MyHouse.wad: 'Doom's most terrifying mod.'

January 18, 2024

There are two first-person shooter video games that have come to occupy a prominent place in my heart, one being Valve's Half-Life series, and of course the ever popular Counter-Strike mod, and the other being the original Doom games by id Software. Both are highly acclaimed game changers (pun intended) in the field of three dimensional shooters that raised the bar for the many imitations that would follow.

First released in 1993 and developed by John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall, the Doom franchise is now more than 30 years old. Were Doom not Doom, it probably would have faded from our collective memory ages ago, but the universe had bigger plans for this iconic masterpiece.

Today the Doom community is still very much alive and well, made possible in part by the release of the source code long ago. There are a plethora of maps, mods, models, ports, editing tools, forums, wikis, websites and all sorts of other goodies dedicated to the original Doom series. Fans simply refuse to allow this game to die as is evident by the fact that it's been included in list after list of the all-time best videos games for 3 decades, and counting.

The fascination with Doom has infected the hacker community as well who have gotten the game to run on the strangest of hardware including oscilloscopes, refrigerators, a pregnancy tester (sort of, video here) and even within Doom itself. One might opine that a hacker hasn't earned their right of passage until they've managed to pull off some crazy Doom related stunt, like getting it to run on a potato powered calculator.

With a history this long, one might mistakenly assume that everything that can possibly be done with Doom had been done, that is until the newest shock wave rocked the Doom community, this time in the form of a seemingly innocuous modification of the game called 'MyHouse.wad'.

MyHouse.wad was announced by 'Veddge' on the Doom World forum on March of 2023 along with an intriguing and most unsettling back-story revolving around a dead childhood friend who began the map nearly 20 years earlier, but sadly expired before he could complete it. 'Veddge' tells us it wasn't until 2022 that he discovered the files on a set of floppy disks after having attended his friend's funeral. This is one's first glimpse into how very, very strange this mod is.

MyHouse hadn't gained much attention in the first few days after it was released. 'ChaseC7527' was the first person to comment on the Doom World forum thread with a simple "looks like a banger, ill give it a shot." A mere 9 minutes later this person commented that the map was "pretty good". This unfortunate sole hadn't a bloody clue as to what they had missed. John Romero, one of Doom's masterminds, was intrigued enough to have given it a shot himself, or rather an attempt anyway. He apparently thought he had finished it after a measly hour of messing around. Not. Even. Close.

'Veddge' provided a link to a Google Drive folder where myhouse.pk3 could be downloaded and so i grabbed a copy. Yes, you want to the pk3 file, not the wad file. If not immediately, you'll eventually want to download all of the other content in the folder as well. Trust me.

WARNING: Entering Spoilerville...

Me being me, i hadn't read a whole lot about MyHouse.wad before jumping in to see what all the fuss was about and so i downloaded the pk3 file, fired up GZDoom, which the game requires, and loaded up the mod. The first indication that something was amiss was the shear size of the file, 66.5 Mb, which is more than twice the size of the entire Doom 1 and Doom 2 games combined. Huh? Needless to say, it took noticeably longer than usual to load the game, but then there i was, rather disappointed at the sight of an unimpressive house planted among an even less impressive landscape. It looked like some 12 year old decided to make yet another boring map of his house after having discovered a level editor 20 minutes prior. Things improved after stepping inside in terms of the visuals, but not extraordinarily so. Gameplay was typical Doom; you whack a few of the all too familiar baddies, grab the blue key and head for the exit after which the game loads the Underhalls map. It was over in a matter of minutes... or so i thought. There's a reason why this thing is 66.5 MB!

Doom is well known for its puzzles which require tripping triggers and collecting keys in order to unlock secrets and new areas of a map, but never have i experienced anything like what is presented in MyHouse before. It all starts off normal enough, but then one begins to notice subtle oddities, like the music not sounding quite right, and it slowly and progressively goes downhill from there, albeit in a wickedly addictive and sinister way.

I first started playing Doom somewhere around 1995 and i still hold very fond memories of the game. I used to play with a joystick and i remember fighting terribly bloody battles which were followed by a most welcome cool down period. The music would soften and i'd be quietly walking along in a dimly lit area while i reflected upon the previous battle which i had barely managed to survive. Serene moments like that are fleeting in Doom and before my cardiac arrest had subsided, sure enough, some screaming something from somewhere would jump out of the blackness and scare the living hell out of me all over again. On more than one occasion i jerked the joystick so hard in an effort to get away from my assailant that i literally broke the damn thing. Similarly, in MyHouse, i once flicked my mouse so hard after suffering such an encounter that it nearly flew out of my hand! How can you not love this game!

