As someone who's allergic to almonds, I'd say that whoever decided that the safest thing to drink be almond water is the most dangerous entity of them all.
The description of Lvl 0 makes me think the room absorbs victims once they die, explaining why no corpses are ever found. That might be why the carpet is damp, a mildly digestive enzyme, and insects being the main hallucination associated with the room
It is interesting to see how people feel about different iterations of the backrooms. Some people prefer the classic, Level 0 only, no entities. And others enjoy the hundreds of levels version, chased constantly by some strange entity.
I personally find the original more unsettling, I feel like if there are monsters in the backrooms, they should not be so clear and honest about what they are or their existence, because not knowing watch or even if something is out there is often far more terrifying, like, they’re very well maybe monsters out there, probably are even, but the space that you and them are traversing is so mine bogglingly big That the chances of you running into one are absolutely minuscule, but then again, you might find one anyways
Personally, I think the separate canons of "completely unknowable backrooms" and this type of level-based analysis are both super compelling. I love both dearly.
@@rosethaturtl_2812 It’s interesting for sure. I’ve heard of the backrooms before but this video is my first actual experience of it. I acknowledge that it isn’t the same as when it started but I still find it a cool idea.
*The fact that we added lore* to something that’s supposed to be unexplainable and unexplored, just shows we are *terrified* of the unknown. We feel the need to over explain it too the point where we feel like we’re in control, even if it’s just knowing what *could* happen or theorizing
As cool as a walking simulator could be... Honestly I just choose to ignore all the levels and "lore" because they completely ruin the concept for me. It's fun to view it as a creative writing project by many people such as the SCP Foundation, but expanding the concept of the backrooms takes away from the eerie vagueness of the original.
Totally agree. The different levels and stuff are cool ideas, but they kind of ruin it for me. I feel like that always happens online, things that should be unique one offs get ruined with fan projects, even if they're cool.
different levels are cool. overpowered entities, survival strategies, safe zones, poorly written addendums, and detailed explanations of everything thats supposed to be mysterious are not cool. if only we could just do away with the latter 5, then we'd be cookin again
@@Omnywrench "The almond water is because the original post mentioned the smell of almonds, which I believe to actually be in reference to a presence of CYANIDE, which famously has an almond smell. People misinterpreted this to somehow be in reference to some sort of super drink. It’s… dumb, sorry." --@AndRocProductions
I love the backrooms as a concept, it's so terrifying on an existential level. The cosmic horror of infinity mixed with overwhelming dread as you slowly realize you will never escape infinity. A hell so alien but so familiar to us because of how it mimics all parts of our world... And it makes some great memes
As much as I don't subscribe too much to how the community has turned the psychological terror of the backrooms into a resident evil-esque survival horror, I do still love the idea of the levels and how they take inspiration from differing liminal spaces.
If you want to see a more psychological horror take on the backrooms, I’d go with The Magnus Archives Episode 47. It’s not technically “the backrooms,” but it’s rather similar
I checked out when the MEG and other organizations somehow living in the eldritch liminal nightmarescape became an accepted thing, but I still enjoy and appreciate how much goes into the concept
If you like the concept of the backrooms you should def read House of Leaves. A house is suddenly less than an inch bigger than yesterday. That's how it began. This a novel that has you interacting with the book itself. At some points you'll even need to read it sideways and piece together stories separated by stories that interrupt other stories. It's a book where reality itself falls apart along with the narrative. All because a floorplan was changed.
Never thought I'd find a UA-cam comment that actually made my day better. Thanks for the recommendation I will read it (or at least attempt to) soon as I can
My meta-headcanon is that there is secretly only a single writer for all of this; an overworked marketing employee given the task of driving up the general interest in almond milk.
@@rLewo_official UA-cam has been around since... late 2005? I seem to remember videos being limited to 10 minutes when I made my account. Could be confusing it with another service.
I agree with everyone saying that the original Backrooms has a kind of existential horror to it that is sort of ruined by adding in monsters and organizations and other levels, but I also kind of like the multiple levels as their own thing. Like, the original can still exist in its own canon of hopelessness and dread while the wiki is in its own canon with all the lore and wacky rooms and stuff.
yeah, i personally really like the crazy rooms with video game properties, it adds to the intrigue for me, but i can see why people prefer the more existential old backrooms. However for me, i like this one because there is hope in what, at face value, is a completely hopeless situation. i just prefer that type of approach
What are you talking about, dude? Don't you find Entity 5AN7A-C (Containment Class: Keter) a.k.a. "The Ho-Ho Man" very very scary? Imagine if you no-clipped out of reality in an abandoned Kmart while you're holding a VHS copy of Toy Story 2 into the Backrooms and he shook his big sack of 1990s toys in front of you, wouldn't that be so scary?
the leveled rooms would work better as it’s own separate thing I agree! and then that leaves more room for freedom and creativity they don’t have to follow the same boring blueprint
I really don’t see the point of the “dirty” levels. What’s fascinating about the back rooms is that they’re empty, not abandoned or run down, which is an entirely different thing. The point is that they’re in a habitable state and yet no one’s in them, which is a big part of what makes them feel unnatural. Sewers, engine rooms and parking lots don’t look strange if they’re empty, because people rarely spend much time in them anyway. It should be things like swimming pools, classrooms, lecture halls, bathrooms, locker rooms, offices, malls, day care centers, etc that might feel a bit moldy and a few decades old for instance, but not ruined. It’s very different from the feeling you get with Chernobyl’s abandoned schools, which are supposed to be abandoned.
to an extent, yeah, for sure. but i mean, in a perfect world, the backrooms arent bound by our rules that we as humans have conjured up for it. it can create infinite expanses of any piece of civilization, or the universe in general seemingly, regardless of their state. its meant to be cosmic horror, not liminal spaces. they are different things with different purposes and origins, people have simply started confusing the two for being the same or similar. what you described that you believe the backrooms should be are already known as liminal spaces
@@spimbles then why do we think of the iconic yellow wallpaper “level 0” when we first think of the Backrooms? The fascination started there, yes with liminal spaces, and that’s what’s brilliant about the Backrooms. All this new stuff we’re adding is taking away its character. Is there a rule to limit what the Backrooms should be like? There has to be one, otherwise a Middle Earth level with Gimly and Legolas or a SpongeBob level are just as likely. And if you have no rules defining what it’s like, then there’s no Backrooms, there’s nothing. Cosmic horror is also not at all the feeling I get with the Backrooms, cosmic horror rather conveys the feeling of one’s insignificance in an uncaring universe. The Backrooms feel more like stepping out into the scaffolding of our very specific reality, the “work in progress” section, the uncanny valley version of urban spaces, where things aren’t properly held together or well defined, with unpredictable results for whoever steps into it by accident. It feels very much like this mysterious space exists because of us, not uncaring. Simulation is much closer to this than cosmic horror. In this scenario there is no universe, rather everything exists relative to us specifically, as if the walls of our offices and the wet carpets are real and the stars in the sky are just window dressing. Granted, no one owns the Backrooms. It can be anything to anybody. But if it can be anything, then it’s nothing. I feel that sticking to liminal spaces should be the goal of this, because it’s what drew people into it initially, and it makes it unique. Spreading out too much will undo that.
@@spimbles no that's pointless and makes the backrooms moot as an idea. They're literally supposed to be backrooms and hallways that never end. You're changing the original gist and concept of the backrooms dude.
Or the idea that there might be, just not discovered. You know if you somehow find one, you have no grounds to go off of because obviously backrooms ARENT relatively close to reality.
I agree. Even if they're monster, having them may give you more hope that there's a way out. If your just alone, eventually (and sooner) you'll give. No entity no people it seems absolutely useless to go on.
I agree. I like the idea of levels as long as they follow certain rules but adding threats to the back rooms makes it feel less liminal which is the thing that makes it so interesting in the first place.
Same my man, I wish people had left the base story of the Backrooms alone. While I love this video, it irks me all of this comes from one little story snippet that was perfect on its own
I really like a lot of aspects about the backrooms, but someone's gotta say it, a lot of the entity names are goofy as hell. It feels like they busted out a thesaurus and just went with whatever page they flipped to
Its very Teen YA Dystopia/Adventure. Kinda like the “Erasers” from Maximum Ride or “Muttations” from The Hunger Games. Very Rule of Cool to name them “Slang-adjacent” terms.
As someone who prefers the Backrooms just being infinite corridors and yellow wallpaper with no way to escape, these were super cool to see and I wouldn't mind sticking around some of these levels! The forests especially, they looked so pretty and fun to walk around in.
I seem to recall that the almond water thing was inspired by some mention in one of the classic liminal horror photo descriptions (poolrooms, maybe?) saying that the water smelled faintly of almonds; this was probably originally implying that the water contained cyanide, which is known to smell like bitter almonds. Ironic that it was used as the basis for the "safe" drink of the group project version.
The almond water is because the original post mentioned the smell of almonds, which I believe to actually be in reference to a presence of CYANIDE, which famously has an almond smell. People misinterpreted this to somehow be in reference to some sort of super drink. It’s… dumb, sorry.
While the original horror of the backrooms has been lost, mostly because there's a big community around it that explains everything, and because there is no liminality anymore due to the fact that the backrooms are inhabited canonically, this is still an interesting worldbuilding project. If it were made into a survival horror game, it'd be fantastic.
My thoughts exactly, great story thing but this is completely different from the origanal intent of the backrooms, where the horror comes from the unknown and silence, not smilers and wibbldywocks.
My version of the lore is that these rooms, oh, are just 0.0000001% of the backrooms expanse. All discovered rooms are just a teeeeensy weeeeny fractuin if the backrooms
@@electrifiedwits assuming the backrooms is the same size as our own universe, infinite, this is probably the correct take, though you can't really give an exact percentage to the amount we've seen considering there's no way to reach the end of infinity
Its strange how both the backrooms and the scp wiki started out as one small story on 4chan to giant sprawling community’s of what they are today. History repeats itself beautifully
Considering what some of the SCP wiki staff have been accused of doing, especially the one behind Dr. Bright, I hope that not all aspects of history repeat.
@@alb0_gent0 Admins of the SCP wiki contacted underage users and requested nudes and what not. Dr. Bright stepped down because of how big the situation had gotten. I'd check out Blarin's video on the situation, even if it's 2 years old.
I personally prefer the psychological horror side of being completely isolated, trapped for eternity in creepy winding halls. But the more “survival video game” like versions are also an interesting concept!
I do enjoy both, they’re different kinds of horror. But imagining clipping in and wandering for ages with no sense of time before finally finding an exit and coming out on the other side of the world 50 years in the future without aging a day is absolutely bone-chilling.
I absolutely hate the video game/scp type lore. The Backrooms were supposed to be this mysterious inter dimensional place you could only access by accident, it isn't supposed to be documented in detail. But now there's almod water scattered along all the levels, with how the Backrooms are documented it sounds like people can just casually walk in and out and there's civilisations forming in the backrooms that have Internet and electricity, like.. wtf is that? It Complete takes away the terror, mystery and uncertainty of the Backrooms.
I tend to be an anti-entity liminal space enjoyer, (I find them peaceful and having a horrible monster that wants to do unspeakable things to me would probably interrupt that.) but I am impressed with the amount of work and detail that goes into this kinda thing
I agree it is peaceful with just the liminal space, but I hate when other people hate on the backrooms just because it has entities. Just let people have their fun.
I love how the backrooms has levels, but I feel like people are trying to one-up each other constantly with every level. And while I love the monsters, some are just, a little goofy. But I still love what The Backrooms has become, I just wish most of the levels weren't just people shoving as many monsters as possible into one level. Other than those, everything else is good.
@@adnanassaf350 no on the fandom you can write whatever you want but on the wikidot you can’t really make a level all of the levels are made by a profesional writers
@@ryanfleshbourne3547 yeah but what I mean is that there are editors and people who work for the wikidot who make sure that levels are well made and that there are no grammatical errors
The later Backrooms levels make video game logic a lot more prevalent with "spawning" items, almond water and it's magical healing properties, things being considered loot and resources rather than physical items with individual significance, sanity being a gauge rather than an incredibly complex concept, hub areas with other people and shops etc.
I think the backrooms being based off of "noclipping" naturally leads to this direction. Simulation theory and video game logic are kind of the roots of the idea I think.
@@quinnandvalor9657 what made the backrooms cool and interesting originally was thinking about it happening in real life with real logic. Writing about it as if its a video game with survival mechanics and resource management is not interesting from a writing standpoint and makes it so people like me cant get invested in them
yeah it genuinely just flat out ruins the backrooms. its not supposed to have safezones, its not supposed to help you out magically by giving you exactly the right countermeasures to any given situation on any given level, its not meant to have researchers that explain every little behavior and detail of an entity, its not meant to be understood or made easier to understand in any sense, so its just so incredibly lame now. a majority of backrooms levels nowadays are, often in more ways than just one, exactly like what the OP described in their comment, and it totally takes away the surrealism and terror of what youre supposed to be reading. theres an old level that used to be on the website used in this video, but i guess it was removed - it was like level 28 or something, no higher than 30, and it was called the Woodrooms. i dont remember the details of it exactly, but thats honestly the best part, because the author left a lot of the level up to your own interpretation. there were no poorly written addendums of humans encountering entities, it didnt tell you what entities were roaming or how to avoid them, it didnt mention any safezone civilization landmarks, it was just this dangerous, unknown, unmarked, unexplored, smelly, dark, wooden attic with weak floors that you could fall through and into other levels. thats it. and i loved it for that simplicity
Backrooms be like "Few people have escaped this level. Here's a completely thorough and accurate description of layout, entities, physical properties- by the way, this level hasn't been explored much- square mileage, furniture, edible and toxic substances, symptoms from consuming the substances- No guys, seriously, this is _so_ dangerous that few people escape this level. Stop laughing. Where was I? Oh yeah, day/night cycles, ecosystems, smooth jazz..."
Man, some of these entries _really_ make me miss the SCP Foundation's enforced writing standards. "There are also alligator entities, which have remained unnamed." NO THEY HAVEN'T. YOU JUST NAMED THEM. THEY'RE CALLED "ALLIGATOR ENTITIES." The Backrooms are so frustrating to me because they come *so* close to being cool and scary, but always manage to steer away just before they get there.
You know the joke that cops were guys who couldn't pass the physical to get into the military? And that mall cops are guys who couldn't pass the mental to get into the academy? Well it seems backrooms writers are the ones who couldn't pass the writing standards for SCP. Or keep having their "le wacky random" or over the top "mega-keter REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED" SCPs downvoted so they went elsewhere. I can't think of any other way to explain the random almond water and boring "cases with food and water just appear when you're not looking" stuff. They could turn the almond water thing into something actually interesting with just something basic like "water with no chemical additions evaporates at much lower temperatures for unknown reasons", which would then necessitate interesting protective clothing and measures to prevent your skin leeching all your water to the air and food storage solutions that prevent all food drying out completely. I can already see weird developments in chemical additions to water that slow the rate of evaporation while trying to not make it unpalatable, with almond infused water providing a promising effect, though with almonds containing cyanide, dehydration, and therefore rapid intake of almond water to counter it, could prove poisonously fatal. Which could be a common problem in the levels with hotspots. This would even make the ocean level more interesting because the constant evaporation could leave dangerous levels of airborne salt, with the starting room having salt-stalactites from the constantly humid, salty air. Could even have wanderers taking these stalactites and grinding them into the raw salt for dried food preservation, to avoid the water-sapped food issue. On that, it seems there's also little use of anomalous effects for the benefit of wanderers. SCP is great about trying to find potentially useful effects with the SCPs, so why are so much of the backrooms limited to "it has lots of almond water for some reason"? If the buildings are not obeying gravity and stacked curiously, why aren't wanderers bringing climbing gear to reside in the upper, safer levels if the entities are ground-bound? I can already forsee a really interesting Fortree City-like place, with the upper, strangely stacked houses having makeshift bridges between the doors and lowerable ladders for rare ground exploration. The rare constantly active light posts being meeting places with mirrors set up to attempt to extend the light as far as possible. Hell even just something as basic as stealing chairs from the hotel or halls levels to make the habitable office area more comfortable? SCP foundation have the vending machine that can get anything sitting in the staff room because it's useful. Why are almond-water dripping stalactites not being consolidated and purified of minerals to make it drinkable?
The fixation with ridiculous elements such as the almond water being everywhere alongside the “spooky scary” elements, like the random newspapers containing only graphic headlines of mUrDeR and nothing else, along with some of the documents having edgy narrators trying to bait you into reading their stories, like the one in the level 27 (bunker springs) document, all of these things makes everything less immersive and more of an obvious huge creepy-pasta fest. this is legit an SCP like fandom on its infancy.
@@adrigl3371 Yeah. Liminal Archive seems to be better at this, as they have stricter standards for posting stuff. They do have a lot less, but oh well.
The entire premise of the original 4chan post that started "The Backrooms" was *liminal horror.* An area that sits in the back of your head; a place that is never thought of as being empty, yet _is._ The thought of being alone, but not knowing if you truly are. I think the fandoms surrounding it turned it into more of an unregulated horror platform filled with poorly-written monsters and collectible items. It slowly eats away at the original idea, one which was suitable for _maybe_ only a niche community with little expansion, nothing like the ones seen today.
For me the perfect balance would be the original concept mixed with unplaceable sounds heard in the distance behind you. The idea of a completely void liminal space where you feel like there’s something else behind a corner which you never actually see is the perfect kind of scary to me
I agree, although I don’t mind Kane Piexel’s interpretation of the monsters which at least for now ‘seems’ to be that they are people who have gotten lost in the backrooms and have mutated. The monsters are not something inherent to the backrooms but the people before you that never escaped.
