Backrooms: Escape Together Level -1

Gameplay and Level Designer

September 2025 - October 2025

Backrooms: Escape Together is a 6 player survival horror co-op game where players must escape the depths of the community driven concept of the Backrooms.

Level -1 was a developed over the span of a month. I had the opportunity to completely own the development of the level while the rest of the team was navigating the games console release.

I prototyped the procedural generation, environment, and gameplay loop of the level.

The level first began as an environment test. I was curious what I could create with simple tiling assets from Megascans, polished with nanite displacement.

I experimented with a claustrophobic level scale not previously done.

It was a unique challenge making an environment in a coop multiplayer game for up to 6 players feel natural.

After establishing a look and scale, I began prototyping the level.

I was able to take a previous levels generation and iterate upon it to get something that could hypothetically be a hotel.

The core loop of the level requires players to find bedrooms and change their light either on or off depending on a hidden symbol.

To balance gameplay, I added a buffer so players did not need to find every room. This was to prevent late game from turning into finding a needle in a haystack.

After getting some feedback on my progress, we agreed a short tutorial would be great for introducing the levels mechanics.

Players initially spawn in a bedroom. In this bedroom they can find a glowing TV with a blocked interact. Above the TV is a mural that depicts the levels main mechanic.

The mural went through a few iterations which ultimately ended with a straight forward and non cryptic hint. This is to minimize player frustration during the onboarding process.

After leaving the starting bedroom, the goal is for players to learn the light mechanic through experimentation.

The tutorial has a buffer similar to the main area.

When the threshold is reached, an audio and visual queue will play. This is to signal to players something has changed.

Returning to the spawn bedroom, players will be able to interact with the glowing TV.

The players will be teleported and their positions are randomized to reflect one of the traits of the level per the wiki.

Not only are lights used to complete the puzzle, but they are used as a defense.

There's a shadow entity that will kill the player. Flipping any light switch in its vicinity will cause it to recede temporarily.

The entity fits into the loop by being tied directly to the main gameplay mechanic.

Their presence creates moments of emergent gameplay and difficulty. Its ability to teleport creates unpredictable moments that make each attempt unique.

Dying in the tutorial keeps players from losing too much progress while giving them an environment to try and understand why they died.

Players must navigate the level while managing the one resource that will allow them to survive and succeed, light.

To keep players from finding rooms at a steady pace, I clustered the  bedrooms.

The intent is so players feel rewarded when finding a new cluster.
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To enhance this idea, I implemented closets that appear the same as bedrooms.

These choices help create more anticipation and delight when players find a bedroom.

Key: Blue = Bedrooms, Yellow = Door Key,   Red = Locked Door

‍The closets are not just environment pieces. They sometimes contain keys on shelves that allow players to open locked doors.

Locked doors potentially block halls with bedroom clusters, adding to the anticipation of discovery.

The closets can have breakers which are off by default. This causes lights around them to be unpowered.

At the end of the level is a room covered in graffiti. A TV sits in the center; It's similar to the one shown in the tutorial. A staircase leads to a locked door.

All of this is designed to create mystery and get players curious.

Once enough rooms have been set to their correct state, the level will teleport players to a small maze.

New red lighting obscures visibility making it a final challenge.

The final area leads to the bottom of the staircase.

The door is now unlocked and players can access the final room where the TV will be glowing.

Interacting allows them to escape.

All these systems took time to balance and get feeling fair for the widest range of players.

Thanks to the amazing community, we were able to get an abundance of playtesting feedback before the levels full release.

Developing this level has significantly improved my ability to manage player expectations.

Thank you for reading my breakdown of this level!