@@crimsonghoul8983 Tbh, you could make that argument about every horror device. Like how Faith is amazingly well done and terrifying, but the FNAF 8-Bit minigames aren't really that scary.
Darkness is the greatest device for horror. It's not the darkness itself that is terrifying, but the fact that it doesn't present you what may be lurking in the darkness to you, and your mind creates the horror within.
The backrooms would be even scarier (to me) if it was a place where you don't feel hunger nor any other physiological need, not even sleep. A place where you can exist forever awake and spiral into madness.
I wonder if silence is uncomfortable for the same reason it signifies danger in nature. If all the birds and critters go quiet in the woods, it usually means some kind of predator is lurking. Maybe it's ingrained in our psyche to dislike pure silence, and furthermore to fear it, especially in isolation.
i think its unsettling because its just really uncommon, no matter where you are. rooms get quiet sometimes, but even when its quiet, theres always _some_ sort of noise. rustling paper, buzzing lights, the wind or rain outside, theres always background noise. and we get used to it, even if we arent paying attention to it. so when theres an absence of it, its immediately noticeable and unsettling, because we fear the unfamiliar. we know background noise is normal and safe because its constant, so when it isnt there, we figure something must be wrong.
Silence also makes EVERY sound seem much louder (your own footsteps, for example.) Since you are alone, have no map or navigation aid, and no means of defense, instinct tells you that making noise is to be avoided, because you don't know what is around the next corner, and they'll hear you before you hear THEM. You can literally scare YOURSELF.
@kimraudenbush247 Oh absolutely!! I've been in that position, albeit out of paranoia while alone, since it wasn't an unfamiliar environment but my own home while alone and not used to it. Instinct makes you hyper-aware of every little noise, especially your own, and it can get you feeling like a prey animal; small and vulnerable, like a mouse in an open field with nowhere to hide. And in nature, when it comes to being prey, you usually wont hear the predator coming, so your best bet is to keep yourself quiet, as you said! It's a terrifying sensation!
@@kimraudenbush427 the silence part and footsteps was very real for me when I worked at a hospital and had nightshifts. Patients were quiet at night so when I walked down the hallway all I heard is my breathing, rustling of my suit and my footsteps. Sometimes it was unsettling
@@cumcumcum148 i'm employed as an unarmed security officer. I've spent a number of holidays babysitting facilities. The two things at night that really screw with you? 1- Motion-activated lights in the warehouse, because you see a row of them light up on the camera feed but surrounding lights stay off, nobody's in the building but you, and when you go to investigate, it's completely silent. And it's not til halfway through your shift that you realize the overhead fans are causing air movement that is moving little scraps of paper around and THAT'S what's triggering the lights... 2- patrolling "The Yard", which is where 53' trailers are stored, loaded, and unloaded. A fence surrounds the property, the light posts illuminate YOU better than anything else, you can't really see what's outside the fenceline at night, it's often very foggy, and the wind blows across the holes in the safety bars at back of the trailers, causing an eerie whistling that can send chills down your spine... Not to mention deer and foxes also pass by outside the fence. Ever heard a fox's alarm bark? That'll scare the life outta you on a windy and foggy night...
That’s literally my favorite thing about watching Seán’s videos! If I had a dollar for every time he’s predicted something in a game mere moments before it happens, I’d never have to work another day in my life!
I know of Vivarium, but that is much more supernatural. A few overlaps, but I feel there'd be more than enough to differentiate it from a backrooms vibe.
@@maxmachac9756 Is it the one where a couple gets trapped in a 'too perfect' suburban neighborhood that goes on infinitely and are given a child that grows super fast and fed food that slowly kills them with the ground being clay and there being no escape whatsoever? I just saw a 'how to survive' video on it and it freaked me the fuck out
And imagine if the shower snap in head and just try to keep telling about how nice would large sofa be here and maybe remove wall here while they all are in shock while lost.
