Escape the Backrooms Review (Xbox Series X/S & PC)

I could feel my heart beating at a million miles an hour, desperate to locate an exit in a cheese-clotted labyrinth that, in my mind, simply didn’t have one. Or at least, not an exit that was etched in bright lights and luminous signals. Physically, I felt sick to my stomach. Mentally, I was hell-bent on finding the door that would lead me home. I had the key fob, and I had a purpose. But what I didn’t have, however, was the faintest idea on how to navigate the corridors. I’d sprint in one direction, and then hit a brick wall. A fork in the road would pull me back, and I’d suddenly find myself at the same crossroad for a second, third, or fourth time. Sure enough, “it” didn’t want me to leave.

Escape the Backrooms had me sweating buckets, not because it was a physically taxing experience, but because it had this awful habit of breathing down my neck as if I was the only known oxygen mask in the world. Regrettably, it was something that I just couldn’t ever seem to shake — that gut feeling that there was another being looming in the shadows. A brittle vessel; a slender hand; a pair of razor sharp teeth. It wasn’t all that often that I’d see it with my own two eyes, yet The Backrooms had this way of arousing my suspicion and keeping the hairs on my neck sharper than the jagged corners of the maze. The eyes — they had to be somewhere. I just couldn’t ever seem to figure out if they were two feet from the back of my ankles or ahead, in the next cluster of corridors.

I’ll admit that, in spite of my best efforts to fool myself into believing that I could single-handedly romp through Escape the Backrooms without having to blink twice, I must have spent more time aimlessly sprinting, jolting and cowering behind pillars than actually sourcing viable escape points. The whole point of the game was easy enough to comprehend, true. Yet, in the spirit of Backrooms lore, the act of navigating the labyrinth was as tough as I could have imagined. Annoyingly, it was never about hopping from point A to point B, but about zig-zagging from A to D, E to K, and Y to B, all whilst learning how to remain out of harm’s reach for minutes at a time.

Of course, I tried to slug through Escape the Backrooms on my own, but frankly, it never quite hit the sweet spot. The objective was still the same, but it almost felt as if it lacked a pulse. Although a solid Backrooms experience in itself, it occasionally felt that its single-player Story Mode was an afterthought, and that its backbone was skewered around its online multiplayer counterpart. And so, without giving it a second thought, I abandoned the yellow brick borough, and I tapped into the beating heart of Escape the Backrooms’ signature. With hindsight, I should’ve started from there, for the game was never meant to be a cheap emulation of a Backrooms flick, but a full-fledged co-op horror.

See, unlike your typical lone wolf Backrooms escapade, Escape the Backrooms aims to incorporate teamwork into the equation. Rather than having you mindlessly scour the corridors for missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle as a lonesome soul, it forces you to act as a collective. And that’s where Escape the Backrooms finds its place on the podium — not as “yet another” Backrooms romper, but as a multiplayer game that favors collaboration and team-based corridor grafting. Oh, it’s still vaguely similar to your traditional Backrooms gig, only it prefers to make several players jump through hoops rather than one. A blessing, or a curse? Eh, a bit of both, really.

As with most co-op survival games, Escape the Backrooms presents you with a rather daunting challenge—an obstacle that, due to the strict nature of the location and the seemingly unbreakable bond that you share with your jumpsuit-sporting colleagues, you must overcome as a team. In other words, if one player falls behind, then the entire squad suffers the consequences. And as a result of that, there is only one way to beat the game: escape as a unit, not as an individual.

Of course, if Escape the Backrooms was as simple as scrubbing the floors for wooden planks and keys, then there probably wouldn’t be all that much to write home about here. However, the game does do a rather brilliant job of fabricating traditional facets here. For instance, any player can fall into a trap, and any player can fall victim to the monstrosities that wallow in the dark. Therefore, it’s your job, as a team, to work as one for the sake of acquiring the best possible outcome. Not that this is an easy feat to accomplish, mind you.

Unsurprisingly, Escape the Backrooms plays out in a similar manner as your typical Backrooms chapter, by which I mean, if you’re not actively sprinting between the crags and crevices of a seemingly endless network, then you’re bolting away from an entity that stalks your shadow at the worst possible moments. The only striking element that sets this labyrinth apart from the others, of course, is its inclusion of a multiplayer mode. But other than that, what you see here is what you get: a semi-traditional Backrooms experience that mostly consists of rummaging around in the dark and screaming at your own two feet.

Here’s the good news: Escape the Backrooms has a lofty collection of biomes to explore and, well, get lost in. Aside from the iconic yellow-soaked maze, you also have a vast library of office complexes, parking lots, underground tunnels, and VHS-like countryside towns, to list just a handful. And, again, while the objective is often made to feel the same throughout, it does make an effort to provide a substantial catalog for you to work through. Alone, it’s a different story. But with friends, it’s an absolute blast. Or at least, it can be, provided that you have the patience and the co-ordination to put two and two together.

Suffice it to say that, from a visual standpoint, Escape the Backrooms is about as textbook as they come. To call it a flawless work of art just wouldn’t be true, for it is, with all due respect, a minimalistic game that doesn’t dare to go much further than your typical ode to Backrooms lore. But that’s to be expected here, to be fair, given that liminal environments is, and likely always will be its bread and butter. It might not look great, but at least it keeps in tune with the source material.

To state the obvious, Escape the Backrooms, despite the fact that its Creepypasta forefather has a cult following that is evidently thriving, is still a niche game at heart. It’s also a simple game that doesn’t offer a lot more for you to do outside of fleeing, collecting, and volleying back and forth between corridors. For fans of the genre, this ought to sound like ideal fodder for a good time. But for those who enjoy survival horror games with a little extra meat on the bones, it’s unlikely to provide enough substance for you to get your fill. Swings and roundabouts, really.

Verdict

Escape the Backrooms dares to embrace the multiplayer spectrum, not as a run-of-the-mill, cheap ode to The Backrooms, but as a full-fledged horror that minces the best of online co-op with a lofty collection of familiar yet awfully inviting locations. It might not appeal to every person and their neighbor I’ll admit. But, for those who find joy in the simple act of screaming at their own shadow, something like this ought to go down as a real treat.