Well, I sourced a copy of Doom 3 from a generous friend whose PC is so ancient it couldn’t possibly run it, and I’ve been scouring ModDB for anyone still using iD’s Tech 4 who seems to be making something interesting. And here’s someone! Still Decay is a one-man effort from modder SpiritusSanctus, adapted from an old entry he submitted to a Doom 3 competition a few years back. It’s an ambitious-looking project with the player climbing a giant, crumbling tower, one of the last remaining landmarks in a fallen gothic-industrial fantasy landscape.

Too ambitious? It does seem a lot for one man – he talks about a dual skill system, upgrades and levelling weapons, and a theme of the machine versus the spiritual, but he’s missed one release date by his own admission and so far the updates are mostly just screenshots. At the same time, Spiritus seems to have a relatively decent grasp on how to keep things simple yet detailed – iconic, rather than basic, shall we say? Textures aren’t anything wildly out of the ordinary but there’s still something of a unique look and two distinctive styles at work here. Not to mention he thinks his original story was ‘lacklustre’ and wants to rework it primarily through concentrating on the bare essentials, so the evidence does support his claims the minimal look is an intentional design choice.

Some new screens just went up, so work does still seem to be progressing. I don’t have a clear impression of how impressive this might or might not be yet, but I’m definitely curious. Stripped-down steampunk in ‘an ancient ruin, falling apart’ sounds like it could be worth waiting for.

You can find Still Decay’s page on ModDB here.