Wingless

"If anyone may find this letter,

My name is Gilus. And I do not belong here.

Where I am from, I was only supposed to clean things for the leaders and princes and kings, and did so for many years. But things then changed. They took notice of me when they had only looked past me before.

They took me away, chained me, and cutt my wings. I don't know why, or what they would do next. And don't know how I escaped, but I did. I fled as far as I could, into places I was nott supposed to go and others had not been in a long time. Hiding in the dark, I stumbled and touched... something. And everything was pain, then dark. I do not remember what happened from there, but then I awoke somewhere different. Here. Wherever here may be called.

I don't know how long it has been. There are no patterns here to count the time. But it has been a long time... I have survived in the out of the way places from the ones who live here. Familiar, but... not familiar enough. The few times I have been seen, they have not hesitated to try and attack.

I scavenged what things I could, turned my old cleaning broom into a weapon, and looked for books and maps to find out anything I could: if there was a way here, then maybe there was a way back. And I learned about the towerr. A transport machine that could move things between worlds. I didn't have any other thing to go on.

By the time this letter is being read, I will have either succeeded or failed in reaching it. I managed to trapp and kill a pursuer - and took his gun. Other cleaners I knew had once been from the mortal realm, and taught me about these things.

And so, I will be moving on soon. I have a plan, and a real weapon. If the towerr takes me home, then maybe I will confront those who betrayed me. If it does not, then I only hope it takes me somewhere better than here."

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Hi!

This my latest (and quite scope-crept) project for the UZDoom source port (and related - see install/run section). In it, you take the role of the gargoyle-esque and nervous individual Gilus, who, stripped of his wings, is cast through a dimensional crack from his infernal home realm to a place much stranger than he could have prepared for. Once part of a lowly cleaning caste, he now must use skills and knowledge his kind weren't supposed to possess to make his way home - if home will even take him.

The world he finds himself in is a disorderly sediment of materials, concepts, and beings that have similarly fallen through weak points in the spatial fabric from places both familiar and extremely alien, across unknowable spans of time, and blending together in many ways. Some recognizable, some almost friendly, but most utterly inhospitable and dangerous to someone like him.

The current release takes place over the span of 6 levels. It is a total conversion with 5 new weapons, a mix of modified vanilla and several fully new monsters, a custom soundtrack, and overall a different sort of gameplay pace than vanilla. A bit slower, more methodical, and uneasy. With future releases, I intend to iterate and expand on what's already there, and eventually add additional episodes to the story with some further weapons and monsters.

That's not to say the current release is "unfinished" - I am trying to keep the versioning simple here: Each release is intended to build on the last, but also be of what I feel is good enough quality that if I had to stop for some reason, I would be okay with leaving it there. Partly for my own sanity because there is always more that could be done... (This excludes hotfix releases for the inevitable horribly broken stuff). There are still some more notable omissions however, such as difficulty scaling. Consider the current to be normal difficulty, with easier and harder to come later.

A specific new feature worth noting is the aiming system. As an alternative to unrestrained vertical look, you can enter a free aim mode. This shows a crosshair that can be moved around on the screen for more precise aiming. This is also pending further refinement, but I am happy with how it feels so far.

Beyond that, my unbiased suggestion is that you should play it and find out! And I hope you have fun doing so.

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Further info on specifics of how to run the mod, extra asset credits, etc can be found in the readme file.