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| The image that started it all. Quite boring, really. |
PR: The Backrooms, a purgatory-like place where one is condemned to walk aimlessly for etenity, where everything is possible and nothing is what it seems.
Featuring over 1000 levels and even negative ones (though these seem to be rather unpopular), the backrooms is presented in a wiki-like format where stories from different wanderers are collected and achieved, the backrooms also have this "no-clipping out of reality" idea that we've seen previously in "the holders" saga, and no-clipping in general seems to be something consistently used as means of passing through levels.
Following, I'll be commenting on how the creators develop this fictional world with their own fauna, factions, objects, curses, and much more.
Level 0 and 'The Red Rooms' present a familiar Backrooms setting. Initially unassuming, it gradually unfolds into an unsettling and adventurous scenery, making for an enjoyable read. The narrative moves at a brisk pace, presenting a linear progress to seemingly infinite levels, from Level 0 onward.
There are brief narrations from observers and wanderers, adding some depth to the story. Although I should add that some elements are quite clichéd, such as:
- The must-have Zombie fungus: causes hosts to self-amputate within minutes of contraction. Why?
-Terrible names: A disease named "The Disease", red rooms simply called "Red Rooms"
-"Red means Scary"
Levels 1 and 2 are tedious and overly long. The narration shifts from a story-like approach to a dry, wiki-style format, focusing on historical events of questionable significance. The story delves into events like the "Major Exploration Group" helping "The Survivors" fend off "The Wretched", which are essentially zombies.
The ambiance is also quite unimaginative, being simple garages and maintanence tunnels. There's a bunch of plain pictures to boot...
The levels only saving grace is introducing biological inconsistencies and funny, also cliché creature designs. For example, giant snakes are said to use their bodies to drill through concrete and steel levels, while hound-human hybrids, referred to as "The Hounds", are inexplicably born from eggs.
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| Me: But hounds don't come from eggs. Fandom: What did you just see, reader? WHAT DID YOU JUST SEE? |
Level 1.5 is a disaster, just an inverted version of Level 0. The narrative is excessively long and disjointed, with a jarring sequence of logs. Specifically, Log 4 appears where Log 6 should be, followed by Log 2 after Log 7, and then 'True Log 6', which serves as a TL;DR.
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| "The level is completly devoided of life, except for mother. Hi mother!" |
Level 1.3 is rather interesting having this cancerous approach to this annoyingly good room that healed everyone within. Something (again, unimaginatively) called "the Decay" has made this level that cured illnesses, fracures and others now aggraviates said wound and gives you cancerous tumors due over healing.
I remember having read a fiction where casting healing spells or potions on a healty character lead to tumors and similar health issues, but it was rather fine.
Level 1.1 is similarily decent for the most part, although the last segment of the endless halway that progressively degrades into instability was rather dull with the whole "The guide beacons" theme going on.
To whatever nerd created Level √2 mixing pasta with math, you deserve to noclip.
I would like to point out again how terrible the 'entity' design is so far. In addition to the previous three disasters, we have 'Smilies,' which are floating, glowy smiley faces; a vending machine that sells drug-coated human flesh; 'phantom bees' without further description; Skin-stealers, which are about as imaginative as you'd surmise; entities that switch from humans to plain mannequins with sharp teeth; death moths that are just larger versions of regular moths; Howlers, which are essentially fast, armored humans that scream really loud; and, lastly, the amusingly unimpressive 'death rats.' Their entry states that they live off the other entities, and I simply cannot get over the image of all the supposedly 'scary' Backroom fauna fleeing at the sight of a common black rat.
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| X gon' give it to you |
And these Items, man. It just kinda breaks immersion having magic Almond water that's some sort of cure-all, "liquid pain" cashew water, some kind of Pokemon-like monster repellet and this... Sorry, eating gun-shaped candy does what?
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| Why. |
Suprisingly, despite it's stupid name, the disease is quite impressive. There's an overabundance of medical jargon that in my opinion negatively affects the narrative, but overall they manage to make a blood-coaguating disease that doesn't make much sense appear mildly credible, even after the wikipedia borrowed jpeg of random strafilococcus. Funny note, I just recieved a bloody bill, so I might have contracted the disease. Scary!
