A map uploaded by an unknown user, with secrets hidden deep inside its walls...
Doomworld Link - www.doomworld.com/forum/topic...
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-- @supereyepatchwolf3007's "Horror in Impossible Places: Liminal Spaces and The Backrooms" - • Horror in Impossible P...
-- "Doomed" by Rimco on OCRemix - ocremix.org/remix/OCR00231
-- @CloudCuckooCountry's "Ergodic Literature: The Weirdest Book Genre" - • Ergodic Literature: Th...
Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:06 i - Expedition 1
00:19:17 ii - Intermission
00:24:55 iii - Expedition 2
00:44:37 iv - Expedition 3
00:56:05 v? _____________
01:03:46 v - Expedition 4
01:30:21 vi - Conclusion
01:39:25 Credits and Q/A
01:41:57 The Truth Behind The Mystery
ATTRIBUTION:
Old Film Leader Clip - www.videvo.net/video/old-film...
Film Rewind Clip - www.videvo.net/video/film-rew...
JJ Hardy Photo - By Keith Allison on Flickr - Originally posted to Flickr as "J.J. Hardy", CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
my house / in the middle of my doom / my house...
Everything: *goes to shit, realities warping* Doomguy: 🤨
He's been in hell for a very long time, nothing scares him.
@@greatwavefan397 but aint this the space marine who was sent to an abandoned station as a punishment fighting for his life?
Doomguy: "I'll kill a thousand demons, a million, I don't care, nothing scares m- OH NO NOT THE HOUSE NO WAIT WAIT PLEASE"
guess hell isnt a place. its a feeling
This map is deep and all but doomguy only ubderstands 2 things: Rip and tear
I’ve heard multiple times House of Leaves was never adapted into a movie or TV show because the context and mystery would be lost in a medium change, this guy is just like, “Hold my beer, I’ll do it in Doom.”
"but can it run doom?"
@@jr-bh5rm you know damn well everything can run doom.
@@jr-bh5rm "But can it run in doom?"
Well, there’s a big difference between the forms of media that actually works in favor of adapting it into a video game. Control. Your input is directing the experience. This not only makes you feel personally involved, but also gives greater meaning to the unexpected changes making you feel like you *aren’t* in control. I love it when video games are referred to as the medium of “interactive storytelling”, because there is a greater value to it than some people realize, even today.
@@chrisschoenthaler5184 I always feel like people who decry video games have never played through a good one.
This is the game equivalent of “IM BACK IN THE FUCKING BUILDING AGAIN”
Hehe snapcube (marry me)
"I'M BACK IN THE FUCKING *HOUSE* AGAIN" (pretend it's blue instead of just being bolded you can't change text color on KZhead alas)
"Welcome to MyHouse.wad, as you can see I keep making the exit dissapear and changing how it looks on the inside because I get so tilted at the towers."
The delivery on that from Alfred was amazing
NO I THOUGHT THIS LAST NIGHT ITS LITERA;;Y JUST THAT
Going to the backyard of that daycare and slowly turning around to see *a humanoid figure* just calmly walking towards you was genuinely terrifying and clashed so violently with the loneliness and quiet unease of the previous areas. The reveal that this figure is, in fact, Shrek did unexplainable things to my emotions
I was looking for this comment. 😂
That's also the beauty of Doom, and a lot of older games in general, something that I, and I'm sure others experienced as a kid playing these older games, when all the enemies are dead, or there's a strange lack of enemies, it always made me feel so uneasy, like I always expected something to be behind me. That portion with Shrek really personified that uneasiness, like as a kid I used to feel a game could just decide to add something behind me like that on a whim. It's not just limited to that though, it's really just anything that goes against your expectation of what a game establishes as normal, like if there's always background music but an area is lacking it, or there's normally ambient sound and then it stops, this mod does a perfect job playing on all those weird fears and superstitions you feel playing a game as a kid, but lose as an adult due to your experience and expectations being well established, that fear of the unknown kind of disappears.
@@Pigulodothat’s long
It's also hands down the most beautiful outdoor area I've seen made in GZDoom.
@@VicRiariaaverage 9 year old attention span
this went to "how did they manage to put a room ABOVE a room!?" to "how did they create a parallel universe and a mirroring status that persists between ENTIRE LEVELS while also causing different events!?" real quick.
facts. This is an amazing map
if I remember correctly, mirrored Underhalls is marked as MAP33, which means it was simply just remade and all exits within mirrored areas lead to MAP33 instead of MAP02 as for room-over-room and "parallel universes," just mapping tricks in modern source ports
Really went from “that’s weird for doom” to “I am in a non euclidean dreamscape that embodies my fears and trauma”
@@collincornish1492 in a matter of minutes
It's really not that deep, calm down.
Guys will create an impossible art piece in a 30 year old video game and release it like it is nothing rather than go to therapy. Video was so amazingly fun to watch.
@@chrisboelens2640it's a meme
@@seinyaaa4504 You're a meme! >:(
If he'd gone to therapy, we'd not have this technical masterpiece. Yeah, that's reason #19188 why it's better to let it fester, than to seek 'professional help'
@@franciasii2435 you good bro? 🤨
Therapy is too expensive
Anyone interested in House of Leaves should check out the 2000 album Haunted by Poe who is the author's sister, it acts as a sort of musical companion piece and is woefully underappreciated
Wow thank you! I have never heard of this and I LOVE HoL.
that album is actually a huge part of my late childhood and i have fond memories of listening to it with my mom and sister while driving to and fro. i knew it was related to house of leaves, but i never read the book, just was a huge Poe fan lol
I finally powered through the book recently thanks to this KZhead video and had an incredible time; thanks for sharing this additional recommendation!
The sequence starting at 1:21:56 with the mysterious song is absolute art, just evokes this thrilling feeling
I could just mentally see Doomguy pumping his shotgun at “happiness must be fought for”. I’ve used your time stamp to rewatch it so many times.
Do you know the name of the song perhaps?
