What more can we show about Doom that we haven’t already seen? What kind of mod or patch is left to explore? Believe it or not, today we have something different: an official game you probably haven’t heard of until now, and it’s an RPG. No, we’re not under the influence of any chemicals: Doom RPG is a legitimate project from id Software that got trapped in the era of Java mobile apps, and was rescued thanks to a group of Costa Rican developers.
Let’s travel back to 2005. Windows XP still dominated the world, iPhone and Android didn’t exist (Nokia was God back then), and there was also some official activity in the Doom franchise. On one hand, Doom 3 arrived on the original Xbox with a fairly decent port, and on the other, its movie debuted in theaters (which may be bad, but it has become a guilty pleasure for me).
The third element was… a mobile version of Doom. Between September and October 2005, id Software joined forces with Fountainhead Entertainment and JAMDAT Mobile to release Doom RPG, a turn-based role-playing game that reminds us a lot of old dungeon crawlers, with the difference that we’re on Mars, we control the marine, and we must blast demons. Would you like to play it? Great, because now you can on Windows.
Doom RPG: Demonic Blood on Your Smartphone
Doom RPG is undoubtedly an interesting beast. In the game we find humans with whom we can (and must) talk more than once, computers that provide additional information and hand out access codes, new mechanics like locked doors and fire (which require an axe and extinguishers), a notepad that records level details, and an inventory.
When it comes to combat, everything depends on our position: If we face the demons in an open space, they’ll attack us from several directions per turn, but if we occupy a spot that chokes their movements, the 1-on-1 definitely plays in our favor. Just like in conventional Doom, we must find special keys, and secrets are abundant.
In short, we can’t deny that Doom RPG is impressive on a technical level, but its problem is obvious: The devices compatible with BREW (Qualcomm’s API), Symbian, and Java that could run it are now obsolete, or ended up reduced to dust, with destroyed screens, or their lithium batteries swollen like balloons. Fortunately, a team of Costa Rican developers known as GEC.inc created a port for the BREW edition of Doom RPG, and added new features that improve the experience on PC.
The port works marvelously, but it’s not something you can just double-click and start playing. Just like with engines such as Chocolate Doom, you need the original game files—more specifically, the doomrpg.bar. Extracting that resource from a device isn’t impossible, but there are rumors about a certain “Internet file” that simplifies these processes. The last step is to copy doomrpg.bar into the Doom RPG folder, run BarToZip for conversion, and open DoomRPG.exe.
Download Doom RPG for Windows: Click here
