would be absolutely aggravating in any other game, as each chapter aims to properly convey the situation that Leif’s army finds itself in - this means it often puts you in heavily disadvantageous positions and loves to throw heavy curveballs at you as the chapters’ stories advance and the opposition’s own plans advance alongside yours. What makes this feel reasonable in Thracia is the sheer strength and number of tools you have to navigate around these tricks. They will catch you off guard - and likely steal some of your soldiers away from you - but they rarely felt outright unfair, instead feeling like I could have prepared better, or could have played better. Chapters often feel like real opponents constantly trying to keep you on your toes, and while it’s crushing to lose a strong unit to something you didn’t expect, the stakes make it even more satisfying to defy the odds.

Its story compounds those themes held up by the gameplay, as while the broad strokes involve the reclamation and unification of an entire country, the details focus on the people of the story, their victories and losses, their choices and resulting consequences, their perseverance or lack thereof. Leif’s inexperience leads him to struggle to lead the Liberation, making multiple brash mistakes that set back his goals and get those close to him killed, as he stumbles forward in pursuit of a personal goal that almost none of the other fighters can even relate to, all while being overshadowed by the fighters beyond the borders. It’s his perseverance, in spite of all his losses and heartbreak, that leads him to eventually recapture Munster from the Empire. Just as Leif’s own quest is imperfect, the game expects yours to be, as not only can multiple events only be seen with certain characters kept alive, but small details change when certain characters *die* - Leif can even fail to achieve his own strongest motivation if the right mistakes are made. Why bother implementing these, if not for these losses being an expected part of the experience?

After all, if everyone’s story was perfect, nobody’s story would be unique.

an adaptation of the fevered sugar-fueled scribblings in the margins of your maths textbook, impossible battles and astonishing reveals and incredible images streamed directly from the imagination of a bored 11-year old. zero restraint, zero conception of what is and is not "enough", pulling from all the things they love with reckless abandon, rendered with all the technical mastery of one of the most legendary studios in the industry at the height of their powers.

sin and punishment reeks of a dense inner mythology that it almost never lets the viewer peer into, not so much beginning in media res but existing almost entirely in the head of it's creator, assuming an understanding that could only be found inside there. i mean this as the highest possible praise, sin and punishment channels an effortlessly positive adolescent enthusiasm that other games could only dream of replicating. pairing this with an understanding of cinematic technique in gameplay years ahead of the curve, turn-of-the-millennium eco-warrior themes screamed loud enough to be heard above the glorious cacophony, a beautiful tapestry of rail shooting that entices perfection like few other games manage and what else could Sin and Punishment possibly do? what more could we possibly ask for?

well, one of the best final bosses that video games have ever seen certainly helps.

A warning from Beyond The Time, from futures wrapped in themselves: Kill the future they say Must Be. Preferably with a gunblade.