Image: Jaeden

Is it a free standalone game? Is it a mod? Is it using questionably borrowed assets? Yes! Who cares!? All that's certain is that Tenebrum 2 is one of the biggest things to come from the Doom modding scene in a while, and that's saying something. Or perhaps that should be the Heretic & Hexen modding scene, as this is an utterly massive hack-and-slash adventure through a high fantasy world. A very large one. Maybe four times the scale of Hexen. And with four times as many characters and weapons. All from one developer, too - the humbly named Jaeden, a regular on the Doomworld forums.

And the best thing? No purchase necessary. All you need is the UZDoom engine and the Tenebrum 2 game data. Unzip them together in the same directory, run UZDoom, and you're playing! Just check the options menu to configure your controls and jump in. There's not much story here - evil sorceror, dark armies, etc etc. Kick some pseudo-medieval ass.

Now, if you've actually PLAYED Hexen before, the thought of 'Hexen but four times the size' has probably got you paralyzed with fear, wracked with flashbacks to inane switch-hunts through unhinged, barely-connected levels. Worry not! Jaeden has taken some notes in the intervening 30+ years since Hexen's release. So far, I've had no problem navigating this particular world of ghoulies and ghosts, and each episode has its own distinct look and set of enemies, with elite named enemies frequently mixed in with the fodder.

While the game's campaign is utterly sprawling in scope, it's broken up into many smaller adventures, each one an interconnected hub unto itself. There's options to play the game as one contiguous whole, or just tackle a single episode at a time, in classic Heretic style, if you want something more bite-sized. A good opportunity to hop around between the twelve playable characters, each of which has five unique weapons, a passive perk and an active special ability. There's also a ton of consumable items to pick up and use.

Because I am a sucker for Baldur's Gate 3's Karlach, my favorite so far is Rose, a big red demon lady who is the tallest, toughest fighter in the game to begin with. And then she uses her Enlarge ability to grow to over twelve feet tall, smashing most regular enemies into gibs with a single punch and soaking up damage by the bucketload. And you might think that the game would hold you back from using something so obviously powerful? Nope, this is a power fantasy. It recharges quickly when you're not using it, letting you bust it out whenever a fight is going south.

My only real complaints from what I've played so far are that Tenebrum 2 is mostly assembled out of borrowed assets. The world textures and music are largely from Heretic and Hexen, with a few extras made in their style. The character and enemy sprites are chunky pre-rendered sorts, though, with amusingly oblong abs on many of the bigger characters. It's not an ugly look, but it is charmingly amateurish, which, given that this is a one-person passion project developed over years? Yeah, that checks out. This is just big dumb fun, and for the best price of all. Thank you, Jaeden. You did damn good.

Tenebrum 2 is out now, free, and only requires you to download the UZDoom engine . You don't need to own anything. Not Doom, not Heretic, not Hexen. But if you DO own Heretic... I'd also highly recommend Faithless, if you're up for more magical hack n' slash action - another years-long project.