How a Run Works#
A run is one trip into the Backrooms: from the moment the screen fades to the moment the player is back in the city — alive or not.
Getting in
The player dies, walks through an entrance or is sent by an admin. The screen fades, they drop onto Level 0 — or the level an entrance leads to — and a card names the floor.
Surviving
They carry a flashlight and one spare battery. Sanity, stamina and battery tick down, supplies hide in boxes, and monsters arrive when the director decides.
Finding a door
Each run shows only a few of the level's exits. Going through one takes the group deeper, back to the city, or springs a trap.
Getting out
Escaping pays cash plus the worth of what they carry. Dying leaves a body with their items for the others. Either way they come back to the city, and the run is recorded.
Every run is its own copy of the world — a separate routing bucket with no traffic or pedestrians — so players in different runs never see each other, and nothing from outside follows them in.
Ways In#
Way | How it works | Set in |
|---|---|---|
Dying | When a player dies anywhere on the server, there is a chance — 6 in 100 by default — that they wake up on Level 0 instead of at the hospital. A cooldown of 15 minutes stops it happening to the same player twice in a row. | Settings → Getting in |
Entrances | Taped-off walls and arcade machines you place in the world. Each leads to the level you choose, and a machine can charge for the run. |
|
Hidden spots | Five fixed places with an | Built in |
Admins |
| |
Your scripts | The |
Players who go in at about the same time share a run. With Join open runs on (the default), a new arrival joins a run on the same level that started less than three minutes ago and still has room, up to four survivors. Turn it off to give every entry a private run of its own.
The Five Levels#
The levels are played in order: an exit that leads deeper drops the group onto the next one, and the last level only has ways out. Each has its own lighting, fog, ambient hum, monster — and drains sanity at its own rate.
Level | What it is like | Monster | Sanity drain |
|---|---|---|---|
Level 0 — The Lobby | Yellow wallpaper and buzzing fluorescents. Long gaps between flickers; blackouts are rare. | The Wanderer | ×1.0 |
Level 1 — Habitable Zone | Darker, colder halls. Blackouts come early and often. | The Still One, during blackouts | ×1.18 |
Level 2 — Pipe Dreams | Pipes and thick fog. Every blackout turns the lights red. | The Bundle | ×1.42 |
Level 3 — Electrical Station | Almost no light, fog fifteen metres away, frequent red alerts. | The Screamer | ×1.70 |
Level X — The Sublevel | A vast underground space under long, dim red alerts. The last floor: its exits lead out or nowhere. | The Colossus, woken by a red alert | ×0.65 |
Three events shape every floor:
Flickers — the lights stutter and dip for a moment.
Blackouts — every light dies for twenty seconds or more. Sanity drains fast, and some monsters only come out now.
Red alerts — the lights pulse red with an alarm. Something is awake.
A quiet period at the start of every run holds back the first blackout, red alert and monster, so players get their bearings before anything happens. Deeper levels keep it shorter.
The Monsters#
Monsters are not placed. The director sends one when the group's tension is high enough — often after a few seconds of unnatural silence — at a distance from the player it judges most vulnerable, and takes it away when it wanders too far or has been around too long. None of them can be killed.
The Wanderer — Level 0
A tall figure that patrols, listens, and never loses your scent once it has it. It opens doors and forces them. Your flashlight is the defence: shine it in its face from close enough and it backs away, and may vanish. Hits for 17.
The Still One — Level 1
It cannot move while anyone can see it — and it does not need to walk. Look away, or lose sight of it in a blackout, and it is suddenly closer. It sees all around itself, hears from far away and hits for 65. Meeting it face to face snaps the camera to it and tears away a chunk of sanity. Keep it in view.
The Bundle — Level 2
A mass of cables drawn to light and noise. Near it, your flashlight flickers; close up, it dies for a few seconds. Switching the torch off is often the right call. Hits for 22.
The Screamer — Level 3
It stands facing a wall and ignores you — until you look at its face. Then it screams, the screen flashes red, and it runs at you faster than you can sprint, and it never gives up. Its touch kills. Keep your eyes down.
The Colossus — Level X
A giant, slow cousin of the Bundle that wakes when the lights turn red. It hears from almost a hundred metres away, reaches further than anything else, never loses your scent and, like the Bundle, is drawn to your light and kills it up close. Hits for 42. Outwalk it.
Most of them hunt by sound, and a locker beats every one of them: once a player is inside, the monster loses them and gives up after a few seconds. A flare drives them away from where it burns, and an entity sample lures them to the jar instead of you.
Between monsters the director keeps the floor alive with omens — a whisper, footsteps overhead, a door slamming somewhere, something crawling in the vents, a scream far away, a figure crossing the corridor — growing stranger as tension rises. Scares come in waves: after each one, the group is given a moment to breathe.
