Doom Roguelike Analysis Index

Doom Roguelike is a snazzy game you can get for free with a lot of depth and good design to it.

Yes, I'm aware Jupiter Hell is a spiritual successor with fancier graphics and so on. Doom Roguelike is still great, and while it has a wiki providing a lot of bare technical info, the wiki is often poor at explaining itself, has several pages one or more versions out of date with no indicator this is so, and is essentially dead. It's also got a higher hurdle than some wikis out there to being allowed to edit it.

Hence these posts.

Intro. In which I talk a bit about how Doom Roguelike is more natural a concept than I'd assumed when first hearing about it, and explain why I'm covering Doom Roguelike rather than Jupiter Hell, and also pointing out that Jupiter Hell Classic is not gameplay-identical to Doom Roguelike.

Universal Traits. The Traits every class has access to. I also cover how Accuracy actually works, how HP actually works (It's not intuitive), how time mechanics broadly work, the Dodge mechanic, the Berserk status' effects, how knockback works, and cover the oddity that Doom Roguelike's level system is prone to accelerating returns instead of diminishing returns.

Class Analysis: Marine. Doom Roguelike's 'default' class, intended to be the class that eases a new player into the game most readily. I also explain the basics of how Mastery Traits work, and discuss some funky aspects of Mastery design axioms.

Class Analysis: Scout. Doom Roguelike's speediest class, who is pretty powerful but the game seems to struggle with how to translate 'gotta go fast' into a playstyle that's distinct from the Marine's 'I'm a real tough guy' approach. I also explain the game's turn mechanics in more detail because their under-the-hood behavior is important to a Scout Mastery. I furthermore call more attention to the weird jank with Dodge checks being applied against player attacks if you explicitly targeted an enemy, since it creates wonkiness with another Scout Mastery. And I explain Running as a mechanic, since the Scout has a gimmicky Mastery running off of it.

Class Analysis: Technician. Doom Roguelike's tech-head class, burdened with Masteries so bad that Mastery-less play is usually the safer bet, hampered by having most of their power backloaded in general, and just generally an understrength class. I also talk about how Jupiter Hell's Mastery system is legitimately an overall improvement over Doom Roguelike's attempt.

Equipment Analysis: Pistols. Doom Roguelike's basic weapon that, like in classic Doom, is really bad and should be moved on from swiftly... unless you choose to hard-specialize in it, at which point Pistols turn into very strong weapons with excellent ammo efficiency, great damage output, good Accuracy, and the best responsiveness of any weapon category. My only complaint is I wish there was more real variety in the non-Unique portion of things.

Equipment Analysis: Shotguns. Your default workhorse weapon before Traits start tilting you in a particular direction, with a pile of unique mechanics that don't necessarily behave the way you'd expect. Also our first victim of Doom Roguelike's tendency to resolve events sequentially even when they really ought to be resolved simultaneously, hurting Double Shotguns and to a lesser extent Super Shotguns and the Jackhammer.

Equipment Analysis: Rapid-fire weapons. A bit of a hodge-podge, crossing ammo types and damage types, I wouldn't lump these together if it weren't for the fact that the game itself is so insistent on the notion that rapid-fire is A Distinct Category. I kind of wish Plasma Rifles and Chainguns were more separated as specialties and whatnot.

Equipment Analysis: Rocket Launchers. The only standard weapon category you can't specialize in as a standard thing, and with some oddities like Shottyman working on them. Appropriately to classic Doom, they're more a special tool you break out for specific situations rather than a staple offense you can lean on continuously. I also talk about explosion mechanics, including the overlapping mechanics of corpse destruction, terrain destruction, and item destruction.

Equipment Analysis: Melee Weapons. Unexpectedly diverse in weapon count, but overall not very differentiated, melee works but is one part of the game I always wished got more polish.

Equipment Analysis: Non-standard Weapons. BFGs, plus a bunch of weird weapons, most of which use Power Cells. Unfortunately, largely an understrength category, with multiple weapons that have the potential to be cool and interesting, but currently are very lackluster. At least the Railgun is good.

