Never let it be said that, although I live comfortably outside the loop, I don’t know what’s going on inside it, especially when it comes to gaming.  Now, am I keeping up with every single new trend that surfaces? Eh…probably not. Okay, okay, definitely not. Case in point, this whole “backrooms” phenomenon that’s become a mainstream thing. I was so far out of the backrooms knowledge loop, I couldn’t even see its boundaries. All that changed when fellow blogger, The Duck of Indeed, posted a video of a demo of Backrooms Anomaly. Coincidentally, a similar game called Escape the Backrooms appeared on Game Pass right around the same time. I took this as a sign that I needed to get with the times and experience the backrooms for myself.

There’s plenty online that provides history on how “backrooms” became a thing, but the general notion is that the backrooms reside in liminal space, space that feels eerie, unsettling, and nostalgically familiar all at once. The “backroom” that apparently started it all visually was an empty office space completely shrouded in a sickly yellow color with fluorescent lighting. From the image rose internet lore, creepypasta, and various memes. In game form, backrooms have taken shape in escape games, with the simple premise that one must find a way out of a space while avoiding some sort of skulking terror that’s in said space with the player.

Doing a search for backrooms games on Steam brings up hundreds of results (624 in the moment I searched), so undoubtedly the trend has caught fire of late. Whether or not Escape the Backrooms is a dud or a gem, I wouldn’t quite know because I didn’t get very far, though I did nominally enjoy my short time with it. I started out the game in the ubiquitous yellow office with winding corridors, humming lights (the devs nailed that sound, for sure), and a feeling that something wasn’t right. I discovered a single objective: to find pieces of ladder, which I set about doing. To say navigating this space was disorienting was an understatement, as it felt like I was going around in circles forever, without anything happening. Only then, I caught a glimpse of…a hand?

The monster, there it was! From there, in the butchered words of Sherlock Holmes, the game was afoot. Of course, I had to get closer to the monster to see what it looked like, except that once it caught wind of me, it gave chase, and I then sprinted the heck on down the nearest corridor. After catching my breath, I continue my search for the ladder pieces. I did get caught by the monster a couple times, which resulted in a good jumpscare the first time and annoying ones after that. Upon locating all the ladder pieces, the ladder itself led to a key, which I thought would open a nearby passageway. But each time I tried (the game saved progress so I didn’t have to find the ladder/kay with each new respawn), nothing happened with I tried to open it. Confused, I did one run where I simply kept exploring the level a while avoiding the monster, which eventually paid off in the form of escaping via an entirely different way that had nothing to do with the key. Whether the key situation was a glitch or intentional, it alone pushed my buttons the wrong way and made me reluctant to keep playing.

However, I soldiered onto the game’s second level, which was not a yellow office but a creepy parking garage, of sorts, one that had a much more terrifying monster roaming about. And in this level, I had to keep my sanity level up, lest I go crazy while trying to escape. Unlike in the yellow office, the parking garage was most interesting in that not only was there a monster to avoid, but other figures in hazmat suits popped in and out of the periphery, making the level feel intensely weird and much less comfortable than the already uncomfortable yellow office.  While I wouldn’t have said the level was scary in a traditional sense, something about gave me enough butterflies in the stomach that I didn’t want to keep playing. I’m sure that feeling was something the devs were going for, but my own constitution just wasn’t up for the challenge.

While I won’t be attempting to escape the backrooms again in Escape the Backrooms any time soon, I see the appeal. Based on YouTube videos of it and other backroom games with multiplayer, I’ll admit that playing with friends does look chaotically fun. Playing alone, however, was just too unsettling, and progression just too slow. I know I’m forever an impatient gamer, and maybe the whole “find this key for no apparent reason” thing set me and the game off on the wrong foot, but Escape the Backrooms seems to have plenty of fans otherwise. If you, with or without three friends and/or acquaintances, want to Escape the Backrooms yourself, it’s readily available, with cross-platform capabilities, on PC, XBOX series, and PS5.

All images, including lede, were captured by author during XBOX gameplay of Escape the Backrooms (© Blackbird Interactive, Fancy Games).