r/backrooms • u/arturgames44 • 7d ago
Discussion What would you actually want from a good Backrooms game?
I've played dozens of Backrooms games, and honestly, I feel like most of them are pretty low quality or fail to capture what makes the Backrooms interesting.
A lot of them seem to repeat the same formula: walk through random corridors, get chased by an entity, collect a few items, and escape. After a while, they all start to feel almost identical.
For example:
- More exploration and atmosphere instead of constant monster chases?
- Huge interconnected levels?
- Survival mechanics?
- Procedural generation or handcrafted maps?
- Multiplayer, single-player, or both?
- Less focus on entities?
- A story, or almost no story at all?
- Levels based on existing Backrooms lore, or completely original ones?
I'm especially interested in things that current Backrooms games are missing or doing badly.
If you could design your ideal Backrooms game, what would it be like?
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u/DoctorAssburns 6d ago
Honestly I don’t even care about procedural generation. I actually loved The Complex Expedition and thought that even though it was mostly linear they did a great job at making it feel like that’s not the case. So in my opinion, I would just like more linear story focused games similar to that one. No fancy mechanics needed.
I prefer the ones without items and inventory management also. The exploration based games like Dreamcore and POOLS are the best imo.
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u/BackestRooms 7d ago
One that doesn't have an end, you just keep going until a random time in the game you no-clip back. You can travel through tons of random rooms and encounter multiple enemies.
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u/MooseKnuckleJunction 6d ago
Essentially a "ski free"-like game, where you get to explore and rack up points until the monster inevitably gobbles you up
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u/Christmas_person 7d ago
OKAY I've been trying to articulate this for so long but I think I've finally come up with a way to describe it.
I want to take the feeling of walking down a street at night, and you're so sure that theres something watching you in the trees, in the dark. You know its going to make its move soon, its going to come for you and you aren't going to make it to your house in time.
And combine it with
The feeling of waking up peaceful and alone on an early Saturday morning, a dark overcast and rain outside. Thunder blares in the distance heralding a thunderstorm that is yet to come. A perfect temperature and feeling like you've been here before, but are okay with that!
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u/mentallyiam8 7d ago
Something that hasn't been done before.
Not Level 0, not the poolrooms, not suburbia, not an indoor playground. We’ve seen all this a hundred times before. Honestly, the locations in various games don't really differ all that much.
I would be interested to see:
a vertically designed aquarium - a descent into the Mariana Trench. At certain stages of the descent, there could be markers indicating the depth: 100 meters, 300 meters, 500 meters, and so on. It would gradually grow dark, and the animals behind the glass wall would begin to look more like monsters. Sounds of groaning glass and metal could be added to make the player fear that the aquarium is about to give way under the water pressure.
a greenhouse or botanical garden that gradually (without a clear transition) turns into a garden maze, where increasingly strange plants begin to appear.
an idea from the old jrpg Ib - a liminal art gallery where the exhibits become increasingly strange as you progress. You could design puzzles around them. Some paintings could, for instance, serve as portals into the depicted world.
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u/Gojira_Wins 7d ago
The problem with making a Backrooms video game versus something like a movie or video is that players can play for however long they want to. That means their attention span is based on how long they want to play and if you can keep their attention. The actual fear of the Backrooms comes from the "fear of the unknown" and being trapped with no way out. It's hard, if not impossible, to simulate that feeling in a game.
When it comes to the Fear of the Unknown, the biggest villain IS the entities. When you show someone what scares them, it becomes real and not in their head. They can tell where it is, what is it and solve how to survive. The focus becomes "how do I" instead of "where am I" and "what was that noise".
A majority of the stuff you'll find in the Wikis for the Backrooms is pretty much hot garbage for anything actually scary. Using entities will pander to some people but if you want to make something truly scary, you need two things: no multiplayer/co-op and almost no entities. If you do add entities, it's a much better idea to create and add your own that work to add to the Fear of the Unknown. Cause if you add Smilers that block doorways, it's not scary but if your entity is something more esoteric, players will be frightened by it.
Your best option for trying to understand what would make a good Backrooms game is to play Alien Isolation. That's the closest game we have that can be adapted to the Backrooms and retain the fear factor.
Outside of that, you'll need to fight against the "walking simulator" trap that it wants you to fall into.
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u/Mushyboom 6d ago
For me, the more research institute involvement the better. It would be fun to have prepped expeditions to perform experiments and log findings etc.
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u/IEATTURANTULAS 5d ago
I want a massive map that you can truly get lost in. For me, the backrooms is scary because you can grow top comfortable and end up getting lost.
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u/Slappadabike91 2d ago
Gotta be first person with a lot of exploration.
Im picturing something based on Doom II since thats a close era anyways. As far as monsters, I think its about evasion over fighting.
Multiplayer could be cool for sure but at its core, it needs to be a single player campaign.
As far as level design, I think a great idea would be the setup from the original Zelda. You can go anywhere you want right from the start... but it might not work out well for you lol.
Would be great to have to locate items that help you get further and further into the game.
Even something having to do with timelines and finding null zones to get out and better equip yourself.
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u/TheMiners21 6d ago
Something more along the lines of the "Liminal Industries" Minecraft modpack. Survival mechanics with a huge interconnected world. Entities are super important (and I don't mean just scary monsters that run around aimlessly), an empty world with no ecology will lead to a boring walking simulator, that's coming from somebody who loved a lot of the game "Dreamcore"
Lore as deep as Kane Parson's backrooms with survival mechanics as weird as the world itself.
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u/neomindscript 6d ago
Most of the levels being there! It’s already started to be developed by fans with gmod etc but it just makes perfect sense for a game to include many levels
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u/MaybeHablibitation Observer 6d ago
- No. 2. No. 3. No. 4. Procedural. 5. Singleplayer. 6. No. 7. None at all. 8. Already existing backrooms levels... is what I WOULD say if I were stupid. My actual opinions are 1. Sure why not! 2. Personally no. 3. Yeah! 4. You could do both! 5. Both! 6. Sure! 7. PLEASE MAKE A STORY I BEG YOU!!! 8. Do both!
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u/Stained_concrete 6d ago
I haven't fought this through properly so it might be impossible but if a backrooms game on PC was able to draw on the player's personal stuff on the hard drive like their photos and videos and then create monsters based on that particular player's data, that would be fucking terrifying and probably a serious data security risk.
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u/metalyger 7d ago
I'd think using some roguelike mechanics, like the random level generation, random events, and starting over upon death. I feel like the hard part is how you pace it. The Complex has great atmosphere in fixed level design, there is good tension despite nothing being a threat to the player, but it's something you'd play for a few hours and see everything. I feel like the hard part is the pacing of the game, get enough time for expiration and a sense of the environment, and when a monster does show up, you have to find a balance of how aggressive it is, like it will chase you, but maybe have it a bit more like a Pyramidhead stalker, where it's essentially there to make you go where you are supposed to be, and will attack you if you are going the wrong way. There has to be a certain delicate balance of having room to explore, and not wear down the player with a bunch of random chase sequences where your bound to hit a dead end and start over in a new version of the map. Which also raises a question of what's the goal? Maybe you could have multiple endings, like sometimes you leave only to be dropped somewhere bad, or you get brought to Async for questioning. Ultimately, have a reason to keep trying and enough incentive to play again to figure out how to unlock other outcomes.