You can finally play the Doom RPG on PCs, and if your first response is “the what now,” that’s exactly why this is good news for Doom fans. Back in 2005, Fountainhead Entertainment, better known for Orcs and Elves, launched Doom RPG for mobile devices, a sequel to Doom 3 that released just in time to be a tie-in for the notoriously bad Doom movie and prompted both a sequel game and a Wolfenstein RPG.
As you’d expect from the name, Doom RPG is a turn-based RPG that borrows elements from mainline first-person shooter Doom, including weapons and characters, and reimagines combat and exploration., and despite its radical departure from the usual Doom formula, it went over rather well. Doom RPG won the “Adventure Game of the Year” and “Mobile Game of the Year” awards for 2005 and even spawned a sequel for iPhones.
The problem was that the first Doom RPG was stuck on old technology. The game’s Fandom page says the latest version of it released in 2007 “may only be available” for Nokia phones. While the game’s files exist on sites such as Archive.org, the Doom RPG to PC project from Erick194 and Anarkavre, screen names for two members of Gec Inc. is the first proper port.
The creators reverse engineered Doom RPG so it, in theory, runs like a regular PC game, no Nokia phone required.
You’ll need the original game files and a bit of tinkering to get everything running, but Erick194 explains how to do that in the Doom forums.
The sequel and Wolfenstein RPG, meanwhile, are much easier to access and play, so it’s unclear whether the duo plans on porting those as well.
The Doom mod community has been rather active of late. One recent project turns Doom 64 on PC into something closer to Doom Eternal, while another decided demons weren’t enough and added vampires to Doom because why not.