Backrooms sense & the flow of despair

The Drifters are a highly spiritual faction, being able to sense how despair and hope flow through the Backrooms, like wind or water. They gain the ability to visualize this flow via Backrooms sense. It lasts for 15 seconds, usually muffling all sound around the player and darkening their vision so they focus on the flow of Despair.

This however causes fatigue. You have 6 feathers that serve as the “Cost”/”Mana” of the game. They are used up depending on the type/focus of Backrooms sense and are refilled slowly (30s to refill 1 feather). They dynamically appear as a bar on the left of the screen similar to how stamina appears.

Totems

Totems are the other mechanic related to the Drifters. At the very start of the game when you choose the Drifters you gain a totem base and a carving knife (Not items but rather like the quill and ink of Cartographers). Using these you can carve a specific totem by choosing the totem’s head and body

You have to have a totem to see something specific in Backrooms sense & Totems and acts as a lens/filter

Totems have a unique power similar to refraction of light in prisms and water, as they refract hope and despair to produce specific effects on your psychie (lore stuff). Basically, specific combinations of totem parts create a totem that gives you a specific part of the general flow of despair AKA change how you view the world through Backrooms sense

There are multiple tiers of totems - early game totems, midgame totems and endgame totems, each having a higher cost:

• Early-game totems: (use 1 feather)
  • Totem of Greed - shows straight-forward beneficial stimuli, like simple lootboxes or items (doesn’t show complex ones like shelves or safes (lootboxes that require minigames to open) )
  • Totem of Danger - shows harmful stimuli, like nearby beings or damage sources (visually the same as totem of greed, hence why you can get confused)
• Mid-game totems (use 2 feathers)
  • Totem of Enlightenment - shows stimuli that the player has never seen before (new items, new biomes and new entities) (doesn’t distinguish between beneficial or harmful stimuli)
  • Totem of Electro-magnetism - shows the wires inside of the walls and in the air. Shows the time left to the next blackout/whiteout depending on how close the particles/wire stuff is to the ceiling and how red it is
• End-game totems (use 3 feathers)
  • Totem of Civilization - shows the path to the nearest outpost as well as showing it as a bleep in your vision (doesn’t show what faction it belongs to)
  • Totem of Orientation - allows you to view the layout of the chunk you are in, your location and orientation in the chunk

Progression

In the early game you only have access to the early-game totems. You improve yourself by using the Skill system , unlocking new totems under the skill “Carving”, of which there are tier 2 which unlocks mid-game totems and tier 3 which unlocks end-game totems