@@Thatguygaminglol like the wind
@@Thatguygaminglol literally no one knows lol. People usually refer to this as "The most mysterious song on the internet", " The Mysterious song" Or "Like the Wind"
@@Thatguygaminglolits a huge internet mystery that no one knows where the song actually came from
The fact that this was FREE and the modder still hasn't revealed their identity, getting absolutely nothing from creating the mod is wild. The modder deserves a REWARD
facts
I think this is the modder
@@tommytromboney8826 lmao
It's way past its era. I think it would have been influential to devs and gamers in the 90s. Although I think it should be put onto Roblox, as much as I normally hate that suggestion for games. There are not enough games with 'bad graphics' that provide this type of immersion, frustration and required relentless completionism. I can see how this would get hyped with a younger gen
@@nofuxgivens2797 what? doom modding is still incredibly active these days, how is it past its era
Never thought seeing blood in Doom could feel so out of place
As well as seeing Blood in Doom! (I'm talking about Bad Dog aka Cerberus and fishes in Bathhouse pool that are from this game)
The bloody nose
I don't understand?
@@Meg_Lovegoodfor some reason, seeing the blood on the floor and walls like in the airport’s bathroom or in the gas station feels..disturbing even if it’s in Doom
It's funny, I used to play a lot of Brutal Doom so it's weird to not see blood and guts splattered everywhere in Doom. Yet the blood smears in the bathroom make me feel so uneasy.
The "Happiness has to be fought for." part of the video was absolutely amazing, engaging, a piece of art itself, and you gave a masterclass in storytelling in this video. One of the best gaming related videos I've ever seen and I've been around for a while.
I say it myself weekly hahaha so inspiring!
At 9:46 when it said “I want pop” it reminded me of my grandfather, who we all called Pop. Probably just a coincidence but still, with the context of the rest of the map it gives me a bittersweet feeling.
That's what I was thinking, That 'I want pop' was a double-entenre of sorts, For me, due to it being in the different house, I was thinking it was some sort of divorce metaphor.
one of the most unsettling things about this mod is going into a new area and slowly realizing its just the house again
exactly, slowly realizing the gas station was just the house sent chills down my spine
I didn't even notice lol
@@njdotson homie he says it in the video like every other minute 😭
It drove me fucking mad lmao, every time he said “oh yeah btw it’s the house again” I was tearing at my hair
More than that, to my mind, is that, as you play through the mod, you start to look for signs of the house. Any time you see a slanted wall or a staircase, you start to question if it's the house. It mentally seeps into your mind, and slowly becomes the only thing you can think about. Just like the mod in the fiction of it's creation. Just like the Navidson Record in House of Leaves. Expertly crafted horror.
The transition between the haunting implication of a miscarriage in a bizarre mirrored world to a boss fight against Shrek is certainly an artistic choice.
Shrek might be a clue of a time line.
Stillborn, way worse than a miscarriage 😢
@@YoursUntrulyall stillborns end up being miscarriages though, technically, only if both perish would it not be one...
@@darkerdaemon7794 a still born is a full term baby, unexpectedly dead at birth. You grow it and expect to be delivering a baby and only find out you won’t have one when you fully birth your dead child,
Miscarriages are losing the baby before it’s due.
This mod feels like one of those very realistic and very intense , nightmares of my childhood.
I'm an adult and still have these nightmares. They're largely the only dreams I end up remembering. They tend to repeat themselves and break when I remember them in the moment and take the correct course of actions, or begin to outsmart them. It mimics aspects of this map and adds to why I felt such a vein of horror on the first watch of this video.
For extra info about the curious "two-story stairs trick," classic DOOM maps are rendered on a single two-dimensional plane because of hardware limitations at the time. You can change vertical plane, but it's not possible to model an area under another because that "cell-" imagine a flat grid of squares- has already been occupied.
I even noticed that the doors behave differently in the different loops. Sometimes they slide, other times, they swing, and there are different speeds of swing. There are just so many tiny details.
Yeah! I think I only really started noticing when I saw that some of the doors in the water-filled house wouldn't open all the way
I think sometimes they open inwards instead of outwards too!
omg i thought i was the only one who saw that
@@cez_is_typingif you ever take it upon yourself for another round of torture, could you look for if the hinges line with the direction the door swings?
Fun fact-that closet that appears after the doors disappear? the green shirt in it? You can wear it. It's 100% green armor.
You can also put on one of the shirts in the airport for blue armor, though it's not blue
@@cdru515 immersion ruined
@@bitzthe8bit668 Immersion destroyed, day ruined, life over.
That curved hallway in the hospital area looks just like one of the dorms at my old school wtffff
Tome say that being in the closet gives you armour
One of the best videos I’ve seen on KZhead and now one of my comfort videos for my restless nights. Amazing work and thank you PowerPak
The thirsty kids in Africa could've drank that money, yknow.
@@dearGOD101 Man you need this money more than them, you need brain transplant asap.
@@nonamenolife2635I eaf monefy
Those kids didn't make my comfort video... where were those kids when I was driving home...
Feels like a love letter to both Doom community and mysteries from all over the Internet. It goes far in messing with player, creating ARGs, puzzles and pure art with a damn atmosphere - from analog horrors to classic last stand. Unique map, also a technical masterpiece. Wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, someone discovered another secret there. Loved it.
can't believe the homeowners managed to get a permit approved for all this crazy stuff
Grover could never
@@bengrizzle3292 what?
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e I think he's referring to the seasame street character.
Always be sure to renew your liminality license.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e look up "Groverhaus"
I love how to get the best ending you have to slaughter a crapton of demons. Under all the mystery and horror, this is still DOOM.
doom is doom and doom is murder. house is doom. house is murder. gotta love “return to roots” endings
I just love an ending with such “fuck it, we ball” energy. Where you refuse to compromise or accept a disappointing conclusion, and just go on a tear after the game’s spent so long beating you down. For all its faults, cyberpunk 2077’s secret ending is what immediately comes to mind when I think of another example of such vibes
It's why the line "Happiness is worth fighting for" works so well in this video. It's cheesy, but this dude has some serious narration and editing skills to the point that it works.
