It's been a few months since myhouse.wad released and I'm still seeing people talk about it, which is no mean feat for a doom wad released in 2023. Before I start talking about it I want to implore you - if you haven't tried it yet, it's one of those things you deserve to experience unspoiled. Grab a copy of GZDoom and the myhouse pk3 from Doomworld (NOT the .wad it's confusing i know) and try it for yourself.
Okay, so now that you're up to speed on the whole situation...where do I begin?
It's easily the best adaptation of the "old haunted video game" trope I've ever seen, because a) you can actually play for yourself, b) it leaves enough to the imagination without being too vague, and c) it doesn't try to do the whole "now the demon is outside the game and in the real world oooooo" nonsense that every other haunted video game story tries to do. It's weird and unsettling, but it tells its story and gracefully moves on. There's no vague promise of a myhouse2 and the only meta ARG-esque secret is more touching than scary.
As someone who grew up with Doom, myhouse is also a fun little nostalgia trip. Back in the 90s when the Doom mapping scene was beginning to flourish, it was super common to see peoples' takes on their house recreated in the Doom engine. If you look on the Doomworld archive you'll find plenty of house maps made by kids who had just gotten their hands on a copy of DEU and wanted to take it for a spin.

Many of these levels were made before Doom was released as open-source, so they're super-primitive and simple compared to the complex scripting available in modern source ports like GZDoom. They're usually either deathmatch-only affairs with no monsters, or disproportionally huge, vaguely house-shaped maps with monsters and pickups haphazardly thrown in, with extremely crude representations of household objects like couches, tables, washing machines, or fireplaces. For example, here's the blueprint-accurate version of the house map created by Noah Haskell in the image earlier.

Most of them, from a gameplay perspective, aren't good maps. The average house isn't a great setting for a game like Doom because you run 100 miles an hour and generally aren't threatened when enemies can only challenge you one-by-one in tiny corridors. However, they're really important as time capsules into not only the past of the Doom modding community, but the mapper's life itself. Most Doom maps are bundled with a text file containing information about what editors were used to make it, and sometimes you get to enjoy little glimpses into the author's life - shoutouts to their friends, relatives, loved ones, favourite bands, whatever they felt like putting in was fair game. It's a strangely human element to a game that's about slaughtering demons by the truckload.
My House !! not completly the best but its okay, when quake gets out I will
make a better version of this. -Dan Nelson
Deathmatch!! I have never played it .. if any one ever reads this that
has a US ROBOTICS SPORTSTER 28.8 then please e-mail me!!!!!!!!!!!
gwnelson@anv.net
Green Day rules
(sadly, it would appear that Dan Nelson did not make a Quake version of their house, but it is a fun coincidence that they share the same last name as the map's author, Steve)
Knowing where the Doom mapping community came from, the premise of myhouse.wad is completely plausible. If someone was into Doom mapping, they probably have some unfinished maps sitting around on a long-forgotten hard drive or floppy somewhere, and what better way to pay tribute to your departed friend than finishing the map you worked on as kids?
Now, with that primer on Doom history out of the way, let's talk about the map itself. Depending on your level of familiarity with Doom, it might take you a while to realize when things start feeling off. There isn't anything particularly remarkable about the house itself at first glance, although Doom veterans would know that having a basement below another floor is impossible in the vanilla engine. If you're running around the basement staircase while the door is open, you might notice the door flickering in and out of existence as you approach - this is a GZDoom trick that allows you to create invisible, silent teleporters to create the illusion of a seamless floor transition. Still, the creator's supplementary files mention that GZDoom is used, so it's not that much of a stretch that he wanted to play around with having a working basement.
Aside from that, the map is fairly standard. There's plenty of "doomcute", that is, everyday objects rendered in the Doom engine, and everything looks really good for a myhouse map, even if a lot of the architecture and prop designs wouldn't be possible without GZDoom. You're never given any direct instructions on how to proceed, but it does a fairly good job of hinting at stuff here and there. The first big hint is the supercharge sphere.

