The Darkening

The Darkening Episode 1: The Nameless Project is a Doom II megawad containing twenty-two maps, split equally between single player/coop and deathmatch. Initially released on January 19, 1998, a v1.1 bug fix followed on January 21 to add a missing flat and texture animation. It was named as one of the Top 100 WADs of All Time under the year 1999.

The project was conceived by Jan Van der Veken and Travers Dunne as a 32-level megawad with team contributions similar to Memento Mori and Requiem, but with more consistent theming. To make new levels publicly available more quickly, the plan was to iteratively release the megawad as three episodes containing 10 or 11 maps each.