@@ji604 he has such a unique style of video structure and narration. For the most part it’s structured as if you’re watching a genuine first time reaction, almost like watching your friend play over his shoulder, but he knows exactly when to interject, when to shut the fuck up, when to let the footage play out and speak for itself, when to add context, when to add drama, etc.. it’s so organic and he knows how to evoke the emotions he wants without making it feel like you’re watching a performance. The dude is both amazingly talented and skilled
@@daltongarrett3393Hitman Blood Money has a good ending in that sense
My friends and I have listened to this at LEAST 200 times. IM NOT JOKING. I WISH I WAS. it's like a cult. we'll be chilling on discord and not talking and we just put it on a bot and listen to it. we get together at each others house and guess what WE WATCH IT LIKE 5-10 TIMES IN A DAY. the main issue is that It's NOT GETTING OLD. I still consistently listen to this and it's like im listening to it for the first time. my friends and I are even able to quote most of this off of memory. should we seek medical intervention!?!?!?!?!?
I've literally had it on repeat for a while too, and it's still fascinating even now. Amazing mod and amazing writing and presentation in this video.
i cant believe this masterpiece is already a year old, i remember watching this nearly 2 days after it was made
Man, this guy sure has an elaborate house setup. I bet his parents were crazy rich
it'd be a great vacation spot honestly
This is probably what an architect sees in a nightmare
@@random_user_br3007 Shouldn't an architect like designing nice houses?
@@liquidsnake6879 Well yeah hence why this would be a nightmare
A little bit of a maze but once you get your routing it's very relaxing
Doomguy’s face constantly being either 🤨 or 😠 in the face of incomprehensible horrors is amazing
Another tuesday for Doomguy
mans just like: “This really isnt worth my time”
This comment is extremely character accurate
But he does have a couple of 😲
Don't forget he sometimes goes 😈
I played Doom when it came out in my 20s. The fact I'm now 54 watching this is the weirdest feeling i can't explain. I've never followed Doom mods but this mod, along with this video, are feats of marvel that fill me with joy, much like playing Doom did thirty years ago. Bravo!
This video is literally just “IM BACK IN THE FUCKING BUILDING AGAIN” I love it and hate it at the same time
Developers have been struggling toward "graphics" for decades now, but something like this demonstrates that all we really need is creativity.
It depends on the game. Sometimes hyper realism is very good. Sometimes blocky is better.
@@rhamlet5290there's a set level of graphics for a game that is necessary, so the developers should focus on gameplay instead. Plus realistic looking games have the disadvantage of looking the same
@@nirvanic3610 They don't all have to look the same and it really depends on the game. Hyper realism can be very good for some games. Stray, for example, mixes very realistic environments with science fiction very well. I think it would be fundamentally a less interesting game if they didn't balance the real with the fantasy so well all with very detailed assets
@@rhamlet5290 I think the problem with hyper realism it will get outdated in the future and will poorer to next gen graphics.
Undertale: *Has now entered the chat*
I love that this took the setup of a normal creepypasta game and instead of cliche "code glitches" it gave you a fully realized piece of interactive art dealing with loss and depression and acceptance
Yeah, you can see the backrooms inspiration throughout it.
@@welestgw I was getting "The Beginner's Guide" vibes throughout
@@welestgw House of Leaves in particular, what with a house that's constantly shifting and becoming gradually more and more nonsensical as it goes on, and the actual hallway complete with the ashen gray walls, the stairwell down into nowhere that takes far less time to get back up than it does to go down.
O shut up its just a mod
@@Genindraz That’s where my mind went almost immediately. House is one of my favorite books of all time. It wasn’t until 18:05 that my suspicions were confirmed by the for sale sign that read Navidson Realty.
13:56 I usually don't fall for jumpscares but the backroom revelation made me slip. Great editing.
I've watched this video a few times, and honestly, every time I do, despite knowing exactly what's coming... I get really on-edge and keep needing to check over my shoulder, just to make sure I'm DEFINITELY alone. That's how good this mod is. It gets you so spooked and on-edge that even just watching a VIDEO about it makes you feel all the horror and tension.
My fav part of the whole map: After you look at the S + A tree carving, the game KNOWS you’ll walk backwards while shooting when the enemy shows up, because luring enemies while strafing like that is how DOOM is played. Because you walk backwards like that, you end up at the beach. Master class in game design imo
Timestamp?
@@alisyedhasany6594 1:16:00
genius what the fuck thats genius
That's actually crazy wtf
Genuinely smart design. The creator or creators knew what they were doing.
Sometimes genuine masterworks of art just seem to appear out of thin air in the most unlikely places. This is unreal
No, it’s doom
Unlikely places? Have you seen what doom modders are up to.
@@FamSisherDare I say, this comment is Gold.
No it's the Doom Engine
Umm, I think you mean to say most. Mainstream is as a general rule of thumb, absolutely shitty garbage that people feed themselves to feel good while somehow not managing to be bored, good stuff mostly gets ignored because it's too much for some people to swallow
"happiness needs to be fought for" is a quote i think about every day. amazing piece of art
I picked up a copy of House of Leaves after diving deep in to the MyHouse.WAD rabbit-hole, and its been a fascinating read so far.
Beyond the horror elements of this map, the entire thing is just insane on a technical level.
fr
Absolutely, would love to know how some of these things were accomplished in the doom engine.
@@meekrab9027 Doom editing tools are incredibly advanced and user friendly these days, after 30 years of development and refinement. Plus the ZDoom engine port is packed full of features the original Doom didn't have. That's exactly why we get stuff this high quality- It's simple enough for anyone to pick up and make stuff, but the skill ceiling is near endless. I know how most of the tricks in this level were achieved- The ZDoom engine allows for some pretty advanced scripting, which would enable most of the stuff that changes between areas (if they aren't just full duplicate areas, which is also possible). You could conceivably pull that stuff off with the vanilla engine's switch logic, maybe, but it would be a huge headache so my bet is just ZScript. Most of the spatial tricks are likely silent portals, a special ZDoom feature, which essentially teleport a player without making them aware of it. You can use this to create the illusion of non-euclidian geometry pretty easily (although they have some giveaways, so you have to be careful how you do it). Making the file a PK3 also gives you more flexibility in adding assets, for instance I don't think you could pull off the way it switches between classic gun animations and SmoothDoom otherwise. But regardless, it still takes immense skill to implement all this stuff as seamlessly as in this map, and not only that, the author used all of the quirks and shortcomings in the engine to the map's advantage. This is quite clearly the work of someone who has been intimately familiar with the Doom engine and its tools for a great many years. I wouldn't be surprised if it were Romero himself.
