Roblox: Weirdcore

Weirdcore and liminal spaces maps are a hidden treasure on Roblox.

If you haven’t played Roblox, you at least know what it is. I was exploring maps made by users that weren’t monetized or promoted by Roblox itself, so they are only findable through searching tags, through users profiles, or attached to groups. They are the maps that are never featured on the front page, and if you didn’t know what tags to search for, you may never find. I began searching for words that become popular with horror-related channels on Youtube, such as: ‘liminality, liminal, liminal spaces, weirdcore, dreamcore, dream, traumacore, nostalgia, dereality.’ These words are all essentially associated with each other, as they go hand in hand with the type of feeling(s) experienced when visiting these maps. Many of the maps made are unique to the user that created them, however there are the fair share of maps that don’t stand out from one another, and have rooms within the map that look copied from another. Many of these maps contain rooms that throw you into a nostalgic, or rather, dreamlike state of mind. Many of the over-saturated themes rooms that feature an experience, or room, that you may have been in as a child, that is indistinguishable from any other. It’s meant to be minimal, feel empty, and bring back a nostalgic feeling, regardless if you find it memorable or not. A child’s playroom, an elementary classroom, an empty parking lot in the middle of the night lit up with street lamps, or an abandoned mall.

There are subtle, but noticeable changes within traumacore, and weirdcore maps. Traumacore maps will usually be catered towards a young child’s trauma (perhaps the user, or a generalization of others’ experiences). Rooms will be similar to that of liminal or weirdcore maps, but have added details that hint towards trauma, usually telling a story within the room: blood on the bedroom floor, a diary, words on the wall, or NPC figures that play a dialog upon interaction. Weirdcore maps are a little more, well, weird, in that they feature rooms with floating eyeballs, mushrooms, checkered flooring, biblically-accurate depictions of angels, and other oddities that could attribute to the aesthetic.

Something that I love about visiting these maps is that the feeling that they induce within you doesn’t ever change, or go away. Listening to the music provided, or in silence, while traversing these maps, especially alone, only adds to the feeling of comfortable loneliness, and endearing isolation.

Here is a video I made while I explored.