roomslikes - a genre guide

The game Rooms is a Roblox game where your goal is to venture through various rooms in what appears to be an office complex, with numbers above the doors - starting from A-1 and extending beyond - through infinite rooms. The main threat, or obstacle, in these rooms is two entities - A-60 and A-120. These entities are named after the rooms that they usually start to appear at, and both can be dealt with in the same way - hiding in a locker. A-60 will show up, indicated by a sound cue, and kill you if you aren’t hiding when he passes. A-120 behaves similarly to A-60 but will attack multiple times in a row once he appears. These two entities are all it takes to make an engaging, as well as atmospheric, horror game.

This game, Rooms by nicorocks5555, is the game that inspired the hit Roblox game Doors. This game was created by LSPLASH, a team made out of the two developers Lightning_Splash and RediblesQW, and released on August 10, 2022, instantly becoming one of the most popular games on Roblox as a whole. This game takes the formula of Rooms and puts it on steroids. Instead of boring office like rooms, this game has you adventure through an abandoned hotel, passing through various rooms on their quest to reach the end of the floor - Door 100. Unlike Rooms, this game is not infinite - the game has only 100 rooms on each floor, and your goal with each run is to reach the end. Each room contains various optional things to look out for - items, gold, and other intractable objects such as paintings, typewriters, and the like. Gold is usually found in drawers scattered across the game’s various rooms. And in most rooms are beds and closets, both which can be hid under. I wonder what those could be used for.

Like Rooms, this game has entities that appear to stop your run if you don’t react quickly to them. The most common of these entities is Rush. He will show up every so often, flickering the lights to indicate his presence, as well as making a static roaring sound as he approaches. When he comes by, you have to hide in a bed or a closet out of his line of sight (and, for more advanced players, sometimes even other places like vents or even other rooms). If Rush spots you, you will die and have to restart your run. Yes, this game is a roguelike, where the map is randomly generated and dying means starting again.

Some other entities include Screech, who will show up in dark rooms and require you to look at him before he bites you, dealing a chunk of your health in damage; Ambush, who behaves like Rush but attacks multiple times in quick succession (sometimes requiring you to dart in and out of your hiding place to avoid being kicked out); Hide, who will attack you if you stay in a closet or under a bed for too long; Dupe, who will appear as a door with the wrong number and attack you if you open the door; and Timothy, a spider who will occasionally jump out at you from a drawer and deal non-lethal damage.

Some entities in this game always will appear. Seek will show up halfway between doors 0 and 50 and again between doors 50 and 100. Instead of hiding from him, you’ll have to run fast through an obstacle course of falling bookshelves, corners, and more to escape him while he chases you through multiple rooms in a row, with the chase ending after a room with falling chandeliers and black hands stretching from the walls to attack you. Another notable entity is Figure, who is the main boss of Doors. He will appear at both door 50 (the library) and door 100 (the electrical room), both rooms which require you to explore a maze and find items - the library having books containing parts to a password and the electrical room having breaker switches to collect. After the items are collected, the final room can be escaped, with the exit to door 100 having you fall down an elevator shaft to the second floor.

Of course, there is more nuance to Doors than described here - more entities, subfloors (one of which even being a recreation and expansion of The Rooms with a new entity and a bonus for reaching A-1000), and even Floor 2 - The Mines. You’ll have to play the game for yourself to find out. But this game has a very notable theme, with most of the basic mechanics being shared with Rooms. This is the genre I am discussing today, one I am dubbing the Roomslike, in honor of the game the others are based off of. The main features of this genre include randomly generated rooms connected by doors, monsters who will attack you and stop your progression by killing you if not dealt with, and a roguelike system of death requiring you to start a new run.

Grace is a game inspired by Doors, so much so that its original name in development was “doors but fast”. This game has a similar structure to Doors, with entities and randomly generated rooms connected by doors as well as a roguelike run system, but its gameplay is vastly different. Instead of Doors’s slow walking, Grace’s movement is much more fast paced, with the player being able to sprint, jump, wallkick, crouch, and slide, moving much faster than you would be able to in Doors. The gameplay is also balanced around this - your goal is to go from one saferoom to the next by running through rooms filled with entities, platforming, and occasionally puzzles, outrunning a 2:30 time limit - with a deadly consequence if you fail to reach the safe room in this time limit. I enjoyed playing this game a lot, but unfortunately it won’t be continuing development.

Some other notable games in this genre include Rooms & Doors - a fan made remake of the original Rooms with more entities, more interesting gameplay, and more, Pressure - a Doors inspired game having you adventure through a facility with underwater sections inspired by Iron Lung, and even Ascensia - a Doors like game I worked on for a bit where you would venture up an infinite office building going into rooms to grab batteries, dodging entities along the way, and going as high as possible. An honorable mention for a similar game, although it doesn’t perfectly fit into the category, is Nullscape, a game where your goal is to run around an ever expanding map hanging over the void, grabbing Gifts, collectibles scattered throughout the map where collecting them is required to pass through each level. This game also has a roguelike run system, and the enemies, curses, and upgrades are drafted after each round instead of randomly appearing. Even though it doesn’t have the traditional rooms system like the other games, it’s still worth a try.

In conclusion, the game Rooms on Roblox inspired a whole host of other similar games with similar mechanics, accidentally inventing a new genre along the way with lots of fun and interesting games to play. Thanks for reading, and go play some of these games if you haven’t already - or make one if you have the skills to. The world needs more of these games. - Themadpunter