DoomRL, the fan-made roguelike Doom spin-off first launched in 2002, entered the news last week after ZeniMax issued a legal letter to its creator. Unofficial projects tend to attract cease and desist orders, but this one was somewhat unusual given it’d been around for over 14 years without previous issue.
Creator Kornel Kisielewicz is running a Kickstarter campaign for Jupiter Hell—a “turn-based sci-fi roguelike” inspired by DoomRL and Doom itself—which is perhaps what forced ZeniMax’s hand to act now. In any event, Jupiter Hell has now surpassed its crowdfunding target.
With 32 hours left on the clock at the time of writing, Jupiter Hell has passed its £60,000 predetermined requirement by just over £200. Should the relevant financial milestones be met, Stretch Goals include more hacking options, new game modes and a new zone—with the game’s Steam Early Access version expected, at this stage, to land at some point in November, 2017 (Jupiter Hell has already been Greenlit).
Since ZeniMax’s intervention, DoomRL—or D**mRL/DRL as it appears to now be known—has also went open source.
“The plan was to release this upon conclusion of the Kickstarter campaign as a thank you to backers, but Zenimax have pushed our hand,” reads an update on the Jupiter Hell Kickstarter page. “D**mRL is available on GitHub, with some simple instructions on how to compile. More detailed instructions will come later. The code is in FreePascal, distributed under GPL 2.0. Derek Yu’s original artwork is released with the game under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.”
More information on Jupiter Hell can be found on its official website.
