The charitable read on this is that it's a really good proof-of-concept. There's a lot of technical ambition here and tons of in-jokes and such about the DOOM modding community, but that's put in service of an actually interesting experience only intermittently. The part that actually takes place in the regular house itself? Technically impressive but not anything crazy. The weird little meta-tricks with looping through Underhalls and back to the main game? Now we're getting somewhere. The liminal space-themed areas where you have to fight weird monsters? That's the good shit. And I wish more of the game were that and less "look at this cool stuff I can do in GZDoom."

Also, not to put too fine a point on it; "Everywhere At The End of Time meets House of Leaves as a DOOM wad" is an interesting synthesis of ideas but by its very nature it's leaning heavily on those influences. I could completely understand someone playing through this whole thing and coming out underwhelmed.

Me though? I'm whelmed. I thought it would be cool and it was cool.

Reviewed on Jul 09, 2023


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