John Romero marks Doom’s 30th birthday by putting out Sigil 2 - aka episode 6 - for free

Nine new punishing levels that continue the OG hell-shooter

Sigil 2 acts as a direct sequel toSigil, which itself looked to extend the story of Doom beyond its climactic fight against the Spidermastermind in E4M8 - albeit as an unofficial fifth episode.

Both campaigns span nine levels created to run as a megawad in the original Doom engine, with Romero’s site suggesting GZDoom as an easy way to boot up the megawad - the format used by both Doom and Doom 2 for bundles of levels and other files. (You’ll need a copy of Doom to run GZDoom, too.) The levels also work as deathmatch maps if you run them in the multiplayer mode.

Following Sigil’s score by Buckethead, Sigil 2 has an original heavy metal soundtrack by THORR. The OST backs a set of levels that seem to be faithful to the original in their crushing difficulty. (“Welcome to Hell,” Romerorepliedto one player who called the episode “pretty brutal”.)

EvenDuke Nukemco-creator George Broussard got in on the action from his fellow nineties FPS luminary,saying: “It’s brilliantly fun and hard. Would have been the “Dark Soulsof FPS games” if it shipped in 1993!”

Happy 30th birthday, DOOM. I’m grateful to have been a part of this incredible team. Thank you for playing our games, and thank you for keeping DOOM alive, all these many years.pic.twitter.com/ZBzGqdXXBo

Also true to OG Doom are a number of secrets dotted throughout the levels, including a fireblu texture - a reference to a popular meme in the Doom community - hidden somewhere in every level that players will need to find and shoot to open a secret room and achieve 100% completion.

“Today’s tools are amazing,” Romero said inour recent look back at Doom’s 30 years. “It’s funny, because I believe that Doom level design has still not been exhausted. I’m still doing new things.”

Sigil 2 isfree to download from Romero’s website, which also offers some fancy (and not free) physical editions with other goodies like artwork, a shotgun shell USB stick and even a signed floppy disk with the campaign on, if you’re after that 1993 nostalgia. Happy birthday, Doom.