Quote from Snoopy on April 26, 2025, 5:45 pm

Quote from Snoopy on April 27, 2025, 4:50 am

Things I'm Adding

• You can't use normal HP spells ('wand waving'), as they don't work properly down here.
• You can find and drink bottles of Butterbeer and pumpkin juice or boil water in a cauldron.
• The sorting hat(s) are possessed and talk gibberish. Don't go near them.
• Some people who get splinched locally also end up here.
• Familiars are twisted versions of owls/cats that sometimes help in return for food or other items.
• You can use cauldrons to cook various items in the game in order to eat and heal.

Quote from Snoopy on April 27, 2025, 4:57 am

The game sort of follows a structured progression through different areas that correspond to memories or information one or more character has. But they all 'bleed' into one another a bit. Below is the rough outline I'm following. It seems extensive, but some levels are fairly small/short duration and/or you can skip them.

Levels

(Hermione-influenced, as no one else is near by)

• Level 1 is bits of recent memories (painting and table from the corridor she just left) and her own. Wallpaper from bedroom in childhood home, dentist chair, chairs and desk of her first exam (which she failed due to nerves), etc. Finds diary (and skeleton) of Ekrizdis' companion and splattered blood and empty potion bottles in a corner.
• Level 2 is a giant dolls house on one side of the room. There is an exit in the back through a long wooden tunnel.
• Level 3 has different rooms with memories in. One is a lounge with two people facing a TV like Hermione's parents, but when you walk around they are just mannequins. Another is a classroom from when she was at muggle primary/junior school.
• Level 4 is a dentist surgery with a long corridor with seats and different rooms branching out with bits of medical equipment in.
• Level 5 Alice, Matilda and Belle rooms. From Hermione's favourite books as a child. Tea party in the centre with giant chocolate cake and stone statues of all three. Can pick one of three routes out via a stone pensieve, a stone mirror frame or a stone arch shaped like the veil.
• Level 6 an empty school fete with mannequins that move when you’re not looking at them.
• Level 7 run through alleyways to park and can take stairs or go down a metal slide that seems miles up in the air.
• Level 8 is an empty version of the The Burrow with a messed up clock.
• Level 9 is a warped version of the twin's joke shop.
• Level 10 is inside the Leaky Cauldron. Most rooms are partly flooded and have odd layouts/furniture.

(Hermione and Snape-influenced, as she's catching him up)

• Level 11 is the brick entrance to Diagon Alley, but it’s a maze of endless moving brick walls.
• Level 12 is an abandoned version of Diagon Alley at night.
• Level 13 is Shell Cottage, but an empty ruined version. On an island of sand and pebbles surrounded by endless ocean.
• Level 14 is a giant chess game. You have to get around the figures without being seen.
• Level 15 is an inverted version of the Gryffindor Common Room with furniture on the ceiling, fire burning blue, portraits with no faces.
• Level 16 is the classroom where they were taught about boggarts. But you have to climb into the cupboard and then it's a network of cupboards connecting to other cupboards.
• Level 17 is Umbridge’s office, but it stretches out much longer with long walls covered in kitten portraits.
• Level 18 is a dark version of the great hall (as seen by Snape when he would patrol the castle at night).
• Level 19 echo of 12 Grimmauld Place.
• Level 20 is Spinners End, but an older version with everything broken.

(More Snape's influence)

• Level 21 lights out area with proto-dementors within rows of hung washing on lines. You can shine light at them to temporarily confuse them.
• Level 22 is the convent school at a local chapel where Snape went before attending Hogwarts. Very dark, lots of whispering, laughing and screams in the background).
• Level 23 is an abandoned part of London leading to the station that he walked on first day.
• Level 24 is an empty version of platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross with a train you have to walk through until you find a carriage with a hidden door to get out.
• Level 25 is the Hogs Head Inn. You get out via the portrait downstairs.
• Level 26 is Knockturn Alley. Most shops boarded up. Shadows of people who aren’t there.
• Level 27 is a maze of moving staircases that are difficult to navigate.
• Level 28 is the empty potions classroom at the school. One of the storage cupboards leads out.
• Level 29 is a shrinking classroom, where each wrong move makes the room smaller.
• Level 30 is a hall of written names (people the DEs killed).

