Steam Week in Review: 4 New Backrooms Games Released

Steam Week in Review: 4 Backrooms Games Released Last Week, Adding to Over 500 on the Platform

With the recent theatrical release of A24's The Backrooms adaptation, I was expecting an avalanche of new Backrooms-themed video games to appear on Steam. Surprisingly, the number is quite modest: a mere four. Still, this brings the total number of Backrooms-related games on the platform to over 500 — a mix of cash-ins, parodies, and legitimate contenders.

When I search "Backrooms" on Steam, more than 500 results appear. Many of these are "coming soon" titles, which may never actually release. However, when sorted by user reviews — since a game needs to be released to have a review — there are still 225 results. Excluding false positives, I'd estimate that at least 150 of those are actual playable Backrooms games. This number doesn't even account for Backrooms titles on Roblox, smartphones, and Itch.io, though there is some overlap with Steam's library.

The sheer volume of Backrooms games on Steam has created a chaotic landscape. One publisher alone has 12 Backrooms games, with five more on the way. The most popular of these, Backrooms: What's Next, has only reached a peak of 9 concurrent players. Others take creative liberties with the Backrooms concept, such as:

Backrooms Cats and Lava: A 2D puzzler with a cat protagonist and lava floors.
Backroom Warfare II: A military shooter that oddly skips Backroom Warfare I.
Chained in the Backrooms: A co-op game where you and three friends are teddy bears chained together.
Backrooms Santa: A horror title featuring an evil Santa Claus.
Skibidi Gyatrooms: A game filled with internet memes and first-person smoking.

Given the abundance of these adaptations, it's hard to tell which are actually worth playing and which are simply opportunistic cash grabs. Most fall into the latter category, making it difficult for casual players who aren't Steam power users to navigate the overwhelming selection.

What's Worth Trying?

If you're looking for a Backrooms game that stands out, Escape the Backrooms is among the most popular. It's a first-person, co-op focused game about navigating and escaping from an endless hellscape of yellow hallways. It also includes levels based on other popular "liminal spaces" like endless suburbia and pools.

Another co-op title is Inside the Backrooms, which takes a more puzzle-centric approach, though it uses AI for some of its in-game paintings. For single-player experiences, The Complex: Expedition is highly regarded. While it plays fast and loose with the more well-known Backrooms lore, it's worth playing if you're drawn to the atmosphere of the film.

I've also heard good things about Within the Backrooms, which applies a period-appropriate PS1 veneer to the setting.

Steam's Curation Debate

Usually when people criticise Steam for its lack of curation, it annoys me: Steam is good because it's full of random, weird stuff! That's what makes it fun! If the price we pay is loads of garbage, I think it's a worthwhile trade-off. However, I will concede that finding a good Backrooms game on Steam at the moment is a risky business.

One silver lining is that publisher Secret Mode is currently hosting a Backrooms-themed Steam event, which helps filter out most of the garbage. That said, the games I've listed above should suffice for most players.

At least Backrooms games tend to be slightly higher effort than most Italian Brainrot-themed games.

Top Steam Games by Revenue (May 19 - 26)

Steam releases its top sellers charts on Wednesdays, so the below chart doesn't factor in some late-week releases that might have been big, including 007 First Light and Mina the Hollower, though the former was available for pre-order.

Rank | Game

Paralives proves yet again that the hunger for a life sim that isn't The Sims 4 is real. PC Gamer's Lauren Morton is digging the early access build so far, and it's reviewing really well on Steam. Could this prove to be everything that Inzoi wasn't?

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is there because it's currently 70% off and a new update just released. Otherwise, nothing very surprising here. Will Mina the Hollower factor into next week's list? I hope so: the studio needs it to be a hit.

Last Week's Steam Deep Cuts

Emuurom | May 26
I've been looking forward to this 2D puzzler for a while and hope to write something more on it soon, but in the meantime: it's a "creature-scanning" metroidvania with a huge focus on unguided exploration and puzzle solving. If you loved Animal Well or, more recently, Derelict Star, this is probably a no-brainer. It was built for the TIC-80 fantasy computer.

Dread Fields | May 29
Another low-poly horror game, but this one melds farming sim elements — cow milking, plant growing, fishing — with a gnawing sense of unease. Set in rural Ukraine, it's your job to resuscitate a farm that the surrounding community holds some pretty hectic superstitions about. Turns out they are not unfounded.

Cheap Car Repair | May 29
Clearly inspired by Jalopy, Cheap Car Repair is about fixing antiquated cars in 1990s Poland. Alas, repairing cars the right way is expensive, which is why it's your job in Cheap Car Repair to fix things as inexpensively as possible. For example, you can use a pantyhose instead of a fan belt. Sounds like a rollicking good time.

Control, I'm Not Coming Back | May 29
Here's a short 'n' sweet narrative adventure that is, according to Steam, "inspired by the Hopecore aesthetic," which is rife on TikTok and designed to serve as an optimistic antidote to, well, everything else. It's about an astronaut stranded in space and searching for a meaning to...