#122 : Backrooms: The Solo Survival Gamebook | A Pencil-and-Dice Horror Escape Game for One Player

You fell through reality into yellow rooms that never end. This solo survival gamebook is a pencil-and-dice horror escape game for one player: map your way out before something finishes counting you.

There is no Game Master and no prep. All you need is two six-sided dice, a pencil and the grid pages at the back of the book. You draw every room as you find it, roll its shape, its doors and what is waiting inside, and search for the Signs that point to the way out. Every run rolls a new Exit Number and a new Exit Condition, so the door you need is never in the same place twice.

The Backrooms fight back. Every action raises the Hum, and when the Hum peaks the whole level shifts: every door with the wrong number vanishes from your map. Lose Sanity and you start to forget. Rooms you knew are crossed off for good, door numbers fade to question marks, and the map you trusted turns against you. A map with no way out at all is sealed forever.

Six levels stand between you and home: the Yellow Rooms, the Drowned Offices, the Unfinished Hotel, the Dark Arrangement, the Bathhouse and the Long House. Each has its own law, its own tables and its own entity hunting you, from the Headcount that measures every room you enter to the Listener behind the ceiling speakers. When one reaches you, hide, run or face it. Every choice costs something.

Every level plays differently. In the Drowned Offices a rising Flood Line swallows the rooms you came through. In the Unfinished Hotel the door numbers change whenever you walk back. In the Dark Arrangement you cannot read a door until you are already through it. In the Bathhouse the warm water makes you drowsy, and resting costs more than it gives. And the Long House waits at the bottom, built on top of the very first map you drew.

When a Wanderer dies, the game goes on. The next one starts where the last one fell, on the same map, with their Last Note and whatever they left behind. You get three Wanderers per campaign. Lose them all, and the Backrooms keep you.

Each level is short enough for a lunch break and different every time. Floor Rules change how a level plays, the exits move, and the dressing tables fill every room with something new: a ringing phone, a stack of chairs, a note from someone who got further than you.

What's Inside:

• A complete, standalone game in 159 pages with its own simple 2d6 rules. You do not need any other rulebook.
• Six levels, each with a Level Law, Floor Rules that change every run, Search and Event tables, room dressing and its own exit conditions.
• Five entities with full-page illustrations, each hunting you in its own way, plus Guests that wander down from the level above.
• 135 numbered entries: set pieces, found notes from earlier Wanderers, encounters and four different endings.
• Legacy rules: Last Notes, searchable bodies and one shared map that carries across every Wanderer who dies on it.
• Four difficulty modes, from Easy to Nightmare, tuned over thousands of simulated campaigns.
• A Quick Start you can learn in minutes, a full worked example, a quick reference, and photocopiable Wanderer Log, Campaign Record and Sealed Maps sheets.
• Room shapes and doors rolled on simple tables, so every map you draw is your own, with a map grid for every level.
• About 20 to 40 minutes per level. A full escape runs all six.

Perfect For:



Solo players who want a tense, replayable game that lives in a notebook

Fans of liminal spaces, creepypasta and the Backrooms

Fans of solo dungeon crawlers and fifth edition style solo games

A late night with every light in the house switched on

Pick up your pencil. The rooms are waiting.