Review by Colin Phipps

Yet another in the excellent KBOOM series of levels by Kurt Kesler. This is another of his bricks'n'metal style bases, situated in a small outdoor area.

You start in the outdoor area. This uses a lot of Boom effects, like deep & flowing water, as well as some convincing bridges. However, I still didn't think this area was very convincing. While more detail, perhaps some more trees are such, would have helped, I think that basically even Boom is not there yet when it comes to doing convincing outdoor areas. The author does sensibly import the sky from Knee-Deep to add to the outdoor effect.

The indoor areas are excellent. There are lots of bridges and lifts where you can see through the floor to the ground below, which look very convincing. Well, I'll rephrase that: they look perfect; if I didn't know Doom had problems with bridges like this, I'd never have realised from this level, because it is very well done.

Despite having a large number of traps scattered through the level, none of these were too unfair: you always stand a good chance of surviving first time. There are plenty of good traps and fights throughout the level. Ammo and health were reasonably generous too.

The final area of the level is very clever; there are lots of teleporting and surprise monsters, which keep the area active for fight after fight. Despite the hordes of imps, revenants, and a cyberdemon which infest the area, the fights are very tactical. And no, you don't need to kill the cyber (fortunately).

This level in many ways shows the summit of Doom level design: the restrictions still present (the limited outdoor area), and the convincing pseudo-3D now available (the excellent indoor bridges & lifts). An excellent level.