This review contains spoilers
Went in completely blind and I wouldn't wish not doing the same on my worst enema. A genuine technical marvel and a tremendous testament to the importance of atmosphere as the primary vehicle for horror. This is what games are about, folks.
Sincerely think the metatextual elements are handled crazy good here. The mod being sourced from a forum post that links to a Google Drive where an uninitiated player (me) can just accidentally download and play the wrong file is so fucking good as a disarming technique - one of many mindful off-putting flourishes that compound as the layers of the .wad reveal themselves. Even the approach to the starting line feels sloppy and homebrewed in a way you don't get on the Steam/Itch store. It's understandable for folk to be wary of any game that tries to build a mythos surrounding the playable executable, but the supplementary material here is so lean and evocative. You won't stop the doe-eyed youtubers from demystifying and theorizing shit into perfectly solvable mulch, but My House only wishes for a slightly transactional push+pull on your curiosity to find the clues for progression in the .txt.
At its absolute strongest when it isn't aping the liminal spaces cinematic universe wholesale. While it's pretty cute that the dev realised these areas in such a fully-fledged manner under such oppressive engine limitations, I can't help but wish I wasn't seeing the same ol' thing.
Ending made me choke up. Doggy........
Want to give the dev a big wet sloppy kiss for having the chutzpah to release a horror title without a fucking audio jumpscare. This man is not a coward.
Sincerely think the metatextual elements are handled crazy good here. The mod being sourced from a forum post that links to a Google Drive where an uninitiated player (me) can just accidentally download and play the wrong file is so fucking good as a disarming technique - one of many mindful off-putting flourishes that compound as the layers of the .wad reveal themselves. Even the approach to the starting line feels sloppy and homebrewed in a way you don't get on the Steam/Itch store. It's understandable for folk to be wary of any game that tries to build a mythos surrounding the playable executable, but the supplementary material here is so lean and evocative. You won't stop the doe-eyed youtubers from demystifying and theorizing shit into perfectly solvable mulch, but My House only wishes for a slightly transactional push+pull on your curiosity to find the clues for progression in the .txt.
At its absolute strongest when it isn't aping the liminal spaces cinematic universe wholesale. While it's pretty cute that the dev realised these areas in such a fully-fledged manner under such oppressive engine limitations, I can't help but wish I wasn't seeing the same ol' thing.
Ending made me choke up. Doggy........
Want to give the dev a big wet sloppy kiss for having the chutzpah to release a horror title without a fucking audio jumpscare. This man is not a coward.
This review contains spoilers
SPOILER ALERT!! THIS SHIT GETS PERSONAL!!! I'M WORKING THROUGH SOME STUFF!!
so now that i have spent many hours with My House I feel really comfortable digging into it. i found this to be a very emotional experience, and that is mostly due to it coming out at a very specific time for me.
my friend passed away earlier this month, and this game really does capture the sorrow of losing someone so close to you in such a tangible way. the place where they were is now empty, it feels haunted, when i found him that night i spent a few days wishing our apartment would burn down and take every last memory with it, i wished it would stand where it was forever as an untouched monument to him. i would find myself mentally there again, opening his bedroom door. The collection of artifacts that relate to him, there is a burning truth to how My House presents grief and how it really is its own non-euclidean nightmare.
Places that once brought you joy now feel flooded, burnt out, grey and lifeless, your ability to keep track of time and place dissolves as you end up somewhere again and again without knowing why you got there. Things that used to not mean much to you like their favorite drink now carry a significance to them. It captures the things that you can't describe to someone else about it, it really felt therapeutic to feel understood by the game.
The fact that this is done in Doom is a testament to how expertly crafted it is, how the blown-up JPEG of a house really sells the narrative that this is just another house map made in Doom. The tragedy, to me, is that my friend would have loved this mod, this was exactly the kind of shit he went crazy for. Now it's a very personal thing to me as I try to understand why he left me.
My House is not going to be for everyone, we are basically counting down until Markiplier is shrieking over it and there are a dozen of Doom wads about scary houses, but until then this is a powerful piece of grieving that makes you walk through its halls and observe the damage it does.
Perhaps there is also something to be said for how damaging it is the deeper we dig into the meanings, the what's and why's. The distortion becomes unbearable the deeper down the rabbit hole we go. Maybe it was best to leave it as it was while we had the chance? But they left us with so few answers we feel we have to dig deeper.
If I have to complain about something that is free that I felt like I should have paid money for, parts do require you be better at Doom than you might expect. So if you aren't used to circle-strafing and dodging, this mod is actually pretty tough in spots. Other than that, I hope to God no more Doom mods illicit this kind of emotion out of me again.
so now that i have spent many hours with My House I feel really comfortable digging into it. i found this to be a very emotional experience, and that is mostly due to it coming out at a very specific time for me.
my friend passed away earlier this month, and this game really does capture the sorrow of losing someone so close to you in such a tangible way. the place where they were is now empty, it feels haunted, when i found him that night i spent a few days wishing our apartment would burn down and take every last memory with it, i wished it would stand where it was forever as an untouched monument to him. i would find myself mentally there again, opening his bedroom door. The collection of artifacts that relate to him, there is a burning truth to how My House presents grief and how it really is its own non-euclidean nightmare.
Places that once brought you joy now feel flooded, burnt out, grey and lifeless, your ability to keep track of time and place dissolves as you end up somewhere again and again without knowing why you got there. Things that used to not mean much to you like their favorite drink now carry a significance to them. It captures the things that you can't describe to someone else about it, it really felt therapeutic to feel understood by the game.
The fact that this is done in Doom is a testament to how expertly crafted it is, how the blown-up JPEG of a house really sells the narrative that this is just another house map made in Doom. The tragedy, to me, is that my friend would have loved this mod, this was exactly the kind of shit he went crazy for. Now it's a very personal thing to me as I try to understand why he left me.
My House is not going to be for everyone, we are basically counting down until Markiplier is shrieking over it and there are a dozen of Doom wads about scary houses, but until then this is a powerful piece of grieving that makes you walk through its halls and observe the damage it does.
Perhaps there is also something to be said for how damaging it is the deeper we dig into the meanings, the what's and why's. The distortion becomes unbearable the deeper down the rabbit hole we go. Maybe it was best to leave it as it was while we had the chance? But they left us with so few answers we feel we have to dig deeper.
If I have to complain about something that is free that I felt like I should have paid money for, parts do require you be better at Doom than you might expect. So if you aren't used to circle-strafing and dodging, this mod is actually pretty tough in spots. Other than that, I hope to God no more Doom mods illicit this kind of emotion out of me again.
