VISITORS TAKE PART IN GUIDED BACKROOMS TOURS

By: Arial

The Dimension Forest and Parks Service has officially begun holding tours in the Backrooms.

According to the latest announcement by the DFPS, tours in the Backrooms began being held last Monday. As of Wednesday, the agency is reporting that a total of 58 tours have been held in the Backrooms. They expect more foot traffic in the coming weeks.

“We have gotten a lot of public interest in touring the very mysterious Backrooms since opening up these tours last Monday,” DFPS chief Ahwi stated, “It’s great to see this interest of such an immense and ancient dimension.”

The DFPS is clarifying to those with concerns that all tours within the Backrooms are hosted by DFPS forest rangers with experience in providing tours. They also state that much of the Backrooms— at least the areas they should visit— are marked with trail lights, as well as plenty of signage to guide visitors around.

“I know some people are worried, but we made sure to mark specific trails and put up signs that are in convenient locations,” chief Ahwi said, “I’ve made sure to specifically mention to rangers that visitors should not go off trail. We can’t reiterate this enough.”

Chief Ahwi has also stated that visitors in the Backrooms can get assistance from forest rangers as there is a ranger station located in the middle of the visitable area of the Backrooms.

“There is a brand new ranger station we set up in this area of the Backrooms for anyone who needs assistance and of course our forest rangers are trained in providing first aid if needed,” the chief explained, “We also made sure to purposefully block off certain parts of the dimension that lead to more deeper parts with nothing of real interest. Again, just follow the trail lights and signs and you’ll be fine.”

Those who want a tour in the Backrooms can reserve a spot online or at a DFPS tour booth. They expect more tours to take place in the coming weeks and expect tours to persist through the rest of the summer and early autumn season. For more information, please visit the DFPS website.

FOUR HE'S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW 

By: Porter

Hello fellow Tribune readers! I am here breaking the fourth wall to report on the fourth Anniversary Party!

This past year has been quite the ride! Though, I suppose I can say that about any of these past years really! So what is it that made the 2024-2025 period of the story different from the other periods? There were some pretty fun times, but there were also some pretty serious times too. Let’s take a quick rewind and catch up on the biggest moments!

Wilderness Expedition: During July of 2024, we saw our friends go on a trip through the wilderness of the dream world. Ophelia and Finnegan tagged along, but this was part of a more secret plan. Finnegan secretly put transmitters in key locations in an attempt to see where any abnormal signals could be coming from should they be originating from the wilderness. These abnormal signals could have been coming from Francis and the DPF wanted to know if he was out there. Other than that, the tour was quite fun!

Halloween Party 2024: Halloween in the dream world last year was pretty spooky! Unlike in 2023 and 2022, there were no major incidents reported for the spooky season and things looked to be going great! Almoral held his own Halloween party at his mansion after Count Anastasius’ party experienced a power outage at the Club dimension. It seemed like a minor, unfortunate event, but this would have ultimately led to something more serious…

Operation Blackout: The highlight of this past year was very much this event in which Francis successfully took over much of the dream world after he set off a freak snow storm and caused a total blackout! Snow wouldn’t stop falling and the dream world was put to a complete halt. With Francis ruling as “de facto leader,” the DPF managed to infiltrate into his base deep in the wilderness and ended up turning off his weather machine and finally arresting Francis. However, when Francis had a real world portal activated that was set to explode, Lucid came right in time to stop it! From here, the road to recovery began…

Daiki’s termination, Sylveran’s ascension: Chief detective Daiki dropped all of Lucid’s criminal charges in late January following Lucid’s actions during Operation Blackout; however, the Council of the dream world began to pressure Daiki into reimposing those charges. When Daiki refused to do so, he was terminated from his position and the Council then voted for Sylveran to take his place! On his first day in office, Sylveran reinstated Lucid’s charges and began a complete overhaul of the detective agency. Sylveran’s ideas were seen as a bit strange and different from Daiki’s, but time would tell where the DIA would go from there…

April Fool’s Party 2025: With Francis out of everyone’s mind, his past actions seemed to persist. As a result of his old actions from previous years, anomalous residues were left behind the past that began to affect our present! Areas across the dream world experienced time anomalies that corrupted them and it was up to Sir Timely and a fellow group of friends to go back in time and clean up Francis’ mess! While a serious matter, many residents saw this as a pretty silly and wacky time to travel the dream world. Sir Timely did indeed clean up all of the residues left behind, though something else was lurking on the horizon, but this would be something to worry about later in the future…

There were more events that took place in the past year, but these were the most important. Which one was your favorite? What memorable events can you recall from the past year? Here’s to more adventures ahead of us all! Happy fourth anniversary!