@@kiara800 What i like about Kane Piexels interpretation, and that specific theory, is that the back rooms itself an entity your scared of, not just a location for monsters to run around in.
@@kiara800 also in his interpretation the backrooms aren't just something you can survive to the point there's a map of areas with ever more powerful dangerous horror, its bare of necessities its like being warped to the north pole, doesn't treat near 100 percent lethal scenarios like being lost in a vast infinite empty hostile world like an obstacle so much as an end
I always saw The Backrooms as the real-life equivalent of Skyrim's (and other games) clean up room, where clutter, dead bodies and other stuff that "despawn" from the world after some time, end up to be disposed of. And I like to associate this with the feeling of "falling down" when you're almost asleep. But I see it has been expanded quite a lot already.
I KNEW I wasn’t the only one who had the Skyrim cleanup room come to mind! I definitely prefer the idea that the backrooms are this space between reality that was clearly never meant to be discovered, and I’m kinda disappointed that the expanded lore makes me feel like they’re just some parallel universe with animals that evolved to hunt people who fell in. That’s far less interesting than stumbling upon an environment that was never meant to harbor life at all, let alone be traversed. I feel like the entities “living” in such a place would be far more uncanny and almost eldritch in nature too, which would make them far more creepy imo.
While I'm not really a fan of the extended universe and additions to the original "level 1", I love the rare inclusions of an intelligent, friendly, and talkative entity. They seem so cute.
I think the most unrealistic thing about this is the amount of people in fiction that have been into the backrooms on purpose. It sounds like a horrible, horrible experience and something someone would only stumble into.
@@2lizard559 you're right if they were real _and people knew about them_ but the problem with that is if the backrooms were real, literally no one could possibly know about them because it's literally impossible to return from them some people would disappear, and no one would know that they went somewhere, just that they went missing
What can we say, humans jump out of planes for fun. Curiosity is a huge part of human nature, plus a lot of people might not fully understand the horrors and danger within the back rooms. so it’s not that surprising that a few hundred people would intentionally go to the backrooms.
As a fellow almond allergic comrade, I’d like to recruit likeminded anti-almonders to hardcore nuzlocke the backrooms with me. Any % speedrun. No almond. Where we no-clipping boys?
First, we take a crate from Floor 2 and do a long-jump through a specific type of wall. This will have us clip out of the world and fall directly into Floor 16... Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-yaaaaa-HOOOOO
From my memory, Other than the fact that There seems to be some sort of secret regarding it the safest place for people allergic to the almond water is Level 27
As cool as the BackRooms are the further you go the more reality should break down to a point where you can't understand what youre seeing. This feels too human.
That makes a lot of sense, which is why I like The Shady Gray a lot, as the further you go in that level, the more reality distorts, to the point in which you die from being there
Agreed. Everything feels too human, too familiar due to being like video game levels, and too afraid to get really weird. It could have been incredible, but no one wants to make up a level where there's no sound, the walls are static and the floor is a red carpet that goes on forever, and everything is spirals and you can feel your pulse in your eyelids as you get closer to the exit but then the floor twists and gravity flips and now you're on the ceiling and the exit is far away again. Instead it's just "and then scary dog-monsters try to eat you".
@@morganqorishchi8181the problem is, the back rooms is too torn between stories. What would make the perfect story/lore is the idea that the rooms themselves “learn” from reality and try to recreate reality through each level or room. The perfect compromise to allow the back rooms lore to grow is to explain away the levels of what we can’t comprehend. The way to do this is to have each level where it’s just static or an environment and beings that we can’t comprehend be a backrooms level or room but in its infancy. A developing backrooms level but in the infant stage of development since theoretically it is the space is indefinite.
The problem with this is that humans can only think and make things up by experience or imagination therefore the un understandable or un humane feel is impossible because of the fact humans made the story up
This reminds me a lot of early days on the SCP wiki. When dozens of people would fight over a certain scp number and everyone wanted to make apocalyptic monsters that somehow all couldn’t be contained
Literally, reading through the backrooms articles is sadly like reading a 14 year old's fanfics on some random website. Every single SCP on the other hand fits within the universe and is extremely well though out and described.
The almond water was already silly, but once there was so many mentions of "this and that was reported, survivors tend to gather here" etc., It lost a lot of the horror factor for me. It was interesting, but not nearly as scary. I think a part of what makes the "vanilla" backrooms experience so horrifying to me is: 1) The unknowns. You don't know how you got there, or how to get out, or the passage of time. You find "exits" but they actually are red herrings and so don't know if there IS a conventional exit. 2) You are there alone. The space the backrooms fills is either infinite or ridiculously huge, so even if other people are falling in the chances of you running into eachother is basically nil. 3) Helplessness. Because of the similar and repetitive surroundings, you can't tell if you're actually making any progress towards getting anywhere. There is no one to ask for help, and no logical way to go about finding an exit. Just neverending exploration. One or two monsters are okay, but not necessary for the spooks. And I'm also fine if it's the "you never get hungry, or thirsty, or need to sleep" lore because it adds onto the horror of not knowing if there is any passage of time.
Level 60: "... Many wanderers come here to wash their clothes." FFS Yeah. This _specific_ set of lore is rather annoyingly written. Less about the psychological themes of the original, and more about "coming up with weird things that people interact with". I mean, it's fine.. but not what I was expecting when looking for the backrooms.
To me.. The backrooms is supposed to challenge our instinctive sense of reality. We sit confident about how things work, and then this unnatural place just flies in the face of it. It gives that same sensation as when you were a child and staring into the darkness of your room at night, or at the bottom of the basement stairs. Or that wonder you experience when looking into an unknown dense forest. As adults, we conquer this through knowledge and understanding. Even things we don't know.. there's an unsaid "yet". We "know" that everything "can be explained". Things like SCP and The Backrooms challenges that. It makes us feel unmoored, drifting, no longer confident. This wiki, the more floors we go, the more explanations given, the more it feels like SCP mobile taskforce "wish fulfillment" stories. It departs from that feeling. It honestly kind of starts with "almond water".
Not too familiar with current lore, but I'd be fine with... Say, a secret company actually exploiting an entry into the backrooms, but all you see (if you come across their setup at all) is something that wouldn't be out of place in there: notes of their research, computers working, but again no one's there. Like all of a sudden something just took any people working there. No buildup, no nothing. Hell, no notes even, just an investigation camp, but it's so randomly placed that a protagonist wouldn't be able to tell whether it's part of the backrooms or not.
That's actually a really good writing/story tactic. Adding little moments of normalcy in a wholly alien experience actually helps prevent that "getting used to it" feeling. It reminds you what normal is, and re-accentuates how unreal this place is. And since there's no one to interact with, you feel almost more alone than before.
yeah i like this concept of ppl gathering but some ppl act like it has to be this hardcore game like "THIS LEVEL HAS 38292629022836 ENTOTIES RUNNING AFTER YOU AND YOU HAVE TO RUN FAST TO ESCAPE!!!!!!" (yes, i am talking abt level !)
I’m at lvl 92 in your video and I gotta say the whole vaguely horrifying idea of the back rooms is gone for me. It loses a lot of the scariness and dread when there’s so many different lvls and areas that are detailed, full of descriptions and lore. Some even read like an off-brand scp article. Great video tho I’m sure the effort put into a video of this length is insane. Just wish I didn’t lose intrigue of the topic
but imagine as though it is barely discovered and that there are hundreds of explorers that might have seen something new, possibly great news, but they can’t report it
@@maxsync183 the "creators" (two seperate anons, one posting a liminal photo and the other trying to create a copypasta along with it) couldn't have possibly expected this response from it. Even if they thought it would become a classic /x/ SCP style phenomenon they limited the canon to: "Nothing but" the original photo. also your username is similar to that of Axxyl, so your opinion is invalid.
Love The BackRooms. This version Might not have that original feeling that the community had in the Early days, but isn’t that kinda perfect for Liminal Horror? That feeling exists in our memories now, that version that made you feel “that way” is still there, in your head; And it will always be there, no matter how much people add to the wiki.
looking into it, a lot of these are surprisingly unimaginative and repetitive, everyone wants their level to be a dangerous entity-filled mystery to the point where the only ones that stand out are the levels that are peaceful or seem like different liminal space worlds.. you know, like the original one. Things like the entity names or mysteries that always end in "but its unknown" just feel like an incredibly boring version of scp made by people trying to be edgy.
Yeah, and the constant spam of "X material/thing/object cannot be identified" is really repetitive, not to mention pointless because the fact that it isn't being described already implies it is unknown. Like surely past level 5 it has been established that things just are the way they are sometimes, so why do they keep pointing it out every single time?
@@karhu7581 personally I think writing communities like this and scp are great opportunities for aspiring writers looking to refine their talent but it ultimately restricts the material in the long run until everything has to be pointless and unknown to protect its status as a writing community… unlike scp, however, theres significantly less that can be created with the backrooms. The fact that these things always delve into a set rulebook on lore or canon items and facts should automatically imply the existence of a lacking substance or payoff for any interest. People are interested because they want to know more, instead of masterfully hinting at a rising storyline or explanation the backrooms projects ultimately prove that unless your here for unsolved and half-baked mysteries for the sake of mysteries- theres little for you. Its a neat project but its already deep into suffocating its potential, its an armory of chekhov’s guns designed to never fire.
Agreed. It’s why if I attempt to write within the SCP canon that I try and make content and characters that can be known and identified. It’s all well and good when some things are unknown, but it stops being special when everything is unknown.
I was honestly giggling a bit by the time I got to level... 10, I think? I mean, part of it is that I'm not really afraid of liminal spaces (they mostly just make me feel like exploring), but a lot of these are just painfully overwritten, with a strong emphasis on making every level the MOST DANGEROUS AND MYSTERIOUS PLACE EVAR. Something a lot of newbie horror writers don't seem to understand is that stuff like the unidentifiable tar that kills you on contact are really, really boring, since there's no real way to use that stuff in a story other than "someone touched the stuff, and now they are dead." Like, no-one looks at a pit full of industrial-strength acid and goes "we should dive into that to see what's on the bottom!" You need to give people SOME reason to actually want to "no-clip" into the Backrooms if your lore is going to be framed as "this is what people have seen when they've gone exploring". EDIT: Heck, I feel like a lot of these "levels" would be stronger writing-wise if they were WAY smaller.
i agree, i like the backrooms bute theyre... poorly written, when hearing the descriptions i always think more about the largeness of it, the subtle anxiety i get comes more so when thinking "how long is it gonna take" or "will i get lost?" instead of being scared by the death traps and dangerous entities
"Level 19 has... a fantastic set of revisions built into the document that I suggest you read" As the author of said Level 19, that makes me very happy to hear, nice video!!!
Over an hour in and after getting a feel for how these folks frame the backroom entries I want to throw my hat into the ring. MEG entry #246 - Backroom “Placeholder 0” [Redacted] See revised entry. The revised entry for Backroom “Placeholder 0” is as follows: Upon initial entry, the team found themselves in a drab yellow room with flickering fluorescent lights. Team Leader Alpha expressed frustration towards the lead navigator for leading them back towards the familiar level 0, which turned out to be a mere facade. As the teams progressed, the paths became increasingly familiar, and they experienced a shared uneasiness. They were plagued by false memories and hallucinations that caused paranoia and insanity, leading to a breakdown in team cohesion. One member of Team Bravo described entering a hallway where she saw another woman's legs in place of her own. She was wearing soaked tennis shoes instead of overboots, and the walls looked the same. It was then that she realized this level was not level 0. Overcome by exhaustion, she collapsed against the wall and began sinking into it, experiencing a foul stench and a strange fungus that blackened the body she was now inhabiting. She felt like months went by, during which time she decayed, but her eyes always remained. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't draw breath into her rotten lungs. She stared up into the light and found her partner striking her in the shoulder to grab her attention. They told her she stood for a few seconds and then began convulsing and screaming before returning to reality. The team's attempt to map the level ended shortly after this incident. Physical examinations revealed that the team members had aged unnaturally, ranging from several months to decades in the most extreme case. Team Leader B was shortly entered into the psychiatric ward, where he described decades of death and decay, and never experienced psychological improvement. It is theorized that this floor is composed of all the paths that have been walked by its unfortunate victims who never found their way out. This level remains unnamed, and caution is advised when exploring other levels and finding oneself in a familiar place. I got tired of the lack of psychological horror which is what makes the backrooms so interesting to me.
I feel like the Backrooms represents different kinds of issues we humans have. The first level represents the dull, boxed-in feeling of hopelessness many of us have in things like typical 9-5 office jobs. The level with the childhood memories represents childhood trauma, etcetera. You get my point.
I personally like to think there are 3 seperate Backrooms canons and I treat them all as their own things. There's the original Backrooms with no lore outside the post, the Wikidot Backrooms (this one) which is like a liminal space SCP alternative, and the Kane Pixels Backrooms which are fantastic seriously go check them out
Yeah same, I love the original backrooms, but I also love seeing concepts that the community comes up with. I treat them as separate canons and Kane Pixels' backrooms are so cool.
Personally, I view the original backrooms and the newer backrooms as two separate entities (no pun intended). The lore makes it interesting, and some of the monsters are cool too. I also like the idea of just a bunch of rooms, slowly driving you insane as you try to get out, scared of the fact that there is nothing. I don't mind the entities but sometimes it's too much. But to each their own.
Honestly, the community building on the Backrooms kind of ruined it, because the strongest part about the Backrooms was the vast gulf of unknowns. Making it a 100floor system with things living there turns it from some strange glitch in the fabric of reality that you can get stuck in to just another ecosystem, but this time made of drywall, carpet, and florescent lights. An ecosystem is understandable. A truly liminal space is not. And the unknowable is more terrifying than the knowable.
this is the thing for me you shouldn't be meeting anyone apart from a monster or two, and even then it ought to be rare certainly not enough to have been able to set up research on the floors and monsters
the ultimate goal of the extended lore* isn't exclusively horror, though? like yeah, it's aiming to be at least a little creepy, but i think the draw of the extended lore for a lot of people is the fact that it's a synthetic ecosystem, giving it a strongly dream-like feeling. it's still an interesting concept, whether you're scared by it or not, which is why so many people are still interested. if you want "real" or "good" horror that caters to you, i'm sure you can find it somewhere else. *extended lore referring to everything added to the "canon" after the original 4chan post
I think the parallels between liminal spaces (specifically the backrooms) and the book house of leaves are really interesting in their obsession with endless malicious "buildings"; not to mention similar works of fiction like the etchings of Piranesi that go way back to the 1700s. Why have humans always been so obsessed with non functional man made spaces? really cool stuff and I'm happy to see the backrooms with such a large fanbase.
Jacob Geller has a great video about this concept! I think it’s called “Control, Anatomy, and the ____ of the haunted house” (can’t remember the middle word) you might like it if you’ve not yet seen it!
There is a really good book named “Piranesi” that is inspired by the etchings of Piranesi, and it focuses on the premise of endless halls of man made things that will never get used! I would recommend it :)
I know its a death destination, but I think it'd be pretty chill to blaze up in the backrooms, especially in the vast areas where it makes you feel small. Though the claustrophobic areas would be good to hotbox, they're usually the most unnerving, can't help but feel like a big abstract monster will peak out at you in said small areas and really freak you out.
I find myself wishing that these levels were linked together more coherently. Especially in the later levels, they very much expose that they're levels written by dozens of individuals with little, in any, linkages to one another. I end up wanting a more defined 'entrance' and 'exit' for each level, or some in between layer in which one level begins to bleed into the next, like the earlier levels mostly have.
I think it’s mostly because the earlier levels are SUPPOSED to link together, one by one. It’s level 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, instead of level 11, 103, 163, 19, 158, and so on. I think this is just me, but since the backrooms is close to the edge of reality, it seems better to have the less stable levels to have strange entrances and exits.
Yeah it makes no sense why to enter level 30 you have to no clip from level 843. Like how did the canon organizations like meg name it level 30 if there were already 800 discovered levels.
All of the "monsters" resemble some sort of humanity (smiles "like" light, hounds often have 4 limbs and a generally human appearance, etc etc), so I really like the theory that they were once humans. They were people who wandered in, or fell in, and couldn't get out. They were corrupted by and became the very thing they were running from.
Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea that the backrooms “corrupts” wanderers over time and turns them into these creatures if they don’t find the exit in time. Heck, creatures like Insanities and Partygoers are confirmed on the wiki to BE people!
I think the idea of just backrooms itself with only one level and no enemies is way more scary. Just imagine being stuck there. There is not true or false or dead or alive. It´s just infinite rooms walls and lights. The fear of being forgotten...
The backrooms is such an interesting concept because of literally infinite possibilities you can explore with it. Hell, if you wanted to you could make a level that is entirely random with features no one could ever imagine and everyone would love it. There’s so much you can do with an idea like this.
Personally I think indie horror fans ruined “the backrooms.” It always got its fear factor from the fact that you were alone. Liminal spaces are supposed to be a place in between, somewhere in the back of your mind. They aren’t supposed to be some scary place with monsters, but a space devoid of meddling and organisms.
I get your point, but on the other hand: If it's just being stuck alone in endless corridors forever, that's kinda... dull? Like, there isn't much you can do with that, creatively speaking.
@@RelativelyBest Exactly. There is not alot you can do with that and there is nothing you should do with that. Leave things up to your imagination as often as possible.
I imagine this version of backrooms as "horrible architecture and design moving people to insanity". Really makes me appreciate environment designers irl.