MyHouse doesn't often scare the pants off its victims with such ordinarily monster encounters however. The theme in play here goes much deeper than that. What MyHouse accomplishes is far more sophisticated than simply throwing a plethora of baddies at you. First of all, how the game plays out depends on how you play it. Unlike a typical Doom game, there is no clear path between the beginning and the end, nor even a correct one, nor even a definitive ending. The player's experience is very dynamic and depends on seemingly insignificant choices and subtle clues. Such trivial things like picking up a soda can or filling a sink with water often provide no immediate feedback and seem to be nothing more than useless trinkets the map maker threw in for no discernible reason, yet it's these kinds of choices that dictate how the game play will evolve and what options will become available. 'Scuba Steve', a senior member on the Doom World forum, captured the essence of MyHouse perfectly in just 7 words:

What the fuck did I just play?

'Jaws In Space' wrote:

It's one of the most emotional & haunting maps I've ever played.

'TJG1289' writes:

Amazing atmosphere, absolutely haunting, and profoundly sad.

And 'pavera' said:

This may be one of the greatest works of art ever conceived with the doom engine, i can't believe what i just played

"Haunting" is the perfect word to describe the experience the map maker presents. Everything about MyHouse is different and strange and just kind of wrong, and that theme extends to what you can and can't do in the game's console. Even the difficulty levels were messed with where the 'Nightmare' level is the easiest. Why? Well, my guess is because no one but the dedicated masochist is going to consider the Nightmare level when jumping into a mod they never played before and so the author provided a helpful option for those who just want to learn the map... that they'll likely never choose. You really have to appreciate the brilliantly sadistic artistry here. The following is an excerpt from the copyright section of the 'myhouse.txt' file which accompanies the .pk3 file:

I tried to delete this map but it continues to change and evolve without
any input from me. What began as a tribute to a lost friend has consumed
my entire life. As this map grew beyond what I created, I suffered
paranoia and insomnia. It consumed me. Don't let it consume you as well.
Delete it. Do not credit me. Do not try and contact me. Do not attempt to
use the material for commercial purposes. Do not remix, transform, or
build upon the material. Above all, do not distribute this file, modified
or otherwise. I tried to keep it from the internet, but it found its way
online. It's still changing. It wants you to feel sad. Alone. Desperate.
Don't let it win. Don't play it.

* Where to get the file that this text file describes *

don't

As the above portrays, as compelling as MyHouse is, there is a most unsettling aura about it that extends beyond the walls of the map. The house is modeled after a real one according to the photographs in the Google Drive folder, but there is a strong child theme embedded in the expierence that seems to indicate some sort of trauma. Whether the following is an example of that, i don't know, but it is an example of how intricate the design of MyHouse is. Notice anything odd besides the misspellings?

click me

The whole thing provokes one's curiosity which inevitably leads to wanting to know more about this complex work, however reading about MyHouse.wad, or watching some of the many videos created in its image, leads to even more oddities, beginning with the story of its creation. Who is Steve Nelson who used the nick 'Veddge' on the Doom World forums? Who was this childhood friend that supposedly began work on MyHouse? Did this friend even exist? Are they both the same person? From Wikipedia:

MyHouse.wad (known also as MyHouse.pk3, or simply MyHouse) is a map for Doom II created under the pen name Steve Nelson, more commonly known by "Veddge". The map is a subversive horror-thriller that revolves around a house that continues to change in shape, sometimes drastically and in a non-Euclidean manner. It poses as a recreation of a real suburban house made in tribute to the creator's deceased friend. The map draws inspiration from the 2000 novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and later reveals itself to be a horror game as the player discovers more areas of the house. MyHouse is non-linear and follows no particular plot sequence; its areas may be explored and completed at will in order to achieve any of five available endings. It makes extensive use of modern Doom modding features, such as portals, seamless teleportation, and scripting.

There are many oddities and mysteries both within the mod and the information surrounding it, not the least of which is the question of who actually created MyHouse to which there doesn't seem to be a clear answer. The back-story of the mod adds to the strangeness of an already strange map, a piece of which has been provided in the form of a so-called 'journal' included with the files in the Google Drive folder.