Q/A: Ask the developer

Dear Adri, what was your favorite event of the past year?

By: Fabo Ritz

Hi Fabo! There are so many events to choose from! When I think about some notable events since July of last year, there are a few that come to mind for their significance to the game and story, but if I really had to choose, it’s actually not an event that had any quest attached to it.

2024 was, to say the least, a very hard year. I can’t sit here and say that it wasn’t hard for many other people too, but it was quite intense and there were many factors that led me to call it a hard year. I think to combat that stress, the most appropriate answer for me to say here is the 2024 Holiday Party. You see, the Holiday Party has always been the last major event of the year for the game. Some years it has had a quest with it, but it didn’t have a quest last year. Why’s that?

Truth be told, Operation Blackout had just taken place in November and that was a MAJOR event. After such an event, I didn’t want there to be a quest for the next major event. The Holiday Party for 2024 would simply be cosmetic. It was the first time that every single room was decorated for an event and I wanted it to be as such to help myself and others find a moment of joy and happiness after a hard year. When I think about an event that made me happy last year, I think of this event. The dream world was recovering after a very intense snow storm and the change in the atmosphere felt hopeful. I liked that a lot.

I think the 2024 version of the Holiday Party was the best one to date. Previous Holiday parties have been fun, but this one felt different…unique in its atmosphere. I’m not sure if the next Holiday Party will feel as unique as 2024, but it will definitely be full of joy and hope as I’ve always envisioned them to be. Maybe the next one will have a quest attached to it? I guess we’ll see.

Dear Adri, are there any events you envisioned doing?

By: Emmy Aginn

Hi Emmy! Yes, indeed there have been. I’ve kept a list of different events that I’ve always wanted to do, but many times I haven’t been able to do them because of time constraints, general interest, and/or relevancy to the story. I’ll explain.

One event that I’ve wanted to do is some sort of music festival event. What I envisioned for this event was for different dimensions around the dream world to represent different genres of music. It’s inspired by Club Penguin’s own “Music Jam” events that were quite popular during its run. I think have different stages set up around the map with its own instruments, stage lights, and other fun add-ons would make it a pretty cool event, but of course, I’ll have to see when to do that. I have always seen it as a summer type of event, but since summer is coming and will be gone soon, it might not be a 2025 thing. Perhaps next year…

Another event I always wanted to do was a fair/carnival type of event. I think I mentioned this one before, but having a carnival type of event would seem pretty fun. I’ll admit that this idea has kind of been given an in-game concept of what it could be like on a miniature scale with the seasonal Fair dimension that comes during autumn. This is more of a county fair type of setting, but if I did decide to do a carnival style event, I do see it as taking place during the autumn season…a fall fair, if you will.

There are other events I would like to see happen, but everything is also a time and place. For the near future, the game looks as scheduled with its usual annual events, though I do plan on continuing the story (of course). And yes, I do accept event ideas if anyone has something they’d like to share with me. I’m always welcome to room ideas, but if you have an idea for a cool event, just let me know! It might just be added to the game at some point.

Dear Adri, is this the first time that the Backrooms has its own event?

By: Evie Entful

Hello Evie! The Backrooms in the game is my own take on it from the many countless takes that have popped up over the last few years. The dimension has gotten makeovers for different events, but it hasn’t officially been a part of an event until this year!

I had actually had the idea of the Backrooms being the center of an event for about two years or so now. The problem was that I didn’t really know exactly what the event would be nor where in the story it would have ended up. There were so many ideas I had with the Backrooms being important to an event, but most felt irrelevant or not necessarily “original” in nature. Considering that I already had a story mapped out for the near future at that point, there was also just no spot for it to be the center of any event in that time period.

Once the third anniversary came, I had an idea of incorporating the Backrooms into the Wilderness Expedition for the following year (this year) after going through the event with friends. Indeed, it felt odd to have an indoors area be a part of an event focusing solely on the outdoors, but if you’ve seen or been to Mystery Flesh Pit National Park— which I took inspiration from for the Wilderness Expedition and is a game you definitely check out— you’ll know that the indoors can also be filled with attractions. And so, I had decided to keep that idea in mind for 2025.

Now that it’s the fourth anniversary, I finally got around to adding the Backrooms into an event that makes it relevant to the story. I won’t spoil anything about it, but the venture into the Backrooms this year for the Wilderness Expedition advances the story into the next general conflict and plot. All I’ll say is to enjoy what the wilderness and Backrooms have to offer…and don’t go off trail.