Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20151224121621/@comment-1496755-20160404050856

@Rottweiler: Oh, nice - secrets definitely add a lot of depth to an otherwise simple shooter. Most secret rooms are rather plain, but a few are designed in a way that makes you feel they have a history (not a nice one).

It's a little strange that Tom Hall left due to id Soft taking a turn towards more violent and gory games... and yet his next project was Rise of the Triad, which is a pretty violent and gory game (though in a different way than Doom). RotT got some of the features that were cut from Doom - multiple characters (they even have the same names as in the Doom Bible), scores, lives, etc.

The best way to appreciate Tom Hall is through the Commander Keen games, of course. His creativity and sense of humor are what distinguishes Keen from the other platformers of the time. Secret areas and secret levels were first seen here - 5 out of the 7 Keen games have a secret level (Keen 2 and Keen Dreams don't have one), which is usually a more special one, either more challenging or with a more unorthodox design concept. Furthermore, the way you reach the secret level is unique for each game, and it always involves doing something weird, or thinking out of the box.

I see that article is about the 2009 Wolf - it continued the tradition of secrets, though it's more like hidden items: gold, intel, and tomes of power (which look exactly like Heretic's tomes of power - it's an easter egg). And this does make the game a little more exciting.

The latest Wolf games (TNO and TOB) have collectible hidden items too - gold artifacts, letters and Enigma codes. TOB, in particular, contains hidden recreations of levels from the old Wolf 3D, and they contain a unique kind of treasure called "old silver".