We've all been there – trying to access a website, only to encounter what scares us CAPTCHA. But what if, instead of matching letters, ducks, or mysterious ladders, you could cast demons out of Hell? This is the idea of ​​​​Doom CAPTCHA, a new project that uses the classic first-person shooter death To prove that a person is not a robot.

Doom CAPTCHA is the brainchild of software engineer and CEO of software developer Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, who shared a video of the project on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

“Verify you are human by playing Doom and killing at least three enemies in Nightmare Mode,” Rauch said.

How does it work?

Using the arrow keys and space bar, players maneuver the space marine through the maze. Demons will appear from all sides, and because you're on Nightmare difficulty, they pack a stronger punch.

However, although Doom CAPTCHA's controls are easy enough, learning how to defeat the demons - especially in Nightmare Mode - can be frustrating and end up taking longer than simply completing a regular CAPTCHA.

“After four attempts at being an idiot, I realized that if I moved forward and then backwards, I could shoot the three guys right in front of me, and I would be far away from enemy fire,” User X He responded To Rauch's position.

"Yes, that's the winning move," Rauch replied. "Do not go out into the fire area."

Ranch did not immediately respond to a request for comment previously Decryption.

Why death?

Released in 1993 by id Software, Doom tells the story of a lone space soldier who fights his way through a research facility on Mars and reaches Hell to fight hordes of demons. Doom was a huge success among players, and became a favorite game for experimentation when id Software released the source code to the public in 1997.

Making Doom open source has enabled developers to modify the game and port it to a myriad of platforms — from Lawn mowers And ATM's Bitcoin And Dogecoin, and eventually to ChatGPT Even the digestive tract Bacteria. Whether or not the device can run the popular shooter has become an interesting trend among engineers and technology enthusiasts, with... Dedicated Reddit subreddit For the reason.

“The choice of Doom came from its pre-existing reputation for unconventional gameplay,” Loren “Raine” Ramlan, a biotechnology graduate researcher at MIT, previously said. Decryption. “I had a great time researching all the weird hardware people had used to run the game previously, and I wanted to throw my bioengineer hat in the ring.”

Last January, a Dogecoin contributor with a pseudonym named Pimax added a playable version of Doom to Dogecoin Blockchain via the Doginals protocol, which is similar to an NFT. He loves Bitcoin ArrangementsDoginals allows users to record media or content on the smallest units of Dogecoin, making them permanent artifacts on the blockchain.

The list of devices and platforms running Doom continues to grow. In September, he launched the cryptocurrency gaming project RIVES.”Death Olympics“, which is an on-chain competition on the Ethereum network a base and Cartesi with prizes of up to $15,000.

After watching players quickly figure out how to beat the CAPTCHA, Rauch hinted at future updates.

“I tend to modify it more to make it more challenging,” he said.

Modified by Andrew Hayward