The Classrooms

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A camcorder, a condemned school and halls that never end.

Platforms: PC
Stores: Steam
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (89% of about 3,300 reviews)
Players: 1
Made by: Xefier Games, Hillcrest Games Inc.
Released: 2022

What frightens In 1996 Robert Chen takes his camcorder into a condemned school to look for his missing sister and is lost in an endless maze of halls and classrooms, different each time you play, where anomalous entities range from harmless to deadly and the noise you make into your microphone can bring them to you.
Content: blood, violent deaths, uses your microphone.

The Classrooms is a procedural, found-footage survival horror game in early access by Xefier Games. You record your way through an endless maze of school halls and classrooms in 1996, searching for missing students while entities hunt you, and your microphone lets the game hear you.

About The Classrooms

The Classrooms is a first-person horror game by Xefier Games and Hillcrest Games, in early access on Steam since October 2022. The store sums it up as a procedural, liminal-space, found-footage survival horror game.

In 1996 Robert Chen takes his VHS camcorder into the newly condemned local public school to look into the disappearance of several students, his younger sister among them. Soon after he goes in he is lost in a senseless, seemingly infinite maze of halls and classrooms. What you play is the tape he left behind, seen through the camcorder with its date stamp and battery light.

The world is fully procedural, with billions of possible layouts, so no two runs are alike. You find and use items, codex entries, keys and equipment, and the items on offer may differ from one player's game to another's. The school holds anomalies from harmless oddities to extremely dangerous entities, each with its own rules; learning those rules is how you survive.

The game listens through your microphone. Loud noise can reveal you to some entities, though the store hints that your voice can also be used to your advantage. It suits players who like the Backrooms and liminal-space horror, and who want each attempt to be new. The makers are still adding entities, levels and story.

How to play The Classrooms

Buy it on Steam for Windows; a microphone is used by the game if you have one.
Enter the school and start exploring the maze of halls and classrooms.
Pick up items, keys, equipment and codex entries as you find them.
Study each entity you meet to learn how it behaves and how to survive it.
Keep quiet near dangerous entities, since loud noise can give your position away.

Screenshots

Camcorder footage dated July 1996: a pale, grinning long-haired entity climbs through a children's play structure

An empty school hallway lined with lockers, flooded and lit a sickly green

A pack of grinning grey creatures climbs over the railing of a school stairwell

Tips

Read the codex entries you find; knowing an entity's rules is what keeps you alive.
Watch what you say out loud: your microphone is heard in the game.
Do not expect the same layout or the same items twice; the world is generated anew each time.