You definitely missed this item on your first run around the house because it doesn't actually appear until you get into the house proper. It's visible from the windows, inviting you to take another trip back outside and go grab that sweet 100 health. The problem is that when you do head outside to grab it, it'll be gone once again, and the map will now begin to mess with you for real.
Depending on how thorough your first search was, you might have missed that there were no basement windows on the outside of the house. But once you go to the supercharge pedestal, you'll probably notice that the enemies you killed are once again alive, with no trace of their earlier deaths. And on top of that, the house itself is now changing. Doors are now swinging outward with a different sound effect, rather than the standard Doom "warp door" behaviour. The windows now have glass instead of simply being empty windowpanes. Keycards have been replaced with a set of skull keys. Your weapons now animate more smoothly, with additional frames that didn't exist before. Mirrors now have working reflections (except for your character).
And this is just the beginning. Myhouse is so engaging because it's constantly upping the ante in different ways. Just when you think you've figured the house out, you'll stumble onto a completely new variant of the house with its own mysteries to explore and discover. There are even completely optional secrets like an absolutely massive House of Leaves-style labyrinth which only serve to add to the mystique.

Playing through my first time, I was genuinely unnerved. The constantly shifting reality, the unsettling music, and not knowing where I really "was", coupled with some of the events in the map being very similar to nightmares I've had in the past - it put me on edge in a way that I never thought I'd be getting from Doom, a game where you can carry seven different guns and run at a hundred miles an hour. A lesser mapper would have packed the map full of jumpscares to take advantage of the building dread, but myhouse opts to let the atmosphere do most of the talking, with just a few scares to keep you on your toes. The excellent soundtrack by James Paddock and Sarah Mancuso work perfectly here, with Paddock contributing a version of "Running from Evil" that very subtly skips or duplicates measures, plays the wrong note, mutes instruments, and progressively breaks down more and more as the track goes on. Meanwhile, Mancuso provides us with an original track that kicks in once you enter one of the many alternate houses, sounding like a radio struggling to tune into a paulstretched version of Running From Evil before turning into an original piece entirely. It's equal parts unsettling, melancholic, and calming, and it's the perfect accompaniment to exploring the impossible landscapes of myhouse.wad.

Like all media, the author of Myhouse takes inspiration from existing works. House of Leaves is the most upfront influence with its concept of a house that changes and twists into impossible spaces, but you'll find yourself wandering through other potentially familiar environments if you've ever seen some of the "liminal spaces" images floating around. You'll even find yourself in the Backrooms if you noclip out of reality in the wrong spots. Good luck finding your way out! The car by the gas station is also playing the most mysterious song on the Internet to build upon the unknowable nature of the map.

If you read the supplemental materials included in the Google Drive link on Doomworld, it helps to explain some of the mysteries in the map, but there is no true, 100% correct interpretation of the map itself and the meta-narrative behind it. While it's all but stated that Steve Nelson, the author, and Thomas Allord, his friend who passed away, were the two highschool sweethearts mentioned in Tom's obituary, there is still plenty of speculation on certain aspects of the story. For example, some people theorize that Tom is transgender - picking up the bottle of pills in the airport bathroom changes the male/female signs outside, gendered public bathrooms tend to be pretty unpleasant places for trans folks (and you better believe the airport bathroom give me the biggest scare), and the A initial in the S+A love heart from the "true ending" doesn't correspond to Tom's first name, implying that he may have chosen a new name, to be shared only with his loved one. It's certainly a valid interpretation, and it's one of the reasons I really enjoyed myhouse.wad - the multiple "endings" and your personal interpretations will determine what you get out of it. It's entirely possible to accidentally download the .wad instead of the pk3, play through the map in 10 minutes, think "ah that was a nice little tribute to the author's friend", and move on. But if you're like me and you grew up with Doom, you'll probably never think this much about a Doom map again.
See you in myhouse.
