Escape the Backrooms Review (PS5)

At first glance, Escape the Backrooms is just a cheap cash-grab to capitalise on the success of Kane Parson’s Backrooms movie. That’s certainly what I thought when I picked it up for a tenner on the PS Store.

The graphics aren’t the best, the sound design is so-so, and there are myriad things you could nit-pick. But I thought it would be a laugh with my mates thanks to its four-player online co-op, so I decided to give it a go.

What followed was a hilariously fun horror experience that is far larger in scope than any one of my friends imagined. Instead of its price tempering our expectations, we were quickly asking, “How is this game only a tenner?”

Escape the Backrooms is fairly simple in its design. You will spawn into different themed backrooms, whether that’s the classic office yellow design or the ever-popular liminal pools. With no real form of direction, you must then explore the level together to figure out how to escape, whilst avoiding a spooky monster or two.

Usually, the levels aren’t too complex. It involves turning some switches to open doors, navigating your way through mazes, or even tackling some deadly form of obstacles. But I was genuinely quite impressed by how much the game is able to mix things up continually across its campaign.

I was over 10 hours in when the game dropped us into a pitch-black tunnel system, which we had to illuminate with a lidar sensor, whilst sneaking around some kind of horrifying silhouette.

A few missions later, we were trying to download gate keys off PCs in a foggy suburban area while fleshy creatures with crowbars waited in hallways, and some sort of tripodal eye thumped its way around the streets.

Or there was the linear hallway level, which just tasked us with running away from the most horrific-sounding creature ever.

None of its levels were so good that I suddenly thought “Oh, this is a great game now”, but its collection of experiences kept things fresh for my friends and I with each new session. It has an incredible fun factor about it too, where there's always something that would spook at least one of us out.

Like other horror co-op giants like Content Warning or Lethal Company, Escape The Backrooms manages to walk that fine line of hilarious and horrifying. I knew the game had hit that right balance when my group chat became swarmed with hysterical clips of us all screaming and dying in a variety of ways.

And even though its visuals aren’t the best, the game is still able to capture the vibe of its various haunting backrooms. Whether it's entirely different styles of areas or the simple use of lighting and elements like fog, it keeps things visually interesting throughout.

It’s helped all the more with a neat use of proximity chat, where the voices of you and your friends will echo and react to the environment. It's been done similarly by others in the genre, but it still adds an extra level of fear to it all, especially when everyone scampers from a monster, and you’re cautiously calling out to see if anyone survived.

The only real pain point for me is movement. For a game filled with tight corridors and narrow doorways, I was often getting caught on my friends as we all floundered about as some murderous creature stomped towards us. If we sprinted down a corridor close to each other, we would often be brought out of the running animation and have to start again, giving it a very stuttery feel.

Overall, the game certainly has some rough edges, with funky animations, and sometimes interacting with small objects can be a bit finicky, adding to this. Personally, I'd love for a bit more polish, but I'm also aware that this is a smaller budget game, so we can't quite go in expecting Sony-level polish.

Performance is also pretty much on par with what I expected. The game doesn’t have performance options, but it’s clearly not hitting 60fps. Is it really an issue? For this particular game, it’s not something that really bugged me too much. Sure, I’m always keen on an extra frame or two, but you’re mainly slowly sneaking around. At least it has an FOV slider.

I've heard reports of online connection issues, but I haven't experienced them myself. Each time we booted up the game, we entered a room code, jumped into a level, and played for hours without interruption or issue.