My kneejerk reaction is that l feel super weird about loving what is essentially an architectural achievement. I can't help but have, a sense of unease at a lot of the surroundings of this experience. The basic copypasta-like clearly House of Leaves-rip that doesn't really have much of a personal soul to it, and more the boxings of one, just rides on me (especially if the trauma part of that is actually real, which makes things even more complicated). Especially when it pulls memes and such of the internet to congeal here, and especially when I'm literally in an in-progress read of the book that leaves me too numb to feel the lovings of a homage without kind of scoffing at the quality attempt.
,,,on that same token though, it is a homage. A very carefully crafted one that manages to utilize its medium in ways that lift the ech-beginnings into something that emotionally feels haunting and winding. It's a very terrible reduction, but sometimes being a meticulous, loving director can help transcend a pretty shitty script. I really was terrified constantly. I found each exploration vast and visceral. Cheating (because this derg, is scared) doesn't even help when more often than not you get lost in ways that unnerve. Walking down the first long corridor and hitting ~The Labyrinth~ I immediately closed the WAD reflexively knowing there was a beast around the corner. I don't want to even talk about the dogs.
There's a big inner giddiness of "gosh I want to see more like this", a nerd-like love from experience looking at the ins-and-outs of WAD-making, feeling the rush when it's all demystified and going "gosh how did they do this??? Amazing!!" Sicker than suburbs have any real right to be. Manages to defy my usual personal distaste for the 'innovative' meta without a concrete narrative heart (e.g. Inscryption (sorry), Pony Island (not sorry), etc.).
,,,on that same token though, it is a homage. A very carefully crafted one that manages to utilize its medium in ways that lift the ech-beginnings into something that emotionally feels haunting and winding. It's a very terrible reduction, but sometimes being a meticulous, loving director can help transcend a pretty shitty script. I really was terrified constantly. I found each exploration vast and visceral. Cheating (because this derg, is scared) doesn't even help when more often than not you get lost in ways that unnerve. Walking down the first long corridor and hitting ~The Labyrinth~ I immediately closed the WAD reflexively knowing there was a beast around the corner. I don't want to even talk about the dogs.
There's a big inner giddiness of "gosh I want to see more like this", a nerd-like love from experience looking at the ins-and-outs of WAD-making, feeling the rush when it's all demystified and going "gosh how did they do this??? Amazing!!" Sicker than suburbs have any real right to be. Manages to defy my usual personal distaste for the 'innovative' meta without a concrete narrative heart (e.g. Inscryption (sorry), Pony Island (not sorry), etc.).
I highly recommend reading House of Leaves. It's a very unique novel that's surprisingly quite funny at times. You will love it, or at least hate it in an interesting way. This WAD is fine, but it pales in comparison to the work it's imitating.
Edit 10/26/23: Changed to unscored. Feel uncomfortable with the work itself as unfiction, and its impact on the Doom community it draws on (from?) seems negative to me. Very unsure of my thoughts though.
Edit 10/26/23: Changed to unscored. Feel uncomfortable with the work itself as unfiction, and its impact on the Doom community it draws on (from?) seems negative to me. Very unsure of my thoughts though.
"House of Leaves inspired Doom mod" is one of the most esoteric concepts you could probably ever cook up, but man, it sure is an esoteric concept aimed specifically at me.
There's a lot to process and unpack, but I don't think the constant comparisons to Yume Nikki are off the mark here: Myhouse is one of those things best experienced rather than actively discussed, even if the (adorably obvious in its adoration for Danielewski's writing) actual "plot" and imagery around the house has a plenty to delve into, analyze and chew on.
On the technical side of things Myhouse is probably the single most impressive feat in the Zdoom engine to date, which is all the more impressive considering the community around that source port (and Doom as a whole) has become more and more defined by getting as much mileage as (im)possible out of a thirty-year-old engine. I don't have as many positive things to say about the actual Doom aspects of it - there's enemy spam at work here that would put Plutonia to shame - but that's not really what you're playing Myhouse for.
There's a lot to process and unpack, but I don't think the constant comparisons to Yume Nikki are off the mark here: Myhouse is one of those things best experienced rather than actively discussed, even if the (adorably obvious in its adoration for Danielewski's writing) actual "plot" and imagery around the house has a plenty to delve into, analyze and chew on.
On the technical side of things Myhouse is probably the single most impressive feat in the Zdoom engine to date, which is all the more impressive considering the community around that source port (and Doom as a whole) has become more and more defined by getting as much mileage as (im)possible out of a thirty-year-old engine. I don't have as many positive things to say about the actual Doom aspects of it - there's enemy spam at work here that would put Plutonia to shame - but that's not really what you're playing Myhouse for.
I don't know about all the literary stuff but from a technical and creative level the effort and execution here are simply eye-popping.
This review contains spoilers
myhouse.wad is a doom ii mod built for the gzdoom source port that masquerades as if it were simply a recreation of someones real life house (which was all the rage in the early 2000s doom map community). of course, the aforementioned masquerade is just a barrier between the player and the actual game. in actuality, the mod is a psychological horror game utilizing non-euclidian geometry courtesy of well-placed teleports combined with proprietary udmf features that creates impossible geometry and subtly changes scenery as the game progresses
the map editor trickery going on here is nothing short of absolute genius. everything is so seamless and well thought out that, without firsthand mapping knowledge, you would genuinely never know how the game works until watching a video about it. i love that its so easy to run and play on just about any platform but the intricacies here, particularly in terms of sheer game design and layout, run deep. i think that, aside from the obvious psychological toying, my favorite aspect of the entire game is just that its so easy to overlook the depth of the game. one facet i have not read much emphasis on outside my own playthrough is how simple yet genius the idea of putting a generic wad with just the house in the game directory is; i thought that was the entire game. had i somehow downloaded the mod not having watched a video about it, i wouldve finished the first loop-around and quit after the blue gate.
in terms of narrative, the only qualms i had were the incorporation of over-done, over-safe possession tropes; the idea of someones soul inhabiting a computer or a game is tried. now, of course, it makes perfect sense to employ in this narrative, but everything about this game is so unique and presented in a genius way that it feels silly to turn to the journal entries and read about spooky dreams mirroring reality and such.
one thing i immediately thought i would dislike about myhouse.wad was the incorporation of the liminal spaces trope, particularly using viral examples as actual scenery in the game. the backrooms and hotel courtyard are actual playable parts of this game. while i thought it seemed kitschy at first, it really does fit the narrative quite well and only the backrooms feels out of place (which is really fine because you have to cheat to get there anyway)
my last comment is the picture of the author of the map and his late friend is so obviously edited (ai?) it hurts. this isnt serious criticism (look at the set dressing in modern resident evil titles) but its hilarious nonetheless
i am the first person to denounce low effort creepypasta, but really, myhouse.wad is the most refreshing internet horror story in recent memory and i doubt one this interesting will crop up again for the rest of the decade
the map editor trickery going on here is nothing short of absolute genius. everything is so seamless and well thought out that, without firsthand mapping knowledge, you would genuinely never know how the game works until watching a video about it. i love that its so easy to run and play on just about any platform but the intricacies here, particularly in terms of sheer game design and layout, run deep. i think that, aside from the obvious psychological toying, my favorite aspect of the entire game is just that its so easy to overlook the depth of the game. one facet i have not read much emphasis on outside my own playthrough is how simple yet genius the idea of putting a generic wad with just the house in the game directory is; i thought that was the entire game. had i somehow downloaded the mod not having watched a video about it, i wouldve finished the first loop-around and quit after the blue gate.
