Game Director — Backrooms TCG™
Norwalk, California 🇺🇸

Aaron “Gearsnakes” Juarez is the founder and game director of Backrooms TCG™, the world’s first solitaire-first trading card game. Raised in the visual and imaginative excess of the 1980s, Aaron grew up immersed in animation, tabletop roleplaying games, early trading card culture, and genre cinema—formative influences that continue to shape his design philosophy today.

Aaron’s academic background includes an AA in Anthropology, with a focus on myth, symbolism, and human behavior, and an AA in Film & Television Production, where he studied visual storytelling, pacing, and narrative structure. This rare combination of cultural theory and cinematic craft forms the backbone of Backrooms TCG™’s lore-driven, system-forward design.

Before founding the company, Aaron worked in frontline retail environments, experiences that grounded his approach to business in persistence, empathy, and practical problem-solving. Those lessons carry forward into how Backrooms TCG™ is run: deliberately, independently, and with a strong emphasis on quality over scale.

Over more than two years, Aaron personally designed the core mechanics, narrative framework, and visual language of Backrooms TCG™—building an original universe inspired by liminal spaces, psychological endurance, and solo exploration. Unlike traditional competitive TCGs, Backrooms TCG™ is engineered for introspective play, strategic mastery, and long-form storytelling.

Ryan “Hass Thrift” Hasselkus

Graphic Design 🇺🇸

Ryan is a Scientist at a biotech company in Boston, MA working with stem cells to develop medicines that will improve the lives of patients. He grew up during the inception of Pokémon and Yu-gi-oh!, playing both of them casually with his friends on the school bus. Unfortunately, he gave away his entire card collection as a kid and it wasn’t until 2019 that he restarted his collection once again. As a result of this endeavor, Hass Thrift & Collectibles was formed.

As Hass Thrift, Ryan has a passion for buying, selling, and trading collectibles including indie TCGs. One of his main goals as a collector is to collect one card from every card game ever produced. He currently has over 300 card games in his TCG museum. His passion for indie TCGs lead to his discovery of Backrooms TCG on Kickstarter, which caught his immediate interest as a solitaire trading card game. Ryan quickly became involved in the Discord community and posted gameplay videos on YouTube.

As a result, Ryan was asked to join the Backrooms TCG development team as social media manager and content creator. This was a perfect opportunity to combine his passion for indie TCGs, Backrooms lore, and his experience in graphic design. When Ryan isn’t playing Backrooms TCG or creating content, he enjoys outdoor activities with his family and playing soccer.

Game Development / YouTube Content Creator 🇺🇸

Hello! I am Noway Artemus from Las Vegas. I've been playing and designing games forever, probably since I was like 9 or 10. I collected Pokémon like most other kids around the early 2000s, 2000 and 2001 I'd say, then switched to YuGiOh which I actually collected and played a fair bit. I wanted to play magic but grew up Christian and my mom was not down with that games' look and theme. She didn't like Harry potter either! I started playing board games pretty heavily around 2012 I believe, found a friend who was really into them and he opened that world to me. I've been pretty heavily invested in board and card games now for at least the last like 10 years or so, and have collected around 200 of them. I've done design work for years, tried many different games, even have one pretty close to being done though Backrooms TCG took my attention. Great game as it is, that's not surprising.

I actually got pretty big into Tomb raider CCG though it's very luck based, which I found not very fun after a while. I like the idea but the dice rolling to beat skill checks is aggravating because there is very little way to mitigate that luck without the right cards, but it being a solo card game made it so you can actually play it by yourself and have a decent time. If only the luck wasn't so mean. But the game looks really cool, feels very thematic.

Ive always wanted to be part of a game design team and think my avid experience with board and card games from the last 15 years brings a somewhat unique perspective to my abilities as a game designer.

Game Development Assistant 🇮🇹

Hello everyone, I’m Daniele, an Italian guy with a huge passion for the Backrooms. Forged by countless battles of Magic the Gathering, even to the point of becoming the Regional Champion in my country for a time, you could say I’m a pretty competitive guy, though I promise I’m also very sweet, I swear! Jokes aside, I have been playing these sorts of competitive card games for the better part of 15 years, which also included time spent on Yu-Gi-Oh and a whole lot of Board Games. They’ve always proven to be fascinating to me, from the ideas, rules, mechanics, and in general the creativity of it all. I’ve always been a Storyteller, creating unique characters and places of my own invention.

In 2019, I first stumbled upon the Backrooms, even being there for the genesis of the original post online, and in the next few years I learned all about the variety of levels with their creatures and the many horrors within. The Backrooms TCG piqued my interest to a huge degree, and it combined my love of the things I love the most, card games and the Backrooms. Being a Horror lover shouldn’t come as a surprise, I suppose, but it’s not a stretch to say that my favorite stories come from the titan of the genre, HP Lovecraft. Cosmic Horrors are truly amazing, after all! If you have questions about the Backrooms, give me a chance and I’ll tell you all about it. Let me share a story with you…

Director of Digital Systems