The Backrooms Game (Free Edition) is the free version of the yet-to-be-released full version of the game, which will expand on this title’s gameplay and themes. Developed and produced by Pie on a Plate Productions, the game was originally released on Steam on the 25th of July 2019 and has been unnerving players brave enough to play the game ever since that day.
How to Download The Backrooms Game FREE Edition
You can download the game from Steam. Click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Game Review
Gameplay
The Backrooms Game (Free Edition) is very similar to many other horror titles from back in the day. Such as the Slender Man games (check out Slender: The Arrival and Slender: The Eight Pages); where you explore a vast, open environment, whilst you’re being hunted by a creature you can’t see until it’s just too late. The Backrooms Game does exactly that but flips the idea on its head slightly, as you would normally be trapped in complete darkness, but this time, the halls are brightly lit throughout the entire game.
Admittedly, though, they’re dank, fluorescent bulbs that can flicker and give off the impression you’re stuck in a horror movie, but that’s half of the fun.
To keep your character from going insane, you’ll periodically need to check your watch and calm yourself back down before feeling your sanity start to slip. The more and more the madness starts to creep in will increase the unsettling actions in the game, such as hearing the monster groaning or even footsteps, despite you being the only person supposedly there.
At times, though, this is all just a trick to keep you on your toes, as the monster does not always spawn in. There will be times you’re looking for the exit and you’ll be perfectly safe the entire time – not that you’ll know that.
Rather impressively, the game touts it has an impressive ‘600+ million sq. miles’ of infinite random generation. This is a claim that’s hard to prove, but when you’re playing the game, it’s so difficult to differentiate one area from another that it gives the impression of just how vast this place could be.
This isn’t always a positive, however, as it’s clear that the game renders in too much of the world and can lead to some serious optimization issues. Hopefully, this is something they’ll fix in the full version of the game, but for this game, it’s just not optimized well enough and can cause the game to dip in FPS.
Graphics
Visually, there isn’t much striking about the game. The whole affair is rather inoffensive in all honesty. For the most part, the environment is just kind of boring, but that’s kind of the whole point, as all you’re supposed to see for miles is just yellow walls, a dingy carpet, dark stains, and some fluorescent bulbs. It’s boring because that’s the design and it does its job well, but it means that after a while it does get a bit tiring and isn’t the kind of thing you’d put up with for too long.
Audio
Any horror fan knows that audio is a significant part of what makes it work so well in the first place and that’s something The Backrooms Game knows very well. When you start, all you really hear is your own footsteps and the hum of fluorescent bulbs, but as time goes on, you’ll start to hear sounds that you aren’t creating or don’t sound natural.
Once these finally kick in, the mindlessness of walking the halls becomes increasingly more unnerving with every couple of steps.
Conclusion
Overall, The Backrooms Game (Free Edition) is a fun horror game, with some interesting mechanics interwoven into the gameplay to make each run different. Navigating the empty halls can get a bit tiresome after a little while, but not knowing whether or not you’re being hunted certainly makes things a lot more interesting.
With some optimizations that hopefully the full version of the game should be receiving, The Backrooms Game is a welcome addition to the horror genre.