@@meekrab9027 As someone who modded the original DOOM 2 excessively back in the day, before the term "modding" was even a thing, all i can say is that it's a lot of portals, with repeating structures, that get alterered and reused time and time again. I think only someone that has created maps in Doom themself can truly understand the sheer insanity that this map and it's editing really is. It becomes a thing of it's own really. The limitations of the engine forcing you to think in certain ways you normally wouldn't, creating a narrative of it's own in the process. It's like a reinforcing feedback loop, except that every iteration of the loop alters the next, to the point that it becomes blurry where, how and why it all started. Hence the bit in the journal, where the author speaks about the map making process, stating that it needs them as much as they need it. I'm not sure about how much GZDOOM actually expands on what is possible in terms of the engine, but judging from what i experienced back when DOOM 2 was a thing, i'm pretty sure this map is quite close to the limits of what is technically possible in various ways, be it sheer map size, amount of triggers, events etc. leave alone the interconnectivity of the logical structure in the construct that makes up the story.
use of seamless teleportation (theres a video about it kzhead.info/sun/fNVqXbiSj6xvq6c/bejne.html)@@meekrab9027
I couldn't imagine creating a magnum opus of a doom map and disguising it as a "My first doom mod" knowing full well my entire work could just go to waste if nobody bothers to dig deeper.
I think it was certainly a gamble, but the creator was certainly aware of the dedication of the Doomworld community to really try most mods on the platform. With the seemingly sweet story about it it also had a lot of draw.
No, this was was always going to be a big deal. all that needed to happen was for one person to try it and they would tell others because it was so weird, and expansive. Word of mouth was always going to make it big.
I’m not saying it happened, but a stealth marketing campaign to reach a few influential doomworld users would be one percent of the effort of the mod.
It's a big risk that projects like this masterpiece face, it's a big part of the reason ARG's aren't as big as they deserve to be
@@nathanjasper512 thats the gamble, even if they tried it, they wouldnt necessarily walk back to the house again.
I remember one i was sick from school and really bored so i just sat in bed and watched this whole thing on my phone. Thanks for curing my boredom that one time.
me finishing this video trembling in a corner: oh so it's like Yume Nikki for boys anyway in all seriousness, what a brilliant breakdown! I can't imagine the hours spent exploring this game, not to mention the time taken actually making it.
The thing is: Yume Nikki is a straightforward surreal piece of RPG work that is eventually revealed in the end to be a girl's psyche. This game is inspired by House of Leaves which is literally one of the most fractured, deconstructionist and postmodern novels of all time. It's like comparing something like Dreams (1990) to Synecdoche, New York (2008)
@@caringheart34idk if I'd call Yumi Nikki straightforward, the most straightforward part is the fact she is dreaming which is revealed on the beginning... oh and the ending is straightforward, everything else is left to interpretation and exploration I think this mod def makes the reality of the world less straightforward but it gives more hints (in the form of the journals and other info) on what is happening in the real world than Yumi Nikki did In the end i do think there is loads of similarities, my favorite is the feeling of loneliness you get from both as you explore
Having “the most mysterious song on the internet” playing while fighting off monsters at a shell gas station at night is the best gaming experience I’ve ever had.
The song actually plays during the fight? I thought that was an edit from this video specifically. I haven't gotten that ending yet.
@@RedSpade37 It does not unfortunately, but I do think it fits in the video itself.
@@Shemsy.C I agree! And for myself, once I got to the Final Battle, I played the music myself, and it was a fun time! I didn't think I could win out against all those demons, but I did it!
@@RedSpade37 The music just makes it better in every way :)
It is like you EMBRACE the creepiness of the map. Car crash and an abandoned gas station? The house changing and all the levels? Actual horde of monsters attacking you? FUCK THAT SHIT I WILL BE HAPPY slaying all those monsters, pausing for a soda and ice cream ofc because, why not?
while i'll admit the daycare section was incredibly unsettling, there's something undeniably hilarious about the mental picture of doomguy climbing out of a ball pit, raiding a child's room, and getting chased down by shrek
No replies?
@@ktos-napewnotwo replies?
@@Voidi-Voidthree replies?
@@Seph... 4 replies?
@@Dalek598625 replies?
Read house of leaves and came back to this video only to realize that it's made in the same format as the book, like a House Of Leaves 2 And completely deserving of the tidal. This video made me find house of leaves and start reading books in general. you've changed my life with this video. thank you.
1:18:28 trying to solve that one hard guestion while doing homework
The "Happiness has to be fought for" followed by the massive battle was so impactful, this video is such a masterpiece
exactly what i wanted to say, it works so perfectly, the song playing in the background also makes for such a climactic battle.
Yeah, he executed that segment perfectly
it reminds me of how difficult being a gay couple can be, especially in an area hostile to gay people. i wonder if the obituaries didnt mention who the men were married to on purpose
@@bugpawwhat
I dont like to think it is a love story, I take the entire thing as a story about grief and what it can do without help and support. If i lost my best friend who loved doom i would also make a doom map in his name. @@bugpaw
The chair at around 48:57 reminded me of the true story of Bernard Gore. A man with alzheimer's learned that if he ever got lost to just sit down and wait for his wife to come find him. He got lost in a shopping mall, wandered into the fire escape tunnels, found a chair, sat down, and eventually died. He was a missing person for 3 weeks.
