No Rest for the Living

No Rest for the Living is a Doom II expansion set originally developed by Nerve Software's Arya Iwakura and Russell Meakim for the release of Doom II on Xbox Live Arcade. It is also now available as part of Doom 3: BFG Edition, in the PlayStation 3 release of Doom Classic Complete, and as an add-on for the Doom Classic Unity ports.

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. Indeed, the episode selection screen reads "Which expansion?", listing options "Hell on Earth" and "No Rest for the Living", selectable at the inception of a new 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. This expansion selection prompt is also displayed when the player intends to load a previously saved game, with each campaign having its separate save game directories. 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 president Brandon James the expansion set "continues on Earth after Hell's forces have [seemingly] been vanquished".

Source port support
The Doomsday Engine has a built in profile for No Rest for the Living.

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 PC version of Doom 3: BFG Edition (this can be automatically detected when the Steam version is installed, or can be manually configured by the end user if the PWAD is in a different location). 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 Doom 3: 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.

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.

ZDoom and GZDoom automatically recognize NERVE.WAD if it's present inside the working directory or in the Steam install directory, while LZDoom recognizes it as its own IWAD. The PWAD is detected by its size and MD5 sum, and is allowed to be played as a Doom II episode, regardless of the version of the Doom 2 IWAD loaded with it (map slots for No Rest for the Living episode are LEVEL01-09) with proper metadata provided by the source ports themselves.

Current records
The DSDA episode records for No Rest for the Living are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 28, 2022.