I've been building things on computers since I was six years old. Batch files. QBasic programs. Chat tools nobody asked for. Websites. Retirement calculators. Portfolio sites with too many easter eggs.

This is the first thing I've built that made me cry.

It started as a hidden page on this website. You can try to play it here, but it won't let you in right away. There's a neighborhood on this site. A few GeoCities pages. If you explore them, one of the neighbors will mention a quiet kid whose page is a little weird. Find him first. Then you can play. A liminal space explorer. Empty hallways. Fluorescent lights. A text parser like the games I grew up on. Zork. Hitchhiker's Guide. Type a command, see what happens.

I kept adding rooms. Then effects. Then sound. Then I added a zone in a dead mall where you can look at a mannequin and it kills you. I added mechanics. Death states. It was getting more ambitious and somehow worse at the same time.

The game was short and concise and it worked. The more I added, the more it fought back. Eventually I abandoned it.

But the feeling wouldn't leave. Liminal spaces do something to me. They clear my head. When things are actually calm and going well in my life, I panic. I take my Xanax. But put me in an empty hallway with buzzing fluorescent lights? I'm home. I like chaos. I like isolation. That's just the life of a single dad who's been through it.

And when I think about liminal spaces, I think about the past. When I think about the past, I think about how I failed. Staying up all night fixing cookies on a cookie company's website instead of spending time with my kids. That was the hardest period of my life. I was physically present and mentally somewhere else. Always somewhere else.

I wanted to make something about that. Something that was all human. All about me and my struggles. Not generated. Not abstract. Real.

It stopped being an easter egg. It became Room 337.

Room 337 is a psychological narrative game. You play as a father searching for his daughters in a dreamlike liminal world. Pools with no water. Malls with no people. Hallways that go on too long.

You type commands. You explore. You make choices. There's voice acting, original music, sound design, visual effects. Six acts. Two endings that are full acts themselves.

It looks like a text game. It doesn't feel like one.

The audio has been a nightmare. Five layers. Different volumes. Music, ambient sound, sound effects, voice acting, and the typewriter text all have to land at the exact same moment or you lose immersion.

So I built my own sequencer. It looks like Adobe Premiere. In the browser. A full timeline with every property from the scene's JSON file laid out so I can scrub through and line up the audio with the typewriter text down to the millisecond. On the right side I can modify every property. The game window sits right there showing exactly what the player would see. If I keep replaying a line, it just replaces it. Even if the music started in a previous sequence, it picks up at the exact moment it would be for the player.

Three weeks to build. The kind of thing nobody will ever notice. But they'd notice if it wasn't there. If the voice comes in a half second late, if the ambient sound doesn't fade at the right moment, if the typewriter clicks don't match the rhythm of the words... you feel it. You just don't know why. That's the thing about immersion. You only notice when it breaks.

We record in a closet. Not a studio. A closet with a mic. The clothes absorb the sound. It works.

We were all kind of scared at first. This isn't my forte at all. Huge learning curve. Frustrating yet satisfying. Every character in the game is voiced by the real person they're based on. My youngest is nine. My oldest is twenty. They're all in it. So am I.

I had to get a 30-foot XLR cable because nobody wants me close to them when they record. Even though I can hear everything through the headphones. They just feel awkward performing in front of dad. Which is fair. We all keep tripping over the cable because the space is small. That makes everyone laugh and eases the tension a bit.

They all take direction differently. Katerina doesn't like it. Kaizeana requires it. I try to help each of them in their own way.

My oldest, Kaizeana, is an actor. When she read her Act 5 script for the first time, she started crying. She kept trying to act it instead of feel it. Because feeling it means going back to a real part of her life.

I told her I didn't think this section would need much acting. Because she lived it.

My youngest, Katerina, is nine. She walks into the closet, puts on the headphones, and just does it. No overthinking. No hesitation. She doesn't know she's good yet. That's the best part.

Every session teaches me something about my kids I didn't know. How they process things. What they remember. What hurt them that I didn't realize hurt them.

I went in thinking I was making a game. I'm also repairing something.

Sidney doesn't show me a lot of emotion. So when she played through the end of Act 1, I wasn't sure what she thought.

Then she wouldn't stop talking about it to her friend. "That cooked." For a text game. From her dad.

I love seeing that. My kid bragging about something I made to her friends. That's not a metric you can track. But it's the one that matters.

The end of Act 1 made me cry. I'm not going to spoil it.

Watching Kaizeana cry getting into character. Watching them acknowledge that this is how things were. The game isn't a metaphor. It's a mirror. And sometimes the mirror shows you exactly what you were afraid to look at.

I can't wait for them to play the demo and see the end of Act 1. They really will feel something.

Six acts. Two full ending acts. Original score. Sound design. Screen effects, visual systems, mini games.

Built by one developer and four kids in a closet.

The math doesn't work. I built it anyway.

The trailer went live today. The Steam page is up. Wishlists are open.

I'm still writing. Still recording. Still tripping over a 30-foot XLR cable in a closet with my daughters, building something none of us fully understand yet.

If you're curious, the trailer is above. If you want to follow the development, I write devlogs on the Room 337 site about the process. The ugly parts included.

This is the most personal thing I've ever made. It's also the best thing I've ever made. I don't think that's a coincidence.