Presumably written by 'Veddge', the journal is worded more like a fictional story rather than a journal. Every instance of the word 'house' is colored blue, but not hyperlinked. There is no mention of any names, not even 'Veddge's' deceased friend and alleged creator of the map, Thomas Allord, for which there is a record indicating that a person by this name died on 3-Aug-2022, age 35. The journal also includes references to elements of the game which provide the player with some cryptic clues. All this seems odd for a journal, the alleged purpose of which was to document the completion of this incredibly ambitious project.

November 13, 2022
It's been a long day, and I'm exhausted. I had every intention of getting some rest earlier, but here I am, still wide awake and struggling to keep my eyes open. I can't help but feel like I'm forgetting something, but I can't put my finger on it. I had so much planned for today--or did I?
I'm trying to remember what I did yesterday, but it's all a blur. Was I working on a Doom map? I feel like I must have been, but I can't remember adding any new geometry or details, and all the new scripts seem completely foreign to me. I don't remember writing them. I'm so frustrated, and I'm starting to get really worried that maybe this insomnia is making me crazy.

One might assume that Steve Nelson and 'Veddge' are one and the same, but this is problematic because, in the game, there can be found a grave stone with a QR code that leads to the obituary of a Steve Nelson who, by the way, happened to have died on the same day and in the same town as Thomas Allord, both having expired before the map was released. In what seems to have been presented as a photograph of the two men, there appears to be a strong resemblance, sans the noses.

Setting aside the behind-the-scenes drama, which the reader is encouraged to indulge in at some point, MyHouse is a technical marvel that may seem impossible at first given the limitations of the Doom engine, GZDoom in this case. For example, the engine does not allow room stacking (one room above another), much less creating separate rooms which occupy the same space while still appearing as separate rooms, yet this "map" is full of such technical trickery. I put map in quotes because there are actually 21 iterations of the basic house which the player may or may not transition between and which provide the illusion of the structure having 4 floors... or is it 3? This wizardry also allows for creating circular columns of stairs and ramps which never end and which further confuse and disorient the player. As if that weren't enough, there's no auto-map to navigate by because the author changed all the colors to black, but there is a little trick that can offer some help.

The game messes with the player's mind in a myriad of ways, from the most subtle to the most jarring. Non-reflective mirrors change to reflect everything except, disturbingly, you, or things that aren't there when you spin around to look. Weapon animations change. A glass coffee table changes its transparency. Rooms take on different textures, or appear, or disappear, or intersect with one another. Pictures on the walls change. Massive indoor and outdoor areas suddenly become accessible. Closets become stairways. Doors and windows are there one minute and gone the next, sometimes trapping you in the house with no apparent escape. There are many radical and subtle theme changes and perhaps hundreds of silent triggers and custom scripts that alter all sorts of things, some obvious, some not. Even the experience of dying has been altered, though few players are likely to discover this, even when they die.

Some who have played through MyHouse have wondered whether they ever found all the little hidden gems and that's a significant part of the brilliance of this mod; there's so much that isn't obvious that one may never know if they've discovered all there is to discover and this provides for a unique experience for all those who have played it. This work of deceitful brilliance may be the only map where repeatability, as in consistently following the same route, actually takes practice and a lot of it.

MyHouse is a complex set of maps that invites cheating if when one becomes lost or unable to determine how to proceed, then punishes the player for having done so, as 'Jimmy' found out.

Got a bit stuck in this. Decided I'd try noclipping...
Worst mistake of my life.

It seems as though the map maker, whoever he or she or they are, have thought of every little detail and anticipated every single scenario, and every bit of it is aimed at screwing with ones head in ways which i've never experienced in a Doom game, or any game for that matter. MyHouse.wad is an exquisite exercise in pure mind fuckery and you will endure the pain it happily inflicts upon you because you'll want to. You'll need to. There's no quitting this game because it's just too damned good.

I'll close with a quote from the MyHouse page on Doomworld:

MyHouse.pk3 is a lot of things, and a tidal wave of ink has been spilled about its many intricacies and themes (In a Doom mod! Perish the thought!) over the last year, but where it stands out and makes its mark in history is in how it uses modern source port functionality not as a means to an end, but as an essential, indelible part of the story and the experience. From corridors switching destination on the return trip to basic gameplay functionality changing and subverting itself, the entire adventure is a seemingly-endless queue of clever magic tricks set up not to wow or amaze but to keep the player second-guessing themselves, doubting their own memory, and fearing that they have dug too deep, all without knowing that they have merely scratched the surface.

Resources used to write the article: