House Of Leaves Introduction videogame

Based on the book ''House of Leaves'' by M.Z. Danielewski, for my final project in architecture studies I tried to make a spatial simulation of the unfolding of the events that happen in the introductory chapter of the book. I tried to do this in the form of a videogame by using Unreal Engine, because I wanted to enable interactivity between the user and the space and experiment with the potentials that architecture, videogames and narrative can explore to enhance the player’s experience, especially when space is no longer treated as a static, but as a dynamic element that helps establish a better atmosphere to virtual design.

About the book: The book is about a guy (Truant) who finds some manuscripts written by an old man (Zampano), that tell us about a mysterious film (The Navidson Record), that is about a world-famous photographer and his family that live in a mysterious house (Will Navidson). Weird doors, unexpected dark corridors, paradox spaces, stairs with no beginnings and no ends, are elements that make up the book’s universe and seem to be associated with the psych of the people that occupy the House.

About the Introduction: The adventure of our protagonist (Truant) begins when his best friend Lude, after an old man living in his building dies, calls Truant to come over and search his apartment because he had crossed over some weird findings. After getting there, Truant finds a box full of written papers that he decides to take with him back home. While reading them, he slowly detaches from reality and realizes things are not really how he perceived them to be at all…

Narration by: Seaspenders Audiobooks

NOTE: This is a project demo, which has been made only for educational/learning purposes and I have not made any profit from it. Since the author has stated his desire not to have the book translated in other mediums, I do not intend to continue on working on this. However it was a great experience, and I still keep a lot of its insights into my following works. Cheers.