@@rokyhawk6753 That's the thing, though: This is what happens when you "leave it up to imagination" - people start getting creative. Writers abhor a narrative vacuum, so if you show them an infinite space of creepy empty corridors, they'll be compelled to put stuff into it. Otherwise, there's no story to tell.
Especially in a later Level where you can obtain either Almond water or regular water from a thing, yet the water is safe to drink without a given reason
This could easily be a game similar to Yume Nikki, with multiple levels to explore and different random ways to traverse from one place to another. Heck, Yume 2kki is already close to this idea, as it's incredibly expansive and is also a massive collaborative project with people creating their own areas. I would love to see something like this get made. On another note, if possible, I'm interested to see what G-Mod maps you used. Fantastic idea using them for some visuals, it made the video a lot more interesting, even if some didn't quite match up with each level.
I listen to this video while I try to sleep every night, not only is this a big relief for my insomnia but I also love imagining how every place looks and event takes place while I try to sleep. All this mixed with Sagan's soothing voice is a godsend for me
Whenever you add monsters it just losses its meaning. I see the backrooms as some sort of limbo. A place to wander for eternity with yourself alone with no way to escape such desolate place.
Kind of agree. I think the very original concept of the backrooms was good enough on its own, and while the embellishments can be fine on their own, their addition tends to detract more from the original concept than they add.
I agree, though I feel a good exception to this is spook’s jumpscare mansion. Because while monsters are added as you move further, it’s not just to be scary, since each specimen is a love letter to the horror genre
The only existence of monsters should be ones you never see. Only scary, inhuman sounds just out of sight. The idea that a monster MIGHT be in the same purgatory as you is more scary than actually seeing and running from a monster.
Adding monsters really just make this very mundane, the backrooms are all about neverending loneliness, adding monsters and other people really defeats that.
I love public writing projects like this and SCP, but I genuinely wish that The Backrooms remained just the original image and explanation. The imagined horror of doing something as simple as tripping into the wrong wall and then being trapped in a purgatory that was not just infinite and inescapable but so mind numbingly bland until you likely die of starvation or dehydration feels somehow more overwhelming than this creepypasta monster factory.
@@gummypusswatterson1322 there are many, cause 1 cannon is that ONLY level 0 is the only level of the backrooms atleast the only confirmed level, theres an other cannon that is only the first 9 levels, with the rest being unconfirmed
Would be amazing to have a backrooms MMORPG covering a lot of levels and entities to discover. Just imagine diving into this distorted reality with VR. It would be so cool.
I found the Backrooms to be a relatively fun concept to think and meme about with some decent horror in it, but it currently feels like 'baby's first SCP'. It feels like theres significantly less quality control for a lot of things. Sure, there are good things in it, I can't deny that, but it just feels like 'Community Made Horror content by kids' instead of for kids.
I see it as the opposite, there's far more potential in the Backrooms than there is with SCP. SCP became laughably oversaturated and trust me... Plenty of SCP fans and contributors are edgy kids adding op monsters for the sake of making them op. There's such a thing as too much suspension of disbelief . The idea of some computer based infinite hellscape that takes aspects of the real world and turns them into an inescapable limbo gives me vibes of an AI gone mad. There's multiple references to computer programming in the Backrooms that no kid would know about while modern SCP seems to be content to co-opt any horror creation without permission from the creator. Such as any of Trevor Henderson's creations or the entirety of r/imsorryjon
am i missing something? is SCP supposed to be for children? there’s very little quality control in community projects because of the lack of a top-down structure and almost no barrier to entry. it’s just a feature of the medium.
@@dirkechoes1377 …Perhaps you’ve only read early SCP? Most of the modern day SCPS written are of SIGNIFICANTLY higher quality and originality then the older ones, and I’ve never seen one of the so called “co-opts” that you mention after like, series 4
@@El_Slugo yeah, later scp is so so good!!!!! maybe it's because i've read more of them, but -3000 entries in PARTICULAR absolutely slap. not a day goes by that i don't think of 3999 or 3001. and the apotheosis and there is no antimemetics division canons are genuinely some of the best things on that site, apotheosis is CRIMINALLY underrated also, hot take, but i'd gladly read some edgy 15 y/os attempt at a creative writing project over a lot of scp writers, who're 30 y/os trying WAYYYY too hard for clout and bullying everyone who dislikes them off the site
I love the concept of the backrooms but I find that more as more people try to make more concepts for it it makes it less and less scary. The fear that stems from the backrooms is the unknown and isolation not the monsters. I hate that they had to add entities to such an interesting horror concept.
The space itself was the horror. Creepy entities and spaces with tacked on anomalous properties is just straight up not in line with the original concept. The levels that featured them felt closer to SCP entries.
I think a lot of it was people adding uncreative rooms not fully suited for the backrooms. There’s a ton of 14 year olds popping out back rooms levels without actually putting proper thought into it, without understanding how the backrooms is so terrifying because of that psychological effect like in the first level. I think the concept of having entities is super cool, as well as multiple levels, but people should put a lot more thought and care mixed with creativity when making backrooms levels.
@@Doku666 honestly yeah, most back rooms levels are just based off liminal pictures and that’s what makes me more mad, it’s lazy and not fleshed out. It has always been about psychological horror, but people ruined it by adding 100+ entities, I feel like just 1 or 2 would be fine
I've seen lots of people giving the Backrooms fandom flack for being some kind of "budget" SCP wiki. What a lot of them forget is that when the SCP mythos started out it also had quality issues stemming from there being a lot of junk on the site and a complete absence of quality control. It took the SCP wiki years to refine it's formula and figure out what tone the myths should take, people don't realize that figuring out what works and what doesn't takes a lot of throwing stuff at the wall which is why some Backrooms concepts might seem poorly thought out. It's all just a matter of people figuring out the proper formula and tone for this mythos.
The only problem that I have with some Backrooms articles (mostly from the wikidot), is that they sometimes try WAY too damn hard to be SCP. *Especially* the format-screwing. My God, sometimes it just feels sooooo unnecessary, because the writing for the article itself just doesn't hold up. *"All style, no substance"* sort of thing.
Also the whole wanderlust scp series scandal was a huge stepping stone in cleaning up the scp wiki. I sincerely hope the backrooms doesn't have a scandal like that, but I do hope they get to refine their stories and create a whole new interesting internet anthology to enjoy. At the end of the day its more horror content which I'm always down for!
and ngl the scp foundation STILL struggles with quality control, but imo in the opposite direction -- people with a lot of seniority are given basically free reign to write whatever, which results in a lot of them pumping out some of the worst articles the site's had within recent memory and being praised for it. scp 3000 really only got its slot because it was written by djkaktus, who has a long history w/in the site, when the next 3 articles + 3999 deserved the placement MUCH more
Tbh there is some truth to it, which is why it's so goddamn hard to write anything for the wiki nowadays (an author of several failed attempts, possibly never succeeding) the backrooms wiki still has it's "anyone can add to it but it's actually true" which is also it's own problem, still i prefer the og, this just tries too hard to be the next scp wiki
Here's the thing. SCP's original premise is ideal for a wiki. They are a bureaucratic organisation, cataloguing the anomalies. You are essentially reading their database. You're seeing them through the lens of scientists attempting to organize the mess. You have access to what they've managed to learn. With Backrooms, the idea of an organized wiki contradicts the premise. They are established as almost impossible to survive, impossible to return from, with people mostly entering there by chance and at best organizing themselves by chance. And yet here we have a group that feels as comfortable in the Backrooms as the Foundation in their own base. But we are still supposed to believe those levels, despite being so well-travelled, remain dangerous. And that despite the overwhelming supposed lethality and unpredictability, those people have time and resources to not just survive, but map all the thousands of infinite levels. My point is, the Backrooms, if they try to follow the SCP formula, are physically incapable of being as good as SCP, because that very formula is unfit for the concept of backrooms. They are only using it because the writers have all grown up reading SCP.
What's funny is that the first message board posts expanding the lore of the Backrooms to reference "water that smells like almonds" were meant to imply the water was laced with cyanide. But somehow, via collaboration and people bouncing lore ideas off each other, that original reference to almond-smelling water developed and flipped on its head and became a concept of a healing item.
I wish this was a thing when I was a kid because my sister and I would have definitely gone around looking for entrances, and then pretend we were in the backrooms every time we were in some empty place lol
@@user-hr1uw4cj2z Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean you can't have fun! Imagine what you'd like have fun on your own, its your life! And if people judge you because "YOurE aN AdUlT, YoU CaNT AcT LiKe A ChIlD" just can't find the fun, either because they don't want to, or just love to ruin people's day for seemingly no reason
The backrooms used to terrify me but now I'd love it. Just chilling out, no other people, no current events, just the comforting hum of florescent lights and the musty smell of moldy carpet.
Dude the poolrooms have to be the best one tbh. It’s so relaxing.. imagine being there with a computer and access to internet as well as music… literal heaven
I'm watching and kinda hoping that one of these just straight up starts describing how the level exists in hyperbolic space and the myriad effects that that has on traversal. Like "yeah, make sure you're in a perfect single file queue, or else you will lose each other, and try not to look too closely at the squares with five sides."
@@HoneeyMoth you’re kind of disregarding what he said, he said no monsters. What you’re saying is “something.” A monster in this case is referring to a named entity like a smiler or a party goer which is way less threatening then something as mysterious and elusive as “something.” In short, there were no monsters because there was nothing to put a name to, only the possibility of whatever you may be unlucky enough to find or not find, and that is much scarier then a named and known monster.
@@blothamus7565 ah fair enough. i will say while the backrooms are less scary with named crap *especially with names like “partygoers” or “coders”*, it is interesting to see the depths of how far the rabbit hole of backrooms content goes but i totally see the purist perspective even if i personally don’t enjoy it that much, maybe you do, i’m not you, you’re not me, so let’s just bring attention to the based Stanley parable profile picture
@@HoneeyMoth Okay, you realise that's better than knowing there's a monster, right? There's ambiguity behind it, not just *"On floor 4(10^30) there's Shadowedge the Hedgehog, who is NOT A KNOCKOFF OF SHADOW. He will defenestrate your spleen if you don't drink approximately 146ml of Almond water and manage to finish a game of chess against yourself before he gets to you."* The original works because you don't actually know if something is in there. They never outright confirm it, or go into excruciating detail about all their edgy OC characters and factions abilities, it's just there.
One thing I love about the backrooms in general is just how much it embraces the weirdness of working in a corporate office. There really are rooms that just randomly smell off or hallways that seem to lead to nowhere so it just all meshes really well
I like to put the back rooms lore into 3 categories: 1) The original one, no entities(?) just yellow halls 2) Backrooms extended (LV 0-2 + few entities) 3)Backrooms expanded universe (the big one)
@CHUBBYTHERAT those were made after the original 4chan post that category 1 originates from by a differentncreator, although thenog post dows allude to some sort of creature with itsnfinal statement
I find the concept of many levels pretty interesting, but I agree with the majority that this doesn't really capture the true nature of the backrooms. This version has a totally different feel, it's more like an SCP. It's a combination of scary, weird, harmless, and harmful rather than the straight up terrifying death trap version of Kane's backroom series. Don't get me wrong, this version is very intriguing. It's familiar, yet alien in how expansive it is. And it makes me want to wonder how these rooms exist, why they exist, and does it keep going infinitely? Are the outdoor scenes on another planet, or are the skies just walls, sooo many questions.
@@pigeonite Weird thing to criticize.... but ok? The backroom's origin is from one small post on 4chan, which describes the endless yellow wallpaper, and implying that a creature lurks there. That's all that is said. Kane's series is more aligned with the story of the original photo, a faithful interpretation of the backrooms. That's what I meant by true nature. Kane's version is far more mysterious like the 4chan post. This 100 level storyline is too heavily explained, and it loses the fearful liminal nature that it was intended to be
@@sketchalater4656 nobody knows what it was intended to be because the poster was anonymous so there isn't really a "true nature" is all I'm saying lmao
@@pigeonite wow you sound so arrogant. it seems somewhat clear to me that the original backrooms post was intended to have the same effect as slenderman, smile dog, jeff the killer, etc. in that it’s just a spooky idea someone thought up to freak people out (who are willing to be freaked out by it). the concept that one day you could ‘noclip’ out of reality and become lost in an infinite maze of yellow rooms and halls within which hostile monster(s) roam which will harm you is pretty spooky. don’t act like an authority on things you have zero inside knowledge on. you weren’t the original poster, you know nothing about it’s intent or true nature or whether there was any to begin with. saying “there isn’t really a “true nature” lmao” is a most ridiculous statement from someone with no ties to the subject at hand.
@@floomfwastaken ??? and you're implying you have any more authority in saying there was a definitive intention for it to be anything specific ???? by the end you basically just repeated my point back to me so I don't really understand what you're going for with this
SCP is scary because anything can be dangerous. A infinite IKEA store, a enormous sea serpent, a unlikable lizard hellbent on mass Genocide, or a mask that forces you to put it on so it can possess you. The Backrooms is just a bunch of circle jerk repetitive floor plus a monster here or there B.S. It was a glitch in reality, a mistake that you fell into that you shouldn’t have, now it’s just a Raid Shadow Legends tower that you have to clear to return home💀
I think this concept is cool but alot of the levels are ruined because of inconsistency. 70% of the levels should be thrown out or just need to be changed alot for the back rooms to have the eerie horror feel we get when seeing Kane pixels found footage videos.
Now, this may sound like an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked it when the Backrooms consisted of just 1 to 3 levels during back when it was still fresh and new. All these additional levels kinda detract from what the Backrooms was originally supposed to be about, that being the fear of isolation and not knowing if there's anyone but you out there. And if there was somebody out there, were they friendly or not?
the spirit of a new horror fad always quickly changes. See: Slender Man, video game piracy screens, creepypasta, .EXE games, etc. I roll with it nowadays, and only latch on after the idea starts kicking off in a direction I like. backrooms started great, and now has entirely more plot than I would prefer. I mean, Hell should stay unexplained, your brain fills in details and theories better than an established lore could.
I like to imagine that the universe, when it renders new things, it makes mistakes and sends those things to a place that can hold these things without people noticing. And sometimes, it accidentally mistakes people and they slip into that place, and the reason it’s so hard to return back to the frontrooms is because the backrooms are made to be inescapable so the universe doesn’t have to deal with these mistakes leaking back into reality.
i think these are super interesting but could benefit a lot from losing the scientific-paper esque writing. journals and notes from wanderers would serve the universe a lot better, i think. either way, though, that's just my opinion and i do think it serves plenty of the levels well. i love the memories one, the detail about the childhood pets really creeped me out. the futuristic halls one is really cool as well, especially the unidentified corpses everywhere. the roller rink one was just plain charming to me, too, lol.
Yeah, the emotionless Wikipedia-esque style really isn't doing this any favors. More human moments like seeing your childhood pets or the guy who wrote a letter stood out, but a lot of the levels really suffer from the scientific paper stylization, as you can't get any kind of read on what the vibe is actually like for people in it. Maximum creepy is best achieved by giving the reader an idea of what it feels like to be in a place, rather than by reading out menu options of other worlds.
I love just hearing the names of some of these entities out of context. Sagan say smth like "skin stealers" and "death moths" and I just have to deal with that. Incredible.
Started out as an interesting idea, rapidly turned into a list of indie horror video game levels with supply drops, monsters and spaces that have nothing to do with the original concept of liminal spaces. The in-depth lore, exploration and total lack of isolation and mystery sucked all the horror out of this horror premise pretty quickly.
This descent has to be the exact opposite of how a giant squid feels in the ocean sometimes. The squid goes UP, encounters unfamiliar terrain, noise, pressure, colors, water, and an enormous plethora of potentially deadly creatures-most of which will leave you alone or investigate you, but some of which actively hunt you and suck you into their unfamiliar and terrifying world with hooks, lines, and boats where you’re probably going to die, or at best they’ll take something from you and throw you back where you came from
i feel like everything interesting and creepy about the backrooms got immedietly defeated by how populated by creatures they are. the threat of something ~maybe~ lurking around the corner in a massive liminal space is way scarier then that thing being a weird dog or a floating smile. its like that feeling of a horror movie revealing its monster in the first 5 minutes, it takes something essential to horror, the unknown out of the equation
There are many kinds of horror. I wouldn't call "the unknown" essential for all horror. You can absolutely reveal the monster immediately and it still be horrifying.
@@zionwingmaster Fear of the unknown still plays a huge part when something is only partially shown. If you know everything about a threat, that becomes an action/thriller rather than a horror story.
speaking as a writer whose favorite part of the process is worldbuilding, this entire video is fascinating; I really had no idea the backrooms was such an expansive collaborative world ! Thanks for compiling all this information !!
thats what some people dont realise, the backrooms may not be the same as it was a few years ago, but there are still really good concepts in the idea, with each level being its own personalised experience with great worldbuilding
Finally a sentiment I can agree with, people keep comparing the Backrooms to SCP saying it’s not as good as SCP. I believe part of that (and I do mean part of it) has to do with SCP being around much longer and is what many people are familiar with and grew up with. Sure they’re both similar but they both have their own flaws and both have their differences. I personally like the Backrooms more due to the complex world building, detailed environments and creative ecosystems. That’s not to say SCP doesn’t have that but it’s not the main focus where as it’s the backbone for the Backrooms wikidot. I do like both for different reasons and both are interesting, I also understand people not liking one or the other but it’s very tiring seeing others compare what is and isn’t good in their subjective opinion just because they don’t like something😮💨
Finally a comment i can agree. I came to this video because i like how expansive the backrooms has become but all the other comments are just people complaining, like, one person complaining isnt bad but the entire comment section is just that, it just starts becoming obnoxious. Thank you for making this comment, it feels like fresh air
Hearing all these floors I’ve noticed a trend in many authors using the term “Non-Euclidian geometry” as a reason to why it is difficult to map these floors, although the mathematician in me wants to clarify that non-Euclidean geometry is in reference to any geometry on a curved surface, so technically all our geometry is non-Euclidean.
