There’s something about the silence in Escape the Backrooms that doesn’t sit right. Not just quiet — wrong. The kind that hums just enough to make your ears feel like they’re adjusting to something that isn’t there. And in that moment, when all you can hear is the soft flicker of a fluorescent bulb overhead, you realize there’s no one coming to explain what this place is. You’re just in it.
You wake up in a space that doesn’t belong anywhere. A maze of faded yellow walls, stained carpet, and light that never turns off. It looks like a storage room someone gave up on halfway through building — except it goes on forever. You walk, and it repeats. You turn corners that don’t remember you were just there. And you’re not alone, though you wish you were.
You can play alone, or with friends. Either way, the goal is the same: get out. But “out” is a moving target. Every level is different. Some are endless offices. Some feel like underground tunnels. Some are so dark you can’t tell whether the shadows are part of the space or something waiting in it. There are puzzles. Keys. Clues scrawled on walls or pinned to things that don’t belong. But what makes it stick is that none of it ever feels safe. Not even for a second.
There are entities — that much you know. You might hear them before you see them: a heavy breath, the slap of bare feet on tile, or something glitching in your peripheral vision. They don’t announce themselves. You just run. Or hide. Or pray the light holds long enough for you to find the exit.
But even with all that, Escape the Backrooms isn’t trying to be cinematic horror. It’s slower than that. Quieter. The fear doesn’t come from being chased — it comes from not knowing if you’re alone. And that makes the small things hit harder. Like the sudden relief of reaching a checkpoint. Or the brief, wordless coordination between you and a teammate before diving into another level. The rare moment where you stop to look up and realize this place is… oddly beautiful, in the way liminal spaces always are. Vast, empty, almost nostalgic — like you’ve been here before in a dream, or a memory you never made.
It doesn’t give you direction. No HUD telling you where to go. No voice guiding you. It just puts you in, shuts the door behind you, and asks: how far can you make it before something finds you?
And somehow, that’s enough.
Escape the Backrooms is available on Steam.
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