We're incredibly excited about our next project, a new game from our teams in Texas and Frankfurt, with game direction once again by Hugo Martin. It'll be some time before we're ready to share more but we can't wait for you to see what we're working on.
— id Software (@idSoftware) November 12, 2026
id Software’s free Slaughter Mode for DOOM: The Dark Ages arrives on 16 November. It is an endless, single-player wave mode, and you need the Revelations DLC to play it. The mode itself costs nothing extra. The premise is straightforward even by Doom standards. Demons arrive, you remove them, more demons arrive, and this goes on until you are dead or have set a high score worth a screenshot.
Game director Hugo Martin revealed the mode on the Slayers Club Live stream in October. It has 19 arenas with randomised encounters, a pile of cosmetics to unlock, and the Chain Spear, the melee-and-ranged weapon that came with Revelations. Martin has said it is so big that it “feels like a sequel”. That is a bold claim for a horde mode, though The Dark Ages is a game in which you ride a cybernetic dragon, so modesty has never been the house style. He also described the Slayer’s heft as like putting a jetpack on an Abrams tank. The same line fits the mode’s marketing quite well.
It also follows the Ripatorium, the customisable horde mode added in Update 2 at QuakeCon 2025, so this is not id’s first go at endless carnage. What makes it notable is that id built it entirely in-house with a smaller team than before, after a difficult year for the studio. id has also confirmed that its next game will be directed by Martin. That will reassure the faithful, who regard him as the man who taught the modern Doom Slayer to dance.
Endless modes are the shooter’s answer to a bottomless brunch: there is always another round, and the regret arrives later. Slaughter Mode looks set to supply plenty of both from Monday.
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