If that's the case, than you guys got any other "cooler" terms for this type of geometry, because all I've got is *"Dimensional Transcendentalism"* from Dr Who, but that doesn't really role off the tongue quite as well. Any other ideas??
Dude, you've been at this for 8 years, and I just want to say you're doing really well. You got my sub today. Wishing you a billion or more before you're done. 💖
The fact that someone can say how big some of these spaces are (like how many MILLIONS of square miles) kills the concept by itself. Not to mention all the other dumb shit like almond water
ong like the whole thing with the original was that it was that one space and it just kept going. nobody knew how big it was, just that it went on and on and there was no way out. a simple but also not simple concept which left lots up to ur own imagination. now we got super mario levels in here😭
Yeah, i think the whole almond water concept should be tossed out the window, its like mushrooms in mario bros, they are there just to give you an advantage, simply for you and to serve no other purpose, honestly a lot of backrooms levels were made like its a video game, theres no logical reason for almond water to be there, the easiest fix would just to be have like, house type levels have water fountains for normal water, like any normal house in the real world and places like arcades to have lots of sodas and stuff like that, it should just have the normal things that a place in the real world should have but minus the entities i guess, almond water fountains really breaks the immersion
That just means this shit is getting documented by a group of people. I was thinking something of the same thing like "who the hell is even documenting this shit? Like is the wiki just a description from it's maker or is the information Itself part of the story? In this case the documented information of the levels by an organization that has figured out a way to explore the levels and make it back to the real world freely traveling back in forth
My problem is, those levels seem like they are always trying to one up one another, ruining any consistency at all. It's also extremely silly that the only elements they chose to keep between the levels are stupid entities and stupid almond water.
yeah, i think there are inconsistencies in the wrong places, like why the hell would most levels have almond water? It makes no sense like 0 vending machines in real life dispense almond water, and its supposed to be like, akin to reality but slightly off, and the almond water just seems like a cheap way for an explanation of how so many survived. And plus like, so many of the backrooms levels seem to be copies of earlier ones, like Roller Rockin pizza copying the Quarter hub, they look so similar, only with very few differences. A level i'll give credit to because it feels like it was well done was definitely Memories cause it kinda emulates the actual concept of liminal spaces, and yeah the sentient plush toy thing is a bit weird but that could showcase how as kids a lot of people believed stuff like barney the dinosaur or other kids tv characters being real
@@kingpig8732 in a way though, doesnt the fact that almond water being so prevalent fit the idea of the backrooms far better than something that does make sense?
@@maxsync183 I get that, but a lot of other things seem to make too much sense, like some stages like the arcade ones (I think it’s roller rink) can serve standard food you’d find there. And yeah there are monsters but that’s just there for the horror purpose, plus almond water having unusual properties like healing bruises and ailments instantly
the newer, fanmade backrooms levels don't really have the same essence that the og ones do. dont get me wrong, the thought and creativity that goes into them is amazing, but i feel like every single one is loaded with entities in order to make it "scary". the concept of the original backrooms was the idea of isolation, the horrors that the human mind can create, and it plays into the fear of the unknown. i love the fanmade levels, but i'd also love to see more levels that play more into psychological horror
honestly yeah I can really relate to this, like I just want a level where it's feels scary and just you swear you can feel something breathing on your neck. or that something is watching you. but you know something isn't there. like I really love horror, and things like the backrooms :(
I actually discovered SCP after I learned about the backrooms. there is something so interesting to be about level 0 of the backrooms. The idea is truly horrifying to me. I have grown to love all of the backrooms levels but level 0 is always what I think of when I think of the backrooms. I have also grown to really love SCP & spend hours listening to narrators talking about them.
@@Ryzard as the video I went on I got less and less scared, the backrooms (level 0) genuinely scare me because of the isolation, but after like 20 I stopped these are like poorly written fan fictions
Im alright with multiple levels, but I wish the backrooms wiki was handled with more scrutiny like the scp wiki. Compared to the scp wiki most of the backrooms wiki works just feel so amateur and unimmersive.
Yes. It is supposed to be a challenge to write a good entry to the SCP wiki. It's supposed to be something to be proud of. An original idea, with clear concise descriptions and simplification without an overexplained mess. It's supposed to be something a writer can sit around for hours thinking about and brainstorming. It's supposed to be something a writer can use to learn and pursue their love for it. Not a free-for-all deathmatch where you can write a jumbled mess of words with half-baked amateur effort and still get it published to the website as an official entry.
level 102039184321874832784327843728 hey guys look its another staircase level but this one is better because theres an entity chasing you the entire time like level !
i feel like the peak of backrooms writing is when the author really gives off the vibe of "youre not supposed to be here" without going hard on the paranormal aspect. authors who add too many entities, make a level far too dangerous, have too many commonplace anomalous properties, or just try too hard to make it scary and interesting in general are always the easiest to spot, since the lack of understanding for what the backrooms is supposed to be is evident. levels like (i havent read backrooms entries in almost 2 years so my memorys hazy) the one in the garage with the noneuclidian pole and fucked up forest trail are insanely good, because not only does it not directly explain to you what to be cautious of, it also doesnt explain why things are there or what the understanding of them is. which is incredible, since the point of the backrooms is to NOT understand any of it. and now for the main point of this comment, i feel like the website you used for this video is the epitome of everything wrong that i listed. most of these levels, especially past the 100 mark, all do at least one of the things i mentioned, and it SERIOUSLY kills any immersion or suspense. at least, if you read a ton of horror, it does. im sure theyre fun to read as a casual cosmic horror fan, but as someone whos basically seen it all done a million times over, the lack of originality and cohesive understanding for what authors are writing makes most of these entries fall incredibly flat. the first 30 or so levels on the website you used have a large amount of genuinely interesting and scary ones, and my guess is cuz the only authors at the time were truly passionate ones and NOT teenagers in middle/high school writing spooky otherworldly fan fiction, which seems to take up the majority of writers today. there are a couple exceptions of course, such as the one on the mountain summit, or that "Claustrophobia" stage, but thats only because the authors knew what they wanted and what they were writing, which was something that even they werent meant to fully grasp. its a shame that this is rarely the case these days. ultimately, the backrooms was doomed from the start to eventually become oversaturated, but i didnt think itd happen THIS quickly. cuz now i just cant bring myself to read any new entries, nobody seems to really have the passion and understanding for both the backrooms and writing like the OG authors did. its a real shame, since the concept of a dimension of a nigh-infinite number of incomprehensibly large plains of existence with dimension warping noneuclidian structures built off of pieces of human civilization that are completely devoid of any sensible science to explain whats going on is beyond beyond awesome cosmic horror. such a damn shame that the internet got its hands on this shit 😔😔😔 kudos to you for even making a video like this. i cant imagine how many hours you mustve spent staring at backrooms entries lol poor dude, hopefully this video does good for you
honestly, i can’t get level 6 out of my head. even though it’s so simple, it’s an extremely interesting and existential concept. it makes you wonder if you could be experiencing life after death.
I love the idea that the backrooms are "gods attempt at a horror game". Like as if whatever god made earth were trying to code a new project, but abandoned it to focus on earth instead
what if it was like "hmm... i need a place, a place for a specific creature to live on." then God was like: "Oh! i know! I'm just going to create endless halls and multiple levels to these these creatures and see what sticks" it's kind of fun to think about
I genuinely don’t understand why people have added levels that are essentially outdoor open spaces. Kind of ruins the entire concept of the original, which was a creepy indoor liminal space where you feel completely trapped and alone. The back rooms resembling an indoor space is what made it initially creepy. I just don’t get that from levels where you’re just in a field or a forest, it loses that claustrophobic feeling. Great video though, it’s still cool to see what people have come up with!
Honestly, if done well, you're giving your character (aka you) false hope. I mean after spending countless of hours wandering yellow hallways, you become numb to it. Exploring more out of sense of boredom than survival. So when something changes, the first thing that happens is your attention is grabbed immediately. And if you've all but given hope of making it out and you see what looks like you made it, you're reinvigored to keep going. You have hope and some sense of relief. And when you get there, you realize, it's all fake and your soul is crushed. --- Like a little kid first learning that their hero, say Mickey Mouse, is actually just some person in a Mickey suit in a bizarre case of the head coming off by accident. A similiar incident occurred years ago at WDW (forget the country), one of the character's head came off during a photo op and a child cried that Mickey (for simplicity sake) was dead (because he was headless) not knowing that Mickey isn't real and the person inside was indeed fine. It was just a massive costume malfunction.
I think it extends the concept because with the weird spatial nature of the Backrooms, areas that seem “outside” are still inside ultimately, more existential claustrophobia
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
this video sucks LMAO i promise im better now
remake it pls!!!
omg i saw a 2 year old video get commented 1 day ago
it does not suck, it is just a less polished version of a sagan video, but still, better than almost every backrooms video in this platform
Stop being so hard on yourself
Make a part 2!
As someone who's allergic to almonds, I'd say that whoever decided that the safest thing to drink be almond water is the most dangerous entity of them all.
I don’t think it actual almond water
it has healing properties so who knows it might reverse your allergy lol
*It won't cause allergic reactions*
this comment gonna collect the people with almond allergies (me too)
Actually your kind of right the author has been banned for toxicity
The description of Lvl 0 makes me think the room absorbs victims once they die, explaining why no corpses are ever found. That might be why the carpet is damp, a mildly digestive enzyme, and insects being the main hallucination associated with the room
I really like this idea actually, especially since it ties up 2 loose ends at once.
Good concept, I like that idea. Creepy!
thanks, i hate it!
I feel like it's constantly changing, disposing of entire areas once passed through
Makes sense to me
It is interesting to see how people feel about different iterations of the backrooms. Some people prefer the classic, Level 0 only, no entities. And others enjoy the hundreds of levels version, chased constantly by some strange entity.
Yeah, I enjoy different iterations of the Backrooms for different reasons
I can see why both are loved but something is very haunting about level 0 being all there is.
I personally find the original more unsettling, I feel like if there are monsters in the backrooms, they should not be so clear and honest about what they are or their existence, because not knowing watch or even if something is out there is often far more terrifying, like, they’re very well maybe monsters out there, probably are even, but the space that you and them are traversing is so mine bogglingly big That the chances of you running into one are absolutely minuscule, but then again, you might find one anyways
I'm a Level 0 only + Entities enjoyer. No MEG, no further levels, no documentation.
I love the fact that the backrooms can be used as a medium for creativity! i love most of the levels, especially the enigmatic ones.
Personally, I think the separate canons of "completely unknowable backrooms" and this type of level-based analysis are both super compelling. I love both dearly.
One of my favorite aspects is how different things are in every room. The stark contrasts show how reality is fluid in the backrooms.
@@rosethaturtl_2812 It’s interesting for sure. I’ve heard of the backrooms before but this video is my first actual experience of it. I acknowledge that it isn’t the same as when it started but I still find it a cool idea.
*The fact that we added lore* to something that’s supposed to be unexplainable and unexplored, just shows we are *terrified* of the unknown. We feel the need to over explain it too the point where we feel like we’re in control, even if it’s just knowing what *could* happen or theorizing
ongggg
Finally,someone with logic
fr
This gives me I'm 14 and this is deep vibes.
@@Starfish_Duder this is giving redditor
Backrooms fans when they’re on level 1046 “The Goobie Zone” and they’re being chased by the Plibbywinklers
backrooms fans when the police rescues them from an abandoned building (the isolation has been ruined with police entities)
Backrooms fan when they are escorted out of the furniture store for entering the back area without permission
Backrooms fans when they got gun down by the special forces for entering restricted government area
Backrooms fans when almond water doesn't heal their 90 inch stab wound from a spongebob entity
Backrooms fans when they get put inside level "3A" and it looks like a sane asylum and there's ropes all over them
I feel like the Backrooms turned from a cool somber horror concept into a not at all scary but kinda cool video game idea
As cool as a walking simulator could be... Honestly I just choose to ignore all the levels and "lore" because they completely ruin the concept for me. It's fun to view it as a creative writing project by many people such as the SCP Foundation, but expanding the concept of the backrooms takes away from the eerie vagueness of the original.
I mean the whole thing started with the very video-gamey concept of no-clipping. It was bound to happen sooner or later
I feel like some of the “corrupted” level entries are really creepy as well.
Totally agree. The different levels and stuff are cool ideas, but they kind of ruin it for me.
I feel like that always happens online, things that should be unique one offs get ruined with fan projects, even if they're cool.
different levels are cool. overpowered entities, survival strategies, safe zones, poorly written addendums, and detailed explanations of everything thats supposed to be mysterious are not cool. if only we could just do away with the latter 5, then we'd be cookin again
I gotta say, after binging tons of Backrooms content, the Almond Water is the most stupidly hilarious aspect of this entire thing.
Lol the fact that some of the rooms have wifi is killing me the most.
Yeah, what is the deal with Almond Water anyway? Why Almonds?
@@Omnywrench "The almond water is because the original post mentioned the smell of almonds, which I believe to actually be in reference to a presence of CYANIDE, which famously has an almond smell. People misinterpreted this to somehow be in reference to some sort of super drink. It’s… dumb, sorry." --@AndRocProductions
@@PrimmsHoodCinemaZamn didn’t know you were into this stuff
@@boedaciousLmaooooooo
I love the backrooms as a concept, it's so terrifying on an existential level. The cosmic horror of infinity mixed with overwhelming dread as you slowly realize you will never escape infinity. A hell so alien but so familiar to us because of how it mimics all parts of our world... And it makes some great memes
🤓
Excellent comment
I feel like every time I click on a backrooms video this is always the top comment
And then it got oversaturated and I stopped caring about it
5t460r00r
As much as I don't subscribe too much to how the community has turned the psychological terror of the backrooms into a resident evil-esque survival horror, I do still love the idea of the levels and how they take inspiration from differing liminal spaces.
If you want to see a more psychological horror take on the backrooms, I’d go with The Magnus Archives Episode 47. It’s not technically “the backrooms,” but it’s rather similar
True, most video's are just cheap jumpscares and loud noises. Real horror and dread comes from your own imagination.
I checked out when the MEG and other organizations somehow living in the eldritch liminal nightmarescape became an accepted thing, but I still enjoy and appreciate how much goes into the concept
@@Glass-Lemonade stalker moment
I agree
If you like the concept of the backrooms you should def read House of Leaves. A house is suddenly less than an inch bigger than yesterday. That's how it began. This a novel that has you interacting with the book itself. At some points you'll even need to read it sideways and piece together stories separated by stories that interrupt other stories. It's a book where reality itself falls apart along with the narrative. All because a floorplan was changed.
i've been trying to read that book for six years
Never thought I'd find a UA-cam comment that actually made my day better. Thanks for the recommendation I will read it (or at least attempt to) soon as I can
That book seems like an inside joke that the author wrote that only makes sense to the him that isn't actually funny but is infinitely fascinating
That just sounds like a Regular Show episode
Great summary!
My meta-headcanon is that there is secretly only a single writer for all of this; an overworked marketing employee given the task of driving up the general interest in almond milk.
Wait a second how was your account created 17 years ago … sir
@@rLewo_official UA-cam has been around since... late 2005? I seem to remember videos being limited to 10 minutes when I made my account. Could be confusing it with another service.
@@Zhyardyou deserve the monocle and little top hat. When you joined the British where still colonizing lol
😂😂😂
@@rLewo_official Because that's how old youtube is
I agree with everyone saying that the original Backrooms has a kind of existential horror to it that is sort of ruined by adding in monsters and organizations and other levels, but I also kind of like the multiple levels as their own thing.
Like, the original can still exist in its own canon of hopelessness and dread while the wiki is in its own canon with all the lore and wacky rooms and stuff.
yeah, i personally really like the crazy rooms with video game properties, it adds to the intrigue for me, but i can see why people prefer the more existential old backrooms. However for me, i like this one because there is hope in what, at face value, is a completely hopeless situation. i just prefer that type of approach
adding monsters aren't a bad thing . it's just the way they're managed in liminal spaces which is problematic
What are you talking about, dude? Don't you find Entity 5AN7A-C (Containment Class: Keter) a.k.a. "The Ho-Ho Man" very very scary? Imagine if you no-clipped out of reality in an abandoned Kmart while you're holding a VHS copy of Toy Story 2 into the Backrooms and he shook his big sack of 1990s toys in front of you, wouldn't that be so scary?