That's sad
Damn. Although, Alzheimer's or not, why would he wander into a fire escape tunnel and think that would be a good place to stay? He should have been kept in a home if he was so prone to getting lost, but I feel for him nonetheless
@@donovanjoseph737 the fire escape (if I remember correctly) was labeled “exit” and he wanted to leave the mall so I guess it makes sense in that way. He was pretty functional from my understanding and some people believe that he would have easily been able to get himself back into the mall except for one thing: the door locks behind you once you get in. It’s reasonable to believe that he would have realized immediately that he wasn’t in the right place and turned around to get back to the food court. But he was trapped and the only way out was through a literal maze of dark, poorly labeled, identical tunnels. The mall knew it was dangerous, too. The entrance to the fire escape was video recorded and the mall had a policy of doing sweeps of the fire escape tunnels every week or so because they probably worried about this exact thing happening to a little kid or a disabled adult. Except they never performed sweeps of the corridors and the police didn’t bother to look at any security footage when he was reported missing. If they did, he could have been found within a day. It wasn’t until his body was accidentally discovered by an employee that they looked at the security tapes and realized what had happened. Super disturbing.
@@donovanjoseph737 People with Alzheimers sometimes hallucinate and don't know where they are. He may have thought he was waiting in a subway station or somewhere similar.
@@donovanjoseph737if he had Alzheimer's and was prone to getting lost, I'm certain that he definitely didn't know he was waiting in a fire escape tunnel where he wouldn't be found
Congrats on reaching 10 million views on this video, this has been my favorite video on all of KZhead for a while now, and it deserves all the attention it has gotten and more.
I’ve rewatched this video several times, and is hands down one of the best KZhead videos I’ve ever seen. Well done.
agreed
Several months later, it occurs to me that all the secrets/easter eggs/anything that isn't the vanilla exit of the game, is designed like the urban legends kids tell about video games. "If you use strength on the truck, you fight mew" or "if you get to the top of the lavafall you unlock luigi", that kind of thing. Except that's this game's entire design.
Kinda weirdly wholesome and nostalgic ngl
Would love to see more games using that concept, it's something really special that I think can only be achieved in the gaming medium.
I like how the Scarlet & Violet DLC now has another Mew moment. But it actually works this time!
@@voiceofthelegion578 it's very unfortunate that this type of stuff can't really happen again considering everything is so easy to disassemble and document nowadays. Toby Fox for instance tried to add some secret routes on his latest game but it took around a day before people found out and documented them online.
@@cfaibah :/
It’s super shitty how overplayed and overdone backrooms and liminal spaces have become. This mod definitely understands the initial horror of the backrooms, and understands horror in general: the basis of horror is confusion and dread.
yeah it is, it kinda pained me when not far after that he said something about a "skin stealer" as if it wasnt some entity made by children that attempt to turn everything into a jumpscarefest
@@axiolot5857 To be fair, that monster in the backrooms on the map? The entity's named "SkinStealer"
I loved the wnding, it shows from bestTo friendo to husband and husband.
❤️
@@axiolot5857 You do know the concept of a "skin stealer" wasn't entirely invented by the Backrooms fandom? There have been many myths and legends in many different cultures about a being that steals your skin.
the way he comments “it’s the house again” reminded me of the “that’s right it goes in the square hole!”
I keep coming back to this video every few weeks to just watch it all the way through again. Your investigation of the mod is incredibly compelling, and you structure it in such a great narrative way that it's never boring. Seriously this is such an amazing video, you did a great job.
Yeah they had to be super intelligent ab the order of the reveal for it to come anywhere near the intended effect and I think it was done perfectly. You dont learn more than you need as you go through the video and you begin to question is PowerPak tricking us somehow in the order of info roll out(misdirection makes horror better or more real like every time)
I love the new horror trend of “what if a house hated you”
edgar allen poe would be proud (re: the fall of the house of usher)
have you seen Jacob Geller’s video about this concept? specifically the one called “Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House” but also “Four Short Games About Pain” bc it discusses some of Kitty Horrorshow’s other work and it seems to be somewhat of a recurring theme for them
@@natalyn139 I second this recommendation.
I hope one comes out that looks like blame
silent hill 4
So, when I first watched this, I thought "Hmm, there's no way this can be that scary, right?" When I finished the video, I thoguht "Well, that was a bit disturbing, yeah, but not _that_ scary" And then I went to bed and had the most vivid nightmare I've had in years
Saw this comment last night and thought ‘haha that’s my luck too’. Also had the most stress-inducing nightmare in about a year lol
Now I am scared to sleep. I just watched a dream matter doom video. This is gonna be tough lol.
God yes, I literally got through the whole video, was like "that was an amazing journey and mystery, but not really terrifying", then got up and immediately felt intensely like I was being watched while walking in my empty suburban Illinois house, and thought I was going to see something or someone in all of my mirrors and windows O_O
Did you perhaps.. "wake up drenched in sweat"
Honestly the video itself feels like a lucid dream ,I cant remember much of it but it gave me an unsettling vibe
I’ve watched this four times over the past ten months. This is my favorite story on KZhead that I don’t mind revisiting when I’m reminded of it. Not so much of a mystery now but I still love it for that reason. I appreciate everything behind the production of this video and the mod itself. Thank you. Fight for your happiness.
I truly think this is one of the best videos ever posted on youtube
I will tell you that nothing is more terrifying then seeing a real door in doom
I mean yeah Doom guy live in mars almost for decade see other human house Will be absolute terrifying
was there somrhing wrong with the music
@@khan-ch2vs wdym?
@@khan-ch2vs There's a lot that goes subtly wrong with the music in the mod but I didn't pinpoint specifics. I just noticed it felt... Really incorrect in a way I couldn't immediately spot
Hearing a normal door opening sound too instead of the compressed future door was really unsettling in a weird way.
I'm surprised you didn't mention this, but when the house first changes after you head outside for the blue sphere, it suddenly has a realistic sloped roof and a sloped backyard. Before, it was a totally flat roof and the yard had "stairs" in the grass -- because that was all you could do in the original Doom engine. Just another tiny thing that feels "wrong" if you know your stuff in Doom!
There are no windows to the basement either, it all starts so subtly!
