As important as the environment are the beings lurking in the Backrooms. Instead of using existing entity ideas from existing media/canons/wikis and adapting my game to them, I will create my own ecosystem of entities that, in my opinion, fit the setting of Noclipped best.

Many mechanics here are inspired by Rain World and Scape and Run Parasites

Global mechanics

  1. Spawners. Beings don’t just spawn in a random room waiting for you. They are always deterministic “Spawners” that come in many forms and have their conditions. The most common is the “Keep Out” doors. These doors are locked during the whiteout and are wide open during the blackout, spawning a Grunt from time to time.
  2. Entity clients. Beings and all NPCs should act as if they are player characters, having their stats, benefits, and drawbacks. All entities have to support their hunger, and stamina. The same Trauma health system applies to them. The AI takes into account all of these stimuli and factors to make decisions
  3. Entity decision-making. Instead of solely existing to chase the player, entities have their own way of decision-making, as mentioned above. Most changes between states are biased by certain factors dynamically (Eg an entity is much more likely to flee instead of attack if they are in critical condition)
  4. Global difficulty/evolution. Inspired by SRP, these beings will slowly adapt and evolve to fit their needs in the Backrooms. They become both the predators and prey. As a being benefits itself near the player, they add X amount of points to a hidden value that determines the difficulty. With this, as the player plays for longer, exploring different areas, the game slowly gets more difficult by spawning more evolved versions instead of the plain grunt.
  5. Deviant variants. Some beings adapt to an environment in a different way than others, leading to variants. This mostly affects beings like The Mimic which rely heavily on the biome they’re in, leading to deviations from the evolution path
  6. Physical animations. The entities, similar to Dying Light, will be constantly in a state of a ragdoll, allowing for animations to be much more integrated with the world. This in addition to procedural animation will add lots of immersion to being chased by horrors beyond comprehension
  7. Adaptation based on environment. The being will choose how it will evolve based on the environment around it, with the addition of some randomness for some chaos
graph TD
  Grunt --> Feral
  Grunt --> Skinwalker
  Grunt --> Stalker
  Grunt --> Fidget
  Feral --> Strider
  Skinwalker --> Mimic
  Mimic -.-> LM("Lower Mimic")
  Mimic -.-> HM("Elder Mimic")
  Stalker --> Diver
  Strider --> Boulder
  Boulder --> Mother["The Mother"]
  LM --> HM
  HM --> WO
  Mimic --> WO["The Wandering Omen"]
  Diver --> Bolt["Boltzmann"]
  Fidget --> Cl1["Clump (Tier 1)"]
  Cl1 --> Cl2["Clump (Tier 2)"]