Survival#
Sanity#
Sanity starts at 100. It drains in the dark and during blackouts, when the player is alone, when a monster is near or hunting them, and when they are out of breath. Light, a lit flashlight, other survivors close by, safe rooms and hiding bring it back.
Stage | From | What the player gets |
|---|---|---|
Stable | 100 | Nothing. |
Uneasy | 70 | Whispers at the ear, footsteps that are not there, the first hallucinations. |
Disturbed | 45 | Breathing behind them, a heartbeat, the screen warping, figures that vanish when looked at. |
Panic | 25 | All of it, more often and louder. |
Breaking | 10 | Almost constant. |
At zero the mind gives out: the lights die, every monster on the floor comes for the player, they lose health, and sanity snaps back to a sliver. Going down a level lifts sanity to at least 80.
Stamina and noise#
Sprinting and jumping cost stamina; walking, crouching and standing still bring it back. Run dry and sprinting is off until it recovers — and a player out of breath pants loudly enough to be heard.
Everything a player does makes noise, and monsters listen. A step on carpet is soft; the same step on metal, a grate, water or glass carries. Crouch-walking is nearly silent, sprinting is not. Searching a box, slamming through a door and — with pma-voice — talking all count, and talking at a wider voice range counts for more.
The flashlight#
Every run starts with a flashlight and one spare battery. F switches it on. A full battery gives roughly four minutes of light and starts to flicker when it runs low; a battery from the bag puts back 45%. The beam keeps sanity up — and matters to the monsters: one backs away from it, and two are drawn to it and feed on it.
Lockers#
Lockers stand around the levels. Press E beside one to climb in: a hidden player cannot be reached, and a monster hunting them gives up after six seconds. Inside, the screen stays dark, the player makes almost no noise, and sanity drains far slower and slowly recovers. E again climbs out.
Items#
Twelve items, found in containers and on bodies. Use them from the Backrooms bag (F2) — or straight from your own inventory with ox_inventory or qs-inventory. Worth is what each one adds to the escape reward.
Item | Effect | Worth |
|---|---|---|
Flashlight | Switches the light on and off. Never used up. | $300 |
Battery | Recharges the flashlight by 45%. | $90 |
Almond Water | +32 sanity, +25 stamina. | $120 |
Spoiled Almond Water | −12 sanity, +10 stamina, −6 health. | $30 |
Bandage | +25 health. | $60 |
Map Fragment | Reveals one exit on this floor. | $40 |
Rusted Keycard | Opens a locked exit, and snaps in the lock. | $220 |
Flare | Burns for 45 seconds and drives monsters away from where it was lit. | $180 |
Radio Part | Reveals an exit to everyone in the group and quiets the floor for 30 seconds. | $850 |
Film Roll | Reveals every exit — loudly, and for 8 sanity. | $1,400 |
Corrupted Tape | Reveals two exits, for 18 sanity. | $1,900 |
Entity Sample | Breaks open and pulls every monster to a spot ahead of you instead. Costs 6 sanity. | $2,600 |
Containers are searched by holding E for three seconds — BACKSPACE cancels, and the rummaging is heard. Each run shows a different random selection of a level's containers, some are empty, and a searched one fills again after several minutes. Deeper levels roll more items per container, and rarer ones. A floor whose exits need a keycard always hides one somewhere.
In the bag: E uses, G drops one, SHIFT + G drops the stack, F2 closes it.
Exits and Traps#
Every level has several exits, and each run shows only two to four of them, picked at random. Hold E for a moment to go through. Most need a Rusted Keycard, which the lock keeps.
The door leads | What happens |
|---|---|
Deeper | The whole group falls to the next level, with a new layout of containers and exits. |
Out | The player escapes: paid, and dropped at one of six spots around the map. |
Nowhere good | A trap. The door slams, the lights die and the director sends a monster straight at whoever opened it. Once in a while the door opens onto the sky instead, high above the city. |
Map fragments, radio parts, film rolls and tapes reveal where the exits are. The last level has no way deeper: its doors lead out, or are traps.
Death, Escape and Rewards#
Dying#
A player who dies inside sees the death screen — what took them, the level they reached and how long they lasted — and their record: deepest level, runs, escapes, deaths and best run. ENTER wakes them up back where they went in, revived unless Revive on the way out is off.
What they carried stays down there in a body the rest of the group can search — hold E — for 30 minutes. The others are told who went down and see a red marker and SIGNAL LOST where they fell. A player who falls out of a level's floor is put back on its spawn instead.