Yeah, there is so much to see that it's almost impossible to catch everything on the first go.
The doors suddenly swinging did it for me
THATS SO AWESOME AND SCARY MAKING A TUMBLR POST RIGHT NOW AND ALLEGEDLY GROOMING MINORS HEARD ABOUT THAT BUDDY HAVE FUN INPRISON
@@gagemerck6761 You good bro?
Just the playthrough of this level is more terrifying and spine-chilling than just about anything I have ever experienced. I've had to pause a video for a second to calm down from a jumpscare and stuff like that, but I genuinely had to close my laptop and just *breathe* for a good half an hour... and I'm barely a third of the way through. Cheers to the bravest souls on this hellsite for making videos like this for me to live vicariously through. I genuinely love these concepts and the horror genre deeply facinates me, but if I had to play this myself I'd probably have to invest in diapers and have the silliest music possible playing in the background. Even then, it would probably take me a month to fully get through lmao
Navidson realty reminds me of a book, house of leaves, where theres a fabled movie called the navidson report, about a family that moved into a house where hallways and closets appear where they shouldn't exist and measurements show the house bigger on the inside than the outside, good book, and this mod seems like a nod to it
I WAS RIGHT, OH MY GOD
I posted this right before he brought up the blue "house" words in the notes, and then when I saw that I was like "no fucking way"
@@78declan you know all things
@Halo-lg7rq nah just had a hunch, was cool to be right
It was foretold
Every single tired “It’s the house again” gives me life.
it's almost like "is this loss" but with extra steps
"I'm back in the FUCKING building again?!"
@@GoodBiDad"OH MY GOD IM SO SICK OF... OH NO NOT AGAIN"
Are you not entertained?
For anyone that might not know anything about mapping, this is made using advanced GZDoom UDMF line specials. Stuff like portals and silent teleporters, 3D floors and the likes, 100% not supported by vanilla Doom. Also some pk3 wizardry. This is a pure representation of skill and dedication to creating a map.
Damn, the creator should do a full episode
When the OP said they were "polishing up an old map" I think they used that term very loosely. lol
@@moonbyul873 yeah bcuz it wasn't an old map. It was made more recently.Its a sortof arg type thing
@@Damian-cilr1 Yup. I wrote my first comment after the first round through the house. I initially just thought it was a super detailed project based off of a junky old map. Just finished up watching the rest of the video and it's even cooler that I thought it was. Such a cool and interesting concept for a map. Not even just a map, but a whole flipping experience.
I was wondering how they managed to do it. I remember tinkering with the doom and duke3d map editors in the late 90s (kinda similar to each other) and they were VERY limited. For example, even just making a 2 story building was impossible because you can't have 1 room on top of another. In other words, vanilla doom was pretty much 2 dimensional with the illusion of height. I remember one time trying to build a trippy series of non-Euclidian rooms by simply overlapping the geometry. Surprisingly it "worked" for like 2 seconds before the game crashed haha.
This has to be my favorite presentation for this map. The way you tell the story and how the game is personally affecting you adds alot of character to an already amazing map!
That february 26 journal entry hits so god damn hard, very relatable hopelessness. But it’s also inspiring. Happiness has to be fought for.
I know this is a small thing, but in the hospital, the fact that the "person" behind the curtain follows you despite being supposedly dead, is absolutely horrifying to me.
This detail would be such a terrifying aspect to add to other horror games. I was genuinely disturbed when I saw that scene; the atmosphere and setting complements it so well.
It's really simple: dude's a 2d model, same as all the monsters. You don't have any weapons there though so he's polite and doesn't attack you.
For others, it's @51:34
he followed the player? i didn’t see him at any other point in the gameplay, unless i’m missing something. i totally could be, so if anyone could give me pointers it’d be much appreciated.
@@approximated_nerd It's purely a visual effect in that one room. If you look at the shape of the guy you'll notice that he stays looking at the player from behind the curtain regardless of where they move.
This map is like what it feels like to be a child afraid of the dark.
It makes me think of exploration dreams I had when I was really little.
Yeah like the part at the start when he says that the doors is not just virtually impossible is just flat out impossible
@octaviusroosevelt7355 I used to have weird dreams as a child similar to this map. I would be in my childhood home or my friends' houses, and their would be extra doors and hallways I didn't remember being there. I would go through them only to find rooms that looked vaguely real but always had slight disturbances too them. I would just keep exploring these random rooms in the houses until I would wake up.
@@beesechurger929 Brings up a vague memory that I think I had a series of dreams where the cellar had stairs down to additional levels, some of which were just interesting and some had scary elements.
I've heard other people say similar things. It's weird how some people have this type of dream as a collective as it doesn't really correlate to anything in real life. Maybe it's like the young mind creating a sense for adventure and imagination? I haven't had a dream like that since I was a kid.@@ShawnFumo
Absolutely amazing video, the editing truly feels so tense and scary while also fully captivating you with the plot. Wow wow wow. Thank you for the experience
Seriously man, I love this video. It’s probably one of my all time favorite videos on KZhead. It’s so well made, you’re able to deliver on a lot of the emotional and traumatic beats the game is going for, and your voice is also just relaxing to listen to for what it’s worth lol. I sometimes struggle to fall asleep but for some reason this video is the only thing that helps me fall asleep within 30 minutes of keeping my eyes closed lol. And I do mean that as a compliment, this video has just become something of a comfort video for me, so thank you also for that
Telling a well thought out and gripping story that uses liminal spaces and fear of the uncanny to evoke emotion through doom 2 as a medium is insane
B7
I love the fact that when you go back into the house, the doors open normally, they dont slide up like they used to, making the house even more strange.
With Minecraft door opening sound effects
I didn’t even realize that!
its weird how a normally opening door can be weird
I am impressed by the fact that the creator managed to script of all the suddenly changing environments in one map (even as a mod)
@@tituslafrombois1164 its not even close to the minecraft door noises bruh
This video and the mod itself were both absolutely fascinating. Thank you for sharing this; I feel like everything shown here was incredibly thought provoking. Really impressive stuff.
