Horror video game gets its creepiness from a quantum computer

A quantum computer has been used to create a horror video game called Quantum Backrooms – and it’s available to play online.

Peculiarities of quantum objects have long inspired philosophers and artists, and now game developers are getting the bug too. James Wootton at Moth Quantum and his colleagues developed Quantum Backrooms, a horror game with labyrinthine levels generated by a real quantum computer.

The game draws inspiration from “the Backrooms,” a horror legend developed on internet forums that consists of moving through a series of endless rooms. In Wootton’s game, each room corresponds to the quantum state of a part of a quantum computer called a qubit, while connections between qubits correspond to possible paths between rooms.

Wootton says that in this way, Quantum Backrooms conveys the feeling of being stuck in a quantum computer. The player can look in a fixed direction, but everything they aren’t looking at is constantly changing until they focus their gaze on it, conveying the idea that states of quantum objects change when observed, he says.

Players don’t need access to quantum computers, as they were only used during the game’s development. Wootton says that he hopes that Quantum Backrooms will reach horror fans who will enjoy the new flavour of creepiness generated by the qubits. “A player can be given this link and not have any idea that it was run on a quantum computer,” he says. It is available to play here.

Laura Piispanen at Aalto University in Finland says that hundreds of quantum games exist already, ranging from those that involve content generated on quantum hardware like Quantum Backrooms to those that rely on simulating quantum states on conventional computers. Access to quantum hardware still isn’t widespread, but the interest in quantum games is growing nevertheless, she says.

Quantum Backrooms may not be a quantum-computing breakthrough, but it might be the most polished and playable version of a quantum game yet, says Michael Cook at King’s College London. He says that game developers are often at the forefront of innovating with novel computing technologies, so it is interesting to give them access to quantum hardware that is still impractical for most people. “Often, their unusual demands or ideas for new technology drives real change in research,” says Cook.

The Moth Quantum team hope that Quantum Backrooms will be a step towards quantum technology becoming more integrated in everyday consumer products. “Just as AI went from being a research product to suddenly becoming something very relevant to consumers within the past few years, I think that we’re going to see the same thing for quantum computing,” says Wootton.