DBP75: Patagonian Pilgrimage

DBP75: Patagonian Pilgrimage | DBP_75.WAD

Doomer Boards

As of this writing the Doomer Boards Project series is on hiatus; we last heard from the DB Krew around Christmas 2025 when they released  the wintery western-themed DBP78: Ghost Riders of Christmas Past. But despite a relatively limited output for 2025, as well as Doomworld banning the Projects again, it was nonetheless a productive and creative year for the Doomer Boards, with themes based on Quake III, post-apocalyptic shopping, 1970s psychedelia, and a variety of original sci-fi concepts. While it's hard to really tell where, exactly, the Patagonian part of Doomer Boards Project 75: Patagonian Pilgrimage comes in, it's nevertheless an entertaining and oftentimes beautiful romp through a nomadic mountain territory.

Mods this time around: Given the snowy mountain theme set in one of the more remote parts of the world, I rolled with High Noon Drifter and HorrorMovieRei's excellent Gothic Doom monster reskins, creating a sort of bespoke Doom-flavored knockoff of the snowy second episode of Blood. I also used a blood recoloring mod I frequently use, NashGore (a very decent and tasteful gore mod) and Flashlight++ (set to the "lantern" preset.)

With this particular loadout it almost feels like a "Once Upon a Time... in the Andes" kind of vibe. This is helped by most of the maps following more or less the same formula: mountainous terrain, small villages boasting fairly simple lifestyles (I saw a refrigerator once, but that's it) and lots of temples and ruins, with textures heavily lifting from Heretic and Hexen, implying worship of the Serpent Riders. Most of the early levels are pretty small, but towards the middle of the set they start to grow in size and monster count. The exception to this trend would be "Hotel Patagonia," a small concept map revolving around a classic Eagles song.

For DBP75, the mapper roster consists of veteran mapper and Doomer Boards administrator Jon "40oz" Vail, who led the project as he often does and contributed the endcap missions and a third one besides early on; the one-of-a-kind Ilya "joeilya" Lazarev contributed a whopping five maps, most of which are even good; and several one-and-done contributors, namely mayhem, J. Wesley "thehockster" Hockster, clumsycryptid, jforce, gije, thundercunt (who used to go by Pedro VC), the Gru formerly known as senpaigru, and lastly, Nockson.

Despite the semi-speedmapping nature of the project, Patagonian Pilgrimage boasts some really fun maps. Hockster's "Hell's Overpass" is a great early level with lots of twists and turns, mixing a semi-industrial aesthetic with the snowy mountain theme and using it as a canvas for some excellent fights. "Patagonia Experiment" by thundercunt might be my favorite map, not least because despite the name, it's more detailed than your average Plutonia-style map while nevertheless maintaining Plutonia-style gameplay. The final level, 40oz's "Patagonian Pilgrimage," is actually not a straightforward credits map as has been the tradition, but instead throws one last fight at you that feels appropriately epic and a good send-off to the set.

While this is overall a solid mapset, with a full sixteen levels of mountain mayhem, there are a couple parts where it drags. Joeilya is the primary culprit; when he puts the effort in, his maps can be really fun and well-detailed. But sometimes he gets some bug up his ass and that bug tells him to make terrible maps, and this time around it convinced him to make "Global Warming," a late-game macroslaughter map that is probably fun for some slaughter perverts (lest you think I'm being unfair, I am also a slaughter pervert) but is the embodiment of boring and frustrating for me. His other late-game map, "Cozy Mansion," is orders of magnitude more entertaining, but it's also very weird and oversized in design, with some strange aesthetic choices that left me scratching my head. "Forgeward" and "Emberstone Fortress," by clumsycryptid and jforce respectively, are also kind of low points for the set; it's not that they're bad, per se, but the former has a lot of stringy corridor design and the latter doesn't really do a lot with its core conceit. 

I liked Patagonian Pilgrimage. While "Global Warming" is very much an outright stinker and I don't think you'd be missing anything by skipping it, DBP75 is still a really fun play. While compared to some of the Boards' other projects, the theme isn't anything special (they've done snowy projects and temple-heavy projects before) it's nevertheless a lovely outing for the project's diamond jubilee. 

 

MAP01: Alpaca Summit

Jon "40oz" Vail

A simple enough starter, a small empty settlement set into the ridge between two small frozen ponds. Mostly trash mobs and a few skelly bois, but 40oz is kind enough to throw a touch of microslaughter at you for an exciting finale.

MAP02: Tribute to Mr Hands

Ilya "joeilya" Lazarev

What a name. joeilya drops a rocky network of frosty hils and tunnels and a stark black sky above. I like how you can see your ultimate goal basically from the start, the trick is to find your way up there, which involves exploring two separate hills and the nearby tunnels, as well as making a couple of jumps. I'm not sure where the Mr. Hands part comes into it, though. (If you don't know what that is, I'd advise you to not google it while also recognizing that ignoring that advice is an internet rite of passage. Do what you want, I'm not your mom.)

MAP03: Caribou Crossing

40oz

A little snowbound village. Like "Alpaca Summit" it's very low-key, relying mostly on trash mobs. A small invasion teleports in when you get the red key, but honestly, at this point you should be able to handle everything the map throws at you. 40oz also reuses the finale from "Alpaca Summit," that being a final room with a large (by the map's standards) swarm of baddies and a pair of caged revenants for artillery fire. I like the paintings in the first house.