in terms of narrative, the only qualms i had were the incorporation of over-done, over-safe possession tropes; the idea of someones soul inhabiting a computer or a game is tried. now, of course, it makes perfect sense to employ in this narrative, but everything about this game is so unique and presented in a genius way that it feels silly to turn to the journal entries and read about spooky dreams mirroring reality and such.
one thing i immediately thought i would dislike about myhouse.wad was the incorporation of the liminal spaces trope, particularly using viral examples as actual scenery in the game. the backrooms and hotel courtyard are actual playable parts of this game. while i thought it seemed kitschy at first, it really does fit the narrative quite well and only the backrooms feels out of place (which is really fine because you have to cheat to get there anyway)
my last comment is the picture of the author of the map and his late friend is so obviously edited (ai?) it hurts. this isnt serious criticism (look at the set dressing in modern resident evil titles) but its hilarious nonetheless
i am the first person to denounce low effort creepypasta, but really, myhouse.wad is the most refreshing internet horror story in recent memory and i doubt one this interesting will crop up again for the rest of the decade
This was pretty sick but gosh darn it, I do hope culturally this won't be to boomer shooters what DDLC was to visual novels.
This review contains spoilers
I'll be that guy and say that I can't really tell if all these people talking of a strong emotional attachment to it are just another part of the joke. The obviously fake picture that sets things running in the Doomworld thread is so obviously fake - and arguably so deliberately obviously fake - that I found it extremely easy to not only see through the ruse right away (something later confirmed by many other hints both in the map itself and outside of it), but to also immediately dismiss all the weepy story elements as mere vehicles for the admittedly impressive map trickery on display. On a technical level, this is a very accomplished wad, repeatedly twisting upon itself in unpredictable ways without ever falling apart; but I find it hard to connect on a deeper level with something so light on gameplay that I also found to be ultimately empty of meaning. Let's just say I'm not really in a hurry to read House of Leaves right now.
At the end of the day, its best (meta-)narrative riff is still releasing something this wild as a "MyHouse.wad" to the Doomworld forums in 2023 and just trusting it would find its audience... but even that crazy gambit is maybe not as ballsy as it looks, with a few super high profile forum members suspiciously showing up in the thread to nudge people into checking it out after a couple days of inactivity, before it had gained any traction, when it might have been otherwise doomed to obscurity if it didn't outright show its hand. Who is - or should I say, who are this "Veddge" person, anyway?
(May 26 edit: this is the worst thing to happen to Doom since Brutal Doom)
(November 03 edit: lmao wait a minute this guy actually doxxed himself what a moron)
At the end of the day, its best (meta-)narrative riff is still releasing something this wild as a "MyHouse.wad" to the Doomworld forums in 2023 and just trusting it would find its audience... but even that crazy gambit is maybe not as ballsy as it looks, with a few super high profile forum members suspiciously showing up in the thread to nudge people into checking it out after a couple days of inactivity, before it had gained any traction, when it might have been otherwise doomed to obscurity if it didn't outright show its hand. Who is - or should I say, who are this "Veddge" person, anyway?
(May 26 edit: this is the worst thing to happen to Doom since Brutal Doom)
(November 03 edit: lmao wait a minute this guy actually doxxed himself what a moron)
Nice house.
My House is cool! Lots of lore and design were put into this, and I respect that! Unfortunately, actually playing this was frustrating for me. I didn't end up beating it, so maybe I'm missing something really cool. I may watch a playthrough or something. Idk.
This review contains spoilers
By now, you likely know what My House.wad is. What appears to be a simple recreation of a DOOM modder’s house is actually a slow descent into madness as the house gradually becomes more unsettling and takes you to liminal spaces that seem all but impossible. All you have to guide you is the aid of a haunting journal written by the person who developed the map, someone who was suffering from nightmares that are reflected by the various transformations the house undergoes.
My House.wad does an excellent job unnerving you and making you paranoid. The initial tiny, barely noticeable changes to the House as well as the music from DOOM II’s E1M1 that make you question your surroundings and your memory are extremely effective. It even randomly plays Discord ping sound effects. It’s a great build up for what’s to come and one of the best parts of the experience.
The different versions of the House that you explore, namely the School House, Bath House, Brutalist House, etc, are all beautifully designed. They tap into a sense of ethereal nostalgia in a way reminiscent of vaporwave art and music, one that really appeals to those who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s. The different Houses have an incredible, unmatched and difficult to describe atmosphere to them. They also manage to tell aspects of a story while never really giving you the complete picture. The story of My House.wad is very much left up to interpretation, one that doesn’t really have any definitive conclusions or answers but gives you enough pieces of the puzzle to form your own.
Figuring out how to progress in My House.wad is very cryptic, too cryptic for its own good. Even with the journal providing you (obtuse) hints, chances are you’re not going to figure out what you need to do without a walkthrough. I don’t think the experience is really hindered for following one either, as long as it's spoiler free.
Despite my love for DOOM, I don’t really have much experience with custom wads, so a lot of My House.wad’s technical achievements with the game’s engine are lost on me. Still, for what it is, I think that it’s a great evolution and interpretation of DOOM’s core design philosophy. You’re still getting into fights with hordes of demons, you’re still hunting down various keys (though in this case, these keys are the different “artifacts” as opposed to DOOM’s traditional keys) and you’re still navigating weird mazes. I think My House.wad a testament to how strong DOOM’s core philosophy is. It can be interpreted in a completely different fashion, yet still be recognizable as DOOM.
My House.wad is complicated in so many different ways. It is, all at once, hair-raising, funny, beautiful, frustrating, and cathartic. It is a true work of art and an experience that definitely sticks with you. It feels like a celebration of the last twenty years of gaming and internet culture with its creepypasta origins in DOOM forums, its use of the character of Shrek (who was once a popular meme) and its own backrooms segment. It accomplishes so much even though it’s a free fangame, and is well deserving of all of its achievements.
My House.wad does an excellent job unnerving you and making you paranoid. The initial tiny, barely noticeable changes to the House as well as the music from DOOM II’s E1M1 that make you question your surroundings and your memory are extremely effective. It even randomly plays Discord ping sound effects. It’s a great build up for what’s to come and one of the best parts of the experience.
