Madness Starts Young

Madness Starts Young is a walking-simulator museum game with a written story. You explore a museum through a minibot controlled with a headset and devices. Move close to artworks to hear them speak: some voices are soft, others scream or roar, and some are echoes of characters who visited before you. Familiar voices may also call across the void.

Explore the museum

The museum presents around 4,500 images created by the artist from ages 1 to 36, arranged as accurately as possible in chronological order and by medium. Its roughly 60 sections range from small to vast. Every artwork and collection has a unique name, and the images include commissioned works by artists alongside the sketches sent to them.

The museum also includes over 100 images of mythological creatures from a board game the artist created; all the monsters speak in that area. Another section displays cover art for 38 novels written over a decade, beginning in 2012.

Read and listen

You can click on interactable objects to read the written story, but engaging with it is optional; only titles require you to see text. The story and the art present a lifetime of artistic and psychological development.

Art and themes

The collection excludes portraits of real people other than the artist, overly revealing nude sketches, and erotica; it contains no depictions of sexually explicit acts. Some sections include adult themes, such as body-horror drawings, occasional gore and violence, and writing about trauma, bullying, family conflict, rage, grief and existential despair. The text also includes ominous or crude humor and occasional coy flirtatious jokes between character echoes.