Co-op and multiplayer horror Analog horror Horror escape

Inside the Backrooms

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Find your way out of the Backrooms with friends, before the entities find you.

Platforms: PC
Price: Paid
Rated: Mostly Positive on Steam (80% of 46,823 reviews)
Players: 1 to 4 (online co-op)
Made by: MrFatcat
Released: 2022

What frightens You and up to three friends are lost in the Backrooms, endless empty rooms of damp carpet and humming lights, where entities from the creepypasta hunt anyone they notice and seeing them makes your character's anxiety blur the view.
Content: jumpscares, uses your microphone (proximity voice chat).

Inside the Backrooms is a co-op horror game for up to four players set in the Backrooms of internet legend. You explore large levels of empty rooms, solve puzzles whose answers change each game and avoid the entities that hunt you, trying to find the exit.

About Inside the Backrooms

Inside the Backrooms is made by the independent developer MrFatcat and published with Dropsiick. It came out in Early Access on Steam in June 2022 and is still being added to; the store page calls it a co-op online horror game for up to four players.

The game is based on the Backrooms, the creepypasta about a place you can fall into from the real world: an endless maze of rooms with old, damp carpet, pale yellow walls and buzzing lights. Its levels follow that legend and grow stranger as you go, from the yellow office rooms to tiled pool halls and dark corridors. The store page lists several large levels, each harder than the last, and two secret mini levels that lead to a hidden ending.

Each level is a puzzle to escape. You explore, gather items, read notes and work out how to open the way on, and the solutions change from game to game, so a guide will not carry you. Almond water restores health, pills calm your anxiety, a flashlight shows you dark areas and a protection suit lets you pass through radiation. Inventory space is limited, so a group has to share what it finds.

The entities are what frighten. Each is drawn from the creepypasta and hunts in its own way, and the game warns that meeting several at once goes badly. Seeing one raises your anxiety, which blurs your vision, and proximity voice chat means talking can give you away. Your stamina is limited, so running is a last resort. It suits groups of friends who like puzzles and liminal-space horror more than fighting.

How to play Inside the Backrooms

Start a game alone or host one for up to three friends online.
Explore the level, reading notes and picking up items such as almond water, pills, a flashlight and radios.
Solve the level's puzzles together to unlock new areas and the way out; the answers change each game.
Watch and listen for entities, learn how each one hunts and keep away from it.
Use almond water to heal and pills to bring down your anxiety after seeing an entity.

Screenshots

Inside the Backrooms screenshot: three players in hooded yellow hazard suits stand in a green-walled office room under a ceiling of tiles

Inside the Backrooms screenshot: curving white-tiled corridors with a wet floor and strip lights, part of the pool rooms

Inside the Backrooms screenshot: flooded tiled arches lead to a white spiral staircase standing in shallow water

Inside the Backrooms screenshot: a door drawn in red on a white tiled wall beside a bench in a dim room

Tips

Keep voice chat quiet when an entity is near; some can hear you.
Save stamina for escapes rather than sprinting everywhere.
Split the inventory between players so no one carries everything.
Use radios to stay in touch when the group spreads out to search.

Questions

How many players can play Inside the Backrooms?

One to four. It can be played alone, but it is made for online co-op with friends.

Is Inside the Backrooms finished?

It is in Early Access on Steam, and its developer is still adding levels, entities and puzzles.

Is Inside the Backrooms on console?

No, it is on PC through Steam.

What are the Backrooms?

An internet horror legend about endless empty rooms with yellow walls and old carpet behind the real world, with entities living in them. The game is built on it.