The different versions of the House that you explore, namely the School House, Bath House, Brutalist House, etc, are all beautifully designed. They tap into a sense of ethereal nostalgia in a way reminiscent of vaporwave art and music, one that really appeals to those who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s. The different Houses have an incredible, unmatched and difficult to describe atmosphere to them. They also manage to tell aspects of a story while never really giving you the complete picture. The story of My House.wad is very much left up to interpretation, one that doesn’t really have any definitive conclusions or answers but gives you enough pieces of the puzzle to form your own.
Figuring out how to progress in My House.wad is very cryptic, too cryptic for its own good. Even with the journal providing you (obtuse) hints, chances are you’re not going to figure out what you need to do without a walkthrough. I don’t think the experience is really hindered for following one either, as long as it's spoiler free.
Despite my love for DOOM, I don’t really have much experience with custom wads, so a lot of My House.wad’s technical achievements with the game’s engine are lost on me. Still, for what it is, I think that it’s a great evolution and interpretation of DOOM’s core design philosophy. You’re still getting into fights with hordes of demons, you’re still hunting down various keys (though in this case, these keys are the different “artifacts” as opposed to DOOM’s traditional keys) and you’re still navigating weird mazes. I think My House.wad a testament to how strong DOOM’s core philosophy is. It can be interpreted in a completely different fashion, yet still be recognizable as DOOM.
My House.wad is complicated in so many different ways. It is, all at once, hair-raising, funny, beautiful, frustrating, and cathartic. It is a true work of art and an experience that definitely sticks with you. It feels like a celebration of the last twenty years of gaming and internet culture with its creepypasta origins in DOOM forums, its use of the character of Shrek (who was once a popular meme) and its own backrooms segment. It accomplishes so much even though it’s a free fangame, and is well deserving of all of its achievements.
This review contains spoilers
Yume Nikki lite for boomer shooter enthusiasts. Don't really get what the point of all the external supplementary material added post-release is for, but I'm sure video essayists will love distilling the magic of this into its purest scripted form.
this is what happens when you buy more land in the metaverse
unrelatable (i live in a flat)
The advent of the Doom modding community, and especially with how the ZDOOM engine is handled, has made it so that a common joke is that you can get by on gaming with purely community-made mods and even releases to be sold on sites such as Itch.io and Steam. It speaks to the lengths of Doom's legacy that even today, notable iterations and offerings of ID Software's philosophy and principles are regularly shared in the Doomworld forum, be it for fun, artistic endeavors, or even good ol fashion trolling.
My House, in particular, mangles the item value, enemy positioning, and overall layout of the map and positional checkpoints in its multiple unraveling throughout the runtime is phenomenal to watch unfold. I'm not intimately familiar with map building within the system's quirk myself - I'm creative and persistent, but not that creative and persistent - but I know enough thanks to various sources that this is a bit of a boundary pusher. There's also some bonus activations from each 'special' spots, be it for Easter Egg purposes (more on this in a bit) or actual gameplay purposes, a tad of which hark more acutely to what the Build Engine titles would do, and it's all very good shit. Due to this, the most appropriate word to describe this with just one would be "wispy"; the feeling where you're familiar with the idea of the environment but know there's wrinkles and nuances to what can establish it that, if done improperly, can spell out the disillusioned mantra, unveiling its macabre being. There's the occasional room hunt befuddling and questionable design choices when it comes to how something activates or what you have to do to progress, but a majority of the time it's something you can quickly get a feel of. About the only other thing I can criticize is the final third's use of enemy encounter leaning towards Spam Central, but part of me, be it by intentional choice or through a personal read, views this as more of a point than a serious critique of a Doom map.
Now, I played through this thrice: once in a quick-and-dirty play, the other when curiosity got the better of me knowing there had to be more considering what my friends have said, and finally the one with the "good ending" as detailed within its page on the Doom wiki (not the awful Fandom one, the good one) as well as a speedrun video on the wad, surprisingly enough. There's something to be said about the experience becoming a victim of abjection due to the use of a walkthrough, how this robs you of initial reaction and well-defined thoughts, yadda yadda yadda listen I just said I played this two times before, and it's not like most of what I've laid to see within text-form didn't impact what I witness unfold from my own eyes and how that affects the thematic revelations, I think I'm allowed this one. I don't want to give a lot of the magic away, which is why I'm being mostly vague about the inner meat of the body, but the warps to anachronistic, dream-like villas of places I'm familiar with, of brutalization and corrupted foundations within these settings abounded by frustration and melancholy, propagated by illuminated spaces and lighting, all compounded by relics of various time periods and objects of importance, either in plain sight or dug from each burrowing of the moment-to-moment design and visual feedback... let's just say I get where the head space was before.
The most common read of emotion for My House is grief, and while true in the broadest sense, doubly so considering what the zip file is packed with and finer investigations others have found, there's an undercurrent of self-loathing and warped perception of the fallout of events that seem to trickle in during the more hectic routines of said enemy encounters, with or without the infighting tricks. I wish I could say more, but I'm already going too deep as it is, so I'm holding it off from here. I dunno about one of the best Doom mods around, but it's surely one of the more interesting experiments I've delved into, and as such I recommend it to anyone wanting to get a fix in and, to perpetuate a sentiment others have shared already, go into this as blind as you can. Already gonna eye-roll at potential videos clamoring and beholding this to be "a super terrifying and surreal Doom mod", but that's just the way the Internet works, so no use pouting about it.
I really should read Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves, various works of Inio Asano, and continue Hideo Yamamoto's Ichi The Killer at some point.
My House, in particular, mangles the item value, enemy positioning, and overall layout of the map and positional checkpoints in its multiple unraveling throughout the runtime is phenomenal to watch unfold. I'm not intimately familiar with map building within the system's quirk myself - I'm creative and persistent, but not that creative and persistent - but I know enough thanks to various sources that this is a bit of a boundary pusher. There's also some bonus activations from each 'special' spots, be it for Easter Egg purposes (more on this in a bit) or actual gameplay purposes, a tad of which hark more acutely to what the Build Engine titles would do, and it's all very good shit. Due to this, the most appropriate word to describe this with just one would be "wispy"; the feeling where you're familiar with the idea of the environment but know there's wrinkles and nuances to what can establish it that, if done improperly, can spell out the disillusioned mantra, unveiling its macabre being. There's the occasional room hunt befuddling and questionable design choices when it comes to how something activates or what you have to do to progress, but a majority of the time it's something you can quickly get a feel of. About the only other thing I can criticize is the final third's use of enemy encounter leaning towards Spam Central, but part of me, be it by intentional choice or through a personal read, views this as more of a point than a serious critique of a Doom map.
