MyHouse.WAD

[Music] Hello listeners and welcome to season three of Dark Matter, the podcast where we slice dice, dissect, consume, devour, gourd yourselves upon the greatest works of dark fiction. I am John Richter. And I'm Liam Arden. Hey that was a we were a bit of beat and weren't we that folk good? And I did it in an American accent. Yes, some reason. You did sort of one. Sort of yeah. What bit of America would you say that is? The bit where they don't pronounce their teas? Yeah, in my way they say mariding. Yeah. I'm Liam Marden. Oh what bit? Have I gone a bit south there? Just get on my lips. We've got loads of American listeners. I'm sure they'll all be right here. Yeah. Correct us. Yes, welcome. We are here to talk about another piece of dark fiction. It's episode two of the new series. We're going back in the groove. That's it. That's what we like. Is that right? Is that the right time to do it? Yeah, you nailed it. They all did. Perfect note. Just randomly just chuck them in. I've really wasn't a little concept. We are where we used to do it a bit more formalised. We kind of took it in turns to pitch to each other. Now we can't really be asked to do that. So we just pick before and then tell you what we're going to talk about. But what we do is we talk to you know, death about the chosen topic of the episode. And then we decide whether that piece of dark fiction is worthy of a place in the hallowed haunted horrible hellish halls of the halls. Hey, is this where I laugh? That's the story. Yeah, it's that British. I don't know. That's it. Nice variety. If you go back over a alarmingly long podcasting history, you laugh, you know, eclectic laughter has been quite impressive. Thank you. I mean it. Everything else you do is shit, but that is true. I agree. Oh yeah, that was what I was going to say. Spoiler alert. Everything gets in. Yeah, it does. Oh, except that one thing, that one tone. Liam, what are we on about today? Then well, this is a very interesting topic. Very unique. My interest in, do you mean really, really niche and no one's going to revert of it and therefore no one's going to listen to the episode? Yeah, well, it's a video game, but not as you know it. It's even a video game we've covered to an extent before, isn't it? Very true. Yeah. So we're talking about doom, but we're specifically talking about the myhouse.ward release creation. Oh man, it's and just and if anyone's listening to this who has no idea what that means, trust us, it's a good and it I know it sounds like we're banging on about some custom made level made for a 30 year old game because we are, but it surpasses anything you might reasonably expect from that description. Would you agree with that Liam? 100% yeah, absolutely. Like I said, this, we wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't interesting because if there's one thing you'd say about me, it's that I'm very interesting. That I agree fully with that. Do something interesting. Go. Just went for the laugh again. Yeah, see how many interesting things about it? No, my house got what a very interesting, very unique. Yeah, I mean, tell the list is what it is. Yeah, I'll have a crack and explain what it is and spoiler alert, we're going to spoil this thing that we're talking about. So if you want to experience this, in fact, I'll go hard on that. I did spoiler this thing for myself before I played it because I heard about it and ended up watching a YouTube video just because I was interested. And by the end of the video, I was like that was brilliant. Shit, I'm annoyed I didn't play it for myself. So I think if you are a doom, custom, what map type person who knows how to do that, which were sort of trying to explain a little bit, then strongly would suggest you do that yourself and then listen to this afterwards to relive the horror. Just just to add to that, I didn't spoil it for myself. However, by no means did I experience the whole thing properly as we'll get to because there are kind of two different experiences you can have. If not more than two. If not more. Yeah, that's right. You could have just the very basic experience where you go into the room and leave and that's the thing done. But I'm almost like salivating about talking about it. It's just so flipping good. Let's try and explain what it is. So, doom, if you haven't heard of doom, it really is weird that you listen to this nerd fest. But doom is the godfather of first person shooters. I know it wasn't the first one because that was Wolfenstein and blah, blah, blah. But it was the first big massive mega-wom. Early 90s, id softwares, masterpiece, it's running around with shotguns, shooting at hellish zombies and monstrosities from the depths of Satan's spawn. It's brilliant and we all have doom and there's no more to say about that, although there is because we said it on our podcast episode about it a few years ago. So, you should go and listen to that if you were doing fun. Whereas now we refer to the genre's first person shooter for a long, long time, those kind of games were known as doom clones, weren't they? Yeah, it was so ubiquitous that it was doom and then various doom clones. You're absolutely right. And so, like a lot of popular old games, there's still a thriving kind of fun community around them, including sort of modders and mappers. So, again, just to explain, modders, modifications, it's just, it's usually kind of fan-made bolt-ons for existing games. I'm never quite sure about the sort of legality of it, an arrow official. I'm unofficial, you know, you're not going to see them released, or you're unlikely to see them released on, you know, your PlayStation or other games consoles are available, because that would mean they'd need to be sort of formally endorsed and adopted by the games developer and the publisher. So, usually they're kind of unofficial things you can sort of do on your PC bolt-on to a game, and that mods will be anything from complete overhaul of the graphics and new game segments and re-ordering the whole thing, all the way to like silly comedy ones, like it's the same game, but all the enemies have got big simpsons, hairdos, or something. But you're going to say something else then, but uh. I, yeah, I remember something, I don't know, I was thinking, what I was thinking. So, that's modding, and I guess part of modding is maps, so it's levels, custom experiences for players to add on to their basic game, and again, that could be a little silly one-off map that someone's made where it's like, oh look, I made my house in, you know, Quake, or it could be something, you know, big sprawling 35-map episode and really professional and highly polished, and again, there's just these amazingly talented people out there doing that. Do you just do this stuff for free and just release it out of love of the art? So good on them. And I mean, this one in particular must have taken bloody ages. Good heavens, I can't believe against it. It must be months and months and months of work to put this together. But well, interestingly, that's what's a segues into a bit of the backstory about it, because all these modding and mapping forums, where you find out where the latest releases and which one, you know, the rate, the quality of the maps and so on, and links to download them, and it's almost always free. Someone who I think the username was VENCH, I think, was the username VEDGE, if I've got my facts right? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, that's right, yeah. He started asking questions on the forum under the guise of a kind of returning user who, you know, doubled in mapping, you know, 15 years ago, and he was coming back into it and, you know, wanting to get up to speed with the latest mods and tools and editors and so on. And I think this account did exist, you know, 10 or 15 years ago on the forum. So it was a real person who's had some involvement in the past anyway. So, innocently, people are responding to this person answering these questions and he's posting little updates on his project just like everybody else. And then of course, now with the benefit of hindsight, you can see the genius of this. He starts talking about, you know, he's having a few sort of mental problems and he's feeling a bit, you know, can't seem to get this level out of his head and he's going to be having trouble sleeping and then he's waking up and kind of logging on and bits of the level of creating themselves and he doesn't even remember programming them. And I guess anybody who was reading those posts at the time must have thought, "Oh, this guy's kind of having a bit of a breakdown." So this guy's posting all these kind of updates about his projects, which make it sound. And clearly what he's doing is he's laying the groundwork of the kind of fiction, all the sort of meta-fiction that he's going to kind of explore. So eventually this map comes out and it's dressed up in, you know, very, very spartan kind of, you know, trappings, just saying, "Oh, Here's a little oh no, what did he say he said that his friend Had made a map when they were kids and then years later his friend had passed away Tragedyly so he had just spread he'd acquired this map on like an old floppy disk And he just spruced it up a bit and released it in memory of his friend Yeah, and it's just a little Typical teenagers map where they're like you know made their own house, but in doom So you sort of go into the house and there's a little garage and a little living room There's some zombies in it and then there's a bathroom and that's and that's kind of you lot right and then you get you You know your typical doom gameplay, so it's get the red key up in the red key door get the blue key Did it and eventually you get back out into the yard and you go through the blue key and out the exit and that's it takes about five minutes cute little map lovely a Yeah, and that's the end of the episode so thank you, but you know, I'm there. I'll see you next time So and genuinely I think some people who played it just thought it was that so I think there was some comments on this I said oh cute little map I remember these retro style. Oh, I like how he's made a little PlayStation You know all that kind of stuff. It's worth pointing out as well that the background to to the game so There's like He's explaining on the forums, you know what it is how he found it the floppy disc and then there's a picture There's a link to a picture of him and his friend Tom. Yes And this like you said this is just it's lay in the groundwork because there's a lot more Should dare I say law Yeah, yeah to this then then meets the eye it is yeah, it's very very clever stuff But yes a lot of players who played it might have just thought it was that and stopped However, there's a very specific little trap that he lays which is as you are proceeding back down through the house to go to the exit You will probably see because of the kind of positioning of the The rooms are structured you'll see out of the window that there is a what's known I think as a soul sphere, which is a very powerful blue Power up right in the corner of the garden and you might be thinking hang on I went through that at the beginning and it wasn't there or I must have missed it. Oh dear How terribly embarrassing I better go and pick that up then before I head to the exit and Anyone who goes to pick up the blues sphere sort of activates the kind of first major Optional content milestone of this of this fascinating project. Yeah, which I did I I went into the house actually got the The chainsaw straight away as well, which I know a few people missed but Because I was just clicking on everything, but yeah, I went into the house and then I went outside and I just went around the back Just because I thought okay, well, I kind of knew that there was something more to this map anyway, so I wasn't just gonna leave so I went around the back of the house and They're noticed that the enemies had respawned Which in itself is weird, right, but I guess Not impossible to do in kind of vanilla doom. You would just teleport some new enemies in Yeah, but nevertheless I thought oh Or you know, I need to go back inside them. Yeah, you can see them through the windows all the enemies that you've killed They're seemingly back in and that's when the adventure begins. Oh, man, and then We want to cover absolutely every minute you shy of every single door that you open box but suffice to say Your second jaunt into the house. Well, the first thing actually is you Then can't exit the level anymore now because that blue key door at the end of the yard It's been replaced by a blue skull key door and you haven't got skull keys You only got the normal keys so suddenly you now need to find another different type of key to finish the level So you're forced back inside in your attempts to escape back inside you go And at this point the house starts to do some really wacky sort of tricks of geometry and Illusory kind of You know, there's one bit where you open a door into a cupboard But if you go around the sort of corner A door that could only possibly open into the same cupboard is opening into like a massive new room that wasn't there before There's got weird decorations in it and also the original I think it's the front door is suddenly no longer visible on the no longer there on the inside of the house So once you've gone in you now can't get out. Yeah, that's exactly it You you realize you're now trapped in this house that you've gone in for the second time Plus there's this weird like said weird geometry going on and there's really little subtle weird things like Changing the default doom door opening which goes up into that you know lifts up into the ceiling That's just vanilla doom. Yeah to a more better animated kind of 3d door that actually opens outwards Which you could be forgiven for missing. Yeah, like a traditional creaking. Yeah door, you know and really little peculiar things like a one-off Discord notification sound that just plays randomly. Yeah when you're moving through the house and I think the weapon animation is slightly improved. