Tangerine Nightmare

Holly S***!

This surely deserves more love and recognition!!!

This is amazing!!!

The french community make this little mapset that is really really outstanding!

Not only there is a really awesome new palette, but some monters also has new appearances that greatly enhance the experience.

The texture work is marvelous and the maps are fun, visualy gorgeous, atmospheric and really challenging!

The music choice is otherworldy!!! Can't be more fitting!!!

How this monster mapset didn't receive an award is beyond my understanding.

Thank you all the mappers that worked on this project: [WH]-Wilou84, Chaos, Datacore, franckFRAG, Jambon, JCD, Roofi.

This mapset is insanely high on my favorite list.

on the surface, it's yet another community project, and that's just fine and dandy. on the other hand, they've certainly got a color scheme going, making these names out to be orange, theming both the levels and the sprites as orange while still managing to make fun levels. this wad has franckFRAG, WH, and JC, two well-respected authors known for some rather difficult levels, plus several more faces like Roofi, who contributed the gargantuan MAP07.

indeed, MAP07 is perhaps one of two standout maps, as exploratory as the most hardened Eternal Doom maps while still feeling like a pleasurable retreat into adventure gameplay. fun to get lost in and not too difficult, except for the ending battles, which actually hint at the kind of gameplay you'll be seeing in the aptly titled Pandemonium, which is MAP08. while the patrons of the cathedral serve as a warmup, the abomination to come involves an extremely difficult climb through thick and thin while a monster continuously spawns in new spawns. it's a challenge only the battle-hardy can conquer. and the bonus level MAP10 has at least two encounters designed around maximum pain as well.

you'll certainly find Tangerine Nightmare to be a thing so go ahead and try it out. there's a few rather difficult secrets (some of the non-secret ones even have the Levelord easter egg "You're not supposed to be here"), and the gameplay is always good.

"Anti-Christ's blood shall help figuring out this cave's mysteries... "

And Tangerine Nightmare has been finished, played through PrBoom+ and GlBoom+ 2.5.1.5 on HMP difficulty. A rather interesting ride I must say, but what is it about?

Tangerine Nightmare is a short wad comprised of 10 levels (8 main maps, a thank you + credits one, and a bonus). It comes with a new menu background, fonts, status bar, intermission screen, ENDOOM screen, ominous sounding music, textures, weapon sounds, but no new enemies, having most of them redesigned instead. The gameplay is similar to that of classic megawads such as Scythe, meaning that it's gameplay focused and the difficulty increases nicely in steps, in addition to the maps being designed with pistol starting in mind, while the texturing of the maps carries a Requiem and a Valiant vibe, the latter being particularly noticeable in the most hellish areas and caves due to TN revealing a yellow take on it as opposed to the classic red. The action appears to take place exclusively in Hell, with temple-like areas, caves, and outdoor parts.

The first levels are fairly easy while managing to still be fun despite their low danger encounters and traps, which changes later on as things get more and more interesting, eventually culminating with a relatively short but intense battle on MAP08 where an Icon of Sin must be destroyed, but there are a few hundred enemies on the way trying to stop you, so it's not the only thing you should worry about on the map. The levels are usually pretty compact with the exception of the final maps which are larger, allowing for bigger enemy waves, and they are pretty straightforward too, with the only exception of MAP07. MAP07 is too long for its own good, and does not fit very well with the rest of the levels considering its size, complexity, and especially length, taking me over an hour to finish in my blind playthrough. There are also a number of apparently secret areas with cryptic messages in them, likely an attempt at storytelling, but the map kinda falls on its face due to trying to do too many things at the same time. The length only makes the experience worse as for a first playthrough you will likely end up wandering around a lot of time, trying to find progression rather than actually fighting or just doing... something. It's not a bad map overall, but it does end up biting more than it can chew, and that doesn't quite work in its favor. The progression can be cryptic and previous areas are revisited a lot of times on your way, with the starting area being a sort of a focal point with the exit placed just outside of the building you start, as well as having the most aggressive and large wave of enemies at the end. The map does some neat tricks you probably wouldn't expect at first glace too, making you ask yourself why you didn't think about doing a certain thing at all, as is the case of the area with the green skull. At some point you will end up facing wooden bars blocking your path and an arrow pointing in that direction. You'd think you need to find a switch in order to lower it somehow, but the answer is quite literally in your hands. Nope, you don't need to wander around at all, you only need to shoot the bars down. A nice trick which can fool you into thinking you're supposed to do something else when in reality there's nothing. MAP07 is going to be my least favorite level, but I don't have a favorite one, the design is quite consistent and I can't say I enjoy a map more than another, or "Man, this map rocks", but that's okay.

The redesign of most enemies is pretty good, some of them appearing in other megawads, such as the Arachnotron which is also seen in Valiant and Ancient Aliens, however it is kind of all over the place. Barons and Hell Knights look more devilish, a trait the Arachnotrons do not possess. Cacodemons look amazing and they blend very well into the environment just like the HKs and Barons, but the new Pinky is absolutely laughable. Its texture is completely missing the organic touch the vanilla has, giving it a very paper-like look. Granted, it looks a bit better in Software, but not by much.

Despite its flaws, questionable choices and unnecessary risks taken on MAP07, TN manages to stay on top with the gameplay and level design at all times, and doesn't take considerable amounts of time to finish due to it being short and can easily be beaten in one sitting. Looking for something fun but short and accessible? TN proves to be a very good candidate. The difficulty being similar to that of the first Scythe and Plutonia should also make it a blast for everyone, no real reason to worry about it getting seriously intense down the road. I find it pretty underrated and it's surprising to see it has only been downloaded 46 times. Give it a shot, you might actually enjoy this.

Pretty cool WAD! I recorded some gameplay from its TNS run on ZDaemon. Check it out: 

I loved every second of this wad, even the slaughterfest that was MAP08 (and I don't usually care for slaughtermaps) The medieval themed textures, sounds, and monster replacements really set the mood of a medieval hell.  By far my favorite map was MAP07, I believe that map alone could take home it's own Cacoward, and if this wad doesn't win anything this year I'll be shocked.

EDIT: It didn't win.  I'm shocked.

This was a fun mapset though it gets more challenging later on. Map 08 in particular is a mad scramble to the top while the IoS rains spawned Hell down on you. I wasn't a fan of the monster sprite changes but they were thankfully just visual changes, not behavior changes.

The bonus map can get fucked though. Hate that last room encounter. Contending with two arch-viles, a wall of revenants, a mass of cacos AND pain elementals, AND two cyberdemons while trying to move around and dodge all of that was impossible and bullshit for me.

Thankfully the bonus map is just that - a bonus. I would have dreaded encountering this in the normal roster. I'll definitely come back and play through this in the future.

Cool and highly distinct visual style, focusing on the orange and gothic hell aesthetic. I wasn't a fan of a few of the maps here, but levels 06 and 07 were excellent. 3/5

Honestly, I enjoy playing this map, level design is well done!, the only complaint about this map is traps door are little "unexpected", I mean instead of regulars troop like zombieman or lmp behind trap door, it replace with Bunch of Demon or Baron of Hell. Health pick up (except bonus health) are uncommon in every level but other than that is awesome!