Shroom and Gloom Characters

Shroom and Gloom is a single-player roster game wearing a dungeon. Team Lazerbeam is not shipping a dozen secret mains in the free demo. Paperboy is the body you walk. Early Access, scheduled for 10 September 2026 on Steam for Windows and macOS, is scheduled to open five playable characters: Paperboy, Concerned Parent, Lunchlady, Janitor, and Activist. Two paths to The Gloom will carry unique card pools. The Facility is one of those paths.

This page stays on sourced kits. Named cards you will actually see in official overviews are Parental Instinct, Hysterical Strength, Burning Sensation, and the Fireballs Paperboy can feed. Everything else is systems: warmth, cooking, gunk, moods, card draw. If you want the loop rather than the people, use How to Play. If you want the demo route, use the Demo Walkthrough.

Paperboy

Paperboy is the demo starter and the first of the large cast. They are the base character for anyone who downloaded the demo on Steam or itch.io. The kit is heat and greed. In explore, Paperboy can push an extra turn past what a responsible adult would call safe. That extra turn is only free if camp warmth is high.

Fireballs are the signature lesson. They can be fed, restoring 2 Headpoints and creating Burning Sensation. Burning Sensation is temporary and is destroyed when discarded, but while it remains in hand it adds 10 warmth to camp, cutting hazard damage and rising room danger. It can also ignite, including Paperboy’s starting campfire, which is a camp structure that adds warmth for the whole exploration phase. Ignite lines such as growing max Headpoints when you set something on fire are how the class stops being a snack joke.

Combat for Paperboy is the shared demo pool: roast, stab, optional Distant Shadow at 3 energy, moods if they show up. The class identity is the camp, not a fake unique rare chart. Learn rest, dummy, and eating here, then graduate. Getting Started is the first-hour class. The Explore Deck Guide is the warmth textbook.

Concerned Parent

Concerned Parent is an unlockable Early Access character, not the demo body. Their story hook is a search for a missing child—possibly Paperboy, possibly another victim of the under-realm. Mechanically they run on powerful emotions and heaps of card draw. Moods are the point, not a side effect.

Parental Instinct is a starting combat card. Once per combat you can activate it to create Hysterical Strength, a temporary mood that adds 2 rage damage onto all attacks. Hysterical Strength’s rage value grows by 2 every time you draw a card. Looking at a photo of the missing child draws 2 cards and therefore adds more rage. Dad Reflexes draws more attacks. Mama Bear is a free attack that deals 2 damage for every attack in hand. With a fat hand and a grown Hysterical Strength, that free hit becomes the turn.

The cost is planning. Concerned Parent wants draw engines and a hand that can stand being clogged with moods. If you spend Parental Instinct and then fail to draw, you have a small rage sticker and a wasted once-per-combat. Practice the dummy and the frog statue on Paperboy first so you already know how to grow and forget. Then bring the parent into Early Access with a build list plan, not a panic.

Lunchlady

Lunchlady lives on the Forgotten Path side of the roster with Paperboy and Concerned Parent. They specialize in cooking and feed synergies and have a pet dog. A successful demo run can tease them: dish up feasts while exploring, use an apron to catch every crumb of card-growing spores in combat, lunch is served. They stay locked in the demo. You cannot play the apron yet.

Read that teaser as a systems hint. Feasts are explore food. The apron is a combat growth magnet. The dog is a companion card, not a multiplayer friend. Pair Lunchlady in your head with How to Eat Enemies and with soup pots you already saw as Paperboy. When Early Access opens the class, the kitchen you learned in the demo should transfer. Until then, do not invent a full recipe list this wiki cannot source.

Janitor and The Facility

Janitor is listed for Early Access launch alongside Paperboy, Concerned Parent, Lunchlady, and Activist. Official diaries have shown The Facility as a second pathway toward The Gloom: metal tunnels, hazmat remains, rusted fencing, toxic barrels, and high-tech doors with digital locks that need to be gunked or hacked. The team has explicitly postponed a full tour of gunk, machines, data, and the Janitor kit for a later diary. That honesty is the guide.

Expect lock verbs that are not wooden keys. Expect junk resources. Expect explore cards that still feed a combat deck, because the double-deck rule does not change when the wallpaper becomes fluorescent. Do not expect to walk this path as Paperboy in the current 26-tunnel demo and find a complete janitorial closet. The Explore Deck Guide covers The Facility as a path. This page only assigns the likely janitor to that hallway.

Activist

Activist is the fifth name in the Early Access roster of five. Public kits are thinner than Paperboy and Concerned Parent. Steam news lists them with the others; developer launch recaps have sometimes leaned on the first four while still promising five at launch. This wiki will not invent a signature card to fill the silence.

What is safe to say: Activist is a scheduled playable character, not a demo unlock, and they belong in the same two-path structure as everyone else. If later diaries place them on The Facility with Janitor, this page should update with sourced names the same way Parental Instinct is sourced. Until then, treat Activist as a reason to wait for 10 September 2026 rather than a reason to datamine a personality.

Quests are how the paid build is scheduled to unlock characters and bolster card pools. The demo’s version of that carrot is Foresight: find 8 across 26 tunnels, keep one if you win. That is Paperboy homework. Roster homework starts when Early Access is actually in front of you.

Play the body you have. Paperboy teaches warmth, feeding, and the extra explore turn. Concerned Parent will teach draw and rage. Lunchlady will teach the kitchen as a class instead of a hobby. Janitor will teach The Facility’s verbs. Activist will teach whatever the next diary is willing to print. Until those kits are in the Steam build, the tier list hub should rank systems, not a fan-made fifth moveset, and the deck planner should track dummy upgrades you actually played.