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, just all little things that might throw you off And I'm not sure if it kicks in quite at this point, but it's playing the very very familiar The music from the first level of doom 2 which is called running from evil and it becomes a slightly messed up version of that song It's got like some bomb notes in it and like some missing notes and so the whole thing just starts messing with your brain man a little bit But ostensibly it's still just a doom level right you're still going around this bizarre house with these extra unfolding rooms And then I think you start picking up just at this point pick up objects that are not Vagular keys. It's like oh you got the milkshake You got the martini glass That kind of stuff. I can't remember exactly when but I'm sure there is at least one object at this point That you can pick up a yeah, they're like sort of Little like normal household objects dotted around that yeah, you can start picking up like a But like a kind of coke and yeah I know them as well and slightly weird and creepy and then if I remember right that you In effect do the same stuff again even though there's more enemies and they're a bit harder as well And there's a bit less health but essentially the same stuff But when you come to the closet that would have had your final blue key in Instead it's a staircase leading upstairs to like an attic and you kind of think she's all right here we go This is going to be the big finale then something scary in the attic And I've got to say as well this level it makes very very spearing use of jump scares And I was fully convinced there's going to be one here and there isn't it just it does such a masterful job of like Ramping up the dread and the confusion and the uncertainty and oh, it's great better than most modern games Yeah, 100% yeah, so you go to the attic and you can actually pull the like a sheet that's been put over a piece of furniture to reveal that it's a mirror And it turns out to be you can't see your own reflection in the mirror But you can see the reflection of the blue key that you need the blue skull key. Oh, no, sorry It is there on your side of the world you get the blue skull key It's in the mirror that it's a different item. It's it's the reflection of what looks like a sort of Christmas toy Yeah, having got the blue skull key That's when you go back down through the house expecting you've reached the end Only to find there is no front door you cannot exit the house you are stuck in the house, which is great I can't quite remember where you get there, but the sort of level leads you Ultimately to the basement Because you hear this kind of electricity kind of sparking noise Yes, by the by the door which amusingly enough is the sound effect from Quake. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah This is the noise from Quake, but yeah by the door. So you go down to the base to the Sort of basement floor and This time where there wasn't before there's noticeably a gap behind the bookshelf You can go to the bookshelf press activate it and it slides out of the way revealing this little back Utility room kind of thing. Yeah, and in there is the source of the spark in electric noise which you know Simulator kind of knackered breaker circuit. Whatever you call it. Figgy electric thingy So because there's kind of nothing else to do you go over to it and you press activate and Bucket out absolutely bonkers, doesn't it at that point? Yeah, this is where it really now I had a slightly different experience because there's also I don't know how you activate it I think it seems to be random to me, but in one of the rooms It leads you into a kind of almost back room style bit. Oh Well, is this worth doing a little sidebar about the back rooms? So what happens? The way you get there as I recall is if you try to cheat So doom has got famously a load of Cheat codes it just type in she keyboard and it you know gives you like God mode and Invincible and all that kind of stuff and in this mod That you know the guys made it he's covered. He's not everything. So if you try and activate God mode it basically is Nope, can't say that gives you these weird messages instead. And if you do the famous "No Clip" which in video game punks means you can walk through walls, that is how you can end up in the back rooms. So maybe you did a bit of no clipping. Well, no. It's in one of the bedrooms and I've seen it on the video where very occasionally, if you press on to it, it will open up into a new room. Oh, Liam, forgive me. I think we're talking about two different things. But that just shows how much stuff is packed into this one, seemingly tiny house. You were absolutely right. And I didn't really know what to do in there, so I walked around for a bit. Then I kind of found my way out again, and then it just wasn't there anymore. Well, if you don't mind, the reason that we will come back to that is because that is a good segue into the inspiration for the level, but I reckon we're not quite there yet. Yeah, okay. Because that's like a really big nod to this looming specter of this other work of fiction that this is heavily inspired by, which is kind of reveals itself about halfway through. But you're talking about that very dark, a set of just dark corridors that go on forever and there's just nothing in them. Yeah. Just a haunting, kind of sprawling load of nothing. Yeah, carry on, carry on. Well, so put a pin in that. The back rooms thing I was talking about was specifically the kind of YouTube, I guess, viral video sensation. Would you call it that? The back rooms, which is well worth a watch if you've never checked it out. It's like someone gets kind of transported into a, well, sort of, liminal space, and it's this kind of endless series of kind of shopping mall corridors, basically. If you try and do this no-clip cheat, you will end up there in this, what seems like just a completely unsolvable maze being pursued by this sort of terrifying creature that seems to have infinite health and is like a sort of shadowy presence that's sort of following you at a distance. And that, I thought, was a great idea because it's just closing down all these, it's like taking away all these normally reliable crutches. Oh, it's a scary level. I'll just activate God mode. No, I can't. Oh, I'm not sure what to do. I'll just put no clip on. No, that ends put to me into some hellish alternate reality. So it was just impressive how many things you kind of thought of, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, notwithstanding the little couple of side-y bits that we just touched on, we're back in the room with the electrical circuit breaker that is sparking and fizzing away, almost as if there's some sort of dangerous malfunction. And we click on it and what happens Liam? Oh, hell breaks loose. How does hell manifest in this particular instance? Well, you walk out of that room and suddenly the