Picure this: eleven year old Ollie, who is absolutely obsessed with Club Penguin, logs in on October 18, 2012 to the new Halloween party and discovers a mysterious mansion has appeared on the island. eleven year old ollie plays through the mansion, collecting clues and becoming obsessed with the incricate theming and design of the house, almost wishing they could live there themselves. then they beat the game and discover that the end reward is members only and cry about it because their parents refused to buy them a membership.

The 2012 Club Penguin Halloween Party introduced the character of Gariwald VIII, the great uncle of Gary the Gadget Guy who mysteriously dissapeared years prior. it turns out, he had transformed himself into a ghost, and if you solved the puzzles in his manor you too could be a ghost (unless you were a non-member, in which case you could only cry). This Halloween party has been a special interest of mine since it was released eleven years ago: I used to fantasize about living there, recreate it with my dollhouse and play out the story, and draw it constantly. When the party was re-released for Club Penguin Rewritten in 2018 it renewed my obsession: thus, I decided to recreate the entire house in the Sims 4 to finally live my dreams. This is such a niche topic and I don't know how many people are out there remember this party or feel as strongly as I do about it, but I hope you enjoy this build, as I am very proud of it!

Before we begin: this build is available on the Sims 4 gallery if you want to download and play with it! It is titled Gariwald Manor and my EA ID is tw1zz1e.

This build contains one piece of CC: The Kichen by harrie. It only provides clutter and is not necessary for the build if you don't want to download it.

Let's take a look at the official artwork for the mansion (yes, this was my computer wallpaper for at least a year). This is the reference I used for the layout of the build.

Just a note: all of the screenshots you're about to see were taken after the build was completed. This was a several year long project that I worked on very gradually and tweaked over time so I have no progress shots, sorry!

Here is the exterior of the build! I was more loyal to the official artwork above than the silhouette seen in the game so I excluded all the little extra towers, but I directly referenced the front facade with the pointy roof here.

For interior, we'll start with the foyer. When building this, platforms became my best friends. I started this build before platforms were released and let me tell you, the original version of this was a hot mess. I initially tried to simulate platforms by making this 2 levels, but as you will see, I use all 4 stories in this house, so it looks terrible and didn't work in the slighest. Platforms were a gamechanger.

Next is the cellar, through the left door of the foyer. This room was probably the hardest to do, and it might be my least favorite room in the build tbh :(. Getting the grates and stuff right was a challenge. Plus, the mausoleum is awkwardly tall because I had to use the tallest wall height for the platform split levelling, but all in all it's not too bad.

Next, to the right is the library! In contrast, I think this might be my favorite room. This was so much fun, especially since this is the first room with secret passageways! One of the bookshelves opens to a ladder going down into one tunnel, and there is another secret passage behind the mirror up on the platform! That was such a fun puzzle to figure out how to execute. This room is just so pretty and all of the overlapping rugs and tall bookshelves makes me wanna actually live here so bad.

Moving to the next floor, here is the hallway! I already mentioned this but even though this is another "floor" in the building, it is actually the same floor with the tallest wall height with very raised platforms.

In the game the door at the very end is a ghost door but I didn't feel like dealing with that so it's just a regular door. Since I was running low on space and also since the official artwork depicts the ghost lab in a tower, I put a hallway behind the ghost door that leads to a staircase: not something in the game but a little personal touch.

I also added a bathroom under the stairs to the attic because I had the space and wanted my actual sims to be able to use the house lol.

To the left of the hallway is the cemetary! Another favorite room of mine, it was so fun to make. The open grave was one of my proudest accomplishments in the whole build (if you're unaware, there is a collectable inside the grave that opens it).

Next, to the right is the dining room/kitchen. First of all, I swear I put a covered tray like that in the original art on the dining room table but for some reason it vanished when I uploaded to the gallery >:(. I didn't notice until making this, maybe I'll fix it later.

This room was tricky to get, I used a second story to make the balcony over the dining room that leads to the attic. There's also a random ladder in the fireplace that I needed for a secret passage and couldn't hide anywhere else so ignore that lol.

ok, let's move on to the next floor. In the game, the staircase in the hallway leads directly to the attic. However, in order to achieve the height I wanted for my build to match the exterior I ended up with an entirely empty floor between the hallway and attic that is not present in the game. So, since I wanted this build to actually be playable for my sims and since the original game lacks bedrooms (which is weird), I decided to invent my own rooms to go here! Prepare for creative liberties, I think I stayed pretty loyal to the game and am happy with how it came out!

I added two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage closet (with a random coffin in it - I was playing a vampire sim). Overall, it's not a very big space but I think it's really necessary for gameplay and I had the empty space I needed to fill, so here it is! Ignore the pool lol, that's a part of the ghost lab, which is on the next floor up.

Going further up the stairs to the next floor, I have another area that is not present in the game. This hallway leads to the attic, and since the attic is in the tallest tower I had an empty level to give it more height, so I added these two hallways to decorate the space. The hallway on the right leads from the story below with the bedrooms up to the attic, and the hallway to the left goes between the attic and the balcony in the dining room.

And here is the ghost lab!! As previously mentioned, this is accessed through a hallway behind the door at the end of the main hallway, as is at the top of a tower in the in-game third floor. This was by far the hardest room to pull off since it's all sci-fi lab junk which we have very little of. I don't say this often but thank god for Get to Work expansion pack for this one. It's not my favorite room at all, but I do think I pulled it off with the stuff I had.

Finally, here is the attic! Another favorite room of mine. The hardest part of this room was that there is a secret passageway in the pink wardrobe which I obviously could not really recreate (maybe someone more creative than me could figure that out). I ended up just putting the ladder behind the wardrobe.

Last but not least, let's look at the secret passages. These are in the basement and I allowed myself to be loose with their shape and placement since they actually needed to connect certain points on the build that didn't line up great. The cave one connects the mausoleum and the bookshelf in the library, and the hallway one connects the wardrobe in the attic and behind the painting in the library. I playtested these a while ago so hopefully sims can actually use them but idk.

And that's the whole build! I love it so much and worked really hard on this so I hope you enjoyed! Here is a full floorplan. Thanks for reading <3