Now, I played through this thrice: once in a quick-and-dirty play, the other when curiosity got the better of me knowing there had to be more considering what my friends have said, and finally the one with the "good ending" as detailed within its page on the Doom wiki (not the awful Fandom one, the good one) as well as a speedrun video on the wad, surprisingly enough. There's something to be said about the experience becoming a victim of abjection due to the use of a walkthrough, how this robs you of initial reaction and well-defined thoughts, yadda yadda yadda listen I just said I played this two times before, and it's not like most of what I've laid to see within text-form didn't impact what I witness unfold from my own eyes and how that affects the thematic revelations, I think I'm allowed this one. I don't want to give a lot of the magic away, which is why I'm being mostly vague about the inner meat of the body, but the warps to anachronistic, dream-like villas of places I'm familiar with, of brutalization and corrupted foundations within these settings abounded by frustration and melancholy, propagated by illuminated spaces and lighting, all compounded by relics of various time periods and objects of importance, either in plain sight or dug from each burrowing of the moment-to-moment design and visual feedback... let's just say I get where the head space was before.
The most common read of emotion for My House is grief, and while true in the broadest sense, doubly so considering what the zip file is packed with and finer investigations others have found, there's an undercurrent of self-loathing and warped perception of the fallout of events that seem to trickle in during the more hectic routines of said enemy encounters, with or without the infighting tricks. I wish I could say more, but I'm already going too deep as it is, so I'm holding it off from here. I dunno about one of the best Doom mods around, but it's surely one of the more interesting experiments I've delved into, and as such I recommend it to anyone wanting to get a fix in and, to perpetuate a sentiment others have shared already, go into this as blind as you can. Already gonna eye-roll at potential videos clamoring and beholding this to be "a super terrifying and surreal Doom mod", but that's just the way the Internet works, so no use pouting about it.
I really should read Mark Z. Danielewski's House Of Leaves, various works of Inio Asano, and continue Hideo Yamamoto's Ichi The Killer at some point.
Uhhh....She skinamarink at my house until it's full of leaves? [EXREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]
PT for gay people
Way too obtuse for its own good so I don't feel like bothering getting the true ending and tonally its at odds with itself at times but it has some great atmosphere, it does stuff with shifting things around that I wish more horror games would do, and it genuinely unnerved to me the point where it was legit hair-raising so I give it props for that.
AAAAAAARGH NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY?!!??!?!
IIM GOING INSANE
IM GOIINNGG MAAAAD
IIM GOING INSANE
IM GOIINNGG MAAAAD
it seems like every other day i find a new indie game or analog horror video in my youtube feed using hackneyed "subversions of expectation" or file manipulation or arg elements for spooks. imscared was cool, but imscared came out 12 years ago. so when i heard about myhouse.wad, i brushed it off. it wasn't until last night that i bit the bullet, and let me tell you: i should have done it sooner.
the house of leaves inspiration is blatant enough as to call it an adaptation. there's no point in dissecting it, but i'd like to use it to explain why my house doesn't suffer from the pitfalls you might expect. remember how house of leaves has a bunch of hidden shit inside of it that redditors have been talking to death for years? well, you don't need it to enjoy the book. it's an addendum for people who wanna go crazy over that kind of stuff. my house is the same way with its metahorror. the creepypasta elements are contained in the downloadable journal rather than the game itself. the "deeply emotional" (read: tactless and generic internet psychological horror) themes fans don't shut up about are contained in secret content that you won't find unless you're looking for it. in that case, why should you play the wad?
cuz it's a damn good time! if you liked lost in vivo's combat-heavy take on otherworld from silent hill, you'll like my house. the maps are super pretty and fun to explore. there are cool new enemies too! if nothing else, play it to see a modern action horror doom map with strong atmosphere. it only took me 30 minutes and i'd recommend it even if you already know the "twists".
as much as i still want to mock the fandom and compare it to brutal doom, i do hope this inspires people to take full advantage of gzdoom's special features. maybe someone will make a map that uses similar technical tricks to make something in a genre other than horror. as it stands, i super enjoyed my time in my house and i recommend it to all the skeptics. this one's different.
SOLD
This review contains spoilers
Scrapped my first draft of this review. I’ve struggled to write about this game, so I’m not going to talk much about the game itself here.
I didn’t finish MyHouse.wad. I played up until the Poolrooms and I couldn’t figure out much else by myself afterwards (I finished the Nursery as well). I watched a playthrough that showed me what I’d missed: the gas station and, eventually, the beach.
It is technically impressive, as anyone familiar with Doom is quick to remind players, for its clever workarounds and wizardry; although it appears simple for someone unaccustomed to playing Doom .wads, there’s a lot happening underneath the surface which is undeniably interesting and very cool. Watch this video if you’re at all interested in the technological sorcery afoot.
The community reaction to MyHouse.wad was spectacular. Huge name streamers were quick to hop aboard the hype train. When John Romero himself streams your .wad, that’s how you know you’ve created something truly special.
For my two cents, I think MyHouse.wad is nothing if not creative, transformative, and complex. I also think that some pieces of the puzzle are cryptic to a fault. I don’t think all games are beholden to communicating everything to its players, and obviously the community-driven aspect of the game fueled weeks of fervent discussions surrounding it; still, solving a puzzle is one thing, unraveling the narrative another.
It is shocking, then, that the journal takes so much more from the narrative than it adds. Although it’s a handy clue book containing some hints as to progression, it essentially amounts to a creepypasta, and a generic one at that. I can’t really imagine anyone championing the MyHouse.wad journal as a triumph in video game storytelling, or even regular storytelling for that matter. The original post sows more intrigue and reads as much more compelling in just a few paragraphs than the journal does in ten full pages.
To recap: MyHouse.wad is a tribute map to the creator’s friend who’d recently passed away, based on the map his late friend had originally started.
That hook is compelling enough on its own. The journal then removes any kind of ambiguity, veering into nightmares, dissociation, and an obsessive, unreliable narrator which casts doubt on this narrative anyways. Most egregious, however, is the insistence upon the blue text, which is lifted wholesale from House of Leaves. Stuff like this normally wouldn’t bother me, but here it takes an element of the work which was already implicit throughout and puts a blindingly bright spotlight on it (even the Navidson Realty sign in the bad ending was a little too on-the-nose).
Major spoilers for House of Leaves incoming – I’d turn back if you haven’t read.
It took me out of it. I’ve read House of Leaves, man. I have a deeply personal attachment to House of Leaves. It was a gift from an ex-partner. I read it exclusively in my parents' bedroom around sunset. I finished it during the pandemic and it hurt me profoundly. I also don’t think it’s an untouchable work of art above criticism. The amount of gratuitous sex scenes during Johnny’s sections are way too much (even if it has thematic relevance, which I know it does!! I read the book and I know it has thematic relevance!!) There is a part in House of Leaves that discusses Will Navidson winning a Pulitzer prize for a photo of a starving child. Observant readers may draw the connection between Navidson’s photo and the real-life Kevin Carter, who took an identical photo. However, most readers will probably not draw this connection right away, or at least not before the book itself makes the Kevin Carter connection explicit in a footnote – because Will Navidson isn’t real. He’s a character that exists only in the fiction of the Navidson Record, an account of a film that doesn’t exist, written by the late Zampanò, who is dead before the story even begins.
