Half-Life: Crowbar-Deep in the Dead is a complete re-imagining of the first episode of DOOM (1993), taking all of the original levels from Knee-Deep in the Dead and remaking them in the style of Half-Life and its many expansions.
Take control of Dr. Stan Blazkowicz, a Black Mesa engineer thrust into a fierce battle for survival as he fights off hordes of aliens and military troops, shooting and blasting his way through some of the most iconic levels in FPS history. Will you live through this alien hellscape long enough to see tomorrow, or will you be just another body strewn about in the ruins of Black Mesa?
Note: this release is a demo including 4 playable maps. Unfortunately the full version of Half-Life: Crowbar-Deep in the Dead is now on indefinite hiatus.
- Title: Half-Life: Crowbar-Deep in the Dead (Demo)
- Filename: hl1-sp-crowbar-deep-in-the-dead-demov2.7z
- Size : 28.1 MB
- Author: Mr. Floyd
- Date Released: 21 September 2020
- Copy the crowbardeep folder (and if desired, the crowbardeep_hd folder) into your SteamApps\common\Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Half-Life: Crowbar-Deep in the Dead should now be listed in your Library.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
1600 x 900
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1,458Overall
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0Today
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3Last 7 days
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208365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 10 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 34 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 18 Mins by Stef
Longest: 1 Hours by Avantgarde95
Total Time Played: 6 Hours, 15 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Something’s up with the autosaves. Other then the lack of them, it appears the demo shipped with someone else’s. There’s even a couple quick saves I never made. I even got sent to the first Xen chapter of HL1 after dying. While it’s what I deserved, I don’t think that’s gonna be the case for everyone else. Someone might want to put a warning or disclaimer in the description.
OK updated the download to remove the saved games. Unfortunately I don’t think this demo has autosaves, probably by design to keep it in the Doom style perhaps?
A well done demo and sad that it perhaps will never be continued.
I use gauge to install and didn’t encountered any problem during the whole demo.
Design is good with some interesting ideas and especially the alternative ‘secret’ route you can have
Grunt combats may look easy while other and especially when you have only the crowbar are a little bit more challenging
there are also some nice new texture and some slight intresting coding
All in all it’s worth to give it a try even if it’s quite short…
Using Gauge
Medium
18 Minutes
will note that those familiar with the originals dooms secrets should find the re interpretation quite interesting
Indeed a nice little mappack and I did recognize the first Doom map just fine :)! Maybe in later maps using the Doom layout was just to much of a hassle to get this thing finished…
the author stated that he just lost interest in the project and then at the same time he decided to work more on his decay SP campaign conversion.
Short and sweet, can’t say I recognized any Doom stuff but then it’s been a long time since I played any of that…yes, someone elses saves in there as well…odd..it did crash once on me at the beginning so I started again and it was fine that time, I remembered to save it a lot just in case though…one of the mystery saves there seemed of somewhere I never got to in my game…so the plot thickens, however, it’s worth a go if you have 10 mins of nothing else to do which is about all it takes to get through what I found and played.
a lot of the doom style secrets are present just very well implemented into half lifes world design.
This was quite fun; I really wish it was longer. I “think” I found all the secrets but it’s worth going back and investigating. The combat is sparse and kind of secondary to the exploration.
Does anybody know how to get to the vent behind the 2 vending machines in the lobby? I know it’s there but can’t find a way to access it.
Just checked, and that’s actually not a secret – it’s not accessible and really just part of the wall.
I guess it might be an unfinished part of the map. I was noclipping around and found that when you return to the area (after the incident) there is a vent there, a ladder you can climb, a grate you can break, and some batteries in the overhead ventilation duct. But you can’t seem to get through the obstruction to access the area. Why put batteries into an area if the player didn’t have some way to get there?
Ah ok, I did not check after the incident.
It is accessible, and it is done so in the same way it was in doom, assuming you’ve played it. To unlock the doors, go to the end of the map but don’t leave, this will allow you to get the shotgun. To lower the vending machines you need to go backtrack to around the point in the corridor where the two rooms are before you entered the deadly water room. It sounds weird but try it and you’ll see what I mean.
Also I posted a review but for some odd reason it’s not displaying? It seems to be acknowledged in the review data.
Thanks for letting me know about the lost comment – sometimes legit comments go right to the trash unfortunately, not even caught by spam or withheld for things like links. I restored it.
Thanks for the hint. I have not played it in Doom and somehow missed it. Now I “think” I have seen all the secrets!
A very nice demo that will be funny to play for Doom fans.
Sadly it’s too short and probably abandoned, but it was fun to discover some secret passages.
