I can’t remember the last time I played a truly great and scary horror game. Well, developer, Steelkrill Studio and publisher, Feardemic are going to try to change that with their new title, The Backrooms: 1998.

“The Backrooms: 1998 is a first-person found footage psychological horror survival game where it tells the story of a young teen after accidentally falling into the depths of The Backrooms in 1998. Roam freely, mark, explore and try unravel the story – however you are not alone. Don’t scream.”

The basic plot of The Backrooms: 1998 is that you are doing a bit of skateboarding. You fall off your skateboard and then you find yourself in a bizarre and grotesque building that you have to make your way out of. Right from the off, The Backrooms: 1998 nails a scary and unnerving environment. Even in the opening room, things don’t quite feel or look right and before I even started to explore the building, I found myself feeling a bit “dirty” and on edge. The fact that you play this through a VHS camera adds to the “grimy-ness”.

As you explore, it becomes quite clear that there is something very wrong with the place that you are in. There are bizarre messages and images scrawled on the walls. Shadows can hide some pretty disturbing surprises. On top of that, there’s a twisted and bloodthirsty monster roaming the halls that would nothing more than to eat you alive with its blood-stained teeth. Honestly, The Backrooms: 1998 does a great job of setting a mood and atmosphere that will have you on tenterhooks from start to end. You are never quite sure what is around the next corner. The VHS camera glitches, the screen-fuzz, etc all helps to build and maintain a truly horror-like aesthetic.

There are some really interesting gameplay mechanics. You can find a spray gun and put your own messages on the walls, free-hand too. You use this to help you search the dank areas. If you have searched a room, just put a note on the wall so if find yourself in the same area later, you already know that you have explored. The monster can hear you. There is the usual stuff of running making more in-game noise than walking. If you walk on glass, that’ll make a noise and the monster will hear it. But, there’s an added dimension because if you play using a microphone, the monster will hear real-world sounds too. Oh yeah, make too much noise outside of the game and you’ll soon have to deal with those blood-stained teeth again.

You can’t kill or even harm the monster either, you can only run and hide. If it catches sight of you, if you make too much noise, it’ll give chase. So you have to have it away on your heels and try to find somewhere to hide before it chomps you in half. A locker, a table, you must hide until the monster gives up looking for you. Yeah, there’s a lot to like about The Backrooms: 1998… but there’s also a few thing about it that I didn’t like.

First, this is not a particularly big game and I got to the end credits in just under 1.5 hours. I noticed a playthrough on YouTube with someone finishing it it 33 minutes. I’m not saying that this needed to be an epic 50 hour game. For something like this, a shorter gametime is very preferable but 1.5 hours? 3-4 hours at least, no more than 5. The reason it’s not a very big game is because the main meat is just a fetch-quest to find six items that need placing at a specific spot. Then there are the jump scares, oh how they ruin this game. As I mentioned before, The Backrooms: 1998 is genuinely creepy. The atmosphere is great, the mood is spot on… but it is ruined by excessive jump scares. You can get away with two jumps cares, three at a push and they have to be used strategically. Here, they just get thrown at you so often that you become desensitised fast.

The map isn’t exactly huge either and while the addition to the spray gun to leave messages is a nice touch, it’s not needed because it’s almost impossible to get lost. However, the messages on the walls play into the plot in quite a big way. The story is pretty good (bad acting aside) and it is clearly inspired by the real-life Timothy King and James Bulger murder cases. There’s a really good twist at the end and once you get it all sorted in your head, you realise how clever it all is and there are some very well placed clues throughout. Honestly, the story is the best thing about this game, outside of the atmosphere. The Backrooms: 1998, in terms of gameplay is just a bit “meh” for me to recommend. When you get down to basics, it’s just a bland fetch quest wrapped up in some nice scary packaging… and ruined by an overuse of jump scares. This is the work of a solo dev, and I really admire that. This dev clearly has talent, but it would be nice to see a game with a bit more engrossing gameplay.