It’s easy to draw connections between House of Leaves and MyHouse.wad. The author, Veddge (or Steven Nelson) is an easy Johnny Truant analog. The creator’s late friend, Thomas Allord, is a dead ringer for Zampanò. Johnny aims to finish Zampanò's story as Veddge attempts to finish Thomas’ level, meanwhile the readers (or players) grow conspicuously wary of the author and their creative liberties – where exactly does the original incomplete work end, and where does the author’s influence begin?
This conundrum gets exacerbated tenfold by the end of House of Leaves, where Johnny’s story becomes an incomprehensible mess. Maybe none of it was real at all. On a metanarrative level, the entire book is fiction anyways, so of course none of it is actually real. The same paradox occurs in MyHouse.wad if you happen to find a certain QR code on a hidden tombstone. Steven Nelson didn’t survive a week without Thomas. That, of course, begs the question: who is Veddge actually?
If you dig, you’ll know that Veddge isn’t a greenhorn. He’s been on the Doomworld forums for a while. In the months leading up to MyHouse.wad, he’d been active on multiple off-topic forum discussions: “I haven’t logged into the forums in over a decade, but a close childhood friend of mine passed away recently and I decided to go through some of the Doom stuff we were making when we were kids.” So, the seeds are sown.
Reading a few of the later forum posts, Veddge also explores his malaise: “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. For most of my life I could just put my head on my pillow and fall asleep, but lately I find myself lying in bed staring into the darkness. What’s the opposite of claustrophobia? I can’t explain it, but when the lights are out, I’m paralyzed by thoughts of emptiness while seemingly trapped in a void from which I will never escape.”
These forum posts are nothing if not an interesting extension of the narrative… that is, if they’re meant to be an extension of the narrative in the first place. I’d like to say that everything Veddge posted up to and including MyHouse.wad was a clever use of storytelling through forum posts – but what I haven’t mentioned was that, before he resurfaced in late 2022, the last time Veddge had used his account was in October 2006.
There’s no reason to think that Veddge wasn’t just revisiting his 15-year old account and having fun with a little roleplaying. But then the other day, while I was searching MyHouse.wad on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), I found something that actually shook me. A video taken inside of the actual house. Although this video was originally posted on Tiktok in May of this year, it seems to have been recorded around Christmas. There was something very unsettling about watching it. I certainly believed the house was based on somebody’s actual home, I just never expected to see it - even the painting was there.
What was even more unexpected was the additional context. This Tiktok user wasn’t the creator – rather, this was the creator’s previous partner. A throwaway question asked by one user read, “So does the house change like in the mod,” to which she replies, “No, but our marriage did. As our marriage fell apart, so did the house in the game”.
I realize now I dug too deep. I felt nauseous reading this. I felt nauseous typing this.
House of Leaves is full of mysteries, although I suppose the central question lies far beyond Johnny Truant or Zampanò – who themselves might be characters in a story, or… maybe not. I believe the real question is: what can even be considered real in House of Leaves? In a story that is consumed by another story, about someone that doesn’t even exist – did Zampanò see himself in Navidson? Or was Zampanò even real? Or was Johnny even real?
That maddening death spiral is at the center of House of Leaves, turning inwards, eating itself alive.
MyHouse.wad is not only an extension of these ideas, but an inversion. How much of this is actually fiction? Is this Tiktok user actually the creator’s ex-wife? Is this just another extension of the narrative? Did Veddge actually lose somebody close to him?
I can’t help but wonder (and the idea is morbid enough) if this game was the real product of profound sadness and grief for a loved one lost. If the creator had actually been recently bereaved, or that maybe the house itself was always a metaphor as the ex-wife had explained it – the same as in House of Leaves. Maybe Thomas was a stand-in for his wife, and the narrative that idea – losing a loved one, symbolically.
I don’t know. But I’ve felt that grief before. Sometimes all you can do is pour it into something. I am again reminded of when I read House of Leaves in my parents' bedroom. I am again reminded of that orange sunset pouring in through the curtains as daylight slowly slipped away. I am again reminded of people I will likely never see again.
I’ve given up on this critique because I’ve been here before, man. It hurts.
I am again reminded that happiness has to be fought for.
I didn’t finish MyHouse.wad. I played up until the Poolrooms and I couldn’t figure out much else by myself afterwards (I finished the Nursery as well). I watched a playthrough that showed me what I’d missed: the gas station and, eventually, the beach.
It is technically impressive, as anyone familiar with Doom is quick to remind players, for its clever workarounds and wizardry; although it appears simple for someone unaccustomed to playing Doom .wads, there’s a lot happening underneath the surface which is undeniably interesting and very cool. Watch this video if you’re at all interested in the technological sorcery afoot.
The community reaction to MyHouse.wad was spectacular. Huge name streamers were quick to hop aboard the hype train. When John Romero himself streams your .wad, that’s how you know you’ve created something truly special.
For my two cents, I think MyHouse.wad is nothing if not creative, transformative, and complex. I also think that some pieces of the puzzle are cryptic to a fault. I don’t think all games are beholden to communicating everything to its players, and obviously the community-driven aspect of the game fueled weeks of fervent discussions surrounding it; still, solving a puzzle is one thing, unraveling the narrative another.
It is shocking, then, that the journal takes so much more from the narrative than it adds. Although it’s a handy clue book containing some hints as to progression, it essentially amounts to a creepypasta, and a generic one at that. I can’t really imagine anyone championing the MyHouse.wad journal as a triumph in video game storytelling, or even regular storytelling for that matter. The original post sows more intrigue and reads as much more compelling in just a few paragraphs than the journal does in ten full pages.
To recap: MyHouse.wad is a tribute map to the creator’s friend who’d recently passed away, based on the map his late friend had originally started.
That hook is compelling enough on its own. The journal then removes any kind of ambiguity, veering into nightmares, dissociation, and an obsessive, unreliable narrator which casts doubt on this narrative anyways. Most egregious, however, is the insistence upon the blue text, which is lifted wholesale from House of Leaves. Stuff like this normally wouldn’t bother me, but here it takes an element of the work which was already implicit throughout and puts a blindingly bright spotlight on it (even the Navidson Realty sign in the bad ending was a little too on-the-nose).
Major spoilers for House of Leaves incoming – I’d turn back if you haven’t read.