MAP04: Land of Fire

mayhem

The name is a little misleading, as there's very little fire here, but there is a lot of freezing water that damages you. There's also a derailed train outside an abandoned village, and a creepy underground temple nearby. Compared to the maps before, "Land of Fire" is a large map with double the monster count, but it won't really pressure you much, except maybe in the temple.

MAP05: Hell's Overpass

J. Wesley "thehockster" Hockster

Now we're talking. The Hockster sends you through a small warehouse complex that folds in on itself. He starts you off light with imps and zombies and whatnot, but multiple waves of mid-level baddies will show up throughout, culminating in the biggest fight once you grab the blue key, one that leaves you without cover and with a lot of fire coming from above. Great level.

MAP06: Forgeward

clumsycryptid

You start off in the frozen backlot behind some kind of metal foundry. The foundry itself is mostly just stringy hallways, but it features some cool ambushes and ultimately exits in the midst of a small town full of monsters. It's not the most hectic experience out there, but you can make it a lot easier on yourself if you find the secret that destroys the pain elementals before you reach the village.

MAP07: Second Nature

joeilya

Normally I think joeilya's capacity for criticizing other peoples' maps tends to outstrip his own mapping talent, but he's really surprised me with this one. It's a large complex of snowbound buildings set amidst a mountain valley at night. A large meeting hall presents a fairly hectic fight by the standards of the wad so far, but I also liked the invasion of cacodemons from outside after you throw a switch in an abandoned building. The map's finale takes you into the stygian depths of a nearby cave system, with some cool fights in your way in and on your way out. Cool, creepy music too, apparently from a My Little Pony fan game of all things.

MAP08: Emberstone Fortress

jforce

Like a snowy version of a Doom 64 level, "Emberstone Fortress" is a small temple with a surrounding ditch and lots of baddies. It's not likely to take you a great amount of time, but every switch and every key summons another wave of baddies that teleport or fly in, culminating in jforce mercifully giving you the BFG just in time to deal with a cyberdemon and his goons, your last task for this map.

MAP09: Xanadu

gije

It's a big temple complex set into a mountain. Lots of varied terrain with some major height variation, some back-and-forth with the key hunting, a spot of cave diving, all culminating in a big fight by a temple over a lake of blood. Fun level that reminds me a little bit of the temple maps from the original Shadow Warrior; the music probably plays a part in that.

MAP10: Linkorn Park

joeilya

It's one of the largest maps in the pack so far, an entire town massacre under the auspices of joeilya. The central focus is a small park with a fountain in front of what is eventually revealed to be a cemetery; the bulk of the map has you exploring the surrounding area, jumping from roof to roof and window to window. A couple of times the combat turns into outright slaughter in confined spaces, but mot of the time you'll be dealing with things like rooftop snipers, air cover from cacodemons, and a steady stream of trash mobs. Fun level.

MAP11: Patagonia Experiment

thundercunt (also known as Pedro VC)

As the name cheekily suggests, this has a lot of Plutonia vibes to it: from the tight encounter design, the abundance of chaingunners, the sometimes mean-spirited use of arch-viles, all in a beautiful ruined temple complex. The only difference is instead of a jungle setting it's a mountain one. Really fun map.

MAP12: Twilight Ascetic

Gru (formerly senpaigru)

I was not expecting Chrono Trigger music. Your rampage through a series of mountain villages continues; while the "village" is just a couple of buildings, one of which isn't accessible, the bulk of the map is a large temple complex with some industrial bits bolted on. Much of the complex is made up of walkways over icy water, but there's a few indoor sections as well as a large melee at the very end when you grab the final key. Cool revenant jump-scare in the house early on.

MAP13: Cozy Mansion

joeilya

joeilya returns with a map that is much more characteristically joeilya. While it says "Cozy Mansion" on the label, it's much more an abstract idea of a mansion, with some limited Doomcute to show bedrooms, a couple kitchens, some libraries. In practice it's large — even cavernous — maze of corridors and vast rooms, each one boasting a big fight with more than a couple moments of slaughter and even several of the big bosses, including a one-two cyber/spider punch at the very end. Crazy map.

MAP14: Global Warming

joeilya

Come on, Ilya, what the fuck is this? "Global Warming" is the worst kind of slaughter map, a series of boxes where you press a switch and a wall drops to reveal a large chamber where someone just selected the whole room and hit "flood fill." There's 1300+ enemies on UV, and you get to fight them in a series of lava-filled rooms where the floor is made up of sections that sink when you stand on them. It's maps like this that make me grateful for slightly-OP gameplay mods: High Noon Drifter's Basilissa mode helped me power through this mess. Fuck you, Ilya.

MAP15: Hotel Patagonia

Nockson

This one's cute. It's basically an abstract re-enactment of The Eagles' "Hotel California," complete with song lyrics written on the walls. It reminds me a little, thematically, of parts of DBP11: Lilywhite Lilith. Compared to the last level, it's pretty cozy, with a monster count that tops out around 98. Lots of Doomcute, but despite that it's still very much an abstraction on a hotel rather than something resembling a real-world construction. Then again, given the concept, that's probably fine.

MAP16: Patagonian Pilgrimage

40oz

Rack 'em up. In lieu of the traditional quiet walking credits map, you're treated to one last showdown, hordes of low-to-medium level mobs and a few big baddies in and around a lake with a large island in the middle, atop which are some ruins. It's not the toughest challenge in the world, especially considering that 40oz generously tops up your ammo, but it's a fun run-and-gun shootout in what's frankly a very beautiful arena. Great way to finish the mapset.

-june❤