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.