Escape the Backrooms
Blackbird Interactive · Puzzle, Simulation, Horror, Indie
Overview
Explore the seemingly infinite expanse of eerily familiar levels in the backrooms based on the popular creepypasta lore. Each level features different ways to escape with danger along the way.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT10,000 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Escape the Backrooms works best as a co-op night out. Half of the longer reviews (50%) talk about friends, co-op or multiplayer, and the praise is about the same things: screaming over proximity chat, watching a friend get dragged off by an entity, and a long run of levels that each play differently. Players like how much game they get for a low price and how many famous Backrooms locations it covers. 16% of longer reviews say it scared them, some while they were also laughing.
Bugs are the complaint that comes up most: 17% of longer reviews mention bugs, glitches, crashes or softlocks, and among negative longer reviews that rises to 31%. Other reviewers say later levels turn into repetitive, tedious routines (14%), that objectives are unclear and wrong exits quietly send the group back several levels, or that animations, models and entity AI feel cheap or unfair. Long-time players add their own complaints about slow, thin updates and paid cosmetic skins. 85% of the reviews recommend the game, usually to people who have a group and can live with the jank, while a vocal minority finds it a buggy slog even with friends.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Co-op chaos with friendsHigh
Playing with friends is the reason most often given for recommending the game. Half of the longer reviews (50%) bring up friends, co-op or multiplayer, and many short reviews say the same in a few words. Proximity chat is a big part of it: players describe distant screams getting louder, friends cutting out mid-sentence, and deliberate sabotage such as closing doors on teammates or throwing fireworks at them. One reviewer put it as "Came for the Backrooms, stayed for the human entities." Some say the fun depends on who you play with, or that it is only fun with a group. Negative reviews often grant that friends make it bearable and still find the game itself weak.
Scares that mix with laughterHigh
Reviewers name the entities that got them: the mimic that copies a teammate, skin stealers, the hounds and the partygoers of Level Fun. 16% of longer reviews describe the game as scary, creepy or terrifying, and some of them call it funny in the same review, as in "Too scary to play alone, too funny to play with friends." About 2% of longer reviews say outright that it is not scary, and those reviewers tend to blame loud noises and goofy animations for breaking the tension.
Lots of varied levels for the priceMedium
Each level has its own rules, entity and puzzle, and 8% of longer reviews praise the number and variety: "Each level feels a lot different than the one previous so it doesn't get boring." Multiple endings and secret levels give some players a reason to replay. On price, 9% of longer reviews call the game good value, some citing a sale price and a first run of 10 to 20 hours, and one reviewer called it "a LOT of game for the money." About 5% say the opposite: it is not worth the money, should be bought on sale, or they asked for a refund.
Atmosphere and Backrooms loreMedium
Fans of the Backrooms fiction like recognising Level 0, the Poolrooms, Level Fun and the Darkened Suburbs, and several praise the music and sound design of particular levels. In all, 9% of longer reviews talk about the atmosphere, liminal feel, ambience or lore. Critics say the liminal feeling fades after the first few levels, once the game becomes a series of chases and puzzles, and some say later levels barely feel like the Backrooms at all.
Where players are split
The entitiesMedium
Opinions on the monsters split. Fans single out favourites ("The scariest one is the mimic.") and enjoy learning how each one works. 6% of longer reviews complain about entity behaviour instead: monsters camping exits, grabbing players through closed doors, seeing them from across the map, and the same few enemy types reused across many levels. One critic described "the same enemy being used over and over" in later levels.
Puzzles and difficultyMedium
Puzzles come up in 12% of longer reviews, and the split is close to even. Some players enjoy having to think their way through and find the difficulty about right with a group. Others call the puzzles guesswork, collectathons or the same switch-flipping task in a new room. Reviewers name particular levels as walls their group was stuck on for an hour or more: the Terror Hotel's boiler room, the moth labyrinth, Level Fun's partygoers and Kitty's house. The Nightmare achievement, which needs four players, frustrates the players chasing full completion.
Playing soloMedium
"The game plays completely differently solo vs with others," one player wrote, and the usual view among the 9% of longer reviews that discuss playing alone is that solo is scarier and slower and the game is built for groups. Some enjoy it alone and finish it that way. Others say solo is boring or nearly impossible on certain levels, especially ones that need several people to trigger switches or stand at an exit.
Updates and post-launch supportMedium
Newer players often like that the game is still being updated, and 3% of longer reviews ask for more levels. Long-time players are more critical. Updates or new levels come up in 10% of longer reviews, and 4% complain that updates are slow, thin or buggy, with the new Level 421 drawing particular criticism: "After such a long wait for a single level, it turns out to be uninteresting and lasts a mere 20 minutes at most." A few reviewers say the console release and crossplay brought new bugs. Others praise the opposite, saying "the developers are quite active in patching and updating the game."
PerformanceLow
About 2% of longer reviews report poor optimisation, frame drops, stutters or an oversized install ("there is no reason for this game to have 26GB of graphics for the gameplay to be this problematic"). A slightly smaller share say it runs fine on modest hardware, as in "even my age old pc can run it."
What frustrates players
Bugs, crashes and softlocksHigh
No complaint comes up more often: 17% of longer reviews mention bugs, glitches, crashes, softlocks or fatal errors, and they appear in 31% of negative longer reviews and 11% of positive ones. Reported problems include level transitions that fail, keys or items vanishing when a player dies, players stuck in walls, floors or water, entities that stop reacting, fatal errors on certain levels, and lost saves ("our 12 hour run is just reset just like that"). Some positive reviewers treat the bugs as part of the comedy. Negative reviewers see them as the reason the game is unfinishable, and one asked the team to stop adding content: "Don't add new levels, just fix what's already in it and make everything work properly."
