Escape The Backrooms Review – Haunting The Vibes Museum

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If you’re not familiar with The Backrooms, you might not have older children – it’s a popular online horror story among younger generations. Starting as a specific type of ‘liminal space’ content, The Backrooms has become a vast, collaborative horror universe created by online communities over several years. People have collectively built this world, adding monsters and unsettling locations to create a shared horror experience. It’s become incredibly popular, inspiring numerous games, a movie from A24, and tons of videos online. Among all the adaptations, ‘Escape The Backrooms‘ remains a standout portrayal, essentially acting as a playable, maze-like version of this internet-created horror story.

Escape The Backrooms is a cooperative horror game for up to four players, played from a first-person perspective. After being available as an early access game on Steam for several years, the full version is now here. The game lets you explore many of the different ‘rooms’ and universes created by fans within the Backrooms mythos. Each room offers a unique take on the unsettling feeling of liminal spaces – that in-between feeling of places that are familiar yet strangely off. You’ll find iconic locations like the original yellow labyrinth that started it all, as well as other popular areas like Level Fun, the Poolrooms, and the Grassrooms. A key strength of the game is how many different locations it includes, effectively offering a history lesson on the Backrooms’ creepy universe. Because the Backrooms lore is community-created, it’s often flexible and open to interpretation, and this game embraces that spirit.

The game is built around a simple idea: explore strange, unsettling places and find a way out. You’ll mostly be shining a flashlight and drinking almond water to stay sane. There are occasional puzzles, like figuring out which playground slide is safe to use (many are dangerously broken!), and you’ll often need to find items – sometimes actual keys – to move forward. For example, early on you might have to repair a ladder to reach a key, or search a dark parking garage for working elevators while avoiding a lurking monster that steals people’s skin.

This monster is particularly unsettling because it disguises itself by wearing the same yellow hazmat suit as the players. It even uses the radio to mimic other players’ voices! But the disguise falls away when it spots you, revealing a huge, grey creature with zipper-like teeth on its belly. It will then relentlessly chase you until it kills you instantly, unless you can reach one of the safe rooms where it can’t follow. This is just one example of the many unique monsters in the game, each stuck within its own specific area.

Liminal spaces initially became popular online because of their eerie emptiness. However, “The Backrooms” and its extensive backstory take this a step further, filling these dreamlike environments with monsters. While both appeal to a sense of nostalgia, adults tend to be drawn to the unsettling, yet strangely familiar, emptiness of liminal spaces – places that feel like faded memories or scenes from a dream, rather than real locations.

Kids generally seem to prefer the more direct and obvious approach to creating scary environments, often filling them with creatures that would be frightening even on their own. However, in games like The Backrooms and Escape The Backrooms, the horror isn’t as nuanced, and therefore isn’t as effective. It’s hard to really feel creeped out because a monster usually appears very quickly after you leave a safe area – if there even is a safe area to begin with.

While the scares aren’t particularly innovative, they still work thanks to sudden loud noises when monsters appear. The game relies on repeatedly throwing relentless monsters at you across many levels, with only the environment changing – and that environment is actually the strongest part of the game. Unlike truly terrifying experiences like Silent Hill or slow-burn thrillers like Amnesia, Escape The Backrooms is designed for streamers and viewers. It’s full of quick, startling moments, and it shares a similar sense of humor with games like Phasmophobia and Lethal Company – expect plenty of opportunities to playfully sabotage your friends, hilariously fail together, and then laugh about the chaos as a group.

Escape The Backrooms was created before the recent popularity of intentionally silly, close-knit co-op games, but it actually fits the vibe perfectly. The game’s simple, low-resolution graphics and unsettling, empty environments work really well together. While the character models and monsters aren’t highly detailed, and the animations are basic, it doesn’t hurt the experience – in fact, the simplicity enhances the horror. This is especially true for the levels themselves. Just like fuzzy distortion is key to the shoegaze music genre, the slightly blurred and indistinct nature of these liminal spaces is essential to creating a truly creepy atmosphere.

Escape The Backrooms doesn’t offer groundbreaking gameplay, but its environments are captivating, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the Backrooms mythos. The game features dozens of distinct and engaging levels, and exploring them all feels like experiencing an immersive deep dive into this relatively new horror style. Even those who played during early access will discover new rooms in this full release. I especially enjoyed playing with my son and discovering everything the game had to offer.

Playing with him was a unique experience. I saw the game both as someone appreciating its unsettling atmosphere, and as someone watching a kid share his deep knowledge of the monsters and lore he’d learned online. He was the expert, teaching me everything, and we worked together to progress. While it’s not a complex game, it’s surprisingly educational – almost like an interactive museum dedicated to the world of The Backrooms.

I started playing Escape The Backrooms as a big fan of the unsettling feeling you get from liminal spaces – my social media really knows me! But after finishing the game, I wasn’t really motivated to explore the Backrooms universe any further. I do admire the game’s concepts, especially how they grew from a collaborative online creation, almost like a modern-day campfire story. However, the core gameplay gets repetitive, and while the environments are initially strange and interesting, the constant chase sequences don’t let you fully appreciate their atmosphere. It feels like you’re quickly rushing through cool places on a really fast tour bus.

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2025-10-28 02:10