HELLDROP

Doom, played from Hell's side

Helldrop inverts Doom. The marine is the AI — he routes the level like a speedrunner, plays the door and lift triggers, loots ammo off the corpses, and grinds toward the exit switch on a threat ledger that ranks every monster by how badly it can hurt him.

You are the invasion. Demons cost souls — a tithe that drips faster the closer he gets to the exit, and spikes by one per point of damage you land on him. Drop a squad in his path, detonate a barrel under his feet, or recall a lift out from under him with Hell's Hand. Drop into his line of sight and it costs extra and telegraphs; drop in the dark and it's instant and cheaper. Unaided, he clears the map and exits. Your drops are the only thing that put him in the ground — and the mugshot bloodying on his status bar is your progress bar.

It runs right here

The entire native engine — WAD decoding, the deterministic sim, the A* navigation, the authentic Doom sprites and status bar — is compiled to WebAssembly with Emscripten and runs at 60 fps in your browser. No install, nothing to download but the page. A single fully-unlocked level (E1M1) with the whole bestiary and both Hell's Hand verbs ready to go.

▶ Descend into E1M1

Gallery

The isometric view and authentic Doom status bar — **The slayer's HUD** — a real Doom status bar, mugshot and all, decoded from the WAD

A demon wave dropped into Doom Guy's path — **The drop** — a wave lands in his path; infighting and tracers do the rest

Annotated anatomy of the threat ledger and intent — **His tells** — a floating intent label telegraphs every drive and flashes on change

The Know-Your-Enemy codex overlay — **Know-Your-Enemy codex** — every published tell, true to the implementation

The intermission report card with vanilla E1 par times — **The report card** — match end, scored against vanilla Doom E1 par times

The systems you're fighting

The Threat Ledger

His targeting brain. Class weights (arch-vile 4×), time-to-melee, charging lost souls spike, live projectiles bump their owner, infighting pairs get deprioritized — “let them work.”

The Pain Tithe

4 → 10 souls/s

Drops cost souls. The drip ramps with his progress to the exit, +1 per point of damage you deal. Drops in his sight cost ×1.5 and telegraph; hidden drops are instant.

Hell's Hand

F slams/holds a door or recalls a lift; V detonates the nearest barrel — live, shootable, chain-reacting entities. Each on a 12-second cooldown.

The Corpse Bank

Corpses persist as a resource. The arch-vile raises non-gibbed bodies at half HP — so overkill past -spawnhealth gibs them beyond raising, the vanilla rule, now a counterplay hook.

Darkness is terrain

Monsters under light 120 are spotted at half range and score lower on his ledger. Spectres carry their own darkness anywhere. Ambush him from the shadows.

The Doomcam

C opens a 320×200 first-person feed from his eyes — the same render pass with a perspective camera. On his death it takes the screen, drops to the floor, and fades red.

Authentic everything

Every sprite, sound, mugshot and digit decodes from the WAD via the Doom picture format. Point it at id's IWAD and it looks exactly like Doom; ships on the BSD Freedoom base.

A full bestiary

Zombieman through spectre — vanilla-ish dice, hitscan tracers, projectiles, the real infighting retarget rule, corpses and clip-drop looting. Ten fiends a keypress away.

How you play it

Pick a fiend (zombieman … spectre)1 – 9, 0

Drop it at the cursorLMB

Slam a door / recall a liftF

Detonate the nearest barrelV

Toggle the doomcamC

Know-Your-Enemy codexTAB

Pan / zoom / rotate the viewdrag · scroll · Q E

Restart the run (deterministic)G

The browser build runs a single fully-unlocked level so every fiend and both Hell's Hand verbs are live from the first second. The native build adds the full Knee-Deep in His Blood campaign (E1M1→E1M8) with a per-level bestiary unlock.