Are they distinctly separate though? It just sounds like the new shit is retconning the original idea
the leveled rooms would work better as it’s own separate thing I agree! and then that leaves more room for freedom and creativity they don’t have to follow the same boring blueprint
I really don’t see the point of the “dirty” levels. What’s fascinating about the back rooms is that they’re empty, not abandoned or run down, which is an entirely different thing. The point is that they’re in a habitable state and yet no one’s in them, which is a big part of what makes them feel unnatural. Sewers, engine rooms and parking lots don’t look strange if they’re empty, because people rarely spend much time in them anyway. It should be things like swimming pools, classrooms, lecture halls, bathrooms, locker rooms, offices, malls, day care centers, etc that might feel a bit moldy and a few decades old for instance, but not ruined. It’s very different from the feeling you get with Chernobyl’s abandoned schools, which are supposed to be abandoned.
to an extent, yeah, for sure. but i mean, in a perfect world, the backrooms arent bound by our rules that we as humans have conjured up for it. it can create infinite expanses of any piece of civilization, or the universe in general seemingly, regardless of their state. its meant to be cosmic horror, not liminal spaces. they are different things with different purposes and origins, people have simply started confusing the two for being the same or similar. what you described that you believe the backrooms should be are already known as liminal spaces
@@spimbles then why do we think of the iconic yellow wallpaper “level 0” when we first think of the Backrooms? The fascination started there, yes with liminal spaces, and that’s what’s brilliant about the Backrooms. All this new stuff we’re adding is taking away its character. Is there a rule to limit what the Backrooms should be like? There has to be one, otherwise a Middle Earth level with Gimly and Legolas or a SpongeBob level are just as likely. And if you have no rules defining what it’s like, then there’s no Backrooms, there’s nothing. Cosmic horror is also not at all the feeling I get with the Backrooms, cosmic horror rather conveys the feeling of one’s insignificance in an uncaring universe. The Backrooms feel more like stepping out into the scaffolding of our very specific reality, the “work in progress” section, the uncanny valley version of urban spaces, where things aren’t properly held together or well defined, with unpredictable results for whoever steps into it by accident. It feels very much like this mysterious space exists because of us, not uncaring. Simulation is much closer to this than cosmic horror. In this scenario there is no universe, rather everything exists relative to us specifically, as if the walls of our offices and the wet carpets are real and the stars in the sky are just window dressing.
Granted, no one owns the Backrooms. It can be anything to anybody. But if it can be anything, then it’s nothing. I feel that sticking to liminal spaces should be the goal of this, because it’s what drew people into it initially, and it makes it unique. Spreading out too much will undo that.
@@nickfooz L
@@spimbles no that's pointless and makes the backrooms moot as an idea. They're literally supposed to be backrooms and hallways that never end. You're changing the original gist and concept of the backrooms dude.
@@FatesxofxthexDead The original idea is vague. Its for this reason so many people can add their own spin on it and write so many canons
I almost feel like the backrooms would be scarier if there were no entities. it would make it more lifeless and surreal.
Or the idea that there might be, just not discovered. You know if you somehow find one, you have no grounds to go off of because obviously backrooms ARENT relatively close to reality.
I agree. Even if they're monster, having them may give you more hope that there's a way out.
If your just alone, eventually (and sooner) you'll give. No entity no people it seems absolutely useless to go on.
I agree. I like the idea of levels as long as they follow certain rules but adding threats to the back rooms makes it feel less liminal which is the thing that makes it so interesting in the first place.
Same my man, I wish people had left the base story of the Backrooms alone. While I love this video, it irks me all of this comes from one little story snippet that was perfect on its own
and booooring..... zzzzzz
Props to the camera man for exploring the backrooms for us lmao
Camerman never dies ❤
waiting for someone to get r/woooshed here
@@marshalizacuervo3142 I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, UA-cam commenters love going "uhm well, actually 🤓"
@@LiaMakesContentWow well, is that a bad thing exactly?
@@BlueTyphoon2017 yes, because everyone gets it's a joke, so the people who correct are just annoying
I really like a lot of aspects about the backrooms, but someone's gotta say it, a lot of the entity names are goofy as hell. It feels like they busted out a thesaurus and just went with whatever page they flipped to
FRL LIKE SMILERS??? THE HOUNDS???
Its very Teen YA Dystopia/Adventure. Kinda like the “Erasers” from Maximum Ride or “Muttations” from The Hunger Games. Very Rule of Cool to name them “Slang-adjacent” terms.
@@teencrisis4750 the hounds ill accept because I like theyre design but smilers makes me laugh so much it distracts me from any fear I'd have
Smilers are cringe.
lol, imagine the goober snatchers are after you
As someone who prefers the Backrooms just being infinite corridors and yellow wallpaper with no way to escape, these were super cool to see and I wouldn't mind sticking around some of these levels! The forests especially, they looked so pretty and fun to walk around in.
I prefer it with the first 4 levels and that’s kinda just it. Just…. Nothing. Few monsters. You’re just…. Alone. And if you’re not, you wish you were.
hell I'd stick around level 31 for some free roller skating lessons
Even if you are in Level 11 or some other really safe level. There is always a chance that you'll noclip again to another level.
@@catsinwonderland7473 I agree, but othe rooms are a great outlet for creativity.
entities say hi
I seem to recall that the almond water thing was inspired by some mention in one of the classic liminal horror photo descriptions (poolrooms, maybe?) saying that the water smelled faintly of almonds; this was probably originally implying that the water contained cyanide, which is known to smell like bitter almonds. Ironic that it was used as the basis for the "safe" drink of the group project version.
bruh, this makes the whole "almond water" shit even more dumb
"aw dude lucky, i found some of that almond water stuff"
*drinks*
*starts foaming at the mouth and convulsing*
cyanide doesn't smell like almonds, almonds smell like cyanide
@@griffy9639 yes they smell alike that does not change the comment
@@BigFigcat they just wanted to specify that the reason you smell bitter almonds is cyanide and not vice-versa. doesn't hurt anyone
The almond water is because the original post mentioned the smell of almonds, which I believe to actually be in reference to a presence of CYANIDE, which famously has an almond smell. People misinterpreted this to somehow be in reference to some sort of super drink. It’s… dumb, sorry.
my mans drinking anti-cyanide
wow
Wow, that couldve been super cool. Oh well...
Almonds don’t have a smell
@@TheSlayer11799yeah, they do
While the original horror of the backrooms has been lost, mostly because there's a big community around it that explains everything, and because there is no liminality anymore due to the fact that the backrooms are inhabited canonically, this is still an interesting worldbuilding project. If it were made into a survival horror game, it'd be fantastic.
My thoughts exactly, great story thing but this is completely different from the origanal intent of the backrooms, where the horror comes from the unknown and silence, not smilers and wibbldywocks.
My version of the lore is that these rooms, oh, are just 0.0000001% of the backrooms expanse. All discovered rooms are just a teeeeensy weeeeny fractuin if the backrooms
@@electrifiedwits assuming the backrooms is the same size as our own universe, infinite, this is probably the correct take, though you can't really give an exact percentage to the amount we've seen considering there's no way to reach the end of infinity
Wouldn’t that concept for a horror game basically be Spook’s Jumpscare Mansion?
@@Ismatic1906 no, Spooky's house of Jumpscares has actual monsters
Its strange how both the backrooms and the scp wiki started out as one small story on 4chan to giant sprawling community’s of what they are today. History repeats itself beautifully
History repeats itself? Or things evolve
Considering what some of the SCP wiki staff have been accused of doing, especially the one behind Dr. Bright, I hope that not all aspects of history repeat.
@@FrickenDweeb wait what happend
@@alb0_gent0 The youtuber Dr Cimmerian gets into it way better than I could here, it's a lot
@@alb0_gent0 Admins of the SCP wiki contacted underage users and requested nudes and what not. Dr. Bright stepped down because of how big the situation had gotten. I'd check out Blarin's video on the situation, even if it's 2 years old.
I personally prefer the psychological horror side of being completely isolated, trapped for eternity in creepy winding halls. But the more “survival video game” like versions are also an interesting concept!
I do enjoy both, they’re different kinds of horror. But imagining clipping in and wandering for ages with no sense of time before finally finding an exit and coming out on the other side of the world 50 years in the future without aging a day is absolutely bone-chilling.
@@AuthentiKaate infinite youth glitch
@@neneenenejrkerre1828 Who needs a youth fountain these days anyway
I think a mix of both is the perfect horror, it would be eben better if the group of survivor are just another entity pretending.
I absolutely hate the video game/scp type lore.
The Backrooms were supposed to be this mysterious inter dimensional place you could only access by accident, it isn't supposed to be documented in detail.
But now there's almod water scattered along all the levels, with how the Backrooms are documented it sounds like people can just casually walk in and out and there's civilisations forming in the backrooms that have Internet and electricity, like.. wtf is that?
It Complete takes away the terror, mystery and uncertainty of the Backrooms.
I tend to be an anti-entity liminal space enjoyer, (I find them peaceful and having a horrible monster that wants to do unspeakable things to me would probably interrupt that.) but I am impressed with the amount of work and detail that goes into this kinda thing
I think you would just enjoy liminal spaces in general more
I agree it is peaceful with just the liminal space, but I hate when other people hate on the backrooms just because it has entities. Just let people have their fun.
Just don't go downstairs.
I honestly REALLY enjoy entities. But even if you dont like entities, please know that there is a effort on them and You should not trashtalk to them.
@@Meowlegend7they didnt trashtalk them tf they were just sharing their opinion
I love how the backrooms has levels, but I feel like people are trying to one-up each other constantly with every level. And while I love the monsters, some are just, a little goofy. But I still love what The Backrooms has become, I just wish most of the levels weren't just people shoving as many monsters as possible into one level.
Other than those, everything else is good.
I mean the wiki Fandom isn't like that, it has to be accepted by the official creators
@@adnanassaf350 no on the fandom you can write whatever you want but on the wikidot you can’t really make a level all of the levels are made by a profesional writers
I think I kinda realised the universe was going tits up when he mentioned something like "Burster goblins" or something like that
@@RhettMueller864 they are not professional writers, they are fans who gave themselves more power. 95% of these levels just suck.
@@ryanfleshbourne3547 yeah but what I mean is that there are editors and people who work for the wikidot who make sure that levels are well made and that there are no grammatical errors
The way you used Garry's Mod to show the backrooms levels is fucking genius because that game alone is unsettling enough
The later Backrooms levels make video game logic a lot more prevalent with "spawning" items, almond water and it's magical healing properties, things being considered loot and resources rather than physical items with individual significance, sanity being a gauge rather than an incredibly complex concept, hub areas with other people and shops etc.
I think the backrooms being based off of "noclipping" naturally leads to this direction. Simulation theory and video game logic are kind of the roots of the idea I think.
@@quinnandvalor9657 what made the backrooms cool and interesting originally was thinking about it happening in real life with real logic. Writing about it as if its a video game with survival mechanics and resource management is not interesting from a writing standpoint and makes it so people like me cant get invested in them
@@FrankEShaw05 I find it gives them a kind of.. off feeling. granted, i wouldn't go all out with them, just the occasional, but consistant use.
yeah it genuinely just flat out ruins the backrooms. its not supposed to have safezones, its not supposed to help you out magically by giving you exactly the right countermeasures to any given situation on any given level, its not meant to have researchers that explain every little behavior and detail of an entity, its not meant to be understood or made easier to understand in any sense, so its just so incredibly lame now. a majority of backrooms levels nowadays are, often in more ways than just one, exactly like what the OP described in their comment, and it totally takes away the surrealism and terror of what youre supposed to be reading. theres an old level that used to be on the website used in this video, but i guess it was removed - it was like level 28 or something, no higher than 30, and it was called the Woodrooms. i dont remember the details of it exactly, but thats honestly the best part, because the author left a lot of the level up to your own interpretation. there were no poorly written addendums of humans encountering entities, it didnt tell you what entities were roaming or how to avoid them, it didnt mention any safezone civilization landmarks, it was just this dangerous, unknown, unmarked, unexplored, smelly, dark, wooden attic with weak floors that you could fall through and into other levels. thats it. and i loved it for that simplicity
@@spimbles definitely. Just wandering around in a seemingly infinite, abandoned office space with no food or water in sight is enough.
Backrooms be like "Few people have escaped this level. Here's a completely thorough and accurate description of layout, entities, physical properties- by the way, this level hasn't been explored much- square mileage, furniture, edible and toxic substances, symptoms from consuming the substances- No guys, seriously, this is _so_ dangerous that few people escape this level. Stop laughing. Where was I? Oh yeah, day/night cycles, ecosystems, smooth jazz..."
(edited)
@@butttpooop4107 accuracy is no longer allowed
@@evilcatfuhreal The backrooms did it
Yeah lmao not knowing was the main point
Man, some of these entries _really_ make me miss the SCP Foundation's enforced writing standards. "There are also alligator entities, which have remained unnamed." NO THEY HAVEN'T. YOU JUST NAMED THEM. THEY'RE CALLED "ALLIGATOR ENTITIES."
The Backrooms are so frustrating to me because they come *so* close to being cool and scary, but always manage to steer away just before they get there.
Check out the liminal archives. It's not as good as the SCP foundation, but it's better than this.
You know the joke that cops were guys who couldn't pass the physical to get into the military? And that mall cops are guys who couldn't pass the mental to get into the academy? Well it seems backrooms writers are the ones who couldn't pass the writing standards for SCP. Or keep having their "le wacky random" or over the top "mega-keter REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED" SCPs downvoted so they went elsewhere. I can't think of any other way to explain the random almond water and boring "cases with food and water just appear when you're not looking" stuff.
They could turn the almond water thing into something actually interesting with just something basic like "water with no chemical additions evaporates at much lower temperatures for unknown reasons", which would then necessitate interesting protective clothing and measures to prevent your skin leeching all your water to the air and food storage solutions that prevent all food drying out completely. I can already see weird developments in chemical additions to water that slow the rate of evaporation while trying to not make it unpalatable, with almond infused water providing a promising effect, though with almonds containing cyanide, dehydration, and therefore rapid intake of almond water to counter it, could prove poisonously fatal. Which could be a common problem in the levels with hotspots. This would even make the ocean level more interesting because the constant evaporation could leave dangerous levels of airborne salt, with the starting room having salt-stalactites from the constantly humid, salty air. Could even have wanderers taking these stalactites and grinding them into the raw salt for dried food preservation, to avoid the water-sapped food issue.
On that, it seems there's also little use of anomalous effects for the benefit of wanderers. SCP is great about trying to find potentially useful effects with the SCPs, so why are so much of the backrooms limited to "it has lots of almond water for some reason"? If the buildings are not obeying gravity and stacked curiously, why aren't wanderers bringing climbing gear to reside in the upper, safer levels if the entities are ground-bound? I can already forsee a really interesting Fortree City-like place, with the upper, strangely stacked houses having makeshift bridges between the doors and lowerable ladders for rare ground exploration. The rare constantly active light posts being meeting places with mirrors set up to attempt to extend the light as far as possible. Hell even just something as basic as stealing chairs from the hotel or halls levels to make the habitable office area more comfortable? SCP foundation have the vending machine that can get anything sitting in the staff room because it's useful. Why are almond-water dripping stalactites not being consolidated and purified of minerals to make it drinkable?
The fixation with ridiculous elements such as the almond water being everywhere alongside the “spooky scary” elements, like the random newspapers containing only graphic headlines of mUrDeR and nothing else, along with some of the documents having edgy narrators trying to bait you into reading their stories, like the one in the level 27 (bunker springs) document, all of these things makes everything less immersive and more of an obvious huge creepy-pasta fest.
this is legit an SCP like fandom on its infancy.
@@adrigl3371 Yeah. Liminal Archive seems to be better at this, as they have stricter standards for posting stuff. They do have a lot less, but oh well.
I think it just needs time its not there yet but it will eventually get there in my opinion
The entire premise of the original 4chan post that started "The Backrooms" was *liminal horror.* An area that sits in the back of your head; a place that is never thought of as being empty, yet _is._ The thought of being alone, but not knowing if you truly are. I think the fandoms surrounding it turned it into more of an unregulated horror platform filled with poorly-written monsters and collectible items. It slowly eats away at the original idea, one which was suitable for _maybe_ only a niche community with little expansion, nothing like the ones seen today.
This right here is my favorite comment.
For me the perfect balance would be the original concept mixed with unplaceable sounds heard in the distance behind you. The idea of a completely void liminal space where you feel like there’s something else behind a corner which you never actually see is the perfect kind of scary to me
I agree, although I don’t mind Kane Piexel’s interpretation of the monsters which at least for now ‘seems’ to be that they are people who have gotten lost in the backrooms and have mutated. The monsters are not something inherent to the backrooms but the people before you that never escaped.
@@kiara800 What i like about Kane Piexels interpretation, and that specific theory, is that the back rooms itself an entity your scared of, not just a location for monsters to run around in.
@@kiara800 also in his interpretation the backrooms aren't just something you can survive to the point there's a map of areas with ever more powerful dangerous horror, its bare of necessities its like being warped to the north pole, doesn't treat near 100 percent lethal scenarios like being lost in a vast infinite empty hostile world like an obstacle so much as an end
I always saw The Backrooms as the real-life equivalent of Skyrim's (and other games) clean up room, where clutter, dead bodies and other stuff that "despawn" from the world after some time, end up to be disposed of. And I like to associate this with the feeling of "falling down" when you're almost asleep.
But I see it has been expanded quite a lot already.
Thé M.E.G probably thought that too
Hello Anón, I want to play a game.
Where do the people who die in the backrooms go then?
Nice limbo pfp
I KNEW I wasn’t the only one who had the Skyrim cleanup room come to mind! I definitely prefer the idea that the backrooms are this space between reality that was clearly never meant to be discovered, and I’m kinda disappointed that the expanded lore makes me feel like they’re just some parallel universe with animals that evolved to hunt people who fell in. That’s far less interesting than stumbling upon an environment that was never meant to harbor life at all, let alone be traversed. I feel like the entities “living” in such a place would be far more uncanny and almost eldritch in nature too, which would make them far more creepy imo.
While I'm not really a fan of the extended universe and additions to the original "level 1", I love the rare inclusions of an intelligent, friendly, and talkative entity. They seem so cute.
My favorite is definitely The Blue Knight on Level 28
I think the most unrealistic thing about this is the amount of people in fiction that have been into the backrooms on purpose. It sounds like a horrible, horrible experience and something someone would only stumble into.
