MyHouse.wad is a Doom map released for GZDoom on March 3, 2023. The Doom community in particular and the larger gamer community went bananas for it. Doom maps are a dime a dozen so what makes this one special?
Spoilers follow. You can go play it for free.
MyHouse.wad begins as a very basic Doom II Map that appears to be a standard two story house rendered into Doom. You kill monsters and collect key cards as normal. Where it gets interesting is that there are several invisible teleport lines that will move you to different versions of the house. Some of these shifts are nearly undetectable and some only conserve the faintest outlines but they are all the house. Not that MyHouse.wad is just the houses. There is a hospital, airport, airliner, gas station, daycare, and beach. While there are a significant number of enemies in the map they are clustered tightly in a few areas. This means the majority of the level is just empty environments to explore.
That's what makes this map shine. It starts out as a normal, boring house floor plan with a smattering of standard Doom enemies and then you wander thru and invisible line portal into a slightly different version of the house. Then it happens again. You find a room that wasn't there before; which defies space. The music starts to get weird, not obviously weird, but just missing beats and subtle repeats. The house is messing with you, with your sense of continuity, with your understanding of what a Doom map is. As you continue you'll find items, secrets, new strange areas all maddeningly liminal in their interrelations. Which random thing caused the change. Was it on a timer. This map is running on full dream logic.
The internet loves video games, liminal spaces, and mysteries so MyHouse.wad land landed like an incendiary bomb on a munitions factory. The whole Doom community was on fire enough that it spilled out into the larger gaming culture and it was all those corners of the internet were talking about for around a week. The various game dissection channels quickly and efficiently laid bare all of the routes, options, and Easter eggs it had to offer but not before everyone who ever played games online did a blind play through including John Romero himself. MyHouse.wad has been a relative flash in the pan. Once you've seen all of its endings there is little else to do and unlike most Doom levels it offers little in the way of replayabilty. Unlike most Doom levels there is several hours worth of exploration to be had. If you like Doom, mysteries, and don't mind being very confused and slightly scared you owe it to yourself to get at least one play through of this instant classic.
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