Whilst the visuals (lighting, and graphics) are impeccable, I cannot in good faith recommend this game. Firstly, it is clear a lot of work went into this game. However, given it is the backrooms, I think great portions of that effort was used in the wrong areas. There are too many monsters. It makes it scary, but it completely ruins the tension when there are constantly monsters, and monsters being heard rooms away through the walls at that. The other problem is that after dying, you spawn from the same point (which could be fine) however, the objective is linear and requires you to take the same route (making it feel more of a platformer than an adventure), and this coupled with the excess amount of monsters means you are inevitably going to get into a routine of constantly sprinting the same path over and over again. Credit where credit is due, while there are too many monsters i would say the sounds they make, and the characters breathing, and the ambient noises in general, are very well made and suitable. Office level is way too linear as well. I only ever felt lost at the begginning a couple times, and maybe a couple times during the pool section. The objective is too get a battery cell and power the starting room door. It took me about half an hour to complete the first time, and as of november 2024, once on the other side there is a little area that says "to be continued"... ? It appears that is the end of the game thus far, and the game is two years old. So it feels very incomplete. Additionally, it should be worth mentioning that to get the battery cell there, you have to run it from the office, all the way through the pool rooms, and back into the starting section. That is fine... however in order to carry it you must HOLD down left click. So you are running the length of the map, while holding left click. It is not ideal, but worse over, at times when I was sprinting away from the monsters, the battery cell being held would slowly get closer to the players face and would clip into your FOV and make everything blurry and look quite glitchy. Last, whilst traveling through the tunnel (immediatly after opening the picture / painting room) my character got stuck and noclipped through the ground and died twice. That is a clear bug, and once you die from it you have to again, run the entire gauntlet which only adds to the repetition. At the end of the day, it is still obvious a lot of good work and time was invested into making this product. However, I don't think the end result is satisfactory enough for a backrooms game. This is an opinion, so it is ok if others disagree, but for me I think a backrooms game should focus on space, the environment itself, and freedom or large scale mobility in a variety of path ways. Backrooms games should frighten you with the sheer volume of space and immense sizes, coupled with claustrophobic miniscule tight spaces here and there, all ranging from pitch black darkness to light blinding brightness. (this game does do an ok job of that, since there are some tight squeeze areas and large rooms) . If you can achieve that, throw in the RARE monster or 2, and that will capture the perfect horror vibe this genre excells at giving. Do I recommend? No. If more segments were added, and some bugs were addressed, and monster count was reduced? I would whole heartedly recommend.