(influenced by Snape, then both of them)

• Level 31 is the Astronomy Tower, but it keeps going on for ages and has several ‘platforms’ you can explore that branch off from it on the way.
• Level 32 is Malfoy Manor with moving statues that watch you.
• Level 33 is the room where Lily died (where you find Snape hiding out).
• Level 34 is halls with rows of death eater masks.
• Level 35 is a twisted version of the Shrieking Shack, with all the floors slanted and you have to climb down several levels until you can get out.
• Level 36 is an apothecary shop. Exit is in the basement.
• Level 37 is the Honeydukes sweetshop, but a bit warped (the floors is all twisted). You have to turn on the lights to make it safe. Then you're able to pick up various items to eat.
• Level 38 is long twisted tunnels underground with what look like spiders (Aragog’s habitat). Exits in the forest.
• Level 39 is the Forbidden Forrest. Hagrid's hut (empty) is there and you camp out there while Snape heals a bit more. He sends you off to find specific ingredients and talks you through making some potion with them (which you aren't certain will work).
• Level 40 is the quidditch pitch at night with broken/burned stands and the field is covered with broken broomsticks.

(Influenced by both Hermione, Snape and the two survivors they are catching up with - some areas they don't recognise)

• Level 41 is the wooden struts that hold up the quidditch stands, but a huge maze of them with wooden walkways.
• Level 42 is the school greenhouses, but overgrown with broken glass windows.
• Level 43 is a maze of arches in lower levels of Hogwarts, but infested with rats.
• Level 44 is a warped version of the prefect's bathroom and spans several large areas full of interconnected 'baths' of various sizes. You have to leave Snape by a blocked off tunnel while you look for another way around, as he can't go in the water yet due to his wounds.
• Hidden sub-level 44b is the same layout, but dark, mouldy water and an apparition of Moaning Myrtle that you have to avoid.
• Level 45 is flooded corridors of Hogwarts castle. Suits of armour and other things floating around.
• Level 46 Go lower down to area with medieval style arches and tunnels in castle flooded with water.
• Level 47 Flooded castle courtyard with cog mechanisms to open doors to get through.
• Level 48 is a semi flooded classroom with giant Marauder’s Map on the wall with moving unnamed footsteps. You find a way to open the gate where Snape is and let him through.
• Level 49 is the inside of some factory area with a maze of pipes and railings. Neither of you recognise it (based on a memory of one of the two survivors you meet in the city ruins).
• Level 50 is a long cave system that neither of you remember (memory of one of the survivors).

(Influenced by all four of you)

• The Level 51 abandoned ancient city has a dragon (based on Histria in Romania). You find two other survivors (MoM employees stuck there) and can choose to team up. One knew Charlie Weasley in Romania. They tell you they met an older man who built the shelter they are hiding out in. He is now dead, but he told them there is a lake somewhere that leads back to reality. He never managed to find it. The two other survivors gave up and stayed there, as the dragon keeps worse things away. If you choose to stay there for a while and eat with them, they tell you that the MoM used to send messages outside via the fireplaces here. Couldn't choose where they went, but there was some 'one way gate' (the veil) in the MoM they used... until someone fell through the other way and died and it was covered. Explain there is another big ley line underneath London like the one in Scotland that the castle and village were built on. Relics like the pensieve were tools used by the first wizards that learned to use raw magic to create matter in reality. Myth says that magic created humans (who could originally all do magic) and 'wizards' are just those who retained that magic in them.
• Level 52 is a desert with several old dilapidated buildings full of sand.
• Level 53 under the sand caves full of skeletons of weird mythological creatures.
• Level 54 mostly takes place underwater. You have to get gillyweed from the abandoned storage areas, then swim into a deep pipe, through a tunnel and out into a deep enclosed ravine of dark murky water, where there is a sunken muggle ship (where one of the survivor's parents died). You have to swim through the narrow corridors of the ship until you find a section with two hatches. You can all go inside and then turning the hatches will lock the doors and drain some of the water to reveal a ladder and platform to get out.
• Level 55 is inside La Vieille Sorciere, a French tavern that one of the survivors knew.
• Level 56 Tour Bleue village near Carcassonne (their version of Hogsmeade).
• Level 57 a long walk through the rain (falling upwards) towards Beauxbaton castle.
• Level 58 Beauxbaton courtyards. Two stone plaques almost identical. Find the differences to enter.
• Level 59 Beauxbaton hall of mirrors (memory of OC).
• Level 60 is Beauxbaton ballroom (memory of OC), light blue, feathers, French style furniture.

