The progression and the actual game is insanely separated and feel unpolished and unfriendly for newcomers, usually showing in questions that I get asked. I should fix it and here’s my idea

Overview

One of the most major systems, hand to hand with the Inventory system and level generation system as well as the main driver for progression is the Backrooms Journal.

Inspired by mods like Thaumcraft for Minecraft you start with no knowledge about anything. You don’t know what the hell is happening and only gain basic knowledge in the Nexus by talking to NPCs. All items don’t show their stats, rarity, only showing the icon and what you can do with them. With different actions that you perform. After interacting with some system you will gain some knowledge about it, also gaining XP in the process.

The journal also shows how much you progress in the game, visualised as a bar that goes from zero, to early game, through middle game and up to end game.

Those are the “stages” that when reached give some basic knowledge and unlock the mechanics related to that stage. This forces the player to play though the game and not cheese the game

You cannot access content from a stage you haven’t unlocked. Eg: you cannot break polygon crystals during the early game and skip to the end-game

Journal contents

The journal is separated into sections:

The item catalogue

In this section all the items the player has ever interacted are shown. They have several sections that tie with different actions you can do with the item:

• Description and visual look - you unlock this when you pick up the item. It describes the item visually, as well as telling us about the durability
• Contained materials - it unlocks when you dismantle that item, telling info about the compositions and contents of a given item. When you unlock this, the next time you pick up the item it will display the materials that will be gained after dismantling
• Weapon data - it unlocks when you hit something with the weapon. Shows info about damage, speed and weapon type. The glading and upgrades are shown automatically
• Consumable data - it unlocks when you consume the item. Shows info about how much health, hunger, thirst and despair it changes, as well as showing it in the tooltip
• Special data - it unlocks when you use a special item. Just describes what it does