Go play it anyway, it’s not bad and it doesn’t have any bugs.
Manually
Easy
25 Minutes
Crowbar-Deep in the Dead is a recreation of Doom if it was done in the style of Half-Life, and I think this completely succeeds aesthetically, from a mechanical point of view not so much.
I’ll get the negatives out of the way first, because despite having a mostly frustrating experience with this mod there’s far more good than bad. Since the difficulties were changed to the same in Doom I assumed that I should play on Ultra-Violence (Hard) as this would be the “true” experience of the game – like in doom – however I’m convinced that the mod was not actually scaled for this difficulty. Unless you’re extremely lucky you will die on hard through no fault of your own. This mod also contains no autosaves and as someone speculated earlier it may be to keep the doom style, but this doesn’t really work when there’s no pistol starting, but I won’t hold this against the modder, just remember to save frequently.
The modder decided to change the imps into alien slaves, on the surface this should seem like a straightforward swap as they both have a ranged and melee attack as well as looking fairly similar, however in practice this is a terrible choice as the key to defeating the imps is avoiding their projectile attack, something which the hitscanning vortigaunts lack. The result of this is vortigaunts frequently spawning in areas where there’s little to no cover and where you cannot reasonably fight back against them without taking heavy damage. I don’t think I was killed by anything in this mod other than the vortigaunts, aside from some grunts near the end (which only happened because I got pelted by two slave lightning bolts right before that took off about half my health). To make matters worse, there’s one point where a vortigaunt spawning in does not make a sound AND is hidden by a pillar leaving the player to only realise after they have been hit, and while this happens three of its friends come along… Extremely frustrating. Maybe Imps should have been replaced with Bullsquids?
So the good: this looks amazing, it really does, the Black Mesa textures and environments have been utilised extremely well here and despite being a recreation of doom this can easily be believed to be another section of Black Mesa. As a Doom recreation, aesthetically speaking, I don’t think you could ask for better, the layout matches the original doom maps almost perfectly and any changes made are for the better (mostly to add Half-Life flavour to the map). My personal favourite of these changes is how the secrets of the original game are implemented into the setting of Black Mesa, and they were a joy to find.
Unfortunately this is only a demo, but I hope the modder decides to continue this sometime in the future and cleans up the scrappier bits. This could be something great.
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes
Very, very good stuff here !
Huge fan of both Doom and HL, I like to use Hammer for fun since years so I know how long mapping of this quality can be. All is there : faithful architecture, clearly well-thinked gameplay, mastered scripting, brillantly reimagined secrets and eastereggs : a PERFECT MIX !
I hope you’ll continue this huge work that we could reach Phobos Lab soon đŸ˜‰
I just watched Bolloxed’s video on YouTube and really like the demo!
The layout of the maps is very imaginative, with many alternative routes. The fight is hard enough. I hope the author continues the work.
Its interesting for doom fans but its really short and fights aren’t much fun. It looks great tho.
Manually
Hard
30 Minutes
Definately an okay play. I never really was interested in Doom so I didnt get any reference from it.
Good map design and very high quality mapping, fights were decent enough.
Short and sweet for sure, was fun little demo for old Doom fan. Was fun to find all? the secrets again.
Short but pretty enjoyable demo. I like the design of the laboratory and glowing effect of the battery. The combats are also good.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
One of the best demos i’ve ever played.
Manually
Hard
20 Minutes
Well, this was wow! Just wow!!
I mean, I am not a quite Doom fan, and to be honest, I’ve never played such an FPS gaming classic, but after playing this I would definitely try it!
But well what can I say on this one, the map and the mixed styles were awesome and perfectly balanced, like Half-Doom or Doom-Half IDK, it’s a shame this cool and well-polished project just had to stay as a little bit sweet demo.
I hope the author gets the courage to make a full mod out of it. That would be just fantastic!
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes
just perfect
Manually
Medium
55 Minutes
Very impressive voice acting and mapping, shame it’s a demo that never got a full release.
Manually
Hard
27 Minutes
I love this mod, Within the two maps it has, it doesn’t really recreate the levels in doom but instead refines them to a more improved and what I will describe as a more “realistic” take on doom. My favorite part about this is the secrets, they are actually realistic and sensible unlike in doom.
Like how in the beginning E1M2 of this mod, there is a vent which you have to find your way into which leads in a room with a locked door you couldn’t access on the outside. In the original doom there is just a miscolored wall that opens into a secret room.
I also love the take of the E1M2 maze here, while it is hard to recognizable within the mod, it feels like a real life storage room while in doom, it feels weird and out of place.
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes