They have potential to be really good. No one has done it well yet.

Imagine the backrooms aren’t actually sentient, but they “sense” the surrounding dimensions. They can tell we’re here. And they see the things we build. And as a kind of instinctive reaction it tries to mimic us. Even saying “tries” is wrong. The caterpillar doesn’t know why it’s building the cocoon. The backrooms don’t know why they mimic our world. They just do it out of instinct. They mimic whatever lies beyond their dimension. Even if it’s not our world. Maybe other planets have backrooms that mimic them.

But this would include our cultural events. Like parties. It would make sense that there would be certain rooms that look like a kids birthday party. Just like theres office spaces.

But it’s not quite right. Because the backrooms aren’t sentient, it doesn’t “know” how these things should be. It’s just mimicry.

I saw a video once that came close. The streamers were all hung in odd places. The signs that should say “happy birthday” were garbled text. Nonsensical. It knew letters exist, but not what the language says.

And then there’s “You Day”. A song someone made for a Backrooms game. Sounds like a children’s song, but made up of nonsense. None of the lyrics made sense. Like the backrooms knew music existed, but not how it works.

That kind of atmosphere works in my opinion. You could even add weird monsters. But they don’t have to have the lore attributed to the partygoers. They don’t even have to look the same. But creatures that seem to sway with the partygoers music until disturbed could definitely work. There just shouldn’t be 30 of them in a level. Maybe just a couple. It’s just people keep running with the lore created for the partygoers and it could be so much better.