u/chainsawinsect

I'd like to get good bootlegs of these but I recognize they only just got spoiled

Today I made a comment on this post in r/Backrooms about the type of Backrooms game I'd like to see, building off a post I made in r/HorrorGaming a few weeks ago. My comment got some traction, so I thought I'd expand on the concept a bit 😄

I've been wishing we had a Backrooms game that leans fully into the Kane Pixels version of the universe but where the horror / danger elements of the entities (Still Lives and Bacteria / Lifeforms) are a real threat, and I've been thinking more about what the game might look like.

The premise is simple: you're just an ordinary person who accidentally noclips into the Backrooms. You know nothing about it, and your only objective is to survive long enough to find a way back to the real world.

The world is procedurally generated, similar to Minecraft. Every playthrough creates a different Backrooms layout, while still guaranteeing certain important locations and story areas (such as an initial "scripted" tutorial area, where you pick up key gameplay items). The procedural generation would create spaces that feel vaguely familiar—office suites, maintenance tunnels, parking garages, hotel corridors—but connected together in impossible ways. Think Minecraft, but with handcrafted landmarks mixed into the procedural generation (as is the case in the game Core Keeper, if you've played that).

The gameplay loop is survival horror.

You have to manage food, water, and health while exploring an endless maze in search of supplies. Water comes from rare rooms with faucets and almond water containers (with a minimal amount gained by eating food). Food can be scavenged from distorted real-world fruit and other food, animals such as birds that have glitched into the Backrooms, or harvested from Still Lives like in the Backrooms film. Water and Still Life "meat" could be stored in containers to bring with you as you explore.

Still Lives would act as the game's renewable food source. Some are harmless and immobile, some move around passively, and some are extremely dangerous (like Captain Clark). Unlike the Bacteria / Lifeform, they can be fought, killed, and even captured as a source of food.

The actual hostile entities—things like the Bacteria / Lifeform from Found Footage #1—can't be defeated by any means (similar to the Xenomorph in Alien: Isolation). If you come across one, the goal isn't combat; it's escaping and hiding until it loses track of you. Noise becomes just as dangerous as line of sight, encouraging careful movement and making every encounter feel tense.

Throughout the Backrooms, you'd collect items as you go (e.g., batteries, backpacks, clothing, knives and other handheld weapons, containers) that help you survive, including things like marking tape, string, and signs / markers you can use to make it easier to navigate through the Backrooms and find your way back to critical locations.

Instead of building giant Minecraft-style houses, you'd construct small safe rooms. You could move wall panels to block entrances (hostile entities not already chasing you will not investigate a hidden panel), place storage containers for stockpiling items and gear (including knives and other handheld weapons), lighting, and supplies, and establish temporary shelters throughout the map. However, staying in one place too long would gradually attract the interest of hostile entities, encouraging players to keep moving and establish multiple safehouses.

As you explore, you'd scavenge increasingly valuable ASYNC equipment: first aid kits, flashlights, motion sensors, foam spray cannisters, and other survival gear. Rare late-game technology (I've been calling it a Localized Magnetic Distortion System) could even let you create portals between two locations inside the Backrooms, making long-distance travel much easier.

The environment itself would constantly keep you uneasy. Lights flicker, distant machinery hums to life, pipes begin leaking, strange noises echo through empty corridors, and occasionally you return to find a hallway subtly different than you remember. Most of these changes are harmless—but the player is never quite sure which ones aren't.

The (fairly limited) story would be told through found footage tapes, research notes, abandoned ASYNC sites, and environmental storytelling rather than traditional cutscenes. The game would embrace mystery rather than trying to explain every aspect of the Backrooms.

The ultimate objective is escaping the Backrooms by locating, repairing, powering, and activating a damaged ASYNC Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System from within the Backrooms to allow you to go back into the real world. (Doing that would trigger the end cutscene and credits, and the intro sequence would also be a cutscene, so there is no actual gameplay that does not take place within the Backrooms).

I imagine something that feels like Minecraft's exploration and survival, mixed with the tension of Alien: Isolation, all set inside the Kane Pixels-style Backrooms.

So that's my concept. What do you think? 😄

I know there's not really any "official" Backrooms games, and the closest one is probably Kane Pixel's The Complex: Found Footage. But although that game has visuals for monsters, there is no actual danger - you can't "lose" or "die" at all.

And I've heard The Complex: Expedition is also a great game, but similarly, no monsters.

Are there any actually good games set in the Backrooms that have any kind of danger element at all?

To me, the danger is a core part of the Backrooms, so the idea of a game with zero of it doesn't appeal to me.

My trash is normally picked up Tuesday morning.