(Influenced by all of them, then additional people as they get closer to the MoM areas)

• Level 61 is Beauxbaton feast (memory of OC). Food replaces itself with odd items like teeth, coins, feathers.
• Level 62 is Beauxbaton maze, fountains and glasshouses.
• Level 63 is the MoM atrium with central statue and multiple halls of fireplaces.
• Level 64 abandoned offices are from the Ministry of Magic.
• Level 65 is the MoM courtroom pit.
• Level 66 has been taken over by researchers from the MoM dept of Mysteries who got trapped there. Have created a 'stable' area where huge wands are used to collect memories/thoughts instead of the magic in there using it (the opposite of how wandcraft is used outside by wizards). Have a sort of tent town set up. Still expect MoM will be trying to get them out via the veil. Hermione realises what they are talking about and finds out the veil is located over a huge ley line across London, where the MoM offices were built. It was originally intended to used by the Ministry as a gate, but people kept dying during all the experiments. Can get messages out but not people. She then overhears them saying she and the rest of the group can't be allowed to go wandering off for their own good. They plan to escape quickly.
• Level 67 is Azkaban, full of dementors.
• Level 68 escape into a shallow but endless sea with various rocky platforms. One has a door carved in it.
• Level 69 is the vaults at Gringotts.
• Level 70 is a long hall of locked doors with an elevator that leads upwards.

(collective memories - they have to run away to escape and worry they have got lost for a while, as the areas seem very random, then get back to castle based ones)

• Level 71 is a huge pumpkin patch surrounded by mist. Pumpkins are carved with different faces signalling the right/wrong way.
• Level 72 is The Three Broomsticks tavern. Empty, but you can light the fire and there are bottles you can drink.
• Level 73 Can go outside in the dark along the castle bridge, into the main entrance and up winding staircase. Freezing cold now.
• Level 74 is the owlery, but there are just skeletons of owls in the cages and torn letters everywhere in the ice.
• Level 75 is Hogwarts kitchens. Find very old house elf trapped in there sat by the fire. Doesn’t want to come with them.
• Level 76 is the sewer systems of Hogwarts castle, complete with Basilisk. Still freezing.
• Level 77 is the Hogwarts library, but it goes on forever and has phantoms (and books) that attack you. Some of the books are also dangerous. They find a safe-ish area to stop for a while, as they are too cold and out of ideas. A couple of people sleep, others eat, and Hermione starts reading. She finds a book that describes the three gifts from Death (the cloak, the elder wand, the stone - the hallows) and the three gifts from the Oracle (the veil, the pensieve and the mirror - the judges) that act as gates between realities.
• Level 78 find a blank framed canvas and draw the veil. It becomes a painting of the veil set in a stone room they can enter. Everything is made of paint.
• Level 79 find another blank framed canvas in the halls and draw the mirror. Becomes a painting of the mirror of Erised set in a medieval curtained room they can enter.
• Level 80 find a third blank framed canvas and draw the pensieve. Becomes painting of the pensieve set in a woodland clearing that they can enter.

(very old versions of the area that are based on myths rather than anyone's direct memory)

• Level 81 is an oracle's tent with a tarot card game and several 'doors'. The level you enter next depends on the card pulled. Regardless of the card, the levels are going further back in time.
• Level 82 is a swamp area, mud, dirty pools, dead trees, quicksand.
• Level 83 an unknown area overgrown with mushrooms/fungi.
• Level 84 Dead forest of black trees with elder tree in the middle (which Death created the wand from).
• Level 85 is the Hall of Records. A boat through a huge stone library where stone tablets keep track of all sentient lives.
• Level 86 is a seemingly endless stone stairway descending downwards. Starts pretty, then gets hotter with more dead corpses en route.
• Level 87 Path of Fires. Stones carved with ancient runes that you have to follow in order to get out.
• Level 88 is Giant's Row. Huge stone heads buried in the ground based on the first being the magic created.
• Level 89 is a Thestral graveyard where they wander about over piles of bones.
• Level 90 Catacombs full of screaming faces on the ceiling and walls.

(the oldest myths of how the school and then the 'faces' of existence (magic) like 'Death' and the 'Oracle' were formed) (edited)