Escaping#
Escaping pays cash: the base reward, multiplied once for every level deeper than Level 0 the player reached during the run, plus the worth of every item they carry out. With the defaults — $1,500 and ×1.85:
Deepest level reached | Reward, before items |
|---|---|
Level 0 — The Lobby | $1,500 |
Level 1 — Habitable Zone | $2,775 |
Level 2 — Pipe Dreams | $5,134 |
Level 3 — Electrical Station | $9,497 |
Level X — The Sublevel | $17,570 |
With Keep loot on escape on, the items come out with them as well. An escape lands at a random spot around the map — except a run started from an arcade machine, which always ends back at the machine.
Disconnects#
By default, a player who disconnects inside is pulled out: when they return they wake up where they went in, and the run counts as abandoned. Turn Pull out on disconnect off — keeping Back in after reconnecting on — and they come back to the same level with the same items, sanity and battery.
While Inside#
A run takes over the player on purpose — the horror depends on it. Each of these is a switch under While inside, and everything is restored the moment they leave:
First person is forced, with a slight head bob.
Weapons cannot be drawn or fired, and vehicles cannot be entered.
The phone keys are blocked, and
qs-smartphoneis told to stand down.The minimap and your server HUD are hidden.
The wanted level is cleared and stays at zero.
Key | Does |
|---|---|
| Flashlight on and off. |
| Search a container or a body, go through an exit. |
| Climb into or out of a locker. |
| Open and close the bag. |
| Sprint · crouch. |
| Give up an arcade machine run, leaving what was found behind. Machines only. |
The HUD#
The HUD sits at the edges of the screen, styled like old camcorder footage, and every part has its own switch under HUD:
Part | Shows |
|---|---|
Sanity bar | Sanity left and its stage, from STABLE to BREAKING. |
Stamina bar | Stamina left, and EXHAUSTED when sprinting is off. |
Flashlight battery | Charge left, and whether the light is on. |
Level name · Run timer | The floor the player is on, and how long the run has lasted. |
Inventory | Whether |
Around it: the survivors sharing the run, prompts, subtitles for what the player senses, film grain that thickens as sanity falls, and the card that names each floor on arrival.
Placing Entrances#
Entrances are placed in game. /backroomscreator opens the creator: every entrance on the left, searchable, and the selected one's details on the right. Press + for a new one.
Section | What you set there |
|---|---|
Entrance Info | A name, only shown in this list. |
Destination | The level players arrive on. |
Appearance | The type — Wall tape or Arcade machine — and, for tape, its colour (blue, green, red) and condition (clean, peeling, torn): nine looks. |
Price | Machines only: what one run costs, in cash or by bank transfer. It is charged the moment the run starts, never on a failed entry. 0 is free to play. |
Placement | Select hides the window and hands you a ghost of the entrance to aim at a wall. |
Key | While placing |
|---|---|
Left click | Place it here. |
| Rotate. |
| Rotate slowly. |
Mouse wheel | Raise or lower it. |
| Cancel. |
The tape snaps flat against whatever wall you aim at, facing out, so it never flickers. Save, and it appears for every player straight away, labelled Mysterious Entrance — or Insert Coin with its price on a machine — when someone walks up to it. Each entrance can be edited, moved, deleted, or used to teleport in front of it.
Wall tape | Arcade machine | |
|---|---|---|
Costs | Nothing. | Its price, or nothing. |
An escape lands | At a random spot around the map. | Back at the machine. |
Giving up | Not possible — find a door. |
|
Death or removal | Back in front of the entrance. | Back at the machine. |
The Settings#
/backroomsconfig opens the settings panel. It shares a header with the creator and the statistics — three tabs, Creator, Statistics and Settings — and each admin only sees the tabs they have access to.
It holds 45 settings in nine sections. Every field explains itself, a search box finds a setting across all sections, changes are saved together, and Reset section or Reset everything goes back to what shipped. Saved values live in the database and apply to every player at once.
