Rise of the Wool Ball

Rise of the Wool Ball is a 2017 computer game which runs on the ZDoom engine. It was made by MSPaintR0cks (a.k.a. WatchDaToast) and is the sequel to Shadow of the Wool Ball. The game is spread across three episodes, each having five levels with a secret level. Like its predecessor, Rise of the Wool Ball uses a cartoon art style, and it was named a runner-up at the 2017 Cacowards.

Story
The player takes the role of Rebecca, a hedgehog fighting against a army of cats which has taken Scott, Rebecca's boyfriend and the protagonist of Shadow of the Wool Ball. In the game's intro, Scott is taken by the cat army's leader, the leader destroys the world and he throws Rebecca off a cliff. She is saved by a magical force which stops her fall, the power sends a message telling Rebecca to go to a clearing. This power is later revealed to originate from a sheep named Baahrbara, which after E1M5 sends Rebecca to a facility up in a floating part of the world. Baahrbara tells Rebecca to rescue her brother. On E2M5, Rebecca saves baby sheep so that Baahrbara and her brother can make a replica of the cat army's leader to sneak Rebecca into the last facility using their wool. This is all told via clips of dialog between certain levels. Throughout the game, the cat army's leader contacts Rebecca through TVs in each level, usually mocking her but sometimes giving her information about the level or a certain gameplay element.

Gameplay
Like the name implies, the game is very reminiscent to Rise of the Triad in terms of level design, as the player uses bounce mushrooms to launch up in the air and floating objects which act like platforms. Rise of the Wool Ball's weapons, however, seem to follow Doom's. All of Doom's weapons are in the game with the exception of the BFG9000 and chainsaw. However, the weapons have been given a new identity and look to match Rise of the Wool Ball's art style.

The plasma gun is instead a bird which shoots out its eggs at enemies. Similar to Heretic, the player can not over stack their health, it is always capped at 100. Armor is now coffee but otherwise behaves the same.

The enemies in Rise of the Wool Ball range from Doom-like monsters to a unique lineup. There is no replacement for the zombieman. Instead, the game uses the replacement for the shotgun guy to fit into a similar role. A enemy that first appears on E1M2 is a cat on a helicopter-like device that shoots a cannon ball at the player and when the player gets too close to him, he starts to drop explosive barrels below him. When he's killed, he will leave a barrel behind, making the player go around it or shoot it. Another enemy named the Robo-Kitty is a robot which cannot be killed with bullets or eggs, doing so will knock it over but not kill it. Only the use of the Cucumber Launcher can kill it permanently.

Trivia

 * Rise of the Wool Ball's bundled-in is a renamed ZDoom 2.8.1 build. While it wasn't required to run the game through this EXE, WatchDaToast said that GZDoom may cause some bugs. The ZDoom staff took issue with this due to this perhaps causing confusion with users who couldn't run the executable. Version 1.2 fixed this, making the game able to run through GZDoom. Not long after this incident, Rise of the Wool Ball was added to GZDoom's supported IWAD list.
 * A cut enemy named the Psycho Cat was planned to be in Rise of the Wool Ball, but because of balancing issues, it was scrapped. Despite this, its sounds and sprites are still in the game's WAD file. (This was revealed in a now lost YouTube comment by WatchDaToast.)
 * All of Rise of the Wool Ball's graphics were made in.