Doom: The Golden Souls

Doom: The Golden Souls (or just Golden Souls for short) is an platformer-themed Doom II mod created by Andrea Gori (Batandy) for the GZDoom source port. The mod is heavily inspired by the  series of games, and offers several changes to the standard Doom formula to accommodate gameplay elements more commonly found in 3D and 2D platformers, as well as a host of new graphics that harken back to its main inspiration and offer a colorful, whimsical tone. A sequel, Doom: The Golden Souls 2 was released in 2018.

The mod was originally announced on January 1, 2013, and after several public beta versions the full release was uploaded on November 18, 2014. Several patches followed, with the current version of the mod, 1.4, being called the "Even More Definitive Edition". On June 22, 2019, salahmander2, with Batandy's supervision, released Super Golden Souls, an expansion pack for the original mod which added some quality of life improvements to bring the mod up to standards to the newer Golden Souls 2 and 3, and also added several brand new levels. Further, on October 16, 2021, a new version of the mod was released called The Golden Souls Remastered, which reworked the player's arsenal and tweaked the gameplay elements to more closely resemble those of Golden Souls 2, and also fully integrated the extra maps (except MAP80) from Super Golden Souls into the main mod.

In 2018, Golden Souls was included in the Top 25 Missed Cacowards.

Gameplay
As mentioned, the mod is heavily inspired by the ' series of platformer games, as well as other titles such as ' or , among others. The jumping and air control have thus been edited to allow for much higher jumps and a significant degree of control while in mid-air to compensate for the levels' frequent use of platforming sections.

The mod is hub-based, with the initial level being an enemy-free mansion (heavily inspired by the hub level of ) filled with paintings that act as gateways to the individual levels. The objective of each level is to collect a Golden Soul found at the end of everyone, as well as, if the player wishes, finding the three Big Coins hidden in each stage, which generally act as the mod's secret areas. Golden Souls are necessary for unlocking more rooms in the mansion and thus progressing in the game, and Big Coins are also used to access some of the bonus levels. Additionally, secret levels may be found within some of the stages themselves.

Other collectibles include regular coins, very similar to those found in the Mario games, of which the player may collect up to 999, and they act as currency in the game's shops found in certain rooms of the mansion. In the shops the player may purchase health, armor and ammo to make tackling some of the levels easier. The game's arsenal is completely changed from Doom II, and weapons may be acquired within some of the levels, with the more powerful weapons being generally found in some of the later levels. Many new enemies are also introduced, and all foes drop a certain amount of coins upon being killed.

Levels
(listed as they appear in MAPINFO)


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