lights are out, there's a really weird the soundtrack kind of kicks in. Yeah, that's the key, I think. It's the exact moment you touch here. The sound just turns to screaming, horrible people dying, fire flames, burning sounds and it's pitch black. It looks like you're in pitch darkness. Listen to me. pitch black, except you can see these kind of red eye demons that aren't your usual doom enemies, suddenly firing orbs at you. Yeah, these are weird like blood creatures on the floor and. And I don't know whether it's just because they're different, but to me they look scarier than normal do. They look, yeah, 100%. It's a perfect marriage of, you know, visuals and sound, because it sounds horrible, you know, like you said, with the screaming and the just ambient noises. And then, yeah, you've got these enemies that shouldn't really be in doom and they're just creepy looking, yeah, they really are. Really well designed and I think they're just from other mods, you know, I don't think they're actually unique to this creation, but really well deployed. Yeah. And because if you've gone in not knowing, then you're reasonably expecting this problem, this is just a normal, especially if you've read the guy's explanation, where he's just like, oh, it's a little cute map from 1993. Yeah. You wouldn't expect that it'd be non vanilla things in it, it's never mind what geometry it is, impossible rooms and hellish screens of pain from dying people. It's just, that's a complete shock, shock and harm moment, I think, when you press that button. Yeah, because, like I said, you know, I knew I'd heard, you know, I'd sit in headlines about oh, this is doom's most terrifying part and, you know, people were talking about it, but I kind of tried to stay spoil free. So I knew there's something, obviously, made this thing unique and interesting. But yeah, I just didn't know what to expect really. I didn't expect it to be this weird and unsettling. Yeah, it's genius. And so you are still in the house, but as you progress upstairs again, you realize not only is it riddled with terrifying monsters and screams of the dying, it's in effect, it's like a burnt ruin, isn't it? It's like, it's kind of, it doesn't show, you don't see fire, but you have a blazing crimson sky. You can hear this kind of fire sound effect and the house is all fire, damaged and black and scorched and ravaged. That's right. And so you work your way around, you still can't get out. There's no front door, but you can find there's some weird, you know, a taboo teddy bear and that's right. Yeah, there's something like, oh, innocent's lost and you get this really unsettling. But eventually you find your way into, I think it is in the basement again, but it's sort of a trick wall or it might be through the garage. That's right, yeah. And it opens to just a completely new area. And we were talking about the kind of back rooms thing earlier. And this probably has taken some inspiration from there as well. You're into this completely bizarre, impossible, nowhere space at that point that can't possibly exist. Yeah, kind of at first, you know, it sort of looks like a block of flats almost. Yeah. When you look out to the windows, but the actual bit you're exploring, like you see, there's sort of staircases going here, there and everywhere and yeah, like say an impossible space really. And it's like sort of a brutalist concrete architecture. Yes, yeah. And this was pointed out in one of the videos I watched, but there are in effect two apartments you can go in. One is, is made bigger so that you are smaller in relation to the walls and the furnishings and in that apartment. So I didn't notice that that you are smaller in it. And in that one, there is a terrifying three headed server, a dog creature from hell that as loads of hell finished that's what I found. First of all, I died to it and we're in the so I had to not surprise. And then the other one, if you blend the screen run away in terror, you can get into the same apartment, but it's more normal sized. And there's just a little normal dog in it who just comes up to you and is like friendly and doesn't attack. Yeah, but what happens if you attack it? But exactly, but if you kill either of the dogs, obviously it's easier to kill the little cute one, bless him sadly, both dogs die. Yeah. Brilliant. So they're obviously sort of, are they the same dog? He's one of them a child's perception of a scary dog and then one of them's an adult's perception. You know, what's going on here? It started to work on many levels. And also some of the apartments opposite, you can see like silhouettes of people or like a TV screen. And so you kind of, it looks like you can get there almost and I think somebody has, haven't they? But I couldn't jump over there. You can fall off the edge of the balcony and down into the black void. And that is a kind of optional area where it gets really weird and you're on this kind of staircase. Which I did by accident the second time I'll end through. Brilliant. Brilliant. And there's like a room you can go into where it's just like to low in red walls and you end up in the, you go through that, you're going into just the sky, you're just going to the middle of nowhere in the sky and all this. That's right, yeah. That's right, yeah. Well, I think if you go the correct way you're supposed to go and you might have picked up a few more weird objects on really, you know, don't dish bowl or whatever, you eventually get out into what looks like a parking lot. Yeah, that's right. This is what I did. Yeah. And then you do a few laps of the parking lot to realize it's just an endless circle, which you get and wasn't something you could have in the original doom, just endless, you know, endlessly ascending spiral anyway. I think if you open the right door, you go into that weird psychedelic room where you can kind of get back into the house. One other thing you can do is go back into the house or yes, you can get, if you do the right thing, you can get into this car park and then suddenly you're in this airport. But just remind me, is the airport part of the, let's call it the basic run through or does that mean you've progressed beyond basic run through, basic run through? So because in my, I'm not sure if you can get there though, if you go back into the house. So I'm not sure about that. Well, humanly, humanly, because it's after the airport that you conclude what I think is the almost like the intended first experience. Yes, yeah, that most people would do and think bloody out, that was fantastic. And then stop. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the airport is a very well created airport, despite it being in the limitations of doom for a year old game. And it's got like weird flight numbers on a wall and cancelled that spell all wrong. And, you know, one of the flights is destination is nowhere and all that kind of creepy stuff. Home as well. Home. Yeah, home is one of the destinations. And there is another sort of optional bit, but there is a bit where you can go into the toilet. - Yeah, I did this. - This is brilliant. And I can't remember if it's the women's or the men's. - It's the women's, I think. - You're going and it's just a bathroom. But if you go round, it's got, it's sort of got like mirrors in the center and sinks, but you can kind of go all the way around them and round the other side. And if you do that, suddenly as you come around the other side, there's just blood everywhere, all over the mirrors and all over the sinks. And then if you turn around, there's blood all over the wall and the floor behind you. So you kind of do another lap and you're like, oh my God, the whole place, I'm just covered in blood. And then some horrible monsters come at the toilet stalls and it's out. - And they killed me and that was the end of another place. - Yeah. - And that I would say is a brilliantly deployed jump scare in this particular place. But yeah, but again, completely optional stuff, but there's an object in there. So if you're trying to get all the objects in there. - Oh, and another optional bit from that, 'cause I died and then I woke up in a hospital. - Yes, you're right. - And basically it resurrects you one time if you go into a room. - Correct, if you die and don't re- you know, load your save on whatever, if you just stay, leave the game running and just stay sat there, I think after about a minute, it's like a full minute. Your character will just wake up. As if it's just been having a weird episode in a hospital. And you know, it's got this other boom, boom. - And then you kind of go back to where you were. - But even the hospital is scary. The hospital is creepy. - Yeah. But again, just another extra bit that I'm thinking, Christ, I'm discovering all of these things here. Yeah, and there's obviously still more to go. - And the balls to like make it optional as well. 'Cause I always think that's like, you know, criticisms often levied at kind of developers or certainly in experience, you know, novice ones, like I said, not suggesting this person is novice, it would appear they are not at all. But it's like, oh, I've made this, so I have to force the player to see it all. - Yeah. - Whereas if you look at, I don't know, like Dark Souls, there's like a whole hidden, huge level behind that painting, which you don't have to do. You can just completely miss it. - Yeah. - And it's sort of quite brave of a developer to do that. - Yeah, I agree. - So yeah, so you end up, you've survived all of those tribulations. You end up on the plane. The plane is then infested with weird floaty monsters. You kill all them. It's giving you like a do-do-do, you know, plane crash alert sound effect. And you have to open the door and jump out of the plane, even though it's in motion, sort of onto the, you know, into the sky or onto the runway or whatever. And at that moment, you sort of jerk away, you're in bed in the house. But it's not the original nice normal house. Nor is it the flaming on fire full of screaming monsters and hell house. It's like a post burnt ruin abandoned house that's just, yeah, it looks sort of damp and there's weeds growing at the wall. And it's just like a wreck, like no one's been in there for years. - Yeah. - And at this point, the fucking front door has finally reappeared and you can go outside and you can use your blue school key to exit the level. But before you do that, you might just take one last look over your shoulder at that horrendous house. - Which by this point, you definitely would because you've kind of become accustomed to weird shit happening because I turned around. You, I think you definitely would. - Yeah, you've been conditioned to expect. - Exactly. - Rewards. - I'd be surprised if people missed this, but I'm sure it has happened. - And you turn around, the house has completely gone, disappeared. All there is is a foresale sign that says, "The house is being sold by, or the plot of land "there's been sold by Navidson realtors." - Yeah. - And that's almost, you might think is the final punchline into the exit you go. Navidson or Navidson is the surname of one of the main characters in Martin Danielewski's novel, "House of Leaves", which is my favorite book. You'll see, imagine how exciting I was when I realized that that's what this was all about, all along. - And yeah, I mean, you'll have to speak about the house of Leaves 'cause I haven't read it yet, but when you sort of saw that direct nod to it, could you place any of the other parts of the. - So that was why I wanted to scheme over when you were talking about that ridiculous long sprawling dark corridor bit, 'cause that is just almost directly lifted. I think even the geography of it mirrors something that happens in the book. So we'll maybe do another episode of it at the book sometime 'cause I really like you to read it as well. But, well, it's another one of these books that kind of works on many layers and it's kind of meta, but it ostensibly is a book about a documentary. The documentary is about a man's experience of a house he moves into that he realizes has got these impossible rooms within it. Except the book's not only about that, it's about a person who was writing a critique of the documentary who's an old man who dies and someone who moves into his apartment finds this manuscript and becomes obsessed with it because it turns out this documentary doesn't actually exist in real life. And so, anyway, I won't go too far than the house of Leaves root, but suffice to say, these themes of houses that trap you with impossible geometry that's bigger than the constraints of the outside walls is very, very house of Leaves. And the idea of going through a door into a dark corridor that goes on forever, that is literally from that book. So brilliant, and as I say, Davidson is almost like that's the clear, if you know what you know, kind of moment you can see what I mean. - And there you go, and that's the end of it. - But wait. - And I'm sure loads of people must have thought that was it. - I did, yeah. So as I said, I went into this spoiler free, knowing that to expect something unusual from it, but still spoiler free. So I was blown away by everything that you've just described, you know, and I discovered some things accidentally other things, you know, as like I'll figure it out. But yeah, I thought that is absolutely incredible. - And that's enough, isn't it? - It's enough. - If it was just that, you'd be like, that is a masterpiece. - And how creative and how incredible that is to come up with something as complex as that and just as weird and unsettling. But little did I know, 'cause after that, 'cause it's one of those experiences as well that sticks with you a bit, and you wanna find out more. So then I started watching, you know, YouTube videos about it and reading up about it. And my God. - It goes so much deeper, doesn't it? - So much more to it than that. That is basically the, like you said, almost the first run through where you only really scratched the surface. - And it's