The concept of the Backrooms tapped into a feeling deep in the collective consciousness. While everyone can explain why they are afraid of monsters and demons, it’s a little harder to articulate why empty, quiet spaces between spaces can be so unnerving. In a world where traditional jump scares feel a bit played out, this liminal horror subgenre builds its terror almost completely on an atmosphere of the uncanny.
There’s something about the subversion of common areas, twisting something familiar into something surreal through the simple act of changing their context. Seeing spaces like malls and subways devoid of people immediately puts you on a back foot, making you wonder what’s wrong with it as your mind tries to fill the emptiness with imagined horrors. This feeling was ingrained in my brain after reading and falling in love with the classic novel House of Leaves.
With the new A24 film Backrooms, based on Kane Parsons’ series of YouTube videos, hitting theaters this week, I wanted to highlight a few of my favorite horror games that manage to capture this vibe in the creepiest way possible.
P.T.
This one isn’t the most useful recommendation since it’s no longer available, but no game has captured the terror of a mundane space being twisted more than P.T. This “Playable Teaser” for a new Silent Hill game from Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro was pulled from the PlayStation store after the project was cancelled due to the messy professional breakup between Kojima and Konami, but it stands as a fully experience on its own as one of the scariest experimental games, even without its relation to the iconic franchise.
The whole game takes place in one hallway that loops back on itself in impossible ways, becoming more and more haunted as you make progress. Even before things start getting wild, the feeling of unease comes from being in such an innocuous space under such strange circumstances. Many of the game’s puzzles involve trying to figure out what’s changed on your loop, causing you to intimately learn the layout of the hallway, making things all the more startling when you come across changes. While you can’t download P.T. anymore, there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be had just from pulling up a Let’s Play on YouTube and following some poor streamer on their descent into horror.
THE EXIT 8
In some ways, The Exit 8 reminds me of an indie version of P.T., but on a much smaller scale. While not necessarily as narrative-focused, it’s got the same ideas of repeating spaces and seeing what’s changed. The difference here is that rather than to do it for solving puzzles, spotting the changes is the core gameplay mechanic. You find yourself trapped in an underground passageway, just a simple, stark white tiled hall with a few doors and some signage. The rules for progressing are simple: if you find an anomaly, turn back the way you came; if you don’t find any, continue forward. It’s a clear setup that will have you second-guessing everything you know by about the third loop.
Even before things start getting surreal, there’s something really unnerving about the passageway you repeat. It’s always empty, except for one guy who walks towards you on a set path, over and over again each time. Just that is enough to make you feel off, but the real secret sauce that makes it work is the variable scale of the anomalies that you’ll run into. Sometimes it’s as small as a slight alteration to a poster, but other times it’s bigger in a way that acts as a jump scare. It’s a real lean-in type game, where you are actively scanning for tiny details in the environment, which sets you up for a jolt when it’s a big one. Not only did this spawn a small anomaly hunting subgenre of games, but it was also potent enough of a concept that it was adapted into a feature film this year. It won’t last you more than an hour, but it’s a clever concept that has a great bag of tricks to scare you in non-traditional ways.
BACKROOMS
If you want actual Backrooms-related content, there are tons of options out there. Escape the Backroom and The Complex: Expedition seemed to be the biggest ones, but I wanted to highlight the Backrooms game from indie horror legend Puppet Combo, which was recently released on consoles. It’s presented with their low-poly, VHS-filter style, enhancing the vibes into something that feels so much more surreal. You play an office worker who, while taking the subway home, no-clips into the titular liminal labyrinth. You’re confronted not only with dreams of your past, but also with the dawning realization that you’re not alone in there.
While it may be a little too short to have the full narrative punch I was hoping for, the atmosphere it creates is exactly what I want from a liminal horror experience. There’s something distinctly eerie about staring at a fuzzy-textured, low-poly wall and trying to tell if you see a face in the gap or if that’s just your imagination playing tricks on you. Puppet Combo’s signature VHS- inspired style gives it a found footage feeling, making it feel very raw and immediate. Abrupt ending aside, this is a great little creepypasta-style short story that will do an excellent job of getting you in the right headspace for the upcoming film.
POOLS
The term walking simulator has often been used in a negative light, but there can be something intriguing about a game just about navigating maze-like levels, especially in the liminal space genre. POOLS is a game about wandering through hallways and rooms populated by pools. It takes familiar elements like locker room-style floor tiles and water slides and makes them feel abstract and strange with its layouts. It’s like it’s an alien space assembled out of building blocks that we’re meant to understand, but done without any understanding of what they are actually for. The stunning photorealistic art style brings it to life, but it’s the sound design that really builds the atmosphere.
There are no jump scares in POOLS, but the footsteps and splashes you make play tricks on your mind, giving you the uneasy feeling that you’re being followed as they echo through the empty hallways. It almost feels like horror ASMR, where the sound just tickles some part of your brain that doesn’t make rational sense. There’s nothing downright terrifying, but it does give you that eerie feeling of walking through an empty space completely alone, not sure if you’re hearing something just around the corner. At the same time, it has a very chill vibe to it, allowing you to alternate between feelings of relaxation and discomfort. Check out this one if you want a game with more of the liminal with slightly less of the horror.
ANATOMY
One of the best haunted house stories of all time, the indie masterpiece from Kitty Horrorshow is a game that puts you in a mundane, empty space and really makes you think about it. You explore it. You get familiar with it. You compare it to the human body. It’s a simple setup that has you fetching tapes from around the darkly-lit house, bringing them back to the kitchen to listen to the narrator clinically dissect the idea of what a house is. It’s almost impossible to capture that atmosphere of sheer dread it creates in its halls, stairways, and rooms, but it remains one of the scariest games I’ve ever played.
The combination of expert writing and perfect atmosphere makes efficient use of its mundane location. I’ll never forget the feeling of going into the basement the first time, worried that I was going to get forever lost in the sea of darkness if I strayed too far from the wall that grounded me. Even though it twists into something darker on subsequent runs through the game, it still feels like the horror of it comes not from a scary monster chasing you, but rather realizing that a house itself could be a scary monster. It’s an incredibly unnerving game, and with a price of $3 and a runtime of just under an hour, I recommend everyone check it out.
Are you revisiting any of your favorite liminal horror games to prepare for the Backrooms? Drop your recommendation in the comments below!