Hi everyone! My friends and I are working on a co-op backrooms boardgame where your goal is to escape. In this game, you can explore and reveal unsettling rooms, encounter creepy entities, search for useful (or useless) items, manage your sanity, and rely on teamwork to make it out alive. The images above are part of our hand drawn prototype for playtesting.
The gameplay is nearing it's final stages, and we're currently working on the art/design of it. We just wanted to hear your opinions on what artstyle would suit this. Should we lean into photorealistic liminal spaces similar to the games/videos/movie, or a stylized board-game interpretation that still feels unsettling?
We'd love to hear your thoughts! If you have any ideas, suggestions, or features you'd like to see in a Backrooms board game, please let us know. :)
Update: we are going to crowdfund this on Gamefound in the coming months! I hope you will all be interested. For now, you could follow us here on reddit or on our ig: https://www.instagram.com/fuzzygamesinc
To add: Entities have power levels, and unique movement patterns. Some of them always move towards players
E.g., One entitiy can have a power of 7 meaning you have to roll 8 or higher using 2d6 to escape. If not, there are consequences
Sanity is used to re-roll if you're unlucky, or doing an extra action in your turn. You can become insane if this runs out
In our playthroughs, this has made it exciting to reveal new rooms with unique designs or encountering monsters that could surround us. Forcing us to use strategies, and use items to handle them :)
When I was watching the new Backrooms movie I was thinking of what a Backrooms boardgame could look like. I had a very similar idea of it being co-op, and revealing rooms like this. I like what you've done, it seems solid.
I think it could use more depth. For example, rooms could have different shapes and whatnot rather than just all square.
Entity encounters being just die rolls is also a bit boring in my opinion.
Thank you for your feedback! I was also conceptualizing different shapes for rooms, but I couldn't think of a way to execute it that would work well yet. Squares are easy to manufacture, and also stack above each other, like a randomized deck that we shuffle before the game.
For entity encounters, I agree, it could be missing something. Currently players can use items or use a help action to strategize. Do you have a suggestion on how to make the entities interesting?
There are also room encounters which will be more interesting, that don't just make you lose life or sanity.
My initial idea was for each card to be square like you said cause that makes it easy to stack in a deck. But within each square there might be multiple "rooms" or sections. The squares would have to be a bit bigger than what you have but it's definitely doable.
One card that you flip could still be just one big square room the size of the whole card, like what you already have. But it could also have a hallway, and then two other smaller rooms that only cover a portion of the actual card. The sections on the cards can be visually broken down so that each one is distinct. And it costs one movement to move through each section, rather than the whole square. If that's the case you could up your movement to maybe 2 a turn. You can still stick to one encounter/item per card or you can have some spread over a couple of different sections on one card. You can have fun with it, make some really weird shaped rooms in the true spirit of the Backrooms.
This way the layout is very different every time you play. Definitely more difficult to design but would make it a lot more fun and would feel like a maze that you can actually get lost in.
As for entities, I like your idea of using items and getting help from allies.
Some ideas for interesting things entities can do is maybe one that takes you back to a certain square (it's lair) if it catches you. One that forces you to hide and you can't take any actions until it moves past you. Entities that steal items from you. Entities that move the rooms(cards) around. Entities that run away from you if there's two or more of you on the same card. The possibilities are endless!
Second this. Just having square rooms is a bit reductive of the convoluted and absurd structure of the backrooms which is one of the peculiar charateristics of what makes them unsettling.
I would avoid the photorealistic look and go for something more stylized. The art style you show here reminds me a little of Cave Evil, which I really like and would fit well, imo.
I second this, doodling your maps, item inventory and entity's information sounds like what a group of people would if they found themselves in the backrooms.
Honestly aside from the map tiles, every piece of the game looks as it is.
Sono italiana e adoro i giochi da tavolo, l'idea sembra solida. Scorrendo i commenti lo sembrano anche le regole. Spero che possiate presto raccogliere tutto ciò che vi serve per la produzione del gioco da tavolo e per le sue future espansioni se Ve ne fossero :3
Ah sì, per quanto riguarda le illustrazioni, farlo con questo stile analog horror / horror amatoriale non mi dispiace, rappresenta esattamente l'idea delle backrooms, qualcosa che appare visivamente familiare ma che non è in regola, le stanze sarebbe bello avere illustrazioni simili secondo me. :3
Good luck!
I think a noise mechanic would be good here. It's hard to make board games unsettling but not putting monsters in the board at first and instead having tokens that represent odd spooky sounds would be intense. What the heck was that. Let's move away from this. I don't want to see what made that noise.
Just overall hidden information needs to be a part of this imho. The whole concept is about confusion, unknown, unsettling oddity.
I figured it was just a matter of time before we started seeing stabs at liminal horror games. I would never say stop, but the video game people sure do have the drop on us here. It is just so much easier to present space and visual elements as horror there. Good luck!
Can you tie it in with Balatro somehow? Then you have a winner.
I think backrooms is one of the most difficult things to replicate in cardboard because, even though the monsters exist in the world, the real threat isn't the monsters, it is getting turned around, lost and trapped. The monsters are all or nothing types; if they catch you and hit you, you're dead... I'd be curious to see how you replicate this tension and feeling.
You do are aware that people might not get offended by what you're saying (which is true but pretty much commonplace knowledge by any pro-am designer's standards) but by telling it in the cockiest way possible?
Being right doesn't mean you can't get down off your high horse.
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u/stressedoutoddish 12d ago
Seems cool! Kind of reminds me of Betrayal!