Rinsma explained that it’s already “relatively well-known” that PDFs can support a number of features such as dynamic content scripting when opened in something like Adobe Acrobat/Reader. Some of that same scripting support, however, is also available in both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chromium ’s respective PDF readers, PDF.js and PDFium.

A high school student found a way to run the classic PC game Doom from within a PDF file by leveraging the format's support for JavaScript and the Chromium browser engine.

A crafty high-schooler was able to do something I didn’t think was possible: They got Doom running inside a PDF file. Seriously. And weirdly, it works better than you might expect!

Doom PDF only works in Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc.) and supports custom WADs (modded Doom files like the recent Gallery Experience ), though you’ll need the original Doom WAD to get them working.

In the past, hackers have used this little-known Adobe feature to code simple games like Breakout and Tetris into PDF documents. But ading220 went further, recompiling a streamlined fork of Doom 's open source code using an old version of Emscripten that outputs optimized asm.js code.

There’s a growing trend of developers flexing their muscles to make PDF documents do completely different things than what they’re intended to do. The goal is to push the boundaries of the PDF format.