It took me out of it. I’ve read House of Leaves, man. I have a deeply personal attachment to House of Leaves. It was a gift from an ex-partner. I read it exclusively in my parents' bedroom around sunset. I finished it during the pandemic and it hurt me profoundly. I also don’t think it’s an untouchable work of art above criticism. The amount of gratuitous sex scenes during Johnny’s sections are way too much (even if it has thematic relevance, which I know it does!! I read the book and I know it has thematic relevance!!) There is a part in House of Leaves that discusses Will Navidson winning a Pulitzer prize for a photo of a starving child. Observant readers may draw the connection between Navidson’s photo and the real-life Kevin Carter, who took an identical photo. However, most readers will probably not draw this connection right away, or at least not before the book itself makes the Kevin Carter connection explicit in a footnote – because Will Navidson isn’t real. He’s a character that exists only in the fiction of the Navidson Record, an account of a film that doesn’t exist, written by the late Zampanò, who is dead before the story even begins.
It’s easy to draw connections between House of Leaves and MyHouse.wad. The author, Veddge (or Steven Nelson) is an easy Johnny Truant analog. The creator’s late friend, Thomas Allord, is a dead ringer for Zampanò. Johnny aims to finish Zampanò's story as Veddge attempts to finish Thomas’ level, meanwhile the readers (or players) grow conspicuously wary of the author and their creative liberties – where exactly does the original incomplete work end, and where does the author’s influence begin?
This conundrum gets exacerbated tenfold by the end of House of Leaves, where Johnny’s story becomes an incomprehensible mess. Maybe none of it was real at all. On a metanarrative level, the entire book is fiction anyways, so of course none of it is actually real. The same paradox occurs in MyHouse.wad if you happen to find a certain QR code on a hidden tombstone. Steven Nelson didn’t survive a week without Thomas. That, of course, begs the question: who is Veddge actually?
If you dig, you’ll know that Veddge isn’t a greenhorn. He’s been on the Doomworld forums for a while. In the months leading up to MyHouse.wad, he’d been active on multiple off-topic forum discussions: “I haven’t logged into the forums in over a decade, but a close childhood friend of mine passed away recently and I decided to go through some of the Doom stuff we were making when we were kids.” So, the seeds are sown.
Reading a few of the later forum posts, Veddge also explores his malaise: “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. For most of my life I could just put my head on my pillow and fall asleep, but lately I find myself lying in bed staring into the darkness. What’s the opposite of claustrophobia? I can’t explain it, but when the lights are out, I’m paralyzed by thoughts of emptiness while seemingly trapped in a void from which I will never escape.”
These forum posts are nothing if not an interesting extension of the narrative… that is, if they’re meant to be an extension of the narrative in the first place. I’d like to say that everything Veddge posted up to and including MyHouse.wad was a clever use of storytelling through forum posts – but what I haven’t mentioned was that, before he resurfaced in late 2022, the last time Veddge had used his account was in October 2006.
There’s no reason to think that Veddge wasn’t just revisiting his 15-year old account and having fun with a little roleplaying. But then the other day, while I was searching MyHouse.wad on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), I found something that actually shook me. A video taken inside of the actual house. Although this video was originally posted on Tiktok in May of this year, it seems to have been recorded around Christmas. There was something very unsettling about watching it. I certainly believed the house was based on somebody’s actual home, I just never expected to see it - even the painting was there.
What was even more unexpected was the additional context. This Tiktok user wasn’t the creator – rather, this was the creator’s previous partner. A throwaway question asked by one user read, “So does the house change like in the mod,” to which she replies, “No, but our marriage did. As our marriage fell apart, so did the house in the game”.
I realize now I dug too deep. I felt nauseous reading this. I felt nauseous typing this.
House of Leaves is full of mysteries, although I suppose the central question lies far beyond Johnny Truant or Zampanò – who themselves might be characters in a story, or… maybe not. I believe the real question is: what can even be considered real in House of Leaves? In a story that is consumed by another story, about someone that doesn’t even exist – did Zampanò see himself in Navidson? Or was Zampanò even real? Or was Johnny even real?
That maddening death spiral is at the center of House of Leaves, turning inwards, eating itself alive.
MyHouse.wad is not only an extension of these ideas, but an inversion. How much of this is actually fiction? Is this Tiktok user actually the creator’s ex-wife? Is this just another extension of the narrative? Did Veddge actually lose somebody close to him?
I can’t help but wonder (and the idea is morbid enough) if this game was the real product of profound sadness and grief for a loved one lost. If the creator had actually been recently bereaved, or that maybe the house itself was always a metaphor as the ex-wife had explained it – the same as in House of Leaves. Maybe Thomas was a stand-in for his wife, and the narrative that idea – losing a loved one, symbolically.
I don’t know. But I’ve felt that grief before. Sometimes all you can do is pour it into something. I am again reminded of when I read House of Leaves in my parents' bedroom. I am again reminded of that orange sunset pouring in through the curtains as daylight slowly slipped away. I am again reminded of people I will likely never see again.
I’ve given up on this critique because I’ve been here before, man. It hurts.
I am again reminded that happiness has to be fought for.
I'm never financially recovering from this game. One of the most amazing experiences I had playing a game in years, and I cannot stress enough how much you need to play this if you like FPS or horror. Please go as blind as possible as you can.
God I love modding, it's so important for gaming.
God I love modding, it's so important for gaming.
If you're here, you already know this isn't just a house.
Playing through this blind is undoubtedly the best way to experience My House. Don't watch one of the rapidly-emerging, multi-hour video essays on YouTube about it: just get the link to the forum, download the .zip, and get exploring. If you're not too experienced with this stuff (like I wasn't), you want to drag-n-drop myhouse.pk3 onto GZDoom (NOT myhouse.wad). Obviously, "the end" is not the end nor your real goal: look around a bit and you'll be rewarded for it. Is that space a bit bigger than it should be?
I recommend getting to a point where you can't explore any further, and I won't explain what I mean by that, before reading something like this guide/wiki. You'll likely reach the same ending point I did, as my biggest problem with this map/level/experiment/tribute is that some of the items required to "complete" it requires some pretty arcane knowledge and skills, and at a certain point, against-better-judgement decisions. You won't be reaching the "best" outcome on your own, you can bet on that, but I think that's worth pursuing after your blind run as it leads to a lot more 'game'.
My House is good fun. Very different, spooky, and wildly creative. It wears its seemingly-biggest inspiration, "House of Leaves", proudly on its sleeve. The "closet" is a pretty big hint, but seeing the name "Navidson" is a dead giveaway. I love the book and highly recommend it, and it was pretty cool to see it (somewhat) in a game. Try out My House, it's a great adventure I recommend!
Playing through this blind is undoubtedly the best way to experience My House. Don't watch one of the rapidly-emerging, multi-hour video essays on YouTube about it: just get the link to the forum, download the .zip, and get exploring. If you're not too experienced with this stuff (like I wasn't), you want to drag-n-drop myhouse.pk3 onto GZDoom (NOT myhouse.wad). Obviously, "the end" is not the end nor your real goal: look around a bit and you'll be rewarded for it. Is that space a bit bigger than it should be?