Yours isnt the first video Ive seen on this and Ill admit to knowing little about DOOM, but youre the only one of the several Ive either watched or dozed through to bring up the details of S+A after that final code. It really adds something to the story it tells
After going through the most gut wrenching house he's ever been in, Doomguy find himself in Underhalls.
Now he gets to be the one wrenching guts
"Doomguy, you good?" "Yeah, just... sold my house."
@@seacatlol831 i like to imagine doomguy sitting on some stairs with a random zombie asking him this
@@genericuser984 Yeah, me too.
I don't know if this video covers it, but if you exit the MyHouse level from the mirror universe, you end up in a mirror version of Underhalls, where even the map title is "sllahrednU"
I've spent a long time on the internet. Long enough to know that a mod with a heartfelt description of someone dying and the publisher finding it through their belongings is going to be some of the most psychologically horrifying thing I've ever experienced.
I don't know if this is fake or real. By that, I mean that I don't know if whoever created this really was grieving or he's just a basement troll.
66 megs on floppy, I call BS.
@@PexiTheBuilder The .wad map is much smaller. And even then it's still modified from what was supposedly found on the floppy disk.
@@PexiTheBuilder Obviously ARG-esque things like this are 99.9% likely to be made-up. Doesn't make it any less fun to pretend that it's real though.
@@Winter-Alpha-Omega this is definitely an arg- i dont think anyone is arguing it is real but observing it as real and investigating as if it was is really interesting
I have trouble sitting through a lot of 10 minute videos. For that reason, I tend actively avoid long essay videos like this. But this started playing and I watched the whole thing. Very well done.
the ammount of times ive rewatched this video is unreal- You did such a good job!!
another thing about the navidson hallway, intentional or not, is that since it's so dark youre constantly staring at your own reflection on the screen
An Echo of yourself.
@@alexredfield1943 outchicaneried again
Scariest part of the whole game
^ the door opening as i was reading the comment 😢
Unless you have a matte screen...which...is weird that you don't.
Also, important distinction. It's always a house, never a home... The character(s) never felt attached to it; it was always just a place to them, a place where they experienced rough times, and possibly where horrible things happened.
It says HOME in the airport implying that home is somewhere else always out of reach
y'all reading way too into this
@@dakota9407 it's a clearly esoteric and metaphorical artpiece, the whole point is to read into it
@@kuunt6065 I will never read into anything outside of face value. That way my brain stays smooth and I stay frosty.
@@dakota9407 at least you are self aware
Oh it’s march 3rd today, Happy one year anniversary my house.wad
Dude while watching this video i was constantly thinking back to that supereyepatch wolf video, didnt expect you to actually mention it though
For what it's worth, the Shrek fight seems to have a fairly reasonable explanation. The daycare has a slightly disturbing mural of shrek on the wall when you arrive. Explore it enough and the mural disappears, that's when the fight with him in the daycare yard will become available. Given that the shrek boss entity has the name "Childhood Nightmare" if you linetarget it with the console, it seems like it might be a representation of a literal childhood nightmare caused by some creepy wall art in a daycare. Either something the author actually experienced or just something they came up with. It's basically a creepypasta plot.
Not even to mention the comment made when picking up the crayons, "Adult coloring books." I'm assuming something really traumatic happened there with an adult figure when they were little.
@@solarmarks3093 what are you talking about? adult coloring books are real things, they're coloring books made specifically with adults in mind, I'm 36 and i have a few, i use colored pencils
@@RosenrotRtLiebchen87 yeah. But the item was found in the daycare. Game wise it may mean something. Irl wise, didn't know they exist. Cool.
@@solarmarks3093There's a berserk powerup in the daycare. As far as I know, it's the only one in the map.
@@Fruckert Got to use the cracked wall on the other side for it to get pushed off the shelf.
this mod is an actual nightmare to play. not that it is unplayable and unpleasant to boot up, but that it feels like something that can only exist in your mind when youre asleep. nothing makes sense, you loop around again and again, no text you find makes sense, but there is a lingering sense of familiarity wherever you go. this kind of feeling is something i didnt know one could capture in a tangible piece of visual media. what a labor of love this is.
So a liminal space, then
You could call it a liminal space
It feels wrong, it also feels like, even when you figure out all the answers, the ONE secret. You still have no idea what is happening, nor..... if that was the true answer.
These are the types of things that can happen when you somehow mod Doom 2 to allow non-euclidean level design. kzhead.info/sun/ktx_kradmpyBhHk/bejne.html
@@fitzr0551 I mean why not🤷♂️ a lot of liminal spaces have that unpleasant feeling, yet it all feels so familiar
Underhalls immediately looked wrong. Like, too small. Such a great, subtle detail if real.
Good catch. He mentions it around 1:33:30 !
This was genuinely one of the best video essays ive ever watched. The inclusion of the mysterious song in the final battle particularly sticks out to me as a fantastic choice to add to this already amazing experience.
There's something so indescribably 1980's style epic about a guy armed to the teeth fighting an army of his inner demons at a gas station while TMMS plays
What's the full name of the song? I've looked it up and all I can find is some rap track lol
yeah what is the song?
@@-IE_it_yourself I just found it out. TMMS stands for The Most Mysterious Song. On yt, it's "the most mysterious song on the internet. No band has come forward to claim it so it seemingly appeared from nowhere. Very cool tune 👌
@@DayTripper44925 im on it.
tbh at first i was like, what are the doom monsters there. but yeah you nailed it. and it really brings the mod to another psychological level. lol, considering i wrote a short story about a dude fighting zombies that were a metaphor of his regrets, im surprised to took me so long to make that connection.
I love how all of this is creepy and insane and doomguy is just kind of looking around like "Hmm, I don't know about you but this is kinda weird"
I mean. when your whole life is fighting demons, a little subtle horror is probably a nice change of pace.
"🤨" edit: holy enchanting table how did I get more than 2 likes wowzers
Doom guy is just super comfuse on why there was no demon blood getting spilled everywhare 24/7
Guy has been to literal hell. It probably feels like a vacation.
yeah.
