At the time of this writing, I have been looking into the community of speculation around Christopher Manson's MAZE: Solve the World’s Most Challenging Puzzle, a book of woodcuts of 45 rooms each accompanied by a short piece of text describing a group of visitors and their guide moving through that room. Most of the rooms don't seem to have any particular function, and to accommodate a multitude of wordplay-based clues they are cluttered with unlikely objects and paintings. Reading MAZE is like wandering through a dream.
It reminded me strikingly of Mateusz Skutnik's Submachine, a series of point and click games about exploring a network of seemingly abandoned locations connected by often fantastical means. Here, too, are collections of useless objects suspended in a timeless realm, with exploration being the only real goal. These exploration experiences are some of my favorites, and I feel that they're at the heart of the genre I call house-labyrinths (many examples of which can be seen at the entrance). A house-labyrinth is of unknown extent; its architect is unknown, or it's unclear how it was built; it is not quite constructed for humans to live comfortably there, but it doesn't seem to have any other purpose either; it is most often empty of people; it demands explanation, mapping, and exploration that extend far beyond what is visible or knowable. All the explorer will ever find is more of the house, because there is no good explanation for it.
But maybe this time there will be an explanation behind it all? Or at least something to find that will vindicate all the exploration?