clever actually how he does it. So another convention of Doom mapping is, when you've made a custom map, you replace a map from the vanilla game. So obviously you're gonna replace the first map, aren't you? Because you want the person to play your map straight away. You don't want it to get through level one and two and three and then eventually get to yours. You want it to slide in at number one. So what you'd be very, very common to experience is you've just played someone's custom map, you've finished it and therefore it takes you to level two of Doom, or Doom two. And that, so you'd be normally faced with, is he called the catacombs or the underholes? - The underholes here. - Underholes. So, and I probably played that level, you know, fucking a million times in my life from sort of loads of other nerds. And so what you might do is actually just, oh well I'm on it now, I'll just carry on, I'll just do underholes. It'll take me four minutes. You know what I mean? Yeah, I wanted to carry on playing. It was just like, I was kind of, well I kind of carried on because I wanted just, I kind of assumed that there was more to it, but then I was just quite enjoying playing. - Just good old Doom, 'cause it still goes? - Yeah, exactly. - So you finished the underholes, and normally you would then open the third level, which from memory I think is called the gauntlet, which famously is misspelled in the original game, and it's called the gauntlet, which is quite silly. Except it isn't the gauntlet gauntlet, it's my house again. And that's when you kind of think, oh, so in order to do that, I'm gonna God knows, as he put a copy of the second level into his map, or anyway, the point is, it's telling you, no you're not done here, you need to go in again. And I, again, 'cause I didn't do it myself, I've watched a video about all this, so I obviously found out what you'd missed. But if I remember rightly, the clue is kind of in the, you know that mirror we talked about, a different object reflected in it. And there's a point in the game where you can, in the house, where you can reach the bathroom mirror in one of the bathrooms, and you can go in, go through it, go through the mirror into like a mirror world. - Because just one little small point about that, that really frustrated me the first time playing. It's like, I know there's got to be something to do with that mirror, and the object you can see, but you couldn't figure it out, and then I kind of just forgot about it. But if I had just kept that in my mind, then maybe I would have got there eventually. - Yeah, and you know it is one of those things where it's like, people played games in different ways, don't they? And some people test every wall, and some people kind of just do the obvious thing, and then move on. I'm more in the latter camp, I tend to have to, if something's not, sound posted clearly, I'll probably miss it. So I probably wouldn't miss all this anyway. boy. in the mirror world, it's amazing this. It's all the enemies are flipped, so they're all backwards. The sound effects are backwards. So instead of going, raa, they go, ar, or whatever, that's what you're gonna mean. Gun sound effects backwards. There's a weird kind of filter over the screen. And if you finish the level normally again, so if you just did exactly the same level again, but just really flipped, it would still play through in the same way. And you end up in the flipped underholes, including the name underholes, that is written backwards on the screen. That's genius, isn't it? But what you're supposed to do is clock that there's this picture appeared on the wall in the living room, which has got all these blanks in it. And as you pick up these weird items, we talked about the milkshake in the bottle of wine and the kid's toy and all this disturbing sinister shit. It starts to populate these blanks. - So it's kind of, it works as like a checklist. - That's it, that's it, exactly right. So and it's actually some items, even if you get them on the normal side, they don't necessarily, they might go on the mirror side or vice versa, but you basically have to get these 16 items. So then you're trying to figure out, well, what have I missed? And I can't remember which side it's on, how you get there. I think this might be on the normal side. You might not even need to go through the mirror to get to this, but there's a way you can access another secret bit of the house, which is, yeah, so it is through the mirror because it's that blue Christmas toy and you follow a trail of Christmas toys. Leads you to a closet, which on the normal side is empty, but on the mirror side is like a whole and you jump into the hole, very silent hill. The bottom of the hole, it's a slide into a kid's ball pool and you're now in a nursery school with, I think it's like a picture of Shrek on the wall and it's actual Shrek, so it's probably not been pointed for licensing purposes, but anyway. And then there's some stuff in the nursery, toys, bits and pieces, nothing particularly interesting, I don't think. - Again though empty nursery, it's creepy, yeah. It's just creepy anyway. Exactly, if it was full of monsters, that would be less effective than it would just be a creepy empty nursery for no apparent reason. So then you leave the nursery and you're into like a misty dark playground. If you turn around, Shrek has followed you out of the nursery and attacked you. - Yeah. - So gross. It's like a shadowy scary version, but that's another great jump scare that, I think that's genius. Yeah, and again, just really unexpected. - And this is gonna end up being a bumper episode of this, isn't it? So, Shrek, you get a key, you go through a door. Some of the weird shit you will encounter, maybe won't go into minute detail. Really, really weird, bizarre locations, disturbing stuff, sites you can't unsee. But I feel like the culmination of it is when you end up on that country lane. - Yeah. - And that bit is, and you're like, what, what was it gonna happen to Redex? So you just go along this road and there's like trees and the moon is bright in the sky and it's dark and creepy. And then I think you hear a song playing, don't you? - Yes, that's right, yeah. - And even that, even that song is a blubbing rabbit hole that I didn't know about. So. - Oh yes, yes. - Is it called the most mysterious song ever made to it? - Nobody knows. - Yeah. - Some famous apparently famous song that sounds like it's maybe, I think it's been sung in English, but we've cleaned it like a German sounding accent or an Eastern European accent. And it's quite a good little 80s kind of synthy indie song. But no, it's this mysterious recording that's been on earth and no one knows who the band is or what the song's called. And that's playing it, but it's playing from the radio of a crashed car. So there's a crash car with a head lights on, creepy song playing. The lights pointing into the woods and you can follow the headlight beams into more insanity. (laughs) - You'll be honest, can't