underhalls.pk3
tamara mochaccina
Note: this review has unmarked spoilers.
While My House stands tall as the big megaproject that successfully blended metafiction with fifteen years of creepypasta and the explosion of liminal horror, it's not the only metafictional or philosophical Doom wad out there. The Thing You Can't Defeat simulates dementia and the slow deterioration of memory by presenting a version of Doom's shareware episode that just feels wrong somehow -- switches are in the wrong place, some textures are missing with only blank grey in their place, your memories of that classic episode that you've probably played dozens of times just don't jibe with what you're seeing. lilith.pk3 utilizes -- really, abuses -- ZDoom software rendering tricks to present a mapset that seems to be in an active state of corruption, being simultaneously an example of glitch art and a demonstration of what it must feel like to be having a stroke. Or how about Down The Drain, a modern-day commentary about the infinite strangeness that was old compendium wads from back in the day? Speaking of back in the day, you could even go all the way back to The Sky May Be. And then there's tamara mochaccina's underhalls.pk3.
Reading the release thread -- and Dominic Tarason's thread about it on Bluesky -- there was some anticipation that this was the next big My House. And it's not, not really. If I had to compare it to anything, I'd have to say it's in a similar rhetorical space as I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY THING, which was an extremely abstract macroslaughter art piece about a lesbian relationship. underhalls.pk3 isn't the same thing as that, but it's the same kind of thing, in terms of it being an expression of deep personal emotion.
Let's go back.
Instead of being in a zip with a text file, underhalls.pk3 as of this writing is only distributed as a loose file. As it stands, the OP only has this to say:
underhalls is one of my favorite maps in doom
sometimes i wish
things were better, so i made a script that makes underhalls into
everything i need it to be. this is its output
[screenshots and links]
ps i don't know why the filesize is so large. it feels like nothing ever goes my way
Reading down the thread, tamara has some further comments. When someone runs into trouble with opening the final door, tamara replies, "it doesn't like it when i'm not thorough enough." Someone else suggests no-clipping, to which tamara says, "i don't want it to get any more mad at me." Later, seemingly in response to someone commenting about emerging from the sewers, is this: "the sewers are scary and i don't want to go back in them."
As you can see, there's a gloomy tone to tamara's writing style that gives strong hints as to what underhalls.pk3 is about, though that comment about being thorough is a strong hint about what you need to do to progress.
Okay, so we load up the .pk3 in GZDoom, which it's intended for. It is indeed as advertised: an updated take on Doom II's "Underhalls," initially familiar but with visual enhancements loosely reminiscent of Doom 2 Re-Buildt. The northern half with the small outdoor section and brown outbuilding has been replaced with a ladder leading up to street level, with a little DoomCute diner and a building under construction next door. Pretty straightforward otherwise. So we finish the map, and think that's it. Except it's not -- we're then unceremoniously dumped into a misty, empty version of the original "Underhalls." We can of course play this as normal, but around where the lower sewer section and the exit would be is instead six stone reliefs, each with some sort of symbolic feature beneath them -- a row of tiny UAC crates, a miniature version of the iconic Plutonia teleporter, and so on.
Exploring further, we find that there are exit buttons (and a teleporter)
in specific places. Trying any of these sends us to one of six different
maps, each one called "Underhalls," but here's where it gets strange. It
took me a while to realize what was happening, because the first one I went
to was a version of "Underhalls" utilizing some
Doom alpha-style textures and a high monster count.
Immediately after that was a map styled after
Wolfenstein 3D (and even preventing mouselook!), but still
using the "Underhalls" layout. But the other maps are all variations on a
theme: they're all based on stock maps that are the second map in an IWAD...
sort of. I saw weird remixes of TNT: Evilution's "Human BBQ"
and Plutonia's "Well of Souls" (with a touch of "Aztec.") One
of the maps is actually based on E2M2, "Containment Area" from the original
Doom: double 2s! If you hit the exit button located where a monster closet is
otherwise found in the original game, you're transported to a remix of...
"Betray" from the XBox Doom 3 version of Doom II, which if you're unaware, is an old 1995 map from one of the XBox port's
coders, accessed via an invisible switch hidden in the same spot on that
version's "Underhalls." Sure, why the fuck not.
And don't think that these maps are just slight remixes of their source
material. There's a powerful sense of deja vu at all times, where
you'll stop and say to yourself,
wait a minute, that's from "Underhalls." The "Human BBQ" remix is
borderline unrecognizable, and yet there are elements that jump out
immediately -- the literal human BBQ going on in the opening area, the
hidden baron chamber, and so on. Oh, but be warned,
underhalls.pk3 is surprisingly hard -- that alpha-style map is
brutal, and so is the "Human BBQ" one, and only more so if you're tackling
them early on. The Wolfenstein 3D one has almost no health,
though much like the real Wolfenstein 3D enemies die easily --
just don't let them get a shot off!
There's a few new things to discover here as well. Medipacks are extra-large medikits that give you 50 health and otherwise behave the same -- even activating a special message if you grab it while under 25 health. Aside from a couple enemies brought in from Wolfenstein 3D, there's the Undead Marine, a hitscan zombie that looks like the stock zombieman with a helmet, who fires a semi-auto rifle at a fire rate comparable to your pistol. He's easily dispatched, but makes for some interesting mob compositions as he's placed somewhere equivalent with the shotgunner in terms of danger level.
If you've figured out the secret to unlocking the final door -- I won't give it away -- you'll move on to the ending, and it is here that tamara reveals the point of underhalls.pk3. It's not made explicit -- no mention of LGBTQ+ struggles is made outright -- but given the very scary social and political climate for LGBTQ+ people right now, especially trans teens, it's obvious what tamara is trying to say with this mod. The kind of verbal abuse we're subjected to, straight out of The Shitty Parent's Handbook, will seem very familiar to people who have strained relationships with their family, especially if they're queer. There's a metaphor to be found in the ending's structure too, with each attempt to grab the blue key made harder and harder, with increasingly upsetting audio clips of a "dad" figure yelling at you, until finally you're just trapped in a box, with no way out. Fade to black.
Thus we see the true meaning of underhalls.pk3; if you'll excuse me doing some theorycrafting, underhalls.pk3 is more than just a cheeky levelset paying tribute to stock MAP02s, it's about reinvention, it's about how no matter how hard you try to be something else, your true self will always shine through, even if attaining it sometimes feels impossible.
It gets better. As scary as things might seem right now, as much as it seems even our loved ones have turned against us, we'll get through this.
And in the meantime, there's always more Doom to play.
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