Uroboros
By Ravendesk - 11 Maps
Format: Boom
[Download]
Started: September 25th 2026
Finished: September 25th 2026
Status: Abandoned
(Continuous play is REQUIRED for this wad's unique structure to work properly)
Uroboros' very unique gimmick makes for an immediately interesting hook that I'm surprised hasn't really been done before. Your route through this wad is very non-linear, with your exit being randomized each time, and after reaching the end of this branching journey you'll be given a special tool to use while revisiting the previous maps to find new things to get a better ending. It's a theoretically interesting concept, but the way it's executed leaves a lot to be desired. On your way to your first goal you'll go through a pretty disconnected set of ealy maps. Map 2 "In the Hall of the Mountain Queen" is EXTREMELY annoying, making use of Boom-compatible floor friction effects to fill nearly every inch of the map in either black liquid that slows you down, or white liquid that acts like ice except instead of having low friction it has NEGATIVE friction, not only multiplying your speed but also (due to how Boom friction floors work) INVERTING YOUR CONTROLS while standing on it. WHY. The slow floors aren't too bad but the weird ice is just ridiculous to deal with, and has a tendency to fling you directly into danger and is way too disruptive to the experience. Map 4 "Vingt mille lieues sous les grottes" is just one gigantic cave room that teleports in 2000+ enemies with 3 ridiculous Archvile clumps serving as turret sentries. Ravendesk gives you essentially limitless BFG ammo (enough for nearly 800 BFG blasts) and tons of megaspheres, so it's not particularly difficult, but it feels very lazily designed, the bumpy cave floors are easy to get stuck on, and the Archvile clusters only serve to make you awkwardly hide behind cover every once in a while unless you want to get pinballed around the arena and likely die instantly. The following room filled with way too many Cyberdemons doesn't help the slapdash feeling design of this map. Map 6 "Karnak" is the end of this wad's first half, having you do a set of annoying puzzles and platforming bits to gain access to The Scroll of Karnak, a custom weapon that gives you a fake jump button on command, which also does 20 damage to you every time you use it for seemingly no reason. Unlike JUMPWAD though, the platforming using it feels much less robustly tested, and having to use it during combat makes the jankyness of it much more immediately apparent. The way it carries momentum and gives you slightly more height if you have a running start is fine when you're completely alone and have as much time as you need to line up jumps, but when you're getting shot at by enemies constantly it's incredibly frustrating to do even simple jumps. As soon as you get it you're IMMEDIATELY thrown into a very cramped and annoying encounter which makes for a terrible first impression too. Now that you have the scroll though, Uroboros' second phase begins. You're sent back through the previous maps to use your newfound ability to get to new areas. But that's only possible if you first even figure out how to LEAVE "Karnak" without going directly to the bad ending, which is a very confusing process of finding several hidden keys outside the original boundaries of the map. Spending several minutes trying to awkwardly jump over the walls in an attempt to find literally anything soured me on the prospect of more secret hunting before I even really got started, so that's it for me. As mean as this sounds, I think Ravendesk is just not the right mapper to make something like this work. His style of mapping and fairly chaotic fight design doesn't fit especially well with exploration and secret hunting, and makes replaying the maps while trying to find hidden stuff more annoying than fun. The randomized map structure doesn't work on this small of a scale either, there's only really 6 proper maps in the shuffle (1-5 + 8, since 6 either takes you to the bad ending or back to the first map with no randomness, and the remaining maps are the final map that can only be reached from map 4, and the 3 ending maps), so it comes off like more of a theoretical tech demo than a fulfilling experience on its own. Despite technically reaching an ending legitimately (the bad one), I don't consider this wad as properly completed, since the other endings are pretty clearly not optional, and because there's still two of the regular maps (5 and 8) that I never saw due to the weird randomization process.
Rating - ⭐⭐½
Favorite/Least Favorite Map skipped because the WAD wasn't completed.