I recommend getting to a point where you can't explore any further, and I won't explain what I mean by that, before reading something like this guide/wiki. You'll likely reach the same ending point I did, as my biggest problem with this map/level/experiment/tribute is that some of the items required to "complete" it requires some pretty arcane knowledge and skills, and at a certain point, against-better-judgement decisions. You won't be reaching the "best" outcome on your own, you can bet on that, but I think that's worth pursuing after your blind run as it leads to a lot more 'game'.
My House is good fun. Very different, spooky, and wildly creative. It wears its seemingly-biggest inspiration, "House of Leaves", proudly on its sleeve. The "closet" is a pretty big hint, but seeing the name "Navidson" is a dead giveaway. I love the book and highly recommend it, and it was pretty cool to see it (somewhat) in a game. Try out My House, it's a great adventure I recommend!
it's a very good map (a technical marvel no doubt), with tons of great twists and turns to boot, but far too hokey and unserious for me to consider some narrative triumph. very much in the same ballpark as godzilla NES creepypasta if that makes any sense
I’m a poor girl so didn’t actually play this bc I don’t own a laptop but watched the video essay for it that’s going around. pretty fucking lame stuff tbh, it’s new sincerity through the lens of traumacore or horrorcore, adult swim aesthetics. feels weird and feels gross not in the way it’s intended to, just feels like a weird bastardization and exploitation of real trauma and real experiences real ppl go through all in the name of the game that is get updoot on reddit dot com. shrek and good doggo and picture of wholesome kitteh and unexpected yaoi, shit is genuinely evil and I think I don’t fuck with it for the same reason I think ari aster’s body of work is kind of soulless and dead eyed and fucking mean spirited. just exploitation by the everyman. cool architecture and like it looks good but idk dude put ur talents to something worthwhile. my bf made skyline chili bc we both have never tried it but have always wanted to and we had that while we watched the vid, very yummy even though it looked nasty lol
Easily one of the houses I've been in
Extremely my type of shit, and very well executed. Not such a huge fan of how much content is locked behind repeat plays and random pixel-hunting - kind of saps some of the mystique. But only some.
This review contains spoilers
Eh.
Very impressive work technically and visually and auditorily (they have got to tell me who did the ambient songs for this i need to listen to their work because the stuff here is incredible) but it falls to the same exact issues Yume Nikki does. The atmosphere is impressive until you get stuck somewhere for 10 minutes and have to pull up a wiki page (that spoils everything if you move your eyes in the wrong direction) to figure out what obscure thing you have to do to trip the flag that lets you progress to the next part. (Also not huge on the "liminal space" aesthetic that's rampant here, I think it's executed about as well as it can be, but like, empty airports and such are still kind of played out i feel.)
Judging by how much people love Yume Nikki, I'm clearly in the minority opinion as far as my repulsion towards oblique progression goes (honestly, i can barely even get through an old point-and-click adventure game, i'm definitely the weird one), so I'm just gonna chock this one whiffing on me up to personal taste
Aside: while the game itself i can easily see someone appreciating a ton, the metatextual ARG/Creepypasta shit really sucks lol, imagine turning a seemingly earnest depiction of grief into some lame "the computer is haunted and its killing me what da hell" shit
Very impressive work technically and visually and auditorily (they have got to tell me who did the ambient songs for this i need to listen to their work because the stuff here is incredible) but it falls to the same exact issues Yume Nikki does. The atmosphere is impressive until you get stuck somewhere for 10 minutes and have to pull up a wiki page (that spoils everything if you move your eyes in the wrong direction) to figure out what obscure thing you have to do to trip the flag that lets you progress to the next part. (Also not huge on the "liminal space" aesthetic that's rampant here, I think it's executed about as well as it can be, but like, empty airports and such are still kind of played out i feel.)
Judging by how much people love Yume Nikki, I'm clearly in the minority opinion as far as my repulsion towards oblique progression goes (honestly, i can barely even get through an old point-and-click adventure game, i'm definitely the weird one), so I'm just gonna chock this one whiffing on me up to personal taste
Aside: while the game itself i can easily see someone appreciating a ton, the metatextual ARG/Creepypasta shit really sucks lol, imagine turning a seemingly earnest depiction of grief into some lame "the computer is haunted and its killing me what da hell" shit
I went into this completely blind not even knowing this mod existed until a friend of mine basically forced me to play it, and I wanna apologize for all the mean things I said to them because my god this is probably one of the best Doom mods I’ve ever play.
The places this Mod takes you is just otherworldly and something I wish more pieces of media would try doing. I just recently played through the game Garten of Banban 3 and that game tries really hard to tap into the psychological horror of liminal spaces; but fails miserably since the devs are hacks and refuse to actually try with interesting level design. In compersion with this mod, made for a game that can run on a fucking pregnancy tester; has some of the most outstanding usage of liminal spaces since seen since the backrooms first came out. (before it was overrun with children and stupid lore) The way this mod just takes Dooms engine and just completely revamps it to do this the base game could ever achieve is so stupidly impressive I’m just blown away whenever I even think of the mod or the levels that take place in it. I don’t really wanna say anything about the mod since I feel like going in blind and unaware of the events in the game is the best way to play it, this is more or just me gushing about how much I’m blown away by the amount of work and passion is just seeping out of this mod. Like you really didn’t need to be cooking this hard for a Doom mod but they did and I respect the hell out of them.
Go play it or else I’ll break into your house and replace all the coke you have with Pepsi (unless you already have Pepsi, in which case I’ll just take a dump in your bathroom and not flush)
The places this Mod takes you is just otherworldly and something I wish more pieces of media would try doing. I just recently played through the game Garten of Banban 3 and that game tries really hard to tap into the psychological horror of liminal spaces; but fails miserably since the devs are hacks and refuse to actually try with interesting level design. In compersion with this mod, made for a game that can run on a fucking pregnancy tester; has some of the most outstanding usage of liminal spaces since seen since the backrooms first came out. (before it was overrun with children and stupid lore) The way this mod just takes Dooms engine and just completely revamps it to do this the base game could ever achieve is so stupidly impressive I’m just blown away whenever I even think of the mod or the levels that take place in it. I don’t really wanna say anything about the mod since I feel like going in blind and unaware of the events in the game is the best way to play it, this is more or just me gushing about how much I’m blown away by the amount of work and passion is just seeping out of this mod. Like you really didn’t need to be cooking this hard for a Doom mod but they did and I respect the hell out of them.
Go play it or else I’ll break into your house and replace all the coke you have with Pepsi (unless you already have Pepsi, in which case I’ll just take a dump in your bathroom and not flush)