Escape the Backrooms PS5 Review – A Surprisingly Meaty Co-Op Horror Bargain

Escape the Backrooms launched on PS5 for around ten pounds, and on paper it looks like a quick cash-in on the Backrooms internet mythology and Kane Parsons' upcoming film. The visuals are rough, the sound design is middling, and the whole thing screams budget release. But spend a few hours in co-op with friends and that first impression collapses pretty fast.

The game drops up to four players into themed backrooms levels — the iconic yellow office spaces, liminal pool areas, foggy suburbs, pitch-black tunnel systems — and tasks them with figuring out how to escape while avoiding whatever creature is stalking the level. There's no hand-holding: you find switches, navigate mazes, dodge obstacles, and piece together the exit together. What keeps it from feeling repetitive is how aggressively it rotates its ideas. By the ten-hour mark, one level had the group navigating a completely dark tunnel using only a lidar sensor while sneaking past a horrifying silhouette. Another had players downloading gate keys off PCs in a foggy suburban street while fleshy crowbar-wielding creatures patrolled hallways and a tripodal eye creature stomped around outside. None of these levels are individually stunning, but the constant rotation of concepts keeps each session feeling fresh.

Escape the Backrooms sits comfortably alongside co-op horror titles like Content Warning and Lethal Company — games that nail the balance between genuinely unsettling and laugh-out-loud funny. That tonal tightrope is hard to walk, and the game manages it consistently enough that group chats apparently fill up with hysterical clips after every session. Proximity chat helps sell the atmosphere: voices echo and react to the environment, so when everyone scatters from a monster and someone quietly calls out to check if anyone survived, it lands with real tension.

For a tenner, Escape the Backrooms punches well above its weight as a co-op horror experience. It won't win awards for production values, but the sheer volume of content and the reliable fun factor make it easy to recommend to anyone with a regular group of friends to play with.