Dead Sea Scrolls
By BEG - 9 Maps
Format: Vanilla
[Download]
Started: September 23rd 2026
Finished: September 23rd 2026
Status: Completed
It's rare to see wads still using Doom 1 as a base nowadays, with this, John Romero's SIGIL series, Arsinikk's RUST, ViolentBeetle's Solar Struggle, and Muumi's Reldresal Crater being the only noteworthy projects that immediately come to mind, but despite being chained to Doom 1 resources, Dead Sea Scrolls still does quite a lot to keep things very fresh. Your weapons have been spruced up a little bit for faster gamefeel, and there's quite a lot of totally new additions to the enemy roster which is nice to see. Admittedly I think DSS makes a weird first impression, since most of the focus was placed on the atmosphere over raw combat (and the fact that most of the new enemies won't make their appearance for quite some time) makes the early maps feel a tad sluggish, shotgunning Imps and Pinkies and saving your rockets for Barons, Barons, and... Barons. I did enjoy the first map being used as an interactive cutscene to set up the overall mood, and E2M2's light puzzle solving culminating in a mad scramble to escape the ruins with your treasure intact makes for a great Indiana Jones type feeling. Despite taking a while to get going, DSS hits its stride in E2M6 "Bnei Beliyal". It introduces three more custom enemies (all of which are incredibly creative with some pretty great custom sprites) pretty quickly as well as debuting one of my new favorite custom weapons ever made in a Doom wad. The dual shotguns make for a fantastic stand in for Doom 2's Super Shotgun that honestly feels even better to use. The spinning reload animation can even damage enemies if you're lined up right and hits pretty hard which was a big surprise. The custom sprites for it look really nice, and it plus the expanded enemy roster are what make DSS' lategame combat rise far above just basic Doom 1 stuff. The secret map is also pretty fun, taking an old Counter-Strike map, rebuilding it with vanilla Doom textures and loading you up with guns and ammo to go nuts with. With one last custom enemy to introduce, E2M8 "Tophet" not only does the herculean task of making classic Doom hell look appealing, but ends DSS on a bang, including a very fun sequence that has you playing a mock round of deathmatch against an army of evil Doomguy clones. After all that I was a tad disappointed that there wasn't any custom story text (though looking into the Dehacked file it seems like it just didn't load for some reason), but that's a tiny complaint after a pretty well executed finale. Despite starting a little rough, Dead Sea Scrolls is a VERY impressive project for being BEG's first major release aside from a prior single map wad from 2024, and a very underrated wad that really should get more attention than it does currently.
Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Favorite Map - E2M8: "Tophet"
Least Favorite Map - E2M4: "Kaf Hakela"