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Backrooms Games: Lost in the Endless Yellow Rooms

The Backrooms began as an internet legend: no-clip out of reality and you land in endless, damp yellow office rooms humming with fluorescent light, with something else out there. These games take you there, with friends or alone, and a few go to the empty pools and liminal places the legend grew into.

The games

7 of the 12 games in this guide are outside your choice (PlayStation) and are left out. Show them all.

  1. Escape the Backrooms key art: four players in yellow hazmat suits and gas masks stand in an empty library-like room under a sign reading THE END Co-opEscape the BackroomsThe best-known Backrooms game: more than thirty levels of yellow halls, pools and warehouses for up to four friends, with entities that each hunt by their own rules.
  2. Two players in yellow hazmat suits face a tall, thin black entity in the yellow halls of Level 0, with a grinning face glowing in a dark doorway SurvivalBackrooms: Escape TogetherUp to six players in Backrooms levels that change every attempt, learning how each entity hunts.
  3. The Backrooms 1998 key art: a yellow, stitched-together creature with a gaping toothed mouth in a yellow-walled corridor, beside the title EscapeThe Backrooms 1998Alone, through a 1998 camcorder, with a failing flashlight and something that hears your footsteps and even your microphone.
  4. POOLS key art: a long rectangular pool of dark water with a metal rail and stairs at the back, in a hall of pale tiles stretching into the distance Walking simulatorsPOOLSNo monsters at all: endless white-tiled pool rooms and still water, the liminal fear without a chase.
  5. Dreamcore key art: a bright open doorway glowing in a dark, grainy empty room, with a dim round object beside it PsychologicalDreamcoreVast liminal maps, from dream pools to a Level 188 hotel, with no monsters and no directions.

Escape the Backrooms is the one most players start with: up to four friends no-clip into more than thirty levels, from the yellow office to flooded pools and dark warehouses, solving puzzles to find each exit while entities hunt by sight or sound. Backrooms: Escape Together takes up to six and rebuilds its levels every attempt, so you learn the entities rather than the maps, and Inside the Backrooms gives up to four friends changing puzzles to solve before something notices them. Backrooms: Extractions sends a found-footage crew of up to six back in to rescue agents who never returned, with entities that hear what you say on voice chat.

For the Backrooms alone, The Backrooms 1998 is seen through a teenager's 1998 camcorder, with a failing flashlight and something that hunts by sound, including your microphone. The Classrooms is its school-shaped cousin: a camcorder, a condemned school and halls that never end, different every time you play. The Complex: Expedition is slower still: a research expedition into the Backrooms goes wrong, and you wander its yellow halls, flooded pool rooms and hotel lobbies alone through a VHS camera, with several endings and something following you. Subliminal, from 2026, builds its liminal spaces from memory, empty play places, water parks and basements, and makes light itself the tool for its puzzles until a figure that is not human starts chasing you.

On a phone, Backrooms Descent is free on iPhone and Android and rated 4.5 or better on both stores: you start in the yellow rooms of Level 0 and descend level by level, through the Poolrooms and a deserted party hall, hiding from entities when you hear them because they may already have heard you.

If what draws you is the emptiness rather than the monsters, POOLS has no enemies at all, just endless white-tiled pool rooms, still water and nobody else, and Anemoiapolis: Chapter 1 wakes you in a vast underground neighbourhood of closed malls and indoor pools where doors change behind you. Dreamcore is the largest of these walks: standalone maps of endless dream pools, a looping suburb, silent playrooms and its own take on the Backrooms hotel Level 188, with no monsters and no directions.

If you only try one, play Escape the Backrooms with friends, or The Backrooms 1998 for a night there alone.

Questions

What is the best Backrooms game?

Escape the Backrooms is the best known and the most reviewed on Steam; it is built for up to four friends. For playing alone, try The Backrooms 1998.

Are there Backrooms games on console?

Yes: Escape the Backrooms and The Backrooms 1998 are on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, Backrooms: Escape Together is on PlayStation and Xbox, and POOLS is on PlayStation and Switch. On phones, Backrooms Descent is free on iPhone and Android.

Is there a Backrooms game without monsters?

POOLS and Dreamcore have no enemies at all; their unease comes from endless empty pool rooms and liminal places.

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