General
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Language | English, or | Every text of the resource, in game and in the panels. |
Sound volume | 90% | Master volume of ambience, monsters, footsteps and alarms. |
Getting in
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Wake up inside after dying | On | A player who dies anywhere may wake up in the Backrooms instead of at the hospital. |
Chance after dying | 6% | Out of every 100 deaths, how many end up inside. |
Wait between death entries | 15 min | How long before dying can send the same player in again. |
Revive on the way out | On | A player who leaves dead comes back alive. Off leaves them to your ambulance job. |
Groups
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Players per run | 4 | How many share one run — world, loot and exits. 1 to 8. |
Join open runs | On | New players go into a run that still has room before a new one opens. Off gives every entry its own run. |
Only runs on the same level | On | A new player only joins a run on the level they are entering. |
Time to join a run | 3 min | How long after a run starts new players can still be added. 0 means any time. |
Escape and rewards
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Reward for escaping | $1,500 | Cash paid for escaping from the first level. |
Multiplier per level | 1.85 | What the reward is multiplied by for every extra level survived. 1 pays the same everywhere. |
Exits that lead out | 31% | The chance that a descending exit takes the group back to the city instead. It applies to exits without a fixed outcome; exits placed in the level editor keep the one they were given. |
Keep loot on escape | On | Players keep the items they found. Off empties their bag on the way out. |
Drop loot on death | On | A dead player leaves a body with their items for the group to search. |
Body lasts | 30 min | How long a body stays to be searched. |
Survival
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Starting sanity | 100 | Sanity a run starts with, out of 100. |
Sanity after going deeper | 80 | Going down a level lifts sanity up to this. It never lowers it. |
Sprint cost | 11 / s | Stamina used per second of sprinting. Higher tires players sooner. |
Battery use | 0.42 / s | Flashlight battery used per second while it is on. |
Lockers | On | Players can hide inside lockers, where monsters cannot reach them. |
Monsters give up after | 6 s | How long a monster keeps looking for a player who hid. |
HUD
Show HUD turns the whole HUD on or off; Sanity bar, Stamina bar, Flashlight battery, Level name, Run timer and Inventory switch each part. All seven are on by default.
While inside
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Force first person | On | Keeps the camera in first person. Strongly recommended. |
Head bob | On | The camera sways slightly while walking and running. |
No weapons · No vehicles · No phone | On | Blocks drawing and firing weapons, getting into vehicles, and the usual phone keys. |
Hide the minimap | On | No minimap during a run. |
Hide your server HUD | On | Hides your own HUD, connected in |
Disconnects and ranking
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Save runs | On | Keeps each player's run — level, items, sanity, battery — in the database while they are inside. |
Back in after reconnecting | On | A player who disconnects inside returns to their run when they reconnect. |
Pull out on disconnect | On | A player who disconnects inside wakes up outside when they return. Wins over the option above. |
Leaderboard size | 15 | How many players the ranking returns. |
Commands and access
Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Creator command |
| Opens the entrance creator. Typed without the |
Creator permission |
| The ace needed to use the creator. |
Settings command |
| Opens this panel. Needs a restart. |
Settings permission |
| The ace needed to open this panel and the statistics. |
Framework admins | On | Your framework's admins open both windows without an ace. |
These values live in your database, not in a file, and updating the resource never touches them. Renaming a command is the only change that waits for a restart — the panel says so when you save.
Statistics#
The Statistics tab reads every finished run live from the database. It opens with the same permission as the settings.
Section | What it shows |
|---|---|
Overview | Players, runs, escapes, deaths, who is inside right now, the best escape and who made it, time played, items found, the deepest level reached and the average run. |
Activity | Runs finished per day over the last 14 days. |
Where runs end | Escapes, deaths and abandoned runs, by the level they ended on. |
Latest runs | The last runs finished on the server: who, which level, how it ended, how long it took and the loot it carried. |
Players | Search by name or identifier and sort by deepest level, escapes, deaths, runs, best escape, time played, items found, last played or name. Open one for their rank, their numbers, how their runs ended by level and their last 25 runs — and copy their identifier. |
The Level Editor#
The layouts of the five levels ship ready to play. To change them there is a level editor — a developer tool that only exists while Config.Debug.enabled is on, and only admins can open. Use it on a test server.
/brdeveloper [level] flies you to a level with a free camera and a panel: the levels with a point count each, what you are placing, its model, and every point of that kind already placed — each with GO and DEL.
Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
Spawn points | Where players appear on entering the level. Position only. |
Exits | Doors, each set to Descend, Escape or Trap, optionally needing a keycard, with a door prop or as text only. |
Loot containers | Searchable boxes. A random selection appears each run. |
Lockers | Lockers players can hide in. |
Props | Decoration with no function — crates, office furniture, work lights, wrecked cars. |
Safe rooms | A radius where sanity recovers and pressure drops. |
Navigation nodes | Points monsters walk through. Place several along corridors and at junctions so they never get stuck. |
Key | Does |
|---|---|
Left click | Grab and move a point. |
| Save it. |
| Delete what you aim at or have selected · undo the last change. |
| Drop it to the floor. |
| Rotate · switch the axis between turn, tilt and roll. |
| Free camera on or off — |
| Show or hide the cursor. |
| Close the editor and return to where you started. |
The panel can also delete everything within a radius around you, or every point of one kind on the level. Every change is saved to backrooms_points at once and reaches players on their next visit to that level.