A Boy And His Barrel
A Boy And His Barrel: Forbidden Love
A Boy And His Barrel is essentially a series of escort missions with a “juicy” twist! The “plot” of this mod is as follows: “You’ve befriended (and apparently married) a barrel full of blueberry paste named Violet Barrelgarde, but the demons don’t understand your love. Both of you must make it to the exit intact – if either of you dies, you must restart. Simply push Violet onto the exit gate to progress!”.
I really wanted to contribute a map but was knee-deep in Skulldash development at the time. I eventually joined the A Boy And His Barrel team thanks to a small deal I made with Jimmy – I make a map for ABAHB, and in exchange he makes a map for Skulldash’s “Expanded edition”. Little did we realise at the time that this interaction would cause us to become good friends and work on more projects together, such as The Joy Of Mapping 5.
Research Is The Keycard To Success
Before I put my mind into making a map I experienced A Boy And His Barrel in it’s entirety to get a feel for the mod’s direction. Needless to say, I fell in love with the mod (not Violet, heh) and couldn’t wait to contribute. The cleverly reimagined renditions of classic Doom maps combined with the ‘minor to major’ converted midis and a whole host of cute and charming in-game interactions makes for an absolute blast of a game to play; complete with decent combat, tricky puzzles and other fun gimmicks.
After discussing what’s required by the team I opted in to do a map which was an “A Boy And His Barrel Friendly” rendition of The Ultimate Doom’s Episode 4. Before starting my map that then meant more playing was necessary – I cracked open Doom 1 and blasted through E4 in it’s entirety, jotting notes down of maps and areas that were of particular interest, as well as taking screenshots to later influence my creation.
Map Crafting & Barrel Cruelty
I finally put my mind to drawing the map itself. I crafted the map in a way that was ‘chronological’, both in the way the map plays and in the way the episode originally went; with the opening area being very, very similar to E4M1’s opening scene, complete with the vicious shotgunner invasion. I took some liberties, creating ‘theme appropriate’ areas exclusive to A Boy And His Barrel; one such area features a room which has a conveyor belt in the middle of the room, which leads to a pit of lava. The player is forced to place Violet on this ‘conveyor belt of doom’, and then has to run around, killing demons to race to a switch which will grant access to an item able to save Violet from her death and subsequently proceed further in the map!
A section of the map, representative of E4M2, see’s Violet catapulted all over the room over pits of lava until eventually resting in a place well out of the player’s reach. This leaves the player a little anxious, and also can cause Violet to become upset due to the lack of care from the player, meaning the player has to hastily make their way through some dangerous locations until eventually becoming reunited. This map features some pretty in-depth secret areas – there’s secret passageways that give the player a massive health boost as well as providing quicker “speedrunner friendly” shortcuts to various areas. There’s also a massive secret area complete with a secret exit, which can only be found once the player has found the correct exit.
I had a brilliant time working on this project and now remain as part of the team, in control of testing maps and making suggestions where appropriate. If you want to obtain a demo of this mod, click here.
Release Date
Unreleased, no date confirmed as of yet.
My Contribuitions
- Map: “Thy Juice Consumed”
Tools Used
- GZDoom Builder