Equipment Analysis: Armors. One of the clunkier-albeit-functional parts of Doom Roguelike's system, hampered by its Uniques and Exotics having a bizarrely high rate of weirdly awful instances. The core mechanics function well enough, but the balance tuning could really use some work.

Equipment Analysis: Boots. This covers Fluid mechanics first, as they're directly pertinent to Boots. As part of discussing fluids, I also discuss a fair amount of floor generation mechanics, as fluid generation is tied up pretty heavily in floor generation. Boots themselves don't give me a lot to say; that's a contributing factor to me covering fluid mechanics here, as otherwise this post would be really brief and say basically nothing!

Equipment Analysis: Mod Packs. This isn't getting into Assemblies, as those are getting their own posts. Mod Packs themselves are a cool system with... uneven design. They're one of the main things I hope further development helps improve.

Equipment Analysis: Basic Assemblies. The Assemblies you can make even if you have no ranks in Whizkid. They're a funky mix of a few really great Assemblies, a few niche-at-best Assemblies, and a few so self-evidently-awful Assemblies I genuinely don't understand why they exist.

Equipment Analysis: Advanced Assemblies. The most awkward Assembly tier, regularly hampered by Master Assemblies automatically being in easy reach if you can make Advanced Assemblies at all and/or by maximum supermodding automatically being in easy reach if you can make Advanced Assemblies at all. There's some noteworthy Assemblies in here worth pursuing with the right builds (Hyperblasters are unexpectedly great!), but... overall awkward.

Equipment Analysis: Master Assemblies. Absurdly important to Angel of 100/Archangel of 666 runs, to the point that Whizkid 2 is basically mandatory in such runs, but for standard runs Master Assemblies are a lot more erratic. You can easily end up having no reason to Assemble anything from it, between key utility being dependent on Exotic Mod Packs and/or totally displaced by certain Uniques or even Exotics, and the fact that your build might have no motive to pursue a given thing it can build. It also has the most inexplicably flawless Assembly of the game, making it extra-weird that so many other Assemblies get burdened with big flaws for some reason even though their core effects are much weaker. Probably overall better-designed than Advanced Assemblies, but still very funky.

Equipment Analysis: Powerups. Heals, more heals, even more heals, but also some more esoteric advantages. I also explain the oddness of the 'action clock' in more detail here since it's heavily relevant to multiple Powerups. Overall, a system that works okay, but with several rough spots.

Equipment Analysis: Used Items. The stuff that goes into your inventory and can (mostly) be eaten for some kind of benefit. Most reliably significant for HP restoration. Non-Medpacks all have clunkiness to their design, and even Medpacks are haunted by the implications of some enemies being allowed to pick up and use some gear.

Environment Analysis: Levers. A mechanic inspired by wall-switches from classic Doom, but implemented in a manner that works out to being very 'classic hardcore roguelike' in the sense of being unpleasant player-hostile design that kills learning players for non-mistakes. It's... not great.

Difficulty Levels. The core five difficulty levels laid out in detail. Not Angel Challenges: that's for later. I also explain the Danger system, which is to say the game's mechanic for controlling how many enemies spawn into a floor, and of course explain a bunch of special difficulty effects.

Enemy Analysis: Former Human. I also explain a number of basic elements of enemies, and also cover all the monster groups. (That I know of) To be honest, I don't talk about Former Humans themselves that much...

Enemy Analysis: Former Sergeant. No Dodge for you, Doomguy! Though if you're relying on Shells, you're probably glad to see one of these guys regardless.

Enemy Analysis: Imp. The most generic early enemy of the game overall. I also talk a bit about some general AI tendencies, such as how Doom Roguelike's AI prefers to move diagonally, not orthogonally.

Enemy Analysis: Lost Soul. The first dedicated melee enemy we're covering, with a very odd mechanic unique to it that I'm still a bit surprised isn't how most projectiles actually work in Doom Roguelike.