WAD Review: Sleepwalking (Ravendesk, 2024)
a 3-map wintry wonder for DSDA/Nugget Doom
One thing you should know about me is that I avoid anything that could be described as “Ribbiks-inspired” like the plague. Giant monolithic labyrinths of burnt metal and neon highlights with thousands of monsters packed into post-it note sized arenas built to give you just barely enough room to only shoot or dodge does not do it for me in any capacity. But something about Sleepwalking caught my eye. As I played it I only came to love it more and more.
This “small” levelset fully equips you with an MBF21-charged arsenal. The starting revolver is an absolute monster, the Super Shotgun’s firepower is doubled, the Chaingun is practically an autoshotgun, and the Rocket Launcher is a fully-automatic anti-tank rifle. The Shotgun and Chainsaw replacements? You’ll have to find out yourself. Immediately the levelset informs me that it respects my time and wants me to have the tools to succeed.
The visuals are absolutely sublime. You fight in these gorgeous open snowy areas and intricately designed metal halls, each having unique geometry, mixing the style and approach of Ribbiks and something else, something a little kinder and more accessible. Health, ammo and armor powerups are sprinkled extremely generously across the levels, so you never feel like you’re going into a fight unprepared. I first played the wad in its RC2 incarnation, where the fights were a little bit overloaded and frustrating, but have since been polished to a mirror sheen for the idgames release. The only thing I dislike about it to this day is that the MAP02 MIDI is a bit too short and gets on my nerves.
If you’re worried that your search for doom maps to play is too akin to playing Minesweeper, as you try to skirt around an abundance of ultra-technical puzzle-map Ribbiksian neon-nihilism, or over-bloated 40-minute OTEX excursions, but you want something new and interesting to take you out of your comfort zone, please, PLEASE play Sleepwalking. It’s slaughter done right. I enjoyed wandering and exploring these massive levels to find every optional encounter and secret, and just existing in these spaces was breathtaking.
One of the best things I ever played in 2024, and cyan is my favourite color, besides lavender. Kudos, Ravendesk.
idgames link