Why I'm Making This

It started as an easter egg.

I was building games and hidden things into my website. Achievements. Puzzles. Small stuff that would make twelve year old me lose his mind. One of them was called liminal.exe. A short experience about empty pools and hallways that go on too long. Supposed to be a quick thing. A few rooms. Done.

I kept adding to it.

More rooms. More effects. More text. The scope was wrong. It didn't fit inside a portfolio site anymore. So I pulled it out. Started over. Room 337 is what it became.

The Kids

I have four daughters. I've always worked. A hundred hours a week sometimes. Always something on my mind. Something to build. Something to fix. I'd go to their plays and sit on my phone the whole time. Physically there. But absent.

Real father of the year stuff.

I have a lot of regrets about that. More than I like to admit. I think about moments I missed. Conversations I wasn't really in. Times they needed me and I was somewhere else in my head. You can't get that back. I know that. But I think about it anyway.

The Walls

My health has gotten worse over the last few years. I can't do what I used to do. I miss them being younger. I think about that time a lot. Too much, probably.

I grew up not being allowed to show emotions. My mom died when I was eight. At her funeral, I cried. My grandma smacked me across the face. Don't show emotion. Just survive. So I learned to lock it down. Swallow it. Keep the walls up.

My kids grew up with a dad who never showed emotions. Because I wasn't allowed to.

That's changing.

Making This Together

One of the things I've learned is that my brain needs to stay busy. Keep thinking. Keep creating. That's just how I'm wired. But I've been learning to do it differently.

Room 337 is about a father searching for his daughters in liminal spaces. It shows their perspectives... before the hurt of dad being absent. And after. Why they needed their dad then. Why they need him now.

It's voiced by me and my actual daughters.

I get to stay busy. Keep my mind occupied. But I'm doing it with them this time. Not just in the same room while I'm somewhere else in my head. Actually with them. Recording together. Writing together. Building something that matters to all of us.

And they get to see me be vulnerable. They get to watch their dad make something deeply personal and not hide from it. That's new for them. It's new for me too.

The Spaces

Liminal spaces unsettle most people. The empty malls. The fluorescent hallways. The pools with no water. But for me? They feel like home. Nostalgic in a way I can't quite explain. The unknown feels known somehow.

There's something about the quiet. The emptiness. The strange comfort of places that exist between moments. Not scary. Just... waiting. For something you can't name.

The pull between being present and thinking about what's already gone. That's what liminal spaces feel like to me. And that's why they're the setting.

My grandpa used to have me play Leisure Suit Larry when I was young.

Questionable parenting runs in the family, apparently.

I would also play games like Zork, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, etc. Games where you typed commands into a parser and your imagination filled in what the pixels couldn't show.

I liked that. I wondered: can a game feel immersive without any real visuals? Just words and sound and atmosphere?

When I tested early versions with and without audio, it was a different experience. Sound changed everything. The hum of fluorescent lights. Footsteps echoing. Then I added visual effects. Text that behaves in ways you don't expect.

Why This Matters

I cried making this game.

I don't cry at anything. My therapist has been trying to get me to cry for months. Doesn't work. But writing this story, hearing my daughters voice the characters, putting something this personal into a thing other people will experience... that did it.

This is a love letter to my past self and my future self. But mostly it's a love letter to my daughters. I want them to know I hear them. I'm sorry for my mistakes. I'm here now.

They already know that. But this shows it in a way words at the dinner table can't.

We all mess up. I don't need to hide that. I've learned from it. Grown from it. That's what Room 337 is about, in the end. Not the mistakes. What comes after.

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More updates coming. Next one will be about recording with my daughters.