you? - Yeah, I'll, yeah. - Pretty perpetual station. - Yeah. - With a crime scene, you know, blood on the toes. - And if something's gone horribly wrong. And so there is more, oh well sorry, there is one more thing I do wanna say actually about the content of the game. So this route that we're going through now, this is the, let's call it the true pack. - Yeah. - But there is still another red herring you can find where if you don't manage to get every single item, you can find your way to an ending, can't remember how, where you end up on a beach in a sort of a delic beach scene. But you're just there and it's like, oh is this the end word? What am I supposed to do? But you can walk off the beach and round the back of it. And you can see that it's just all like, like stage furniture, like wooden props. - Like like a movie set. - Yeah, like a movie set or something. - Like a movie set. And then it's brilliant. And then there's a table with like, I don't know, a directorial paraphernalia on it at the side of the set, including like a, I think there's a radio that's playing the idyllic music or the sound effect of the waves lapping. And you can just press that and it turns them off. So you realize that the sounds bullshit as well. And then if you press that, what do they call it? Is it a clack of board? Clack of board? - Yeah. - Then things where you go, take one. And if you press that, it just ends the game. - Yeah. - Like your screen goes black and that's it. Just, that's such a good idea, isn't it? - And then, but like you said, even that's not, there's still another ending. - Which does have a sort of big culminating, not a boss fight exactly, but well, I guess it is a boss fight. It's like a massive battle with loads of monsters and some really mad stuff. There's an Easter egg where you can find a grave stone with a QR code on it. And apparently this game was, this release was so unexpectedly popular that whatever software the creator was using to host this kind of QR thing, he just packed in, it couldn't cope with the demand. - Really? - So that was one thing you couldn't actually access this QR code as intended. - And what was it for? - Well, that plays into the ending. So if you make it all the way through all of that, the big, the end scene is, you make it to that same beach, but it's the real beach. It's a real, you can tell, it's a beautiful sunset, it's not fake anymore. If you didn't kill the dog, the dog's there. - That's what I was saying. - Ah, so cute. And that's the true ending of the level. But that dreaded word, the law. - The law is, the grave, I think, is I think it is the grave of the person that was claiming to have made the level. So the implication is a bit muddled, really. Until that point, you could assume, oh, he's got this haunted, he's got this floppy disk from his friend who's committed suicide and it's tragic and his friend was all these problems. And that's how it's manifested in this haunted level. But if the person who's made it is also dead, then who made it? And there's possibly, there's even like a, you know, a sort of like a gay romance read on it. We're like the two of these, these two men, rather than this kind of affair and trash the cart together and died together. But again, how did that manifest in a doom level? And it's not an issue. So it's just so much, so, such clever stuff and this kind of storytelling via this forum and outside even of the map itself, just really, really blooming impressive. And what about the implications of some of the things you see in the level? Could you like the nursery and? Yeah, and you couldn't know all that is left kind of open to interpretation, isn't it? Like, is it something like a, is a child died in the car crash? And that's what the nursery's all about. And you've got that like, we talked about the apartment being the smaller version of itself with the, you know, the giant dog. So there's loads of different reads that people have given over what this, what this map could be. But hopefully we've vaguely done it just this, but it, the best thing you can possibly do is just get all of a copy of it. So if you look at myhouse.wad.wad.wad, that's what doom levels are always called.wad files. And you know, you can find YouTube tutorials that'll tell you how to get, if you don't know how to do it. And you can get a custom level into your, you know, your copy of doom or doom two, I think it has to be. It's quite straightforward actually. Yes, doom two. And it's a, this is another interesting thing because it says dot ward, but it's a, is it PK three file, which again, people were saying, why is it named as one thing, but it's actually another thing. I don't know. I think that's so it can include more media like the reader book. 'Cause I think there's like a whole diary at a company in the level, isn't there? Like this guy's gone to the trouble of it. And it's actually very well written as well. You know what, if I'll edit this, but if I thought about it, I could have, or if I've got the journal, you should have if, okay, took a small break, found it, found the journal. It's readily available online actually. If you just download my house dot ward from Veggie's original post on Doomworld, you will, you can get this, this journal file. Well, he's basically given a link to a Google drive that's got the map in it and also this. And it starts off very kind of innocuous. The first entries dated August 4th, 2022. Today I woke up to the news that an old childhood friend of mine, it suddenly passed away. I can't believe it. We were so close when we were younger and I feel like a part of my life is now missing. I feel so helpless. Like I can't do anything to bring him back. I feel so sad it feels like my heart is heavy. I can't have that think about all the fun times we had together growing up. Anyway, that sets the scene. And later on he's he's talking about, you know, I spent this morning doing something I haven't done in years. Browsing Doom World for the most recent Doom editing tools. I was amazed to find that easily and flexible the new tools work and that's what I was used to back in the mid-Nority. Anyway, you can see where this is going but it all starts to deteriorate. And I just thought this, I'll just read this at this entry. February of the 27th, 2023. I can no longer tell what elements of this map are my friends, which are mine and what the map has created. I am no longer afraid that the map is creating itself. It needs me as much as I need it, which reminds me of a dream I had the other night. I'm not sleeping much, but I recall this one with surprising clarity. I was standing on a beach steering out at the placid water, the ocean stretching out as far as the eye could see. Seagulls cored overhead and the gentle caress of water latched the sand in front of me. I dipped my toes into the water, at least I tried. It was an illusion. I realized everything around me was fake. The trees, the birds, the sand, it was all a one act play and I was willy-loman. A damn fool who believed