If the backrooms were real, I think people would enter them on purpose. Historical expeditions coped with extreme conditions just to see something new
@FanOf Dueling I agree. But imagine going to say mars without the possibility of returning. Even if you would decline, you feel an urge
@@2lizard559 you're right if they were real _and people knew about them_
but the problem with that is if the backrooms were real, literally no one could possibly know about them because it's literally impossible to return from them
some people would disappear, and no one would know that they went somewhere, just that they went missing
What can we say, humans jump out of planes for fun. Curiosity is a huge part of human nature, plus a lot of people might not fully understand the horrors and danger within the back rooms. so it’s not that surprising that a few hundred people would intentionally go to the backrooms.
@@Doku666 but you can't intentionally go somewhere that you don't know exists
As a fellow almond allergic comrade, I’d like to recruit likeminded anti-almonders to hardcore nuzlocke the backrooms with me. Any % speedrun. No almond.
Where we no-clipping boys?
First, we take a crate from Floor 2 and do a long-jump through a specific type of wall. This will have us clip out of the world and fall directly into Floor 16...
Ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-ya-yaaaaa-HOOOOO
Luck O Milk.
From my memory, Other than the fact that There seems to be some sort of secret regarding it the safest place for people allergic to the almond water is Level 27
@@adorablecockroach5131 chinese almond water rip off
Cringe
The problem with the backrooms is that it doesn’t have the same level of quality control that a project like SCP has.
bruh stop comparing, there 2 different things
@@liamzombietv they really arent.
@@potatopilot16 how?
@@liamzombietv both are really just strange anomalies and supernatural things in different locations.
@@potatopilot16 yeah ut still there different because the backrooms is different because all the entities are original and it also has levels
As cool as the BackRooms are the further you go the more reality should break down to a point where you can't understand what youre seeing. This feels too human.
That makes a lot of sense, which is why I like The Shady Gray a lot, as the further you go in that level, the more reality distorts, to the point in which you die from being there
Agreed. Everything feels too human, too familiar due to being like video game levels, and too afraid to get really weird. It could have been incredible, but no one wants to make up a level where there's no sound, the walls are static and the floor is a red carpet that goes on forever, and everything is spirals and you can feel your pulse in your eyelids as you get closer to the exit but then the floor twists and gravity flips and now you're on the ceiling and the exit is far away again. Instead it's just "and then scary dog-monsters try to eat you".
@@morganqorishchi8181the problem is, the back rooms is too torn between stories. What would make the perfect story/lore is the idea that the rooms themselves “learn” from reality and try to recreate reality through each level or room. The perfect compromise to allow the back rooms lore to grow is to explain away the levels of what we can’t comprehend. The way to do this is to have each level where it’s just static or an environment and beings that we can’t comprehend be a backrooms level or room but in its infancy. A developing backrooms level but in the infant stage of development since theoretically it is the space is indefinite.
No it shouldn't. Who told you that
The problem with this is that humans can only think and make things up by experience or imagination therefore the un understandable or un humane feel is impossible because of the fact humans made the story up
This makes me appreciate every bit of quality control on the SCP wiki 100X more
ha 69 likes nice
Scp wiki has right controls but makes a ton more sense
This reminds me a lot of early days on the SCP wiki. When dozens of people would fight over a certain scp number and everyone wanted to make apocalyptic monsters that somehow all couldn’t be contained
@LUCASXYD what about it?
Literally, reading through the backrooms articles is sadly like reading a 14 year old's fanfics on some random website. Every single SCP on the other hand fits within the universe and is extremely well though out and described.
The almond water was already silly, but once there was so many mentions of "this and that was reported, survivors tend to gather here" etc., It lost a lot of the horror factor for me. It was interesting, but not nearly as scary.
I think a part of what makes the "vanilla" backrooms experience so horrifying to me is:
1) The unknowns. You don't know how you got there, or how to get out, or the passage of time. You find "exits" but they actually are red herrings and so don't know if there IS a conventional exit.
2) You are there alone. The space the backrooms fills is either infinite or ridiculously huge, so even if other people are falling in the chances of you running into eachother is basically nil.
3) Helplessness. Because of the similar and repetitive surroundings, you can't tell if you're actually making any progress towards getting anywhere. There is no one to ask for help, and no logical way to go about finding an exit. Just neverending exploration.
One or two monsters are okay, but not necessary for the spooks. And I'm also fine if it's the "you never get hungry, or thirsty, or need to sleep" lore because it adds onto the horror of not knowing if there is any passage of time.
Level 60: "... Many wanderers come here to wash their clothes."
FFS
Yeah. This _specific_ set of lore is rather annoyingly written. Less about the psychological themes of the original, and more about "coming up with weird things that people interact with".
I mean, it's fine.. but not what I was expecting when looking for the backrooms.
To me.. The backrooms is supposed to challenge our instinctive sense of reality. We sit confident about how things work, and then this unnatural place just flies in the face of it.
It gives that same sensation as when you were a child and staring into the darkness of your room at night, or at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Or that wonder you experience when looking into an unknown dense forest.
As adults, we conquer this through knowledge and understanding. Even things we don't know.. there's an unsaid "yet". We "know" that everything "can be explained".
Things like SCP and The Backrooms challenges that. It makes us feel unmoored, drifting, no longer confident.
This wiki, the more floors we go, the more explanations given, the more it feels like SCP mobile taskforce "wish fulfillment" stories. It departs from that feeling.
It honestly kind of starts with "almond water".
Not too familiar with current lore, but I'd be fine with... Say, a secret company actually exploiting an entry into the backrooms, but all you see (if you come across their setup at all) is something that wouldn't be out of place in there: notes of their research, computers working, but again no one's there. Like all of a sudden something just took any people working there. No buildup, no nothing. Hell, no notes even, just an investigation camp, but it's so randomly placed that a protagonist wouldn't be able to tell whether it's part of the backrooms or not.
That's actually a really good writing/story tactic. Adding little moments of normalcy in a wholly alien experience actually helps prevent that "getting used to it" feeling.
It reminds you what normal is, and re-accentuates how unreal this place is.
And since there's no one to interact with, you feel almost more alone than before.
yeah i like this concept of ppl gathering but some ppl act like it has to be this hardcore game like "THIS LEVEL HAS 38292629022836 ENTOTIES RUNNING AFTER YOU AND YOU HAVE TO RUN FAST TO ESCAPE!!!!!!" (yes, i am talking abt level !)
I’m at lvl 92 in your video and I gotta say the whole vaguely horrifying idea of the back rooms is gone for me. It loses a lot of the scariness and dread when there’s so many different lvls and areas that are detailed, full of descriptions and lore. Some even read like an off-brand scp article.
Great video tho I’m sure the effort put into a video of this length is insane. Just wish I didn’t lose intrigue of the topic
Honestly my main problem with how many levels there are is that you just can't memorize them (or maybe that's ADHD talking)
but imagine as though it is barely discovered and that there are hundreds of explorers that might have seen something new, possibly great news, but they can’t report it
@@Hellwaterva some awesome /x/ board ideas shouldnt become giant online trends. It's boring to make everything different become the same.
@@mrpitman2428 if the creators didnt want it to evolve they shouldnt have posted it on a public board lmao
@@maxsync183 the "creators" (two seperate anons, one posting a liminal photo and the other trying to create a copypasta along with it) couldn't have possibly expected this response from it. Even if they thought it would become a classic /x/ SCP style phenomenon they limited the canon to: "Nothing but" the original photo.
also your username is similar to that of Axxyl, so your opinion is invalid.
Love The BackRooms. This version Might not have that original feeling that the community had in the Early days, but isn’t that kinda perfect for Liminal Horror? That feeling exists in our memories now, that version that made you feel “that way” is still there, in your head; And it will always be there, no matter how much people add to the wiki.
looking into it, a lot of these are surprisingly unimaginative and repetitive, everyone wants their level to be a dangerous entity-filled mystery to the point where the only ones that stand out are the levels that are peaceful or seem like different liminal space worlds.. you know, like the original one. Things like the entity names or mysteries that always end in "but its unknown" just feel like an incredibly boring version of scp made by people trying to be edgy.
HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT
Yeah, and the constant spam of "X material/thing/object cannot be identified" is really repetitive, not to mention pointless because the fact that it isn't being described already implies it is unknown. Like surely past level 5 it has been established that things just are the way they are sometimes, so why do they keep pointing it out every single time?
@@karhu7581 personally I think writing communities like this and scp are great opportunities for aspiring writers looking to refine their talent but it ultimately restricts the material in the long run until everything has to be pointless and unknown to protect its status as a writing community… unlike scp, however, theres significantly less that can be created with the backrooms. The fact that these things always delve into a set rulebook on lore or canon items and facts should automatically imply the existence of a lacking substance or payoff for any interest. People are interested because they want to know more, instead of masterfully hinting at a rising storyline or explanation the backrooms projects ultimately prove that unless your here for unsolved and half-baked mysteries for the sake of mysteries- theres little for you.
Its a neat project but its already deep into suffocating its potential, its an armory of chekhov’s guns designed to never fire.
Agreed. It’s why if I attempt to write within the SCP canon that I try and make content and characters that can be known and identified.
It’s all well and good when some things are unknown, but it stops being special when everything is unknown.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Levels that are uninhabited are more eerie to me than ones filled with monsters.
I was honestly giggling a bit by the time I got to level... 10, I think?
I mean, part of it is that I'm not really afraid of liminal spaces (they mostly just make me feel like exploring), but a lot of these are just painfully overwritten, with a strong emphasis on making every level the MOST DANGEROUS AND MYSTERIOUS PLACE EVAR. Something a lot of newbie horror writers don't seem to understand is that stuff like the unidentifiable tar that kills you on contact are really, really boring, since there's no real way to use that stuff in a story other than "someone touched the stuff, and now they are dead."
Like, no-one looks at a pit full of industrial-strength acid and goes "we should dive into that to see what's on the bottom!" You need to give people SOME reason to actually want to "no-clip" into the Backrooms if your lore is going to be framed as "this is what people have seen when they've gone exploring".
EDIT: Heck, I feel like a lot of these "levels" would be stronger writing-wise if they were WAY smaller.
next they're gonna be documenting every atom in the levels
i agree, i like the backrooms bute theyre... poorly written, when hearing the descriptions i always think more about the largeness of it, the subtle anxiety i get comes more so when thinking "how long is it gonna take" or "will i get lost?" instead of being scared by the death traps and dangerous entities
@@landa604 i would say that the fandom wiki is poorly written and the wikidot is decent
This is why SCP has such strict quality control
@@thatmeatguy8418 yeah and that's probably why the backrooms will either get better or die off
"Level 19 has... a fantastic set of revisions built into the document that I suggest you read"
As the author of said Level 19, that makes me very happy to hear, nice video!!!
Mid
@@BigJoe2600 Lol
@@boringtalking495 😎
Liar
i went ahead to read it and i loved it hahahaha thanks for the cool level!!
Over an hour in and after getting a feel for how these folks frame the backroom entries I want to throw my hat into the ring.
MEG entry #246 - Backroom “Placeholder 0”
[Redacted] See revised entry.
The revised entry for Backroom “Placeholder 0” is as follows:
Upon initial entry, the team found themselves in a drab yellow room with flickering fluorescent lights. Team Leader Alpha expressed frustration towards the lead navigator for leading them back towards the familiar level 0, which turned out to be a mere facade. As the teams progressed, the paths became increasingly familiar, and they experienced a shared uneasiness. They were plagued by false memories and hallucinations that caused paranoia and insanity, leading to a breakdown in team cohesion.
One member of Team Bravo described entering a hallway where she saw another woman's legs in place of her own. She was wearing soaked tennis shoes instead of overboots, and the walls looked the same. It was then that she realized this level was not level 0. Overcome by exhaustion, she collapsed against the wall and began sinking into it, experiencing a foul stench and a strange fungus that blackened the body she was now inhabiting. She felt like months went by, during which time she decayed, but her eyes always remained. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't draw breath into her rotten lungs. She stared up into the light and found her partner striking her in the shoulder to grab her attention. They told her she stood for a few seconds and then began convulsing and screaming before returning to reality.
The team's attempt to map the level ended shortly after this incident. Physical examinations revealed that the team members had aged unnaturally, ranging from several months to decades in the most extreme case. Team Leader B was shortly entered into the psychiatric ward, where he described decades of death and decay, and never experienced psychological improvement. It is theorized that this floor is composed of all the paths that have been walked by its unfortunate victims who never found their way out.
This level remains unnamed, and caution is advised when exploring other levels and finding oneself in a familiar place.
I got tired of the lack of psychological horror which is what makes the backrooms so interesting to me.
I feel like the Backrooms represents different kinds of issues we humans have. The first level represents the dull, boxed-in feeling of hopelessness many of us have in things like typical 9-5 office jobs. The level with the childhood memories represents childhood trauma, etcetera. You get my point.
Shut up. Not every piece of horror is based off of human trauma. Sliding down a metal slide and burning your ass wouldn’t be a good horror game
It's almost like they're designed to make you have scared feelings. Almost as if this is part of the horror genre.
And Level Fun is an emo’s worst nightmare
Not at all.
You got a point there.
As cool as this concept is, once you get to back room 15 or 20 you’ve basically read them all with the occasional neat idea.
level 53 and 370 and level 550(fandom) come to mind
I personally like to think there are 3 seperate Backrooms canons and I treat them all as their own things. There's the original Backrooms with no lore outside the post, the Wikidot Backrooms (this one) which is like a liminal space SCP alternative, and the Kane Pixels Backrooms which are fantastic seriously go check them out
kane 🤢
@@XerTaaL Tbh wiki dot is the best version
Yeah same, I love the original backrooms, but I also love seeing concepts that the community comes up with. I treat them as separate canons and Kane Pixels' backrooms are so cool.
@potatos yea I use the wikidot but I like the other interpretation tho
@@potatos3753 😊😊😊😊😊😊
Personally, I view the original backrooms and the newer backrooms as two separate entities (no pun intended). The lore makes it interesting, and some of the monsters are cool too. I also like the idea of just a bunch of rooms, slowly driving you insane as you try to get out, scared of the fact that there is nothing. I don't mind the entities but sometimes it's too much. But to each their own.
thanks to bro for personally going to the backrooms himself and recording every floor.
Honestly, the community building on the Backrooms kind of ruined it, because the strongest part about the Backrooms was the vast gulf of unknowns. Making it a 100floor system with things living there turns it from some strange glitch in the fabric of reality that you can get stuck in to just another ecosystem, but this time made of drywall, carpet, and florescent lights.
An ecosystem is understandable. A truly liminal space is not. And the unknowable is more terrifying than the knowable.
Literally as soon as level 0 became a thing there was already like eight clusters or something in the fandom wiki 💀
this is the thing for me
you shouldn't be meeting anyone apart from a monster or two, and even then it ought to be rare
certainly not enough to have been able to set up research on the floors and monsters
It wasn't totally ruined for me mostly because I like survival horror stuff and just REALLY want to see a back rooms game like that
This only the first 100 levels, more than a thousand have been created already
the ultimate goal of the extended lore* isn't exclusively horror, though? like yeah, it's aiming to be at least a little creepy, but i think the draw of the extended lore for a lot of people is the fact that it's a synthetic ecosystem, giving it a strongly dream-like feeling. it's still an interesting concept, whether you're scared by it or not, which is why so many people are still interested. if you want "real" or "good" horror that caters to you, i'm sure you can find it somewhere else.
*extended lore referring to everything added to the "canon" after the original 4chan post
I think the parallels between liminal spaces (specifically the backrooms) and the book house of leaves are really interesting in their obsession with endless malicious "buildings"; not to mention similar works of fiction like the etchings of Piranesi that go way back to the 1700s. Why have humans always been so obsessed with non functional man made spaces? really cool stuff and I'm happy to see the backrooms with such a large fanbase.
I personally miss when the backrooms was just level 0.
Jacob Geller has a great video about this concept! I think it’s called “Control, Anatomy, and the ____ of the haunted house” (can’t remember the middle word) you might like it if you’ve not yet seen it!
@@NootalieWalf legacy! its a great video essay, super recommend!
There is a really good book named “Piranesi” that is inspired by the etchings of Piranesi, and it focuses on the premise of endless halls of man made things that will never get used! I would recommend it :)
@@NootalieWalf seconding! that essay is one of the singular most compelling pieces of writing i’ve ever listened to
I know its a death destination, but I think it'd be pretty chill to blaze up in the backrooms, especially in the vast areas where it makes you feel small. Though the claustrophobic areas would be good to hotbox, they're usually the most unnerving, can't help but feel like a big abstract monster will peak out at you in said small areas and really freak you out.
Imagine greening out there tho
I find myself wishing that these levels were linked together more coherently. Especially in the later levels, they very much expose that they're levels written by dozens of individuals with little, in any, linkages to one another. I end up wanting a more defined 'entrance' and 'exit' for each level, or some in between layer in which one level begins to bleed into the next, like the earlier levels mostly have.
I think it’s mostly because the earlier levels are SUPPOSED to link together, one by one. It’s level 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on, instead of level 11, 103, 163, 19, 158, and so on.
I think this is just me, but since the backrooms is close to the edge of reality, it seems better to have the less stable levels to have strange entrances and exits.
I like the inconsistency, makes it feel a lot more incoherent and unnatural
Yeah it makes no sense why to enter level 30 you have to no clip from level 843. Like how did the canon organizations like meg name it level 30 if there were already 800 discovered levels.