Repetitive, tedious later levelsMedium
The usual pattern is a group that enjoyed the opening levels and then wore out. 14% of longer reviews call the game repetitive, tedious, boring, a slog or a walking simulator, and one described the loop as "enter level -> evade entity -> do puzzles -> exit level -> repeat". Reviewers point to recycled entities, long empty maps and levels that feel stretched to add playtime. Those who call it "quantity over quality" say the level count comes at the cost of finished levels: reused assets and monsters, levels that are over too quickly or drag on too long, and bugs on top.
Unclear objectives and wrong exitsMedium
"The biggest issue is that the game often does a poor job explaining what you're actually supposed to do," one co-op reviewer wrote, in a review that still recommends the game. 6% of longer reviews complain that the game does not explain what to do, or say they had to look up a guide or walkthrough. Some exits also lead back to earlier levels without warning, forcing the group to replay content: "Don't walk through the wrong unmarked door or you will have to repeat it without warning." Others ask for a sign that an exit has opened or a counter for collected items.
Janky animations and modelsMedium
Animations, character and entity models, clunky movement, a general lack of polish and what reviewers see as stock assets draw criticism in 8% of longer reviews. Some players find the goofiness endearing ("that jankiness grew on me"). For others it undercuts the horror, and they point to goofy death animations, twitching ragdolls and stiff running animations.
Multiplayer connections and voice chatMedium
Failing to join friends, crossplay errors between PC and consoles, being kicked from public lobbies and appearing offline make up the connection problems in 3% of longer reviews. A further 3% report voice problems, such as mics that never register, no in-game way to pick an input device, and voice levels that are far too quiet or too loud. Public lobbies come in for criticism too, since hosts leave them open and then kick whoever joins ("people host lobby with enough slots just to insta kick u").
Stamina and sanityLow
"You get FOUR seconds of stamina and have no stamina bar." That sprint complaint, and a sanity meter that drains faster than almond water spawns on large maps, come up in 3% of longer reviews: "Sometimes you will die because your sanity meter ran out in large levels". Some note that resources do not scale with the number of players.
Unfavourable comparisons to Backrooms: Escape TogetherLow
Backrooms: Escape Together comes up in 3% of longer reviews, mostly negative ones that recommend buying that game instead ("B.E.T (Backrooms, Escape Together) is simply the better game."). A smaller group prefers this one for having more levels.
Missing basic settingsLow
Some players cannot rebind movement keys, which blocks AZERTY and left-handed players ("Cannot change keybinds for basic things like walking."). Others ask for a crouch toggle and a microphone input setting, and report that mouse sensitivity changes with frame rate or the cursor sits offset from where it clicks. Together these settings gaps come up in 2% of longer reviews.
Waiting around after deathLow
Dead players are out until the level ends, cannot talk to each other, and have to spectate in silence, which about 1% of longer reviews complain about. In one player's words, "you have to sit there bored out of your mind until all your friends die".
Paid cosmetic skins and the removed VR modeLow
Paid cosmetic skin DLC draws objections in about 1% of longer reviews, mostly from long-time players who would rather see fixes and levels; one counters that "you dont have to buy the dlc". A handful bought the game for VR support and are unhappy it was removed: "Bought it for VR, and then they removed it."
Loud, grating audioLow
About 1% of longer reviews say monster sounds are too loud or loop until they grate, and one says "the screaming from monsters becomes more annoying then scary".
3. The player conversation
Much of the conversation is jokes. The short reviews are full of memes, sexual jokes and lines quoted from the game's levels, and the positive ones tend to boil down to a good time with friends. The negative reviews are fewer but longer and more specific, which probably explains why the longer reviews used for theme counts are less positive than the slice as a whole: people who write at length are more often explaining a problem.
Complaints about short stamina, loud monsters, not finding it scary and whether it was worth the money come mainly from reviewers with only a few hours. Players with dozens or hundreds of hours, some of whom say they played during early access, raise most of the complaints about update pace, Level 421, paid skins and the four-player Nightmare achievement.
The positive share held steady through the summer and autumn of 2026, between 78% and 89% in every week with at least 100 reviews. A few reviewers say they came to the game after watching the Backrooms film, others mention the console release, and crossplay errors turn up among the connection complaints.
4. What the developers could do
- Fix progression-breaking bugs and save loss before adding levels. Bugs are the most common complaint in the longer reviews, and the worst of them (vanishing keys, failed level transitions, reset saves) stop groups from finishing a run.
- Signpost objectives and wrong exits. Some players say they needed a guide to progress, and exits that silently send a group back several levels force whole stretches to be replayed.
- Make multiplayer joins and crossplay reliable. Failed joins, crossplay errors and players stuck offline get in the way of the co-op play that half the longer reviews are about.
- Reduce recycled encounters and tune entity behaviour in later levels. Complaints about repetition and about entities camping exits or reaching through doors are mostly about the later levels.
- Add the missing basic settings. Movement rebinding, a crouch toggle, a microphone input selector, separate monster volume and sensitivity that does not change with frame rate are requested by players who say they can't play comfortably without them.
- Rebalance stamina and sanity, and scale supplies with group size. Players blame short sprints with no visible bar and sanity drain on large maps for deaths that feel unfair.
- Give dead players something to do. Spectator voice chat or more revive options would help players who spend long stretches of a session spectating in silence.
- Put update effort into levels and fixes ahead of paid cosmetics. Long-time players say they would rather get new levels and fixes than skin packs, some were let down by how short Level 421 is, and other reviewers ask for more levels.
