Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a witch)

Janet DeMornay Is A Slumlord (and a witch) (JDM) is a story-driven, non-violent, escape room, horror-comedy. It is a supernatural take on the very real anxieties of what it is to be a renter in Australia during the housing crisis. It is set in the house that the developers lived in for many years, but also features real life stories submitted from all over the world - Real Renter Horror Stories.

A throwback to survival horror classics, it uses a third-person, set camera perspective. The story follows Andrew, one of the queer tenants of an enchanted but crumbling terrace house in Sydney’s inner west. Having just signed a new lease, he expects the house will get a bit better soon. Maybe the cracks in the walls will be fixed. Maybe all of the cupboard doors won’t flap open when the kitchen tap is turned the wrong way. 

But instead of fixing things, signing the lease seems to have attracted the attention of the house’s owner. An owner with strange plans for both her house and the people unfortunate enough to be living inside. That owner is none other than Janet DeMornay, (faded) television shopping star, paper mache atelier, slumlord, and witch. Suddenly, the range hood is broken and the house has been transported to another dimension. And there’s someone else in the house... 

Players will explore their strange house, solving puzzles to try and get back to the real world, with just their wits to guide them. Well, wits and the clues pulled from reruns of Janet’s favourite tv shopping episodes. All while trying to avoid the increasingly menacing behaviour of Janet and her paper mache puppets. 

Inspired by 80s horror-comedy classics Beetlejuice and Poltergeist, JDM is a ridiculous but horrifyingly relevant story about found-family, queer lives, and landlord overreach.