All of the "monsters" resemble some sort of humanity (smiles "like" light, hounds often have 4 limbs and a generally human appearance, etc etc), so I really like the theory that they were once humans. They were people who wandered in, or fell in, and couldn't get out. They were corrupted by and became the very thing they were running from.
Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea that the backrooms “corrupts” wanderers over time and turns them into these creatures if they don’t find the exit in time. Heck, creatures like Insanities and Partygoers are confirmed on the wiki to BE people!
I think the idea of just backrooms itself with only one level and no enemies is way more scary. Just imagine being stuck there. There is not true or false or dead or alive. It´s just infinite rooms walls and lights. The fear of being forgotten...
The backrooms is such an interesting concept because of literally infinite possibilities you can explore with it. Hell, if you wanted to you could make a level that is entirely random with features no one could ever imagine and everyone would love it. There’s so much you can do with an idea like this.
Personally I think indie horror fans ruined “the backrooms.” It always got its fear factor from the fact that you were alone. Liminal spaces are supposed to be a place in between, somewhere in the back of your mind. They aren’t supposed to be some scary place with monsters, but a space devoid of meddling and organisms.
I get your point, but on the other hand: If it's just being stuck alone in endless corridors forever, that's kinda... dull? Like, there isn't much you can do with that, creatively speaking.
@@RelativelyBest Exactly. There is not alot you can do with that and there is nothing you should do with that. Leave things up to your imagination as often as possible.
I imagine this version of backrooms as "horrible architecture and design moving people to insanity".
Really makes me appreciate environment designers irl.
@@rokyhawk6753 That's the thing, though: This is what happens when you "leave it up to imagination" - people start getting creative.
Writers abhor a narrative vacuum, so if you show them an infinite space of creepy empty corridors, they'll be compelled to put stuff into it. Otherwise, there's no story to tell.
@@RelativelyBest But a story can be told without going overboard.
Sagan: Almond water is the only safe thing to drink in the backrooms.
Me, someone with a severe allergy to almonds: well fuck
Well you can drink lucky o milk but I don't know if it's canon
@@me-eat-book_7780 there isn’t really a true canon anyway, so just think what you want and it’s just as true as the stuff in the video
@@lasagnamafia thanks
royal rations
Especially in a later Level where you can obtain either Almond water or regular water from a thing, yet the water is safe to drink without a given reason
This could easily be a game similar to Yume Nikki, with multiple levels to explore and different random ways to traverse from one place to another. Heck, Yume 2kki is already close to this idea, as it's incredibly expansive and is also a massive collaborative project with people creating their own areas. I would love to see something like this get made.
On another note, if possible, I'm interested to see what G-Mod maps you used. Fantastic idea using them for some visuals, it made the video a lot more interesting, even if some didn't quite match up with each level.
most of the video are on the maps "places from your dreams" aswell as "gm_liminal" and "gm_mallparking"
I thought about that when I saw the 'endless apartments' level. Gives me Fish apartment vibes.
i think the water world map might be Aquarium. CSO2
From the footage, I'd honestly be down for a Source game based on the concept.
@@doododaadoo8673 The Stanley Parable ticks most of the boxes for that.
I appreciate anyone who can definitively seperate Kane's backrooms from wiki stuff.
Ill be in for your whole video now lol
Kane’s back rooms is, objectively, a lil better though..
@@blothamus7565 whats your point?
@@KittysInu to illustrate, that Kane’s back rooms, is a lil better though.
@@blothamus7565 ok.... and whats your point? Why are you here saying it on my comment?
And repeating it like you're broken or some shit too
@@blothamus7565 It’s subjective, At most you could say Kane pixel’s is more consistent but that’s about it
I listen to this video while I try to sleep every night, not only is this a big relief for my insomnia but I also love imagining how every place looks and event takes place while I try to sleep. All this mixed with Sagan's soothing voice is a godsend for me
Oh my God, same!! I thought I was crazy for listening to this over and over night after night.
@@ks_cerealkiller sonething is magical about this video
@Hagarism what level were you on bro?
@Hagarism I mean a lot of the levels are peaceful (like 39) but I get why you got terrified because there's levels like 6 or 9
Highway to the GOOBIE ZONE
Whenever you add monsters it just losses its meaning. I see the backrooms as some sort of limbo. A place to wander for eternity with yourself alone with no way to escape such desolate place.
Kind of agree. I think the very original concept of the backrooms was good enough on its own, and while the embellishments can be fine on their own, their addition tends to detract more from the original concept than they add.
I agree, though I feel a good exception to this is spook’s jumpscare mansion. Because while monsters are added as you move further, it’s not just to be scary, since each specimen is a love letter to the horror genre
@@pining_tree6788 Who is talking about Spooks mansion🤔
The only existence of monsters should be ones you never see. Only scary, inhuman sounds just out of sight. The idea that a monster MIGHT be in the same purgatory as you is more scary than actually seeing and running from a monster.
Adding monsters really just make this very mundane, the backrooms are all about neverending loneliness, adding monsters and other people really defeats that.
I love public writing projects like this and SCP, but I genuinely wish that The Backrooms remained just the original image and explanation. The imagined horror of doing something as simple as tripping into the wrong wall and then being trapped in a purgatory that was not just infinite and inescapable but so mind numbingly bland until you likely die of starvation or dehydration feels somehow more overwhelming than this creepypasta monster factory.
Some people like it, some don't, you can just ignore the canon you don't like imo
@@axilia203 it's not really much of a canon tho anymoore is it? more like fanfiction at this point
@@gummypusswatterson1322 there are many cannons, like 1 cannon is every level ever made, and 1 is only the first level (0)
@@itsve8632 that means there is no canon tho and that it's up to interpretation
@@gummypusswatterson1322 there are many, cause 1 cannon is that ONLY level 0 is the only level of the backrooms atleast the only confirmed level, theres an other cannon that is only the first 9 levels, with the rest being unconfirmed
Would be amazing to have a backrooms MMORPG covering a lot of levels and entities to discover. Just imagine diving into this distorted reality with VR. It would be so cool.
I’m currently making an SCP and backrooms into DND campaign.
No Clip VR
I found the Backrooms to be a relatively fun concept to think and meme about with some decent horror in it, but it currently feels like 'baby's first SCP'. It feels like theres significantly less quality control for a lot of things. Sure, there are good things in it, I can't deny that, but it just feels like 'Community Made Horror content by kids' instead of for kids.
I see it as the opposite, there's far more potential in the Backrooms than there is with SCP. SCP became laughably oversaturated and trust me... Plenty of SCP fans and contributors are edgy kids adding op monsters for the sake of making them op. There's such a thing as too much suspension of disbelief . The idea of some computer based infinite hellscape that takes aspects of the real world and turns them into an inescapable limbo gives me vibes of an AI gone mad. There's multiple references to computer programming in the Backrooms that no kid would know about while modern SCP seems to be content to co-opt any horror creation without permission from the creator. Such as any of Trevor Henderson's creations or the entirety of r/imsorryjon
am i missing something? is SCP supposed to be for children? there’s very little quality control in community projects because of the lack of a top-down structure and almost no barrier to entry. it’s just a feature of the medium.
@@dirkechoes1377 …Perhaps you’ve only read early SCP? Most of the modern day SCPS written are of SIGNIFICANTLY higher quality and originality then the older ones, and I’ve never seen one of the so called “co-opts” that you mention after like, series 4
It's going to take time for it to get better like SCP. I'm excited to to see where it goes and to see it get better.
@@El_Slugo yeah, later scp is so so good!!!!! maybe it's because i've read more of them, but -3000 entries in PARTICULAR absolutely slap. not a day goes by that i don't think of 3999 or 3001. and the apotheosis and there is no antimemetics division canons are genuinely some of the best things on that site, apotheosis is CRIMINALLY underrated
also, hot take, but i'd gladly read some edgy 15 y/os attempt at a creative writing project over a lot of scp writers, who're 30 y/os trying WAYYYY too hard for clout and bullying everyone who dislikes them off the site
I love the concept of the backrooms but I find that more as more people try to make more concepts for it it makes it less and less scary. The fear that stems from the backrooms is the unknown and isolation not the monsters. I hate that they had to add entities to such an interesting horror concept.
The space itself was the horror. Creepy entities and spaces with tacked on anomalous properties is just straight up not in line with the original concept. The levels that featured them felt closer to SCP entries.
The first level was scary enough, the scp fandom got bored and decided to ruin this good concept.
I think a lot of it was people adding uncreative rooms not fully suited for the backrooms. There’s a ton of 14 year olds popping out back rooms levels without actually putting proper thought into it, without understanding how the backrooms is so terrifying because of that psychological effect like in the first level. I think the concept of having entities is super cool, as well as multiple levels, but people should put a lot more thought and care mixed with creativity when making backrooms levels.
@@Doku666 honestly yeah, most back rooms levels are just based off liminal pictures and that’s what makes me more mad, it’s lazy and not fleshed out. It has always been about psychological horror, but people ruined it by adding 100+ entities, I feel like just 1 or 2 would be fine
The original post heavily implied that you aren’t alone in there so I don’t think that they have nothing to do with the original concept
I've seen lots of people giving the Backrooms fandom flack for being some kind of "budget" SCP wiki.
What a lot of them forget is that when the SCP mythos started out it also had quality issues stemming from there being a lot of junk on the site and a complete absence of quality control. It took the SCP wiki years to refine it's formula and figure out what tone the myths should take, people don't realize that figuring out what works and what doesn't takes a lot of throwing stuff at the wall which is why some Backrooms concepts might seem poorly thought out. It's all just a matter of people figuring out the proper formula and tone for this mythos.
The only problem that I have with some Backrooms articles (mostly from the wikidot), is that they sometimes try WAY too damn hard to be SCP. *Especially* the format-screwing. My God, sometimes it just feels sooooo unnecessary, because the writing for the article itself just doesn't hold up.
*"All style, no substance"* sort of thing.
Also the whole wanderlust scp series scandal was a huge stepping stone in cleaning up the scp wiki. I sincerely hope the backrooms doesn't have a scandal like that, but I do hope they get to refine their stories and create a whole new interesting internet anthology to enjoy. At the end of the day its more horror content which I'm always down for!
and ngl the scp foundation STILL struggles with quality control, but imo in the opposite direction -- people with a lot of seniority are given basically free reign to write whatever, which results in a lot of them pumping out some of the worst articles the site's had within recent memory and being praised for it. scp 3000 really only got its slot because it was written by djkaktus, who has a long history w/in the site, when the next 3 articles + 3999 deserved the placement MUCH more
Tbh there is some truth to it, which is why it's so goddamn hard to write anything for the wiki nowadays (an author of several failed attempts, possibly never succeeding) the backrooms wiki still has it's "anyone can add to it but it's actually true" which is also it's own problem, still i prefer the og, this just tries too hard to be the next scp wiki
Here's the thing. SCP's original premise is ideal for a wiki. They are a bureaucratic organisation, cataloguing the anomalies. You are essentially reading their database. You're seeing them through the lens of scientists attempting to organize the mess. You have access to what they've managed to learn.
With Backrooms, the idea of an organized wiki contradicts the premise. They are established as almost impossible to survive, impossible to return from, with people mostly entering there by chance and at best organizing themselves by chance. And yet here we have a group that feels as comfortable in the Backrooms as the Foundation in their own base. But we are still supposed to believe those levels, despite being so well-travelled, remain dangerous. And that despite the overwhelming supposed lethality and unpredictability, those people have time and resources to not just survive, but map all the thousands of infinite levels.
My point is, the Backrooms, if they try to follow the SCP formula, are physically incapable of being as good as SCP, because that very formula is unfit for the concept of backrooms. They are only using it because the writers have all grown up reading SCP.
What's funny is that the first message board posts expanding the lore of the Backrooms to reference "water that smells like almonds" were meant to imply the water was laced with cyanide. But somehow, via collaboration and people bouncing lore ideas off each other, that original reference to almond-smelling water developed and flipped on its head and became a concept of a healing item.
I wish this was a thing when I was a kid because my sister and I would have definitely gone around looking for entrances, and then pretend we were in the backrooms every time we were in some empty place lol
i mean there is nothing stopping you from doing this now… i’d totally play this lol
@@oli.4409 Except that its not fun as an adult
@@user-hr1uw4cj2z yes it is
@@user-hr1uw4cj2z
Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean you can't have fun! Imagine what you'd like have fun on your own, its your life! And if people judge you because "YOurE aN AdUlT, YoU CaNT AcT LiKe A ChIlD" just can't find the fun, either because they don't want to, or just love to ruin people's day for seemingly no reason
@@alkv7604 im not an adult 😂
The backrooms used to terrify me but now I'd love it. Just chilling out, no other people, no current events, just the comforting hum of florescent lights and the musty smell of moldy carpet.
*Eternally until you cease living.* Don't forget about that part. Definitely a great place to be.
Dude the poolrooms have to be the best one tbh. It’s so relaxing.. imagine being there with a computer and access to internet as well as music… literal heaven
@@midleno8364 fr bro
@@midleno8364 until some water eventually breaches into the wires in the walls and cooks you
I sincerely doubt that many of the authors knew what "non-euclidian" means.
I'm watching and kinda hoping that one of these just straight up starts describing how the level exists in hyperbolic space and the myriad effects that that has on traversal.
Like "yeah, make sure you're in a perfect single file queue, or else you will lose each other, and try not to look too closely at the squares with five sides."
non-euclidian=cool mysterious scientific math thing
*Lovecraft is typing*
Duh, it means they are a cabal of euclid haters
idk man math is kinda hard
Back in my day there was one "floor", no monsters and a creepy idea that wasn't a knockoff of the scp foundation
Exactly good sir.
"no monsters"
"because god save you if you hear something, because it sure as hell has heard you"
@@HoneeyMoth you’re kind of disregarding what he said, he said no monsters. What you’re saying is “something.” A monster in this case is referring to a named entity like a smiler or a party goer which is way less threatening then something as mysterious and elusive as “something.” In short, there were no monsters because there was nothing to put a name to, only the possibility of whatever you may be unlucky enough to find or not find, and that is much scarier then a named and known monster.
@@blothamus7565
ah fair enough.
i will say while the backrooms are less scary with named crap *especially with names like “partygoers” or “coders”*, it is interesting to see the depths of how far the rabbit hole of backrooms content goes
but i totally see the purist perspective even if i personally don’t enjoy it that much, maybe you do, i’m not you, you’re not me, so let’s just bring attention to the based Stanley parable profile picture
@@HoneeyMoth Okay, you realise that's better than knowing there's a monster, right? There's ambiguity behind it, not just
*"On floor 4(10^30) there's Shadowedge the Hedgehog, who is NOT A KNOCKOFF OF SHADOW. He will defenestrate your spleen if you don't drink approximately 146ml of Almond water and manage to finish a game of chess against yourself before he gets to you."*
The original works because you don't actually know if something is in there. They never outright confirm it, or go into excruciating detail about all their edgy OC characters and factions abilities, it's just there.
One thing I love about the backrooms in general is just how much it embraces the weirdness of working in a corporate office. There really are rooms that just randomly smell off or hallways that seem to lead to nowhere so it just all meshes really well
yeah! its very disturbing too and probably has given me some type of phobia
I like to put the back rooms lore into 3 categories:
1) The original one, no entities(?) just yellow halls
2) Backrooms extended (LV 0-2 + few entities)
3)Backrooms expanded universe (the big one)
The original didn't have any entities it showed us, but did explain *something* could be lurking in the halls.
@@nariemmons1753 yes
The A sync man made creation which I don’t really enjoy :/
@CHUBBYTHERAT those were made after the original 4chan post that category 1 originates from by a differentncreator, although thenog post dows allude to some sort of creature with itsnfinal statement
The original has at least one entity
I find the concept of many levels pretty interesting, but I agree with the majority that this doesn't really capture the true nature of the backrooms. This version has a totally different feel, it's more like an SCP. It's a combination of scary, weird, harmless, and harmful rather than the straight up terrifying death trap version of Kane's backroom series. Don't get me wrong, this version is very intriguing. It's familiar, yet alien in how expansive it is. And it makes me want to wonder how these rooms exist, why they exist, and does it keep going infinitely? Are the outdoor scenes on another planet, or are the skies just walls, sooo many questions.
"true nature of the backrooms" ???????
@@pigeonite Weird thing to criticize.... but ok? The backroom's origin is from one small post on 4chan, which describes the endless yellow wallpaper, and implying that a creature lurks there. That's all that is said. Kane's series is more aligned with the story of the original photo, a faithful interpretation of the backrooms. That's what I meant by true nature. Kane's version is far more mysterious like the 4chan post. This 100 level storyline is too heavily explained, and it loses the fearful liminal nature that it was intended to be
@@sketchalater4656 nobody knows what it was intended to be because the poster was anonymous so there isn't really a "true nature" is all I'm saying lmao
@@pigeonite wow you sound so arrogant. it seems somewhat clear to me that the original backrooms post was intended to have the same effect as slenderman, smile dog, jeff the killer, etc. in that it’s just a spooky idea someone thought up to freak people out (who are willing to be freaked out by it). the concept that one day you could ‘noclip’ out of reality and become lost in an infinite maze of yellow rooms and halls within which hostile monster(s) roam which will harm you is pretty spooky.
don’t act like an authority on things you have zero inside knowledge on. you weren’t the original poster, you know nothing about it’s intent or true nature or whether there was any to begin with. saying “there isn’t really a “true nature” lmao” is a most ridiculous statement from someone with no ties to the subject at hand.
@@floomfwastaken ??? and you're implying you have any more authority in saying there was a definitive intention for it to be anything specific ???? by the end you basically just repeated my point back to me so I don't really understand what you're going for with this
SCP is scary because anything can be dangerous. A infinite IKEA store, a enormous sea serpent, a unlikable lizard hellbent on mass Genocide, or a mask that forces you to put it on so it can possess you.