I watched the entire thing, glad that I found this video. The concept of reality warping rooms from the mod, together with your narration was super interesing!
Hi PowerPak! Thanks for introducing me to a lot of cool games these past few years! This map was one of the best I’ve played ever, thanks for taking the time to cover every thing in depth! Keep making these awesome videos and I’ll keep watching them ❤
Mans literally made a whole Silent Hill game in Doom. Huge respect to the creator
How is it like Silent Hill
@@Bklyn93 the hospital bed, the themes of personal/family trauma, the uncertainty whether it's real or all in their head, the demons, the multiple endings and secrets, plus the entire level design and structure takes heavy inspiration from the wave of games that really took off with PT (Layers of Fear, Superliminal, etc.), though also earlier games like Antichamber.
@@Bklyn93 Sh2 also does the crazy reality jumping into different disconnected places ALL the time. There's a sequence where you go into a museum, descend down an impossible staircase under the lake into a prison, where you keep jumping down holes into graveyards, freezers, mazes, warped hallways of homes, factories, sewers, all that.
@@austinha11 Learn to use “your” correctly
@@denchicksson HA! GOT 'EM
The fight for the Gas Station feels surprisingly heroic
right? the entire time you’re drenched in uncertainty and doubt and finally being able to confidently put up a fight feels just so cathartic
The music, too, fits surprisingly well and just adds to it.
It honestly gives me a deep feeling of dread. Like all the tension of the map is put into a moment where you're stuck in a small, closed space with all hell breaking loose outside. I've had nightmares about locking myself in my room while the world ended outside, and it's eerily similar to this.
Very much so. Also right before it starts at 1:22:08, Pak saying "It's a tough fight, but happiness has to be fought for" with the music kicking in quickly after, adds maybe an unintentional nice touch of sounding like a final declaration act of defiance against all the hell that the player has endured and ready to kick back with.
wild gunvolt pfp spotted :D
When I hit the ten minute mark on this video I was immediately hooked. Then when you no clipped into the backgrounds I literally went “oh hell yeah”. Great vid!
OOOOOH! I called it! I haven't played any of the Doom games, so the initial segment had me mostly confused, and enraptured, but there was a subtle familiarity. Of course, seeing Navidson Realty made it all click, but then you read the journal and confirmed my suspicions. House of Leaves is mind boggling. I recommend it to anyone, but warn that reading it can be very tedious due to its... eccentric nature. Also keep some notes handy, there's so much to uncover. The mods chronological storyline is amazing; I was hooked from beginning to end. There's just so much to uncover and explore, and the second ending was just completely unexpected. The mod author should be proud, they managed to create something that's going to stick in the minds of people for a long while.
the realization of all those different spaces just being the layout of the house again was the most haunting thing. no clue why
It is haunting because, in a way, you feel like you are walking but you aren't going anywhere
@@Julys443 ”you’re walking but you aren’t going anywhere” yes yes yes yes THAT’S THE DEFINITION OF A LIMINAL SPACE!!! (aka a place of transition, so the place helping you get to somewhere, not the actual location you’re going to) AND ALSO TIES IN WITH HOUSE OF LEAVES AND THE WEIRD HOUSE, aka you could walk for miles inside of the endless hallway yet you’d still be *inside of the house* (aka the house being bigger on the inside than outside ykyk)
@@Julys443it also goes a long way in making you feel trapped inside the house once the doors disappear, because despite the different locals, they're all just the house again.
Honestly, the realization each time you're in a new space that it is just the house again gives me the same vibe as when you see a meme, but realize it's just "Loss" again.
Personally, I think it's a statement on grief-when you lose someone you love, nearly everything will remind you of them in some way or another.
I don't know why but the patient in the hospital sat up while flatlined evoked a visceral sense of dread in me. What an incredible creation of art this is.
I had to fast forward it because it gave me chills
i watched it on mute and through my fingers, no freaking thank you
I did NOT like how it follows the camera
at what time does this happen in the video?
@@krewm.2128 51:37
This video and the subject matter of it is so fascinating, I can’t look away from it. Usually I’ll watch a video documentary a couple of times and then I’ll use it as background noise as a draw, but even upon my 7th or so rewatch, I feel the need to see and absorb everything It’s kind of sad because normally this is the kind of thing I use as a nice background video but I can’t miss anything from this and I have to watch it straight through or it’s just not right So I basically need an hour and 42 of free time to watch this so I only watch on occasion when I can very clearly multitask on something
This mod has been one of my hyperfixations since the day you posted this video, and I watch it at least one a day. TMMSOTI in a doom mod was unexpected, but I really needed it. Thanks
I would love to see the creators of this do a postmortem of how this was done on a technical level because it is breathtaking.
I kind of wish they don't come forth. It would lessen the mystery of it all.
Someone has done a video explaining how it's done. It's excellent and linked from the game release on the forum.
@@northernhorror8212 Can you link it?
@@northernhorror8212 here for the link too, or the title since youtube doesn't like links in comments
@@franz.francisco DavidXNewton did a breakdown on it, not sure if that's the videos they were talking about but I love his content so figured I'd mention he did this too.
This is unironically the best use of liminal spaces in a videogame I've seen
This serves as an example as to why Liminal Spaces and The Backrooms as a concept were so engrossing. Its... almost like a Primodial fear. Atleast something that permiates the human subconsious, the concept is found here and there thoughout history
@@siamihari8717 Yep. This really shows you don't need to add monsters on top of monsters to a concept like Backrooms to make it scary.
That and The Stanley Parable
Agreed. The confusing layout & geometry really adds to the general vibe of things
I hope everybody's played Control... Everyone knows about that one, right?
I just realized, the different sections of the video are like the expeditions in House of Leaves. Nice touch!
I just watched this from start to finish (I watched part of it last year, but I stopped after he did the first trip) but oh man this was a trip. Hands down one of my favorite videos, the whole time I was hooked, I didn't even full screen it for half of the video because I was afraid I would miss something while I focused on full screening. This video will make me watch way more of your stuff.