Cosmic horror abounds in Doom 2 mod Divine Frequency
Shades of System Shock, Bloodborne, and the upcoming Scorn.
Doom 2 mod Divine Frequency speaks of wonderful horrors to my subconscious, delivering a demo level that smacks with the kind of cosmic horror dreamscape I'm always looking for. Creator TheNewGenghisKhan has laid out an enticing nightmare world that's threatening to give me the next hit of my drug of choice, and it seems like they're drawing from the same well of nightmare metal albums and cosmic horror that the original Doom games and later ilk draw from. I mean, let's be honest, just check out this weird spidery meat sack covered in mouths:
"mans been eating weird shit"New monster Necrophagy. Sprites by @NashMuhandes #gzdoom #doom #mod #gamedev #alien pic.twitter.com/5TmMFSO80IDecember 15, 2021
It's also being appropriately vague about what the actual hell is going on here, which I profoundly appreciate because cosmic horror is never very scary when you can adequately explain what's going on: "Divine Frequency takes place in a dystopian world where dreams and reality collide. Contents of the unconscious and the external world are integrated under an emerging constant, which gives rise to anomalies throughout the landscape. You will confront the highest peak and deepest depth to reach transcendence."
Divine Frequency is certainly one of the more interesting mods I've seen for a boomer shooter (or whatever we call these) lately. They're fairly easy to get up and running, if you're curious about this demo. Our friends over at TechRadar have a great guide to modding Doom to get you started.
You can find Divine Frequency on ModDB. Anyway, here's a video of the creator getting jumpscare'd by their own game:
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.