Maps with minimalist yet hard combat?

[AtticTelephone]

I'm interested in seeing if there's any good wads out there that use small amounts of monsters and approach combat in a minimal straightforward way but are still hard. Maybe with Tyson and infighting-focused gameplay, and ammo scarcity. I'm asking because I'm working on a mapset that is basically that, and I'd like to see other people's approaches to this "combat minimalism" style.

[suzerduzer]

You might like Swift Death by franckFRAG, it's a megawad of mostly tiny maps that can kill you very quickly. Lots of fun, small encounters in it. I don't really remember many infighting focused encounters in it but they're definitely limited on supplies & health. I like to play this one when I can't think of ideas for enemy encounters.

jq2 by Ribbiks is also pretty similar, there's only 5 maps so you can beat it pretty quickly but it has a lot of very cramped fights & tight layouts. It's pretty underrated imo.

You should also try Darkest Room by Paul977. It's a single map that is very much focused on ammo scarcity & difficult combat. The encounters may be a bit more than what you're asking for but I think it's one of the best maps ever in terms of using few monsters in devastating ways.

[Ravendesk]

jq2 is a great suggestion and a good place to start.

 

Other than that I would also advice checking out 30 monsters challenge community project (jump straight into episode 4 if you are interested in harder maps as it starts very tame), Yum by Meowgi and Esoteric Formula by dashlet, the latter being extremely hard so might be too much but you can check out lower difficulties.

[rita remton]

this is from my doom map study folder: [punch.wad]. despite its name, it's not a tyson map. i love battles in cramped spaces, but this map takes it into another level and paired with extreme health+ammo starvation. infighting is a must. small mistakes quickly accumulate to deadly proportions, making the map very hard to progress. i could not finish it in uv with my amateur playing skills. anyway, good luck!