MyHouseOfLeaves.wad
The first mod I ever downloaded was forSkyrim.
Itreplaced NPCs with Shrek.
The second was a texture pack forDark Souls: Remastered.
Thanks to John Carmacks lightning-fast engine, creating levels and content for Doom has been accessible for 30 years.
WAD devs have gone on to become fully-fledgedgamedesigners, and some WADs have beenreleased commercially.
The breadth and depth of this community formed the bedrock of game developers.
And yet even with this pedigree, MyHouse.WAD is a miracle.
MyHouse.wad dropped on March 3rd, 2023.
You start MyHouse by virtually touring a dead persons home.
Other than beige carpets with eggshell accent walls, there isnt much scary inside.
Then you exit the house, and see that all the demons you just killed are still alive inside.
You reenter, and the level seems to have reset.
You feel a subtle shift in your senses.
Your expectations for what youve been playing start to slip away.
Diving too deep into the structure of MyHouse would spoil some of its more beautiful surprises.
What can be said is that, in many ways, MyHouse rewards the perpetually online.
And it does it by reimagining a touchstone in gaming.
Youve seen the Marine in the green helmet shooting demons.
Youve seen the early scrolling graphics.
MyHouse warps these memories.
Taken all together, this sparkling technical mastery of horror makes you slowly realize something.
The original Doom was never scary.
Outside of an occasional monster popping up behind you, Doom was never really a horror game.
Of course it wasn’t!
It was ashooterwith post-grunge, pre-nu metal intensity.
The excellent Doom reboots, with their renewed focus on violent mayhem, demonstrate this very clearly.
In the original Doom, secrets were little hidden areas.
But none of these seem to be the secret that MyHouse wants you to find.
So what secret does MyHouse want you to discover?
A more talented friend of mine told me that the journal in the games folder would give me clues.
The journal details a programmer falling into madness.
The creator takes on this project in memory of a friend.
To properly run MyHouse, you must drag the .PK3 file onto your executable file.
To play MyHouse, you must consent to your own haunting.
So for something like MyHouse to exist is almost impossible.
MyHouse’s creator has allowed the game’s design to speak for itself.
MyHouse creates the same feeling, but inside one of the greatest games ever made.
The internet is a treasure trove of post-modern reenactments of our favorite cultural moments.
You enter a house built for a friend, and by the end you fully understand what that means.
