I have been on a kick of falling asleep to old video game playthroughs (Silent Hill, GTA, etc) and stumbled across myhouse.wad. I have never played Doom, much less a Doom mod, but somehow was drawn in enough to watch this entire hour long play through.
I’m currently reading House of Leaves and was blown away by the parallels (turns out it was heavily inspired by HoL) and the ability of the video game format to make that horror of shifting space into such a palpable reality.
There is a ton of supplementary written material to this that isn’t spoiled by this particular play through and I have yet to experience. This particular video is fun because it’s someone who knows the Doom franchise so intimately they recognize when anything is slightly off: snares added to the Doom II intro song, reflections appearing, a corner of the carpet being lifted up, the appearance of the most difficult enemy in the entire franchise, etc.
If you like: House of Leaves, the backrooms, liminal horror (done well, not just “oh big weird space=spooky”), subversive horror, Doom, 90s video game aesthetics, non-euclidean geometry, subversive horror, or the video of Connor O’Malley with a gun on a lawnmower screaming “I have the power of God!”, I absolutely encourage you to play or watch someone else play this mod.
Genuinely one of the most refreshing and exciting player-created video game experiences I’ve ever witnessed and I do consider this a piece of new media digital art worth experiencing.
