Escape the Backrooms is one of multiple games to be created after the backrooms urban legend/creepy pasta hype. I bought it during a sale, to play it with friends on their stream.

The game itself starts in the infamous yellowish corridors of the backrooms, with each player spawning somewhere different in them. The first task therefore is to find each other, find a key that is hidden in the level and proceed. The game then takes you through various levels, all based on the backrooms mythos, like mostly empty office spaces, parking garages, tunnel systems, and more. Each of these levels feature some kind of puzzles, others feature deadly creatures like a dog with a human face that is louder than standing right next to an exploding nuke.
One thing we found out that seemed pretty counterintuitive is how coops map changes are done. To change from level to level, every single player has to be in the warp zone. However, the warp zones are not recognizable as ones and often led to us being confused on what to do, just to realize all we had to do was to assemble in one room, that didn't look like it would let us proceed in any way. Also, the game, in its current point of development, feels pretty buggy and rough. One of those dog creatures for example despawned on us, while being visible, there seems to be a lot of animations missing or cheaply done... You get the point, right?

The game feels a bit cash grabby, but it's also cheap. If you really want to try it out, play it with friends and buy it during a sale, but unless you're super hyper into the idea of buying the game anyway, I really can't recommend it.

6/10.

So... I like this game, as I tend to enjoy most Backrooms media, though it has things pulling me in opposite directions.

I wanna stress this is an early access game, and I very much have that in mind when reviewing it and doing so with the hopes it can turn out as good as it possibly can.

The first chase scene spilling over into that balancing section was excellent, and had my heart pounding as well as creating a purpose for me to quickly use the balancing/peeking mechanism, I like that.

I also really like how the entities and levels are designed, they feel significantly faithful to the Backrooms lore while shedding a lot of the PG crap that came with the 'mainstreamification' of the lore itself.

I also am very excited to try it out with friends and my sister at a later time, since we're all quite invested in the lore.

However... there's a lot holding it back. I'll start with the minor stuff. auto-equipping picked up items is a bit annoying, as I'd rather put them in my inventory and take them out if I need to. Also the inventory itself and the way you move/use items is a bit odd and could use some retooling.

The more severe downsides however, come from the unavoidable nature of some of the entities. Hiding from them, at least as far as I can tell, is not possible, and your character also runs very slowly, to the point of barely outpacing the entities. While running from danger your stamina isn't capped, but when it is capped, it is very very low, and not very good.

The sanity meter is also not very well defined and could use some extra numeric clarification as to where your sanity is at.

Apart from that, it's also just slightly janky and glitchy, most notably with the keypad in Level 1, it took a few tries for my clicks to register on the buttons.

Promising beginnings, and I may amend my score to a 7/10 depending on how fun the multiplayer is, and given that the game seems designed around it, that seems likely.