Doom mods are cool. But hey, you probably knew that already, yeah? After all, I’ve covered a bunch of these over the years. It’s one of my favorite topics to talk about, especially with the passage of time and discovering new mods for this old game. They figured out new and interesting ways to tackle the classic Doom formula, years and years later. This time around I wanna talk briefly about one I tried that definitely hit me emotionally.
you broke me is a mod by Doom modder and level designer kevansevans, who’s contributed to a myriad of Doom projects, including assisting with the immensely popular My House, and helping remaster the classic Action Doom mod with original designer Scuba Steve. I honestly forget where I had initially heard about this mod, but something from someone who helped make My House into a phenomenon of a Doom mod has to be worth looking out for.
When I started the mod, it was just run-of-the-mill Doom combat. Kill monsters, hit switches, find keycards to open doors, that sort of thing. Once I successfully went through the level the first time, I saw the monster lineup that usually ends Doom II, so I foolishly thought “yeah that seems neat” and immediately closed it, thinking that was the end.
Turns out that was only the beginning. After seeing longplay videos that show you broke me’s time as significantly longer than 15 minutes, I jumped back in and opted for a new game to start again. But instead of starting from the beginning, that started me back from where I left off. It was there that I realized there was something really special about this one.
Much like My House, you broke me is a Doom experience that changes what you expect to see out of the Doom engine and its gameplay. Often revisiting the same stage over and over again, things change, new enemies show up, occasionally you’re transported to an apartment with a similar look to My House. you broke me covers into anxiety, depression, addiction, and other emotions that makes it stand out compared to other Doom mods. While there can be parallels to My House, I do like you broke me more than My House just because I liked the personal, emotional aspect to the story compared to the more vague horror that My House relies on.
The mod’s scripting really goes bananas at spots, relying a lot of the ZScript used in source ports like UZDoom (formerly known as GZDoom). There’s parts where kevansevans modified elements of Doom’s UI, showing unique options in menus in a way that’s rather clever. Definitely a lot of little tricks and easter eggs shown here that will surprise folk even on repeated playthroughs.
There was even a point where the mod crashed UZDoom, likely by causing something to deliberately crash the engine, only for me to reopen the mod afterwards and continue as if nothing happened. I’m going to assume this is deliberate, and not some unusual bug. Reminds me a bit of one of the final boss fights in Undertale, which had a similar gimmick of closing the application upon a loss, requiring the player to open the game again to try again. It’s a bit annoying, but it’s a neat little gimmick.
Though this mod does have some issues (as of this writing). There’s a few grammatical/spelling errors, which I can forgive that, lord knows I’ve done a few here and there. I did have a bug where I had to replay an entire section, but it was more user error. Because I have a good bit of Doom experience and understanding some of the quirks of that old chestnut of an engine, I ended up hitting a switch that had lowered because I already hit the switch on the other side of a room that would’ve opened the same door. Hitting the other, “hidden” switch caused an unintentional softlock that caused me unable to make any further progress and required me to restart from a previous save, which was at the beginning of the level. Thankfully there was an autosave for it, so I didn’t lose too much progress.
Outside of the wonderful soundtrack — a potpourri of Doom music from other places, mostly by James Paddock — and the surprisingly impressive graphical effects in spots, there isn’t a whole lot else for me to say about this one.
I’ll refrain from saying more, as I don’t want to spoil a lot of this in this post. This mod genuinely needs to be seen with fresh eyes and minimal spoilers. Outside of the few teasers I’ve given here, which is mostly stuff early on. I know it sounds cliché to say such things, but this is a mod that genuinely deserves to be played without any massive knowledge of what’s happening.
you broke me is amazing. There’s a lot of emotional moments that I definitely related to, especially as someone who’s struggled mentally with a lot of things in my life. Definitely had to pause my playing and cry a few times, on the two times I played through this for this post. Though I will warn that the content may be a little rough for some folks, as there’s flashing lights and images, sound jumpscares and talks of serious heavy subject matter.
You can check out you broke me here on the official thread on Doomworld. This requires UZDoom 4.14.3 (the most recent version) or higher to play, and of course Doom II is required to play, of which can be found on a digital storefront or used CD bin near you.
If this mod doesn’t win a Cacoward this year, I will be absolutely floored. I don’t keep super close tabs on the Doom map and mod community, but this is a definitive contender. To me, this really shows the power of video games being used for more than just fun and entertainment, to really get us to feel in a lot of ways emotionally. you broke me is genuinely an amazing mod that not only shows the power of what folks can do with a 33 year old game engine, but also is rather touching and emotional. We definitely need more of that in our lives.
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