Escape the Backrooms

The Backrooms should not still be interesting. It started as an image of ugly yellow rooms with fluorescent lights and somehow turned into an entire internet mythology full of monsters levels and people arguing over what counts as real Backrooms lore. Escape the Backrooms is probably one of the better examples of turning that mess into an actual game. You and up to three other players move through more than thirty different levels trying to figure out how to escape while avoiding whatever horrible thing lives there. The early areas understand the original appeal best. Nothing is happening and that's why it feels wrong. You walk through empty halls listening to lights buzz and wondering whether the game actually put anything in there with you. Eventually you find out. Playing with friends changes the entire experience. Everyone starts confident because there are four people together. Then somebody wanders around a corner. Their voice gets quieter because of proximity chat. You hear them panic somewhere in the distance. Now the other three people have to decide whether being a good friend is actually worth going back. That is exactly the kind of co-op horror I like. The game does not stay inside yellow office rooms forever either. Different Backrooms levels introduce pools dark industrial spaces outdoor areas strange buildings and plenty of other environments built from the wider internet lore. Not every level is equally good. Some are genuinely creepy. Others feel like you are wandering around searching for the one thing the game forgot to explain. Puzzle quality is similarly inconsistent. When everyone is figuring something out together the game is great. When progress depends on trial and error or spotting one obscure detail the whole group can start getting annoyed. The monsters also vary. The best ones force you to change how you move through an area. Others expose how questionable the AI can be. Horror falls apart pretty quickly when the terrifying creature gets stuck on furniture. None of that seems to have stopped people from sticking with the game. The full PC release expanded it significantly and the 2026 console rollout brought cross-platform matchmaking with it. That matters for a game this dependent on having friends available. For ten dollars the amount of content is hard to complain about. You will probably find levels you hate. You will absolutely find bugs. You may eventually become too familiar with the monsters for them to stay scary. The first few times through some of these spaces are worth it anyway. Escape the Backrooms works because it understands that co-op horror does not need to scare everybody constantly. Sometimes it only needs to scare one person badly enough that everyone else starts laughing.