There seems to be a good favor for survival projects lately, and so Grymmoire joined the bandwagon. His project Hunted (alpha stages placeholder name) is a survival horror puzzle map set set on a seemingly abandoned space station. Our protagonist is awoken late at night by loud banging at their door, but no one is on the other side. Grabbing a nearby flashlight they set out to investigate and discovers that everyone on the station has mysteriously disappeared. Along the way the protagonist finds various anomalies that appear to have been set out just for them to find. It's definitely a different way of approaching the regular gameplay that Doom got famous for, so it's really worth checking out.

Quality total conversions (TC's) are far and inbetween. But total conversions that are good and a parody/comedic? Guzz: Ace of the ASS by TontonMayonnaise is what you are looking for. In this total conversion, set on the fictious European east country of Glaviota in the year 19XX, the space exploration complex sent Laïska, a young she dog into space for a test. The poor animal was sent to a certain painful death, starving in the depth of deep space.

But there is light at the horizon: there you go Guzz, the ace of the ASS (Alien Secret Service). To save the lady doggo and fell in love with her. Alas, she died at a young age (as every doggo would be,  if you think about it) and so you set off  Glaviotan secret lab to search for Laïska's DNA extract to make her alive again.

Its clear, Guzz: Ace of the ASS is a total conversion with a ridiculous premise, but it also harbors impressive cartoony spritework. Still a project in progress, Guzz stands among the more unique works to come out of the Doom community this year that isn't a full-on jokeWAD.

Be sure to keep this parody close to you, preferably just not near your ASS.

After the programmer of GZDoomBuilder MaxEd has vanished for uncertain reasons, people feared the worst as the latest release didn't cover various critical errors that made the mapping tool usesless to some of us. Good news is that ZZYZX took the duty on his own and started a new bugfix fork on which he takes care all the problems and seems to continue the development of GZDB. Whether or not MaxEd returns after a while, the community survives it all, thanks to the people who offer their help. Thanks kindly for your dedication ZZYZX, currently working with the new tool on my own - and it works!

Good news for all those GZDoom fanatics out there: The new version 3.3 has been released just a few days ago and it brings a huge list of additions and improvements to the engine, especially some ZScript and UDMF Mapping highlights for you, for example dynamic spot lights configurable in the UDMF map format or mod-defined aliases no longer permanently change CVARs. For a full list of changes and additions, check the release thread and get your copy of GZDoom 3.3 just now - it's worth every bit and byte.

"Praise the Lord (among us people known as MaxED), a new version of the famous map editor GZDoomBuilder has been released. For those of you not familiar with the fork of CodeImp's DoomBuilder 2, MaxED is already working on this for several months and even years now, constantly adding new features and bringing the editor up to par with the development builds of GZDoom.

As a mapper I can definitely say that the program is the total perfection when it comes to usability and speed as MaxED incorporates requests and changes that come directly from the modding community. For a full set of changes and new features, check the development thread and get your download. You will never map the same!