SIGIL

SIGIL is an upcoming episode WAD for Doom and Ultimate Doom that was released as limited editions on May 22, 2019, with the free release scheduled for May 31, 2019. It was announced at Doom's 25th anniversary on by its designer, John Romero.

Although billed as a megawad with 18 maps, Romero clarified in an interview that each of the nine single-player levels includes a separate deathmatch arena, making it a standard episode. The levels were created using Doom Builder 2.

Story
SIGIL continues from the fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed, with the following story line: "After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth — you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth’s savior."

- John Romero

Limited editions
Along with the free WAD, two limited edition fan boxes by were announced that are available for pre-order until December 24, 2018, and will ship in May 2019.

Inspiration and development
John Romero decided to create SIGIL in December 2017 after the positive reception garnered by his previous releases of Tech Gone Bad and Phobos Mission Control.

The difficulty level of the episode aims to exceed the bar set by Episode 4. According to Romero, his design choice required each level be "really hard for [him] to finish". The name of the episode, based on the central artifact in its story, is a nod back to the title of Doom itself in being a simple single word.

A conscious decision was also made to greatly play up the aspect of Satanic imagery. As part of this effort, John's wife Brenda Romero found existing artwork of Baphomet by Christopher Lovell, which John then obtained permission to use as the cover art. The logo for SIGIL was created by Romero Games lead artist Denman Rooke, and incorporates the, 666, by stylizing the "G" in SIGIL.

The high quality MP3 soundtrack available with boxed versions of SIGIL incorporates new and existing music by, whose works Romero listened to while creating SIGIL's maps (in particular, each map's assigned track was used during that map's editing). The new track, "Romero One Mind Any Weapon", was composed by Buckethead specially for SIGIL after Romero made the request to license his music, as Buckethead is a long-term fan of the Doom series.

SIGIL is intended to be widely compatible with a range of source ports. A second version of the WAD file named has been provided which replaces episode 3 for those ports which cannot load episode 5 maps.

Contributors

 * John Romero, producer and designer
 * Brenda Romero
 * Denman Rooke, lead artist
 * Boris Klimeš (dew), playtester
 * James Paddock (Jimmy), MIDI soundtrack
 * Christopher Lovell, cover art
 * Brian Patrick Carroll (Buckethead), MP3 soundtrack