The Backrooms is just a bunch of circle jerk repetitive floor plus a monster here or there B.S. It was a glitch in reality, a mistake that you fell into that you shouldn’t have, now it’s just a Raid Shadow Legends tower that you have to clear to return home💀
I think this concept is cool but alot of the levels are ruined because of inconsistency. 70% of the levels should be thrown out or just need to be changed alot for the back rooms to have the eerie horror feel we get when seeing Kane pixels found footage videos.
The inconsistency is the point
@@shep8439 the point can still be bad
@@TONADRIEL It doesn't matter, Just enjoy the backroom in your way.
@@Blue-Apple-fc9eo i am ?
@@TONADRIEL Oh sorry about that.
Now, this may sound like an unpopular opinion, but I actually liked it when the Backrooms consisted of just 1 to 3 levels during back when it was still fresh and new.
All these additional levels kinda detract from what the Backrooms was originally supposed to be about, that being the fear of isolation and not knowing if there's anyone but you out there.
And if there was somebody out there, were they friendly or not?
the spirit of a new horror fad always quickly changes. See: Slender Man, video game piracy screens, creepypasta, .EXE games, etc.
I roll with it nowadays, and only latch on after the idea starts kicking off in a direction I like. backrooms started great, and now has entirely more plot than I would prefer.
I mean, Hell should stay unexplained, your brain fills in details and theories better than an established lore could.
and I don't get how it's documented?
"You can't escape"
"Also uh we have done research and exploration and video footage" Right.
That's the thing though, that's all it has to be for you. There's no "true" canon, like the scp foundation
ok lol
All these added creatures don’t donit for me they feel a bit goofy(?) maybe they’d work better in a different story/medium
Almond water seems like a horrible thing to choose because nut allergies are like one of the most common allergies
Increases the fear factor
Theres always lucky o milk
@@KnivezKGVCVRYY And the second option is also a super common allergy being lactose intolerance
But it’s quirky doe!
Just send all the nut allergy mfers to the backrooms, i will finally be able to shove pbjs down my throat in peace
I like to imagine that the universe, when it renders new things, it makes mistakes and sends those things to a place that can hold these things without people noticing. And sometimes, it accidentally mistakes people and they slip into that place, and the reason it’s so hard to return back to the frontrooms is because the backrooms are made to be inescapable so the universe doesn’t have to deal with these mistakes leaking back into reality.
Renders... This ain't a videogame bub
@@houndrysmagolyteofhope4661YOU *NOCLIP* HERE
i think these are super interesting but could benefit a lot from losing the scientific-paper esque writing. journals and notes from wanderers would serve the universe a lot better, i think. either way, though, that's just my opinion and i do think it serves plenty of the levels well.
i love the memories one, the detail about the childhood pets really creeped me out. the futuristic halls one is really cool as well, especially the unidentified corpses everywhere. the roller rink one was just plain charming to me, too, lol.
i agree, this seems very scp-esque and to separate the backrooms from the scp-foundation the journal entry format would be the best way.
The writing is done by that science team mes or whatever personally I like it makes things feel uneasy
Yeah, the emotionless Wikipedia-esque style really isn't doing this any favors. More human moments like seeing your childhood pets or the guy who wrote a letter stood out, but a lot of the levels really suffer from the scientific paper stylization, as you can't get any kind of read on what the vibe is actually like for people in it. Maximum creepy is best achieved by giving the reader an idea of what it feels like to be in a place, rather than by reading out menu options of other worlds.
@@owensks that's fair! i'm glad someone can enjoy it where i can't.
There are actually a few levels with documentation like that
I'd recommend looking into level 1.5 as a start
I love just hearing the names of some of these entities out of context. Sagan say smth like "skin stealers" and "death moths" and I just have to deal with that. Incredible.
Me no-clipping into the Backrooms knowing that I now have to deal with the Piss-Gulpers, Blorbos and Evil Houseplants: 😭😭😭😭😭
Started out as an interesting idea, rapidly turned into a list of indie horror video game levels with supply drops, monsters and spaces that have nothing to do with the original concept of liminal spaces. The in-depth lore, exploration and total lack of isolation and mystery sucked all the horror out of this horror premise pretty quickly.
they turned it into a new kind of horror tho
@@Hellwaterva this is the most generic "horror" thing I've ever seen
@@brianthepyromancer924 how come
Why did you watch a 2 hour video on it then?
@@5ashll303 You don't have to watch the entire video to write a comment, chief.
This descent has to be the exact opposite of how a giant squid feels in the ocean sometimes. The squid goes UP, encounters unfamiliar terrain, noise, pressure, colors, water, and an enormous plethora of potentially deadly creatures-most of which will leave you alone or investigate you, but some of which actively hunt you and suck you into their unfamiliar and terrifying world with hooks, lines, and boats where you’re probably going to die, or at best they’ll take something from you and throw you back where you came from
i feel like everything interesting and creepy about the backrooms got immedietly defeated by how populated by creatures they are. the threat of something ~maybe~ lurking around the corner in a massive liminal space is way scarier then that thing being a weird dog or a floating smile. its like that feeling of a horror movie revealing its monster in the first 5 minutes, it takes something essential to horror, the unknown out of the equation
There are many kinds of horror. I wouldn't call "the unknown" essential for all horror. You can absolutely reveal the monster immediately and it still be horrifying.
@@zionwingmaster Fear of the unknown still plays a huge part when something is only partially shown. If you know everything about a threat, that becomes an action/thriller rather than a horror story.
speaking as a writer whose favorite part of the process is worldbuilding, this entire video is fascinating; I really had no idea the backrooms was such an expansive collaborative world ! Thanks for compiling all this information !!
thats what some people dont realise, the backrooms may not be the same as it was a few years ago, but there are still really good concepts in the idea, with each level being its own personalised experience with great worldbuilding
Finally a sentiment I can agree with, people keep comparing the Backrooms to SCP saying it’s not as good as SCP. I believe part of that (and I do mean part of it) has to do with SCP being around much longer and is what many people are familiar with and grew up with. Sure they’re both similar but they both have their own flaws and both have their differences. I personally like the Backrooms more due to the complex world building, detailed environments and creative ecosystems. That’s not to say SCP doesn’t have that but it’s not the main focus where as it’s the backbone for the Backrooms wikidot. I do like both for different reasons and both are interesting, I also understand people not liking one or the other but it’s very tiring seeing others compare what is and isn’t good in their subjective opinion just because they don’t like something😮💨
@@the_cryptid_in_question "ONg BackRooMs HaS MOnSTEr SCP Has MonSYEr iTs ThE EXact SaME You GUys ONG"
@@C0ndensedMilk27 😂😂😂
Finally a comment i can agree. I came to this video because i like how expansive the backrooms has become but all the other comments are just people complaining, like, one person complaining isnt bad but the entire comment section is just that, it just starts becoming obnoxious. Thank you for making this comment, it feels like fresh air
Hearing all these floors I’ve noticed a trend in many authors using the term “Non-Euclidian geometry” as a reason to why it is difficult to map these floors, although the mathematician in me wants to clarify that non-Euclidean geometry is in reference to any geometry on a curved surface, so technically all our geometry is non-Euclidean.
Right? Definitely something they got from Lovecraft lol
Yeah that was driving me up the wall. I know they're parroting Lovecraft but cmon...
If that's the case, than you guys got any other "cooler" terms for this type of geometry, because all I've got is *"Dimensional Transcendentalism"* from Dr Who, but that doesn't really role off the tongue quite as well. Any other ideas??
Makes me wonder what they think it means when they say non-Euclidean
I've been looking for this comment it brings me back to reality every time I hear it 😭
Dude, you've been at this for 8 years, and I just want to say you're doing really well. You got my sub today. Wishing you a billion or more before you're done. 💖
The fact that someone can say how big some of these spaces are (like how many MILLIONS of square miles) kills the concept by itself. Not to mention all the other dumb shit like almond water
ong like the whole thing with the original was that it was that one space and it just kept going. nobody knew how big it was, just that it went on and on and there was no way out. a simple but also not simple concept which left lots up to ur own imagination. now we got super mario levels in here😭
Yeah, i think the whole almond water concept should be tossed out the window, its like mushrooms in mario bros, they are there just to give you an advantage, simply for you and to serve no other purpose, honestly a lot of backrooms levels were made like its a video game, theres no logical reason for almond water to be there, the easiest fix would just to be have like, house type levels have water fountains for normal water, like any normal house in the real world and places like arcades to have lots of sodas and stuff like that, it should just have the normal things that a place in the real world should have but minus the entities i guess, almond water fountains really breaks the immersion
"What is this water made of?" "Inconclusive"
"How big is this eldritch backroom" "millions"
@@jackhazardous4008 “how do these ppl conducting studies on the backrooms even get there?” “yeah😄”
That just means this shit is getting documented by a group of people. I was thinking something of the same thing like "who the hell is even documenting this shit? Like is the wiki just a description from it's maker or is the information Itself part of the story? In this case the documented information of the levels by an organization that has figured out a way to explore the levels and make it back to the real world freely traveling back in forth
My problem is, those levels seem like they are always trying to one up one another, ruining any consistency at all.
It's also extremely silly that the only elements they chose to keep between the levels are stupid entities and stupid almond water.
yeah, i think there are inconsistencies in the wrong places, like why the hell would most levels have almond water? It makes no sense like 0 vending machines in real life dispense almond water, and its supposed to be like, akin to reality but slightly off, and the almond water just seems like a cheap way for an explanation of how so many survived. And plus like, so many of the backrooms levels seem to be copies of earlier ones, like Roller Rockin pizza copying the Quarter hub, they look so similar, only with very few differences. A level i'll give credit to because it feels like it was well done was definitely Memories cause it kinda emulates the actual concept of liminal spaces, and yeah the sentient plush toy thing is a bit weird but that could showcase how as kids a lot of people believed stuff like barney the dinosaur or other kids tv characters being real
@@kingpig8732 in a way though, doesnt the fact that almond water being so prevalent fit the idea of the backrooms far better than something that does make sense?
@@maxsync183 no
the ideaof the backrooms is being like video game levels. because why not, you can't eternally have different stuff each time
@@maxsync183 I get that, but a lot of other things seem to make too much sense, like some stages like the arcade ones (I think it’s roller rink) can serve standard food you’d find there. And yeah there are monsters but that’s just there for the horror purpose, plus almond water having unusual properties like healing bruises and ailments instantly
the newer, fanmade backrooms levels don't really have the same essence that the og ones do. dont get me wrong, the thought and creativity that goes into them is amazing, but i feel like every single one is loaded with entities in order to make it "scary". the concept of the original backrooms was the idea of isolation, the horrors that the human mind can create, and it plays into the fear of the unknown. i love the fanmade levels, but i'd also love to see more levels that play more into psychological horror
honestly yeah I can really relate to this, like I just want a level where it's feels scary and just you swear you can feel something breathing on your neck. or that something is watching you. but you know something isn't there. like I really love horror, and things like the backrooms :(
I actually discovered SCP after I learned about the backrooms. there is something so interesting to be about level 0 of the backrooms. The idea is truly horrifying to me. I have grown to love all of the backrooms levels but level 0 is always what I think of when I think of the backrooms. I have also grown to really love SCP & spend hours listening to narrators talking about them.
Do I hate this kind of horror? Yes. Am I going to watch a two hour video analyzing it, in a pitch black room, at 11:43pm? Yes.
It's 4:34 am rn and I love horror but I'm a massive scaredy cat, I don't think I'm sleeping till day
"Am I a masochist? yes"
@@iane7474 This aint scary at all, it honestly just gets boring when you pay attention to the edge.
@@Ryzard as the video I went on I got less and less scared, the backrooms (level 0) genuinely scare me because of the isolation, but after like 20 I stopped these are like poorly written fan fictions
@@iane7474 4:14 am for me
Im alright with multiple levels, but I wish the backrooms wiki was handled with more scrutiny like the scp wiki. Compared to the scp wiki most of the backrooms wiki works just feel so amateur and unimmersive.
Yes. It is supposed to be a challenge to write a good entry to the SCP wiki. It's supposed to be something to be proud of. An original idea, with clear concise descriptions and simplification without an overexplained mess.
It's supposed to be something a writer can sit around for hours thinking about and brainstorming. It's supposed to be something a writer can use to learn and pursue their love for it.
Not a free-for-all deathmatch where you can write a jumbled mess of words with half-baked amateur effort and still get it published to the website as an official entry.
Not to mention the multiple repeats of what is essentially the same setting.
level 102039184321874832784327843728
hey guys look its another staircase level but this one is better because theres an entity chasing you the entire time like level !
@@UpToSpeedOnJaguar True that, someone please tell me the difference between level 25 and level 40
Hey uh, 2 years late, it's much better now, and the pages look pretty cool and have funny effects. Lots of rewrites and moderation. :)
i feel like the peak of backrooms writing is when the author really gives off the vibe of "youre not supposed to be here" without going hard on the paranormal aspect. authors who add too many entities, make a level far too dangerous, have too many commonplace anomalous properties, or just try too hard to make it scary and interesting in general are always the easiest to spot, since the lack of understanding for what the backrooms is supposed to be is evident.
levels like (i havent read backrooms entries in almost 2 years so my memorys hazy) the one in the garage with the noneuclidian pole and fucked up forest trail are insanely good, because not only does it not directly explain to you what to be cautious of, it also doesnt explain why things are there or what the understanding of them is. which is incredible, since the point of the backrooms is to NOT understand any of it.
and now for the main point of this comment, i feel like the website you used for this video is the epitome of everything wrong that i listed. most of these levels, especially past the 100 mark, all do at least one of the things i mentioned, and it SERIOUSLY kills any immersion or suspense. at least, if you read a ton of horror, it does. im sure theyre fun to read as a casual cosmic horror fan, but as someone whos basically seen it all done a million times over, the lack of originality and cohesive understanding for what authors are writing makes most of these entries fall incredibly flat.
the first 30 or so levels on the website you used have a large amount of genuinely interesting and scary ones, and my guess is cuz the only authors at the time were truly passionate ones and NOT teenagers in middle/high school writing spooky otherworldly fan fiction, which seems to take up the majority of writers today. there are a couple exceptions of course, such as the one on the mountain summit, or that "Claustrophobia" stage, but thats only because the authors knew what they wanted and what they were writing, which was something that even they werent meant to fully grasp. its a shame that this is rarely the case these days.
ultimately, the backrooms was doomed from the start to eventually become oversaturated, but i didnt think itd happen THIS quickly. cuz now i just cant bring myself to read any new entries, nobody seems to really have the passion and understanding for both the backrooms and writing like the OG authors did. its a real shame, since the concept of a dimension of a nigh-infinite number of incomprehensibly large plains of existence with dimension warping noneuclidian structures built off of pieces of human civilization that are completely devoid of any sensible science to explain whats going on is beyond beyond awesome cosmic horror. such a damn shame that the internet got its hands on this shit 😔😔😔 kudos to you for even making a video like this. i cant imagine how many hours you mustve spent staring at backrooms entries lol poor dude, hopefully this video does good for you
Yep.
Less is more. I find that to be true more often than not these days.
@@ShacoPL truly. especially in this type of storytelling, its best to let the readers imagination do the heavy lifting
this man spittin straight 📠
That's a lot of typing
Bro please make a part 2 for levels 100 through 199, this video has racked up like 5.5 million views-
honestly, i can’t get level 6 out of my head. even though it’s so simple, it’s an extremely interesting and existential concept. it makes you wonder if you could be experiencing life after death.
I love the idea that the backrooms are "gods attempt at a horror game". Like as if whatever god made earth were trying to code a new project, but abandoned it to focus on earth instead
what if it was like "hmm... i need a place, a place for a specific creature to live on."
then God was like: "Oh! i know! I'm just going to create endless halls and multiple levels to these these creatures and see what sticks"
it's kind of fun to think about
Like some other commentator said, It's kind-of like a testing room from games but this time for reality.
@@gyroi17 would be terrifying if the some of the entities are like unused creatures that twitches and moves like their animations are unfinished
I genuinely don’t understand why people have added levels that are essentially outdoor open spaces. Kind of ruins the entire concept of the original, which was a creepy indoor liminal space where you feel completely trapped and alone. The back rooms resembling an indoor space is what made it initially creepy. I just don’t get that from levels where you’re just in a field or a forest, it loses that claustrophobic feeling. Great video though, it’s still cool to see what people have come up with!
Honestly, if done well, you're giving your character (aka you) false hope. I mean after spending countless of hours wandering yellow hallways, you become numb to it. Exploring more out of sense of boredom than survival. So when something changes, the first thing that happens is your attention is grabbed immediately. And if you've all but given hope of making it out and you see what looks like you made it, you're reinvigored to keep going. You have hope and some sense of relief. And when you get there, you realize, it's all fake and your soul is crushed. --- Like a little kid first learning that their hero, say Mickey Mouse, is actually just some person in a Mickey suit in a bizarre case of the head coming off by accident. A similiar incident occurred years ago at WDW (forget the country), one of the character's head came off during a photo op and a child cried that Mickey (for simplicity sake) was dead (because he was headless) not knowing that Mickey isn't real and the person inside was indeed fine. It was just a massive costume malfunction.
Level 10 is a great outdoor level, it gives a creepy and eerie vibe, specially with the fog.
I think it extends the concept because with the weird spatial nature of the Backrooms, areas that seem “outside” are still inside ultimately, more existential claustrophobia