This was never meant to be a game. ESCAPISM — a solo project built on the id Tech-based GZDoom engine, developed between 2019 and 2021 during one of the darkest periods of my life.

Fueled by anxiety, isolation, and nightmares disguised as visions, this game was my way of coding through a personal exorcism. The core idea came from a dream I had back in 2016 — surreal, cold, distant. I started working on it alone in 2019. By the time I quit in 2021, I had stopped drinking and slowly climbed out of the pit I’d been in. No further development is planned. The game is abandoned, exactly how I needed it to be.

There’s no tutorial, no comfort, no friendliness. You learn through suffering. It doesn’t want you. It won’t even pretend. Every move feels like a mistake. Every mistake is punished — with death, and then, just for extra emphasis, a crash. You’re not a hero. You’re just a bug in the simulation.

At first, I thought about using royalty-free music. But people close to me started asking about the project, and I decided to write everything myself. It’s dark ambient stitched together with distortion, noise, detuned piano, and broken filters. Think haunted VHS run through a dying modem. You can stream the full soundtrack on YouTube or download it as a ZIP. It’s free. So is pain.

The Weapon: One and Done

a crossbow

It works like a rocket launcher, just faster and more chaotic. The arrows explode. And yes, they can hurt you. Add a warped FOV and some rough hitboxes, and congratulations: you’re now your own worst enemy.

Power-ups That Help (Sort of)

At the end of development, only one enemy had been made.

A turret

Only one enemy made it into the final build: a turret. It fires the same explosive bolts you do. Its behavior is governed by Doom’s cursed RNG. Sometimes it fires immediately. Sometimes it stares at you for a moment, just to build tension. Then it dumps four arrows in your general direction. Dodging is possible — assuming the level layout isn’t sabotaging you (it is).

There’s no health bar.

The more screen noise you see, the closer you are to dying. It’s like Doomguy’s classic face HUD — but instead of pixelated macho grunts, you get a glitchy mess reflecting your decay.

Just like Doomguy’s face!

Because his face sprites were replaced!

I was never great at level design. I barely scratched the surface of what GZDoom could do. Things like silent portals were goals I never reached. Still, the maps reflect the state I was in — raw, broken, and unwelcoming. There’s a kind of beauty in that.

I hate this project.

Not in the casual, “eh, I moved on” kind of way — I mean it viscerally. Finishing or releasing this game would’ve felt like sealing a coffin shut. Not the game’s — mine.

This wasn’t just a mod. It was me trying to simulate the feeling of being lost, numb, and functionally dead. I built it while drowning, and for some reason I thought turning that pain into gameplay was smart. In a way, it was — it kept me alive.

But releasing it? Would’ve been the end. A kind of grotesque celebration of everything I was trying to escape. Like turning trauma into a product.

I didn’t survive to make that kind of art.

So no, it won’t be uploaded to ModDB. No source code. No itch.io. No “v1.0”.

This thing stays buried — and that’s exactly where it belongs.