in something greater, but there was no happiness to be found. I wandered the set only to find myself steering into oblivion. It was the end of time itself. No joy, no misery, no sadness, only emptiness. Men of faith tell us the afterlife is for eternity, but is it possible to keep your sanity for eternity? A day passes in the void, a month, a year, two, five, ten. Is this in eternity? Twenty years, a hundred years, a thousand years. I've sat in this room for a million years now, entertaining the same thoughts, pondered the same questions and ruminated on every mistake in my life, anguishing over them for centuries. A billion years now, double that. Now double it again. I'm still nowhere close to the end of eternity. I pray for death, but it never comes. Just me and my thoughts and my mistakes and my insecurities and my regrets and my loneliness. Somewhere in another dream, the version of myself that winked back is sitting on the real beach, happy and content, knowing life is finite. There is no afterlife and happiness is found in the small things around us that we can control. Happiness has to be thought for. It's just good, it's just good writing, you know what I mean? And that's enticing to the real ending where happiness has to be thought for. You know, you have to go through shit and of enemies to get that true ending. Yeah. Good, good stuff. It's good stuff. And well, I mean, this is the moment of truth, isn't it? Everyone is sure on tinta hooks waiting to find out where the myhouse.wad is going to make it into the hall of pain. And the answer is, well, Liam, what do you think? No. No, really? Not so far away. Of course it does. I mean, it is in itself, it's very own hall of pain. It literally is, you know, one you could get lost in. Or maybe the hall of pain is in the back room somewhere. No, that's matter in it. Right? Wow. What you're trying to say, we can kind of take credit for this game this, in a way, go on then. Yeah, like we sort of inspired it in down there. Yeah. And house of leaves even though that came out 20 years before our podcast, but you know, it's time travel. Definitely. Yeah. No, 100% in this really. Yeah, just even if you only get, you know, that first first ending we kind of spoke of with the airplane. And just watch the other stuff on YouTube. Even that. It's still incredible. There's some great videos out there of people who can. Yeah. There's one of John Romero fabled, you know, Doom creator playing it. And he, you can see as he, you know, he goes through it, he goes from, oh yeah, this is kind of interesting to like, wow. You know, by the end, you can tell he's genuinely properly impressed. Yeah. And also just to add to the mystery, no one knows who this bloke veg actually is. Oh, but I say bloke, that sexist could be a woman. But no one knows who this person is. What? Oh, because isn't our picture of him with Tom. But that's part of the bullshit myth, isn't it? That's that's this fake identity of this person that the QR gravestone then reveals is dead. So I don't think, I mean, if you google it, it says always real name is whatever. But that's, I think that's just part of the fiction. Yeah. Or is it? So yeah, and it just, I don't know, you can get a bit jaded as a, I'm sure this applies to not just games, but like books films. You know, when you're just getting to a bit of a blot and you're like, oh, everything's just a bit crap. I haven't played anything great for years and is the industry, you know, have I sort of am I bored of it? Have I got to a point where I can't be touched emotionally and the same way. And but this was just that was properly blown away by it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it'd be interesting to see with all the game of the year, nominate nominations and awards, whether it kind of gets a look in, because obviously it's not a game as such, but I could see some websites and, you know, influences putting this, even if it's just the honorable mention, I can, it's gotta be there somewhere because it's just because it's the best horror thing that's been released. Yeah, it's just so unique. Yeah, so it's so even I know some people kind of turn their nose up and it all sort of say, well, it's not even a game. It's just a mod, but it is the best horror gaming experience that has been released in 2023, I would say. Yeah. And it's been a great year for gaming, but yeah, it's yeah, it's definitely up there. Oh brilliant. So yeah, well, that's it. We're there. We're over the line. Baby, episode two in the can. Do you feel like you've been through a haunting hellish ringer and, you know, emerged somehow quivering on the other side? It will be now. Yes. It will be. Yes. No idea how long this one's going to be after the edit it feels like it was quite a long one, maybe we'll see. We will see. And we'll see you all soon for another episode of this thing. We've not decided what we're going to talk about either. Have we? No. But we will. We've probably showed before we called it because it's just a live, like a bit of question, but no, we'll have something. Don't you worry listeners and look after yourselves and see you in the whole pain very soon. Yeah. See you then. Laters. Thank you once again for listening. That was a load of fun. I hope you enjoyed it. We're trying to be a better this series, I think in our earlier episodes, we weren't very good at crediting the artists of music that we used. Obviously, we only ever used it in homage to the thing that we're talking about in a positive way. But yes, we want to try and credit the artists. Of course, in this case, it's a bloody nightmare because, you know, you've got a secret mystery song that no one knows who sang it, which is this one that's playing now. The opening track from this episode was Running From Evil, which is the original Doom 2 first-level track by Bobby Prince. But this is a sort of weirder-ified mash-up version I can't find who made it. Don't know if it is known. It's hard, as we talked about, the episode is hard to credit the creator of my house because he or she has kept their identity and mystery. So the only thing I can do is the track we used the weir distorted creepy ambience one in the middle at the episode is by our artist called SL Fortium and that is it's called Memory Equals Entry and then I'll load of gibberish. So we just weir and stuff, just Google the My House soundtrack because it's really good. And as we suggested earlier, you should definitely play it like because it's real. Anyway, right, there's another may I'll shut up. Very quick plug for my new book, which is out imminently at the time of release of this episode. You can pre-order the paperback version already if you search for Scard by John Richter. That's J-O-N-R-I-C-H-T-R. It is a dark, fantasy novel with lots of surprises. It's door for you. Which I'm sure you will enjoy. Or you can look at my website, which is www.john-richter.com. Otherwise, we will be talking at you again in a couple of weeks. Watch this, listen to this space, slimminess space.