I love how there's a religious cult but the author didn't quite know how religions works so they wrote that they're willing to trade statues of "Jesus or other religious entities". Sooo, anything is good?
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| I got a problem with the "parking lot of fog". Where's the fog? |
The amount of
BS handled by level six, mr. "
isn't dangerous because there's something there. It's dangerous because there's nothing there" is astoundishing. The level is a dark, silent cave. The notes are plagued with uncertainty. Someone was attacked by something with human fingers and a human-like voice. Maybe it was a human? The writer assumes supernatural entities, lacking evidence. The victim limped away, leaving a blood trail. The person who found the note didn't assist, saying, 'I don't know if he lived or died, or why he was attacked. I know nothing.'
Level 7 improves, but only slightly. It relies heavily on generic monsters, like 'Tiny,' a 2.5-meter-tall ocean entity wielding a spear, claws and blade-like feet — poorly designed for swimming, if you ask me.
The backrooms continue to defy logic, randomly introducing unexplained phenomena. Extreme temperatures and prolonged underwater breath-holding -even 30 minutes- have no physical consequences...Level 8 clearly stands out as the one with the greatest amount of effort put into it so far. Notably, it appears to have been created by the website's owner, as it quotes this article on the home page. Unfortunately, it's not impressive. The suffocating scenery of a dark, damp cave might have been interesting five levels ago, but after being bombarded with garage levels, cave levels, and office levels, I'm starting to suspect that the Backrooms' catchphrase "Haven't you been here before?" refers to the fact that all articles and levels are similar to each other.
Conclusion
The Backrooms Wiki seems to be a well-meaning community of independent content creators that prioritized supporting newcomers over refining their final product. The existence of Level 1.5 is proof of this. The levels are not only similar but sometimes identical. The subpar pictures are mostly mood-killers, being mundane and boring. The "entities" are almost as poorly conceived as their names, but not as bad as the random assortment of fictional groups inhabiting levels – an idea I believe was bad to begin with.
Rather than creating a sense of katabatic descent, the wiki has a sci-fi-esque multiverse feeling that's so annoying.
There's a bad naming plague in the backrooms wiki, all being terrible, descriptive, and purely functional: "The Disease," "Almond/Cashew Water," "Smiley," and "Th3 Shady Gr3y," among other examples.
It's challenging to focus when navigating "The Parking Lot of Fog" (which lacks fog), encountering nameless "wanderers" facing a "murder" of egg-hatched hounds.
On a positive note, while the articles are mostly subpar, they demonstrate consistency, indicating that the authors have read the earlier articles. For whatever that's worth... 3.5/10
Extra: Backrooms Games
As probably any sensitive person noted, the current disign of the backrooms is perfectly fitted for movies or videogames, though mostly the latter due the whole "noclipping" and interactibility bussiness. Which means there's a lot of backroom games, a whole lot- and
almost all of them suck. Following I'll leave a list of titles I've seen in YT playlists let's play, and a short summary of why they suck.
The backrooms footage: Terribly boring, generic setting that's been seen in at least three other backrooms games, annoying enemy screeches, and overall not scary
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| generic pitfalls you see in every game but in none the lore,. |
The backrooms game: You keep checking on you wristwatch waiting for something to happen, the screen gets stacks upon stacks of chromatic aberration and there's an ocational wailing in the background. That's it.
Inside the backrooms: Terribly long puzzles and overstretched levels, hideous monsters and overall bad, not entertaining gameplay in a fashion that makes zero use of the backrooms spookyness
The backrooms lost and found: First off, looks hideous, second it's a walking simulator. A hideous looking, walking simulator that's not lore friendly on top of everything.
The backrooms: Looking out the window... |
| this is what you see |
The backrooms proyect: Pre-made assets stacked upon pre-made assets, cheap jumpscares that get repeated ad nauseam with the same creature.
Backroom beyond: Not knowing how to add gameplay, dev added portal cubes and pressure plate puzzles.
Backrooms 1998: Again, terrible monster, terrible gameplay. They try, but's not enough.
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