No Rest for the Living

No Rest for the Living is the title of the new Doom II expansion set developed by Nerve Software's Arya Iwakura and Russell Meakim for the release of Doom II on the XBLA. It is also available in Doom 3: BFG Edition, and in the Playstation 3 release of Doom Classic Complete.

No Rest for the Living was one of the winners in the 17th Annual Cacowards.

Episode
The episode consists of nine levels in all, eight standard levels and a single secret level, as a homage to the similarly structured nine-map episodes in the original Doom, particularly Knee-Deep in the Dead. As Doom II did not have episodes per se calling No Rest for the Living an episode is technically a misnomer. The new maps are a separate selectable campaign at the inception of the game, in a fashion similar to Doom's episode selection. Selecting "Hell on Earth" propels the player into the classic 32 map Doom II campaign, whereas selecting "No Rest for the Living" starts the new 9 map addition. Completing No Rest for the Living in singleplayer on any difficulty unlocks the "And Back Again" Achievement, and unlocks the "Doom II Marine Suit" Avatar award.

According to Nerve Software boss Brandon James the expansion set "continues on Earth after Hell's forces have [seemingly] been vanquished".

Source port support
The Eternity Engine has built-in support for the episode if the entire file from the Xbox 360 version is loaded, or if a path is configured to point to the BFG Edition PWAD file. It uses the included in the diskfile, or reads a copy of it from  if needed.

PrBoom-Plus, since version 2.5.1.4, has partial support for NERVE.WAD, as long as the user loads the BFG Edition of DOOM2.WAD. There is even more partial support (only proper level names and music tracks) if the user loads the classic version of DOOM2.WAD. It does not, however, automatically register it as sub-episode of Doom II.

ZDoom and GZDoom will automatically recognize NERVE.WAD by its size and MD5 sum when loading the BFG Edition of DOOM2.WAD, and allow to play it as a Doom II episode (maps slots for No Rest for the Living episode are LEVEL01-09) with proper metadata provided by the source ports themselves. Version 1.9 of DOOM2.WAD is supported in the same way via loading NERVE.WAD as a conventional PWAD file.

Zandronum has partial support, allowing the proper playing of the episode itself via the NERVE.WAD file, loaded as PWAD file for Doom II, but otherwise does not register as a sub-episode of Doom II.