If you’ve ever experienced the multiplayer roleplaying survival game SCP: Secret Lab, then you’ll know just how chaotic and stressful it can be to navigate your way around almost identical corridors while being chased by monsters. While there are a limited number of possible layouts that you can learn, one player has instead opted for a manual mapping tool to help them find their way around. 

There are different roles you can be landed with in SCP: Secret Lab, but the D-Class group is by far the most vulnerable. Starting in a random cell in Light Containment, you need to make your way through three sections of the laboratory to get outside and to freedom, all while avoiding player-controlled SCPs and fully armed soldiers who want you dead. Each of the three containment zones looks similar, so it’s easy to get lost—which is where the map comes in. 

For the longest time, I relied on my half-decent sense of direction to make my way through each zone, but that’s clearly not an option for Reddit user SpaceBug173, who shared a video of their custom mapping tool. “I made a mapping tool (manual) because I can’t remember shit and always forget what the room I just passed was.”  

I made a mapping tool (manual) because I can’t remember shit and always forget what the room I just passed was from r/SCPSecretLab

The video is sped up, but it intends to display how quickly you can build a map of the zones while tabbing in and out of the game. It’s a cool concept and looks like a fun idea to try out, but I can’t see this being incredibly helpful, especially as it requires you to look away from the action, which can be lethal even if it’s only for a second. 

Although SpaceBug173 does point out that as the map is opened up by a shortcut, you can still move in-game, and as you respawn as a different role after dying in SCP: Secret Lab, you can also sacrifice a couple of lives to build it up: “The dream situation of this is sweating your ass off while dead or being Class D since as a Class D you can figure out the light [containment] layout pretty easily by looking at the first two rooms you come across. After that, you’ll just have to place the special rooms and viola.”

But as it stands, this is the only test as to whether this manual mapping system would work as SpaceBug173 isn’t prepared to release it into the wild just yet. “The current version is pretty slow, but honestly, I die a lot as Class D already, and I fear what will happen when I give the Peanut a map,” SpaceBug173 says. For those who don’t know, Peanut is a nickname for one of the SCPs that can chase players at lightning speed around the map, so yeah, giving them a cheat sheet would be pretty scary. 

This mapping tool could certainly be used for evil, but it’s not exactly cheating. Plenty of players already use similar methods, whether on Canva or just by using a piece of paper and a pencil. But even still, I’ll probably just carry on with my mediocre method of memorising the layout and chancing it.