played via the catacombs pack. for anyone unaware it's a dungeon crawler akin to gauntlet that john carmack made before wolfenstein 3d was a conceivable thought

interestingly enough, this game is the first one listed in the aforementioned collection. it's also just titled "catacomb" for whatever fucking reason. so if you play this one first, you're actually playing the second game. whoops!

not that it matters anyway - it's not like there's really a narrative - though i do like john's shitpost-y writings in the stages. seeing this in a stage implied to be a layer of hell is pretty funny for a game released in 1991. i liked how it was followed shortly after with "money grubbing preachers" among other things

game itself is solid but the control scheme is ass. arrows to move, CTRL to shoot and ALT to lock your aim is pretty impossible to get fully comfortable with, but it's workable enough for the hour and a half (tops) that this lasts