• Level 91 is part of the Hogwarts castle surrounded by Scottish wilderness. The houses are made of stone and there are carriages drawn by thestrals (which you can see if your sanity is very low). There are four 'kings' based on the Hogwarts founders. You choose which one to help and they reward you. The others then try to attack. One of OCs is hurt.
• Level 92 is the ruins of the original castle overgrown with more vines.
• Level 93 floating gardens with statues showing the creation story of first beings from magic.
• Level 94 is the singing rooms. White rooms with large glowing windows high up on the walls and pools you walk through. There is a healing charm cast over the entire area, and you can hear it being sung everywhere. OC is healed and Snape's burns/scars disappear.
• Level 95 is a narrow sky bridge in the clouds.
• Level 96 is a giant version of the veil carved above the rocks that has the sky and sun visible through the other side.
• Level 97 is very empty rocky landscape. Follow the shadows until it turns to dusk.
• Level 98 is a giant version of the mirror of Erised with the moon on the other side. Everything turns to night and gets dark as you get closer and walk through it.
• Level 99 a path leading to a river, which you have to build a bridge to walk over (shadowing the Three Brothers story). You hear whispering in the dark and then growling. You have to walk towards the growling instead of running and the shadow of a dog (death) leads you the right way (overcoming fear of death).
• Level 100 You follow the path around a silvery/white lake (like the pensieve), and must enter the lake itself to be judged by the blind Oracle who sits in the middle. If your soul is light enough, you will float out of the pensive on the other side. If it's heavy then you will sink to the bottom of the lake and die. It's the ancient lake that still runs under the hills where Hogwarts/Hogsmeade is based (part of which flows into the lake there today, although it's now mostly covered with water). Hermione is worried she will be judged badly for obliviating her parents. Snape is worried he'll be judged badly for what he did when he was younger. Others in the group are also concerned. One guy is arrogant and thinks he'll be fine. You exit via the pensieve in (now) McGonagall's office. It's night and she isn't there. One of the group doesn't come up. You promise Snape you won't tell anyone he is alive. You also all agree not to tell the MoM how to get in/out, as they would abuse that knowledge. Then you all part ways.

Quote from Snoopy on April 27, 2025, 9:51 am

World Rules
(still brainstorming these)

Death - You can get sick/injured/drown/burn/freeze and die in there, since it's just another version of reality where you can exist or not exist. Your character will comment on it being too cold or hot, look for ways to heal when injured and can only hold her breath for so long underwater. But as the magic is based on the person's memories/thoughts, if you think you will die then you will die. If you don't, then you won't. Although the mind expects to die and that's extremely difficult to overcome.
Birth - I'm not going to include this in the backrooms, as it's an 'incomplete' reality and not stable enough to produce new life. That's my argument anyway. I won't mention it in the game, but the MoM tent area that's been there a while won't have kids running around.
Communication - The windows in there are on the other side of the veil on the outside. You can hear people talking/yelling/whatever on the other side if you are near the veil (the voices Harry heard in the MoM). How do the others know she is in there? While walking past a big window, Hermione hears one of the aurors giving a guided tour of the MoM to new auror recruits and she tracks where the sound is coming from and tries to break the window (can't). Yells in response and a couple can hear her. Ask her who she is and she gives them her name. Tells her to stay where she is, but she is forced to move due to (some threat?). But word spreads via the other aurors to Harry/Ron and others that she is somehow in there, but not dead.
Biology - This still all works the same way, as you still physically exists in this reality. Time still functions, just differently. You won't be in there long enough to age, but there will be references to other characters getting old and dying after being trapped in there for a long time. You won't have specific stats on things like hunger, but your character will complain of being hungry and grab food/drink items when she finds them in different rooms. The same goes for washing. She will comment on being sweaty/dirty when she finds the rooms with pools of water in, and automatically splash her face in it after checking it's safe. In some areas where it's safe (i.e. the library or shelter in the city ruins), you'll set up camp and sleep.

Quote from Snoopy on April 27, 2025, 8:15 pm

Giant dollhouse in level 2 from Hermione's memory (I'll make the atmosphere/lighting more misty once I've finished adding all the details)

Scale in relation to your character. I'm not 100% sure on the layout or what to do with the rest of the room. Underneath the staircase is a door that leads out the back and into a long wooden tunnel. So the dolls house sort of bleeds into the next level environment.

Quote from Snoopy on April 28, 2025, 4:24 pm

The first evidence you see from Snape, although you don't know it's his. The cylinder shapes will be empty potion bottles (haven't made the models yet).

Quote from Snoopy on April 30, 2025, 5:43 am

I still need another 9 'environments' if anyone has any ideas? My brain has run out of creative juice for the week! I'm trying to visually lead the character through a 'plot' if that makes sense.

Done! : )

Quote from The Gestalt Prince on April 30, 2025, 1:46 pm

Would the grotto with the inferi be a possible suggestion?

Quote from Snoopy on April 30, 2025, 1:51 pm

I don't think that would be a memory of any of them. I think only Harry and Dumbledore were there (I could be wrong - it's been a while since I read all the books)?