January 2025 News

All the latest Backrooms news of the month!

By TS Staff
Updated Feb. 16, 2025 from the Staffrooms

New year, new contest!

We’re kicking off the year with a brand new contest: Characterizacon2025! This contest focuses entirely on the POIs we currently have on the site and expanding on them to create a diverse range of lore. Very few of these POIs are actually utilized in pages and are often left at just their introduction page, and this contest aims to combat that!

Similarly to Canonicon2024, this is a team contest! We have 4 teams participating as of right now, all of which were organized by the Staff Team based on a list of requests each participant submitted. While we wait for these teams to release these pages, let’s learn a bit about the teams and their plans for the POIs!

Androgynous Aliens

This team, consisting of LiminalDoctor, Praetor3005, ReyDay¹, Spectre48, and Mel-Raspberry, is focusing on the lovable researcher alien that is Nyx!

Nyx is a researcher with the Ariane Circle who has an ability to manipulate levels to their liking. They’ve harnessed this ability to be able to control almost every aspect of their current home, Level 523-FR. While they are incredibly smart and knowledgeable about engineering and technology, they aren’t too great at social interaction with humans.

This team plans on expanding on Nyx’s relationship with the Backrooms and their struggles with fitting into human society, while also providing a bit of backstory for what life was like for Nyx before they fell into the Backrooms and Nyx’s biology, along with the slightest hint of romance!

“Who needs lore when you have gay alien fanfiction”
”Why not both?”

V for Valentin

This team, consisting of Positive123, exotichive, Schulzenreich, Solomon Sam, and Light_Nate, is focusing on the mysterious director of a mystical group, v-valentin!

Viktor Valentin is the leader of the shadow-y syndicate that is the-eternal-repository! He founded the group in 2016 and it has since had a large hand in the trading of information. Highly valuing anonymity, no one truly knows how the group operates or who they are. Valentin deeply cares about the group he administrates, but that care may cause him to go too far.

This team plans on expanding on the Repository’s relationship with the other groups in the Backrooms, whether that be allyship or rivalry is up for debate, along with a glimpse into Viktor's character outside of the Repository. If you like thriller mysteries and uncovering the truth behind the cloaks and masks, this may be the read for you!

"We are going to expand on this Russian guy who's the leader of a super secret group."

Furry-Curious

This team, consisting of BlueSignet, endless_waters, Liurnia, and pnn wepm, is focusing on the master of the hunt himself, Herne!

Herne the Huntmaster is the leader of the widely feared entity, the Wild Hunt! This… furry² has existed long before humans’ earliest ancestors were born. While he sure looks like he’s friendly and kind, don’t be fooled. He does, in fact, bite.

This team is reportedly still brainstorming on what they would like to focus on! However, there is a rumored W.I.P. home level for Herne and the Wild Hunt, along with some hints at how life was for Herne as someone who’s been around since the beginning of time! Be sure to stick around to see what this team has planned.

“Snapshots of the life of an immortal.”

What Team?

This team, consisting of CamaradeAlbabar, Justazappyrat, InspectingCritters, and Greggita Mahayfaio, is focusing on… which POI is this again? Oh, right. J. Doe!

J. Doe isa eccentric individual who is always on the move! They’re incredibly recognizable for looking like… something. Now that I think about it, I can’t really remember, though no one else can either. This not-so-interesting Person of Interest has the effect of having every aspect of their person or interactions with them completely erased from the memory of those who interact with them! Because of that, not much is known about this indifferent individual.

This team decided “why take one route when you can take all of them?” You’ve heard right, folks. Everyone knowing nothing about you might as well mean that everything about you is true! If you’re interested in complete and utter absurdist nonsense, make sure to stay tuned with this team’s shenanigans!

"Our plan is to make up as much bullshit as we can about J. Doe. You put together a team of jesters so we plan to hold an entire circus act!

Also who?"

Mass Trimming Progress

Trimming continues into the year 2025.

During January, we saw:

13 pages trimmed

10 pages open for rewrite

4 pages remain untouched

Annual Features

You know em, you love em, IT'S TIME FOR THIS YEAR'S TOP ARTICLES!

Voted in by our awesome community members, the yearly features hub has been updated to include the top 12 of 2024. Be sure to check them out, and congratulate the winners!

Features & POTW

With the annual features out of the way, it's time for the first features of 2025. The feature lineup this month consists of the following:

A phenomenon article can sometimes be a strange read, something CamaradeAlbabar has shown in Phenomenon 25 - "Oink, oink." The article shows us the story of Maurice B. and the strange phenomenon that affects him, proceeding to get more bizarre as the story goes on.

Content warnings need to be considered before reading this, as Spectre48 and Justazappyrat have created Volume 1: The Only Banned Game In Level 389. The page shows a comedic, but inappropriate story, about the Game Master forcing contestants into a game that is best left undescribed.

If you like a simple object article, then Positive123 has your back with Object 82 - "Sage Crystals". But what are these strange crystals? How were they created? And what do they do?
Quartz_Br%C3%A9sil.jpg

Sometimes, even the most upsetting stories are the simplest. In Five Years Since You Went Missing, ReyDay³ tells a story of what it feels like to suddenly enter the Backrooms, and how our friends and families in the Frontrooms think of us while we're trapped in the liminal hellhole. Do they know we're still alive though?

For this month's art features, we have:

Tesseract in a Lunar New Year costume by Bluzyx
A Partygoer figure made in real-life by beniodine
A drawing of Nyx by Mel-Raspberry
A fox mask by TrailmixNCocoa
Pixel art of Level 11 by Akiraakira
A list of what to do in the event of entering the Backrooms by LaundryFan_04

For the pages that got randomly selected for a page of the week, we have the following:

Object 32 by PandaShark71004 01/26
Entity 9 by Nikuchan 01/19
Level 233 by AbaddonFmL 01/12
The Snake Crawls Part 1 by Stretchsterz 01/05

Staff & GLMP Updates

During this month’s Staff Evals, we’ve seen the promotion of both Schulzenreich and YourWeirdPlant to moderator! Additionally, Abdallah Amr has been accepted as J-Staff! Unfortunately though, CamaradeAlbabar has decided to leave staff. He will be missed!

Additionally, we have restructured the community team! There are now three subteams of the community team: Events & Discord, Site Forums & Engagement, and Social Media! We have appointed subteam captains of these teams via application and voting, and the new captains are:

Liurnia: Site Forums & Engagement
LiminalDoctor: Events & Discord
Poliacci: (temporarily) Social Media

The Community Team Captain, Poliacci, will oversee the community team as a whole and make sure all three of the subteams work efficiently and properly!

On the GLMP side of things, BlueSignet has returned to their Greenlighter position, but we have also seen the return of r a t i f as a Greenlighter as well! We’re all so happy to welcome him back.

‡ Licensing / Citation

page revision: 7, last edited: 09 May 2026 14:26

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