Find the key. Reach the door. Go deeper. Don't get caught.
Backrooms is a first-person, grid-step raycaster lost in the endless liminal maze. Every level is a fresh procedurally generated warren of damp corridors lit by buzzing fluorescents: find the key, reach the door, and descend to the next level — going as deep as you can before the shades catch you. How deep you get is your score. (Currently v0.7 — Beta.)
STORY & LORE
The endless rooms
There is no way up, only down. Each door drops you into another layer of the maze — Large, Giant, the claustrophobic Trapped, and the rare, sprawling Colossal — and the walls are always the same damp, humming, wrong yellow-grey. Depth is the only measure of how long you lasted.
You are not alone down here
Shades drift the halls. They can't be fought — only avoided, blinded around corners, or outrun. And every so often, the lights simply cut out.
HOW IT PLAYS
Grid-step movement
You move one tile at a time and turn in 90° steps — deliberate, tile-by-tile navigation rather than free-look. On desktop: W/↑ forward, S/↓ back, A/← and D/→ to turn. On phones the portal's Console Shell provides a D-pad and a USE button off-screen.
Key, door, descend
Somewhere in each level is a key; somewhere in the boundary wall is the door to the next level (marked with the level number). Grab the key, reach the door, and drop deeper. Each new depth banks TIX and, at 5/10/20, an achievement.
The shades
Two shades roam each level. If one gets line of sight it screeches and chases you down the corridor; step onto its tile and it captures you, throwing you back to the start of the current level. Break its sightline to lose it.
Buzzing lights & blackouts
Fluorescent tubes hum and flicker, and at random the whole maze lurches into a near-total blackout for a heartbeat. Combined with the closing vignette and depth-fog, you rarely see far — which is exactly the point.
Tools in the dark
Find a companion that follows in your footsteps, pick up neon spray-paint to mark tiles you've already walked, and — if you're lucky enough to find the map — flip on a zoomed minimap with V.
GALLERY
VERSION HISTORY
- First wiki, documenting a big overhaul of an original founder game (v0.2 -> v0.7).
- Atmosphere pass: damp wallpaper/baseboard/stain texturing on every wall, buzzing fluorescent flicker, random near-total blackouts, depth-fog and a closing vignette — turning the flat bright maze into a proper liminal dread space.
- Wired to the arcade for the first time: depth is now a leaderboard score (DEEPEST LEVEL), descending banks TIX, and five achievements were added (reach depth 5/10/20, find the companion, enter a Colossal level). Capture reports a game-over.
- Mobile support via the portal Console Shell (features.gamepad: D-pad + USE) instead of an in-screen pad; verified the shell drives movement. Marked mobile-friendly.
- Cleaned up the HUD to a minimal DEPTH + objective readout and removed the debug map cheat.
- Studio: John.