This week’s project involved me playing through episodes 2 and 3 of Ultimate Doom, and picking an interesting level to analyze and create a presentation on. I chose to focus on the level design, aesthetics, and music of E3M1, Hell Keep.
(Map of E3M1)
This level stood out to me as having a similar purpose to the very first level, E1M1, in that the level is designed to introduce you to new core mechanics in the following levels. From the first room in the level, the player must solve a simple symmetry puzzle in which they make an object (a skull with dark eyes) match an example object (a skull with red, glowing eyes) by triggering it with the ‘use’ key. 
This serves as a simple, yet effective introduction to a theme of episode 3, which features puzzles more heavily than the previous episodes.
This episode also emphasizes a particular design choice that is one of my favorite aspects of Doom; the horror aspect. The jump scares in the narrow hallways and behind closed doors add to the experience of playing the game, which connects the player emotionally by tapping into their fear and adrenaline resulting in these sudden jump scares and dangerous, claustrophobic situations.
(An instance of jump scares, where the player is greeted with a loud roar and several monsters in their face when opening the door.)
All in all, taking a closer look at the level revealed some valuable insight in how to design my own levels and how to introduce new mechanics to players without needing explicit tutorials.