TheBackrooms

you noclipped out of reality

  • 100% free
  • no download
  • no sign-up

best with headphones

rec00:00:00:00lvl 0

Form 0-A · site briefing

A free survival horror game — right in your browser

The Backrooms is a first-person survival horror game that runs entirely in your web browser. Nothing to download, nothing to install, no account and no ads: press play and you are standing in the endless yellow halls. It is free, it starts in seconds, and it works on any modern computer or phone.

A run is a descent. Six floors, and you start on the first. Every one of them is generated from the seed of your run, endless in all four horizontal directions, and every one charges a different price to let you through to the next. You will get thirsty. Your torch will run down. Something will be following you. The bottom floor is the only one with no way down — it has a way out.

  1. Level 0

    the lobby · start here

    Mono-yellow wallpaper, damp carpet and fluorescent hum in every direction. Somewhere out in it the wall has gone soft. Lean on it long enough and it gives.

  2. Level 188

    the courtyard of windows · one down

    A hotel floor built round a courtyard, and round the next one, and the next. Every door is locked and every patio is the same patio. Somewhere a house phone is ringing, and the front desk knows where your key is. The service lift takes it.

  3. Level 1

    front parking · two down

    The car park under a supermarket that was never built. The service ramp is behind a roller shutter, and the shutter only wakes up with four car alarms screaming at once.

  4. Level 37

    the poolrooms · three down

    Warm, tiled, bright and endless — down here the dread is not the dark. The way on is the drain at the bottom of the deep pool, so first you find the main valve and flood the floor you are standing on. The water does not stop at your chin. It stops at the ceiling, and the lights go out before it gets there.

  5. Level 2

    pipe dreams · four down

    Low maintenance tunnels, sodium light, dust and cable. The stairwell door has a keypad on it, and the four digits are written on a wall somewhere else entirely.

  6. Level !

    run for your life · bottom

    The lobby again, remembered wrong and standing in water. Nothing here goes further down. Three fuses, one portal, and a fall back out into the sky over the real world.

Form 0-B · entity log

Five entities hunt these floors

None of them walks a patrol route. Each of the five has its own idea of how to reach you, and they share one instinct: close the distance while you are looking somewhere else.

01

Smiler

A smear of darkness with a face floating in it. It keeps to the unlit rooms and works up its nerve from a distance, and the grin gets wider the longer you look at it. It has no time at all for your torch.

02

Skin-Stealer

Slow, starved and wearing somebody. It shadows you from cover a corner or two behind and will not commit until it is close enough to reach you. It takes a great deal of killing.

03

Hound

Eyeless, four-legged and faster than you are. Where there is one there are usually more, and the moment one of them decides, the rest come round the sides.

04

Partygoer

It never hides. It comes at you across open floor, hat crooked and a dead balloon in one hand — and it only breaks into a run once you have turned your back.

05

Strider

Far too tall, and made of something like wet black sticks, with a brim over a head that has no face. You will catch it standing at the far end of a hallway. Once it comes for you it creeps while you watch it, and takes the floor in a few long strides the moment you look away.

And what you have

You start with a torch and a field receiver, and nothing else. The rest is scavenged off the floors: a metal pipe, a pipe wrench, a kitchen knife, a fire extinguisher, a pistol and the box of 9 mm it runs on. Batteries keep the torch alive. A glass bottle holds water, and thirst is what kills the players who were careful about everything else. The bag has a weight limit, so every pickup is really a decision about what you put back down.

Operating instructions

Posted in every room
Move
WASD walk · Shift run · Space jump or swim up · C or Ctrl crouch or swim down
Look
Mouse. Click the page once to hand it over.
Hands
LMB attack · RMB block, aim or drink · E interact, pick up and fill your bottle
Kit
1–0 or the wheel to equip · hold V to look over what you hold · G drop it · F torch · R re-aim the receiver
Stop
Esc pauses and saves the run.
Move
Left thumb walks. To run, shove it on past the ring towards the arrows — running costs water, so it never happens by accident. In water you swim the way you look.
Look
Right thumb, anywhere on the screen — even while it is on a button.
Hands
The big button uses whatever you are holding; the one beside it guards, aims, drinks or works the torch. A hand lights up when something is in reach, and a tap button at a tap.
Kit
Tap an item to hold it. Tap it again to look it over, drop it or put it away.
Stop
Pause, top right. It saves the run.
Form 0-C · enquiries

Frequently asked questions

What are the Backrooms?
An internet horror legend about noclipping out of reality and landing in an endless off-yellow office — damp carpet, buzzing fluorescent lights, about six hundred million square miles of empty rooms, and something in there with you. This game is one playable version of it, not an official adaptation of any other Backrooms project.
Is The Backrooms free to play?
Yes, completely. There is no purchase, subscription, sign-up or advertising. Bug reports and suggestions are welcome on GitHub; the source code is private.
Do I have to download or install anything?
No. It is a WebGL game and it runs in the browser tab you are reading this in. Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari all work, on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.
Can I play the Backrooms on a phone?
Yes. On a touchscreen the game swaps to controls built for thumbs: a stick under your left one, look with the right, and a few picture buttons that only turn up when there is something for them to do. Pushing the stick walks; shoving it on past the ring is what runs.
How many levels are there?
Six: Level 0, Level 188, Level 1, Level 37, Level 2 and Level !. Each one is endless in every horizontal direction and built fresh from the seed of your run, so no two descents are the same maze.
How do you escape the Backrooms?
Get to the bottom floor, find the three fuses scattered across it, carry them to the exit portal and step through. You can leave with fewer than three if your nerve goes — the door still opens, just barely.
Does the game save my progress?
Pausing writes a checkpoint into your own browser, so you can close the tab and pick the run up later. Dying clears it: a checkpoint is for putting the game down, not for a second try at the same corner. Records stay local too. The only thing the game sends on its own is an anonymous count of started and engaged runs with a country, no IP and no identifier, and ?telemetry=off switches even that off. A note you write from the pause, death or escape screen is sent only when you press Send.
Can I replay the same maze?
Yes. Every run has a seed and it is in the address bar — ?seed=1234. Send someone that link and they get your maze, your fuses and your exit, exactly where you found them.

no way but down

The Backrooms — a free WebGL horror game. No download · no install · no ads · works in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari, on desktop and on mobile.