Shroom and Gloom Exploration: Camps, Rest and Hazards

The June 2026 rework changed this completely

If you watched a Shroom and Gloom video from 2025, the exploration you saw no longer exists. The June 2026 demo update — the first since August 2025 — shipped an “entirely overhauled explore mechanic”. Team Lazerbeam listed what it added: lighting torches to camp in safety, feeding the creatures you encounter, and revealing, breaking, fixing or unlocking things to grow your decks.

That same update added a prologue chapter, built largely in a one-day game jam, precisely because new players could not tell what explore cards did to the world around them.

Camping and WARMTH

CAMP FIRE costs 1 energy, carries the CAMP type, and reads: “Add WARMTH to hold danger at bay.” WARMTH is the buffer that makes resting survivable, which reframes camping as something you set up rather than something you press.

Resting itself draws you a fresh hand — that is what players on the Steam forum worked out, and it is why a hand with no useful explore card is recoverable. The cost is time and the cards you spend clearing whatever the room throws at you first.

Hazards make rooms expensive

Demo players describe hazards as the thing that makes a rest worth doing or not: you spend cards to remove them before you can rest. Judge a room by what it costs to make safe, not by whether you technically can.

The rest key changed for Early Access

In the demo, rest sat on E — directly beside W. A player reported ending runs by fat-fingering it, and Team Lazerbeam replied: “happy to report this has been resolved on our side and the Early Access version won’t have rest mapped to E.” If a demo video shows someone rest by accident, that is why.

Locks, breaks and the tools for them

The tunnel screenshots show a chained wooden door with a glowing padlock, and the hand beneath it holds exactly the tools for it: KEY (0 energy, PICK, “Unlock and consume. Handy.”) and BASH (1 energy, SKILL, “Break and …”). The Facility’s doors are different — the second path replaces wooden doors with “high-tech doors with digital locks that need to be gunked or hacked”.

The Gloom is a clock

The rule that ties it together, from the June update notes: “don’t stay too long — overstay your welcome and The Gloom will take you into its cold embrace.” Exploration is not free looting time. It is a budget, and camping is how you buy more of it.

Related

• Card list — the explore card types: CAMP, FOOD, PICK, SKILL.
• The Facility — how the second path changes what you are exploring.
• Demo page — what else the June update changed.