@@wingsoficarus1139 oh man I hadn’t even thought about disassembling the walls, that’s a great idea, you could completely renovate your little home in the backrooms. I’ve been trying to write down all the ideas I’ve had for this incase I ever try to make this game myself. That’s a good one, also defending from monsters would probably be a lot better of an objective than just making a room for no reason. Both great ideas
For anyone interested. Lacrimosa was composed by Mozart. It explores themes of death, not knowing what happens after we die/grief, etc. What’s more, he died before he finished the work. A very smart choice by the game’s developers to put in here. Although I haven’t seen the ending of the video just yet, but one can assume..
The text is a section of the requiem mass called the sequence, which precedes the gospel reading. Mozarts setting of the whole thing is really beautiful
I like the idea that since there are things in the Backrooms (sofas, fridges, washing machines), it means there are people out there whose sofas, fridges and washing machines have no clipped through the ground and suddenly the phenomena of disappearing appliances is now a relatable thing.
Honestly, with how ai generated art looks today, I feel like the backrooms kinda resemble an ai trying to build a human world. Some things are familiar, but it just has that sense of unnease to it.
Exactly, that’s what I was thinking. Like something that isn’t human is trying to mimic what the human world looks like. Which is why they don’t know where normal objects would usually go
I was just thinking that! all of the stuff looks like ai trying to rebuild a world but is mixing inside with outside stuff, like the plastic lawn chairs inside. also the China Express inside a supermarket, both food related but not quite right. like ai doesn't understand what should be where so it's like mashing stuff together to see what works. I also like the idea that it's kind of like Coraline where it's the "other world" and the entity is making something to feel like a home but it's not quite right. it's like how the world is so huge but most of it is outside, it's like the entity tried to replicate the vastness of the earth, but make it strictly inside/confined to keep him trapped (I haven't finished the video yet) I got to the carousel part where there's a fake sky and omg based off my theory it's like it's trying to replicate night sky (and in the swimming pool area there was like a hole in the ceiling for light to come in but it probably wasn't sunlight) omg so cool
45:49 i think a really big thing that happens in a lot of these kinda backrooms game is that you first start with anxiety cuz you don’t know if there’s any monsters yet or not but as you go along you don’t find any clues that point to monsters so you let your guard down until the game pulls something like this and it freaks you out cuz you don’t know how long the monster has been following you and watching you without you knowing
The backrooms is like uncanny valley for objects and buildings instead of people. It borders on familiarity but there's something just barely off and that's what makes it unsettling
@@buffy9486 I know exactly what you mean because I actually work at an Airport and when I go to the Basement at Night it feels reeeeeally freaky! I got used to it but sometimes it just has this very weird feeling that I cannot describe!
I love the idea of the backrooms having creatures in it *in theory.* Like, not knowing for sure if you're alone or not. Hearing noises, seeing things move out of the corner of your eye, stuff like that. Not a huge fan of full on monster chases and stuff; I don't want to see the creature, I just want to have the suspicion that someone or something *might* be there. I feel like the endlessness of the backrooms, and the unease of not knowing if you're actually alone or not, is so cool.
There is a chance that the creature in this one is just in the character's head cuz he's going insane, because it doesn't really interact with it throughout the game, just appears and spooks him
This works well for short games but the larger survival type games in this IP have to eventually have a release to that buildup. Or what a couple backrooms games I’ve seen have done is just make it where your never quite sure what is behind any given corner. You know there is danger, you just have no idea where or what it is.
@@themotions5967 yeah I agree. I think that in the case of having that climax happen, I prefer it done like it was in this game though. It was a creature that wasn't outright malevolent and you still don't really know what it is or what's its motives are. Still a lot of mystery in it, and it plays off that fear of the unknown. Its also a common rule in horror movies and games that you want to avoid directly revealing the monster since viewers/players can tend to get desensitized to the scarryness of it quickly.
that's what the backrooms were originally supposed to be, the endless rooms you travel through that instead of a physical monster killing you, it's your own mind and sanity eating you alive, more games should explore this type of horror content, I feel like it's way scarier than having a physical monster try to kill you
I think the scariest thing about this game is just everything feels wrong, like instead of a hunting ground like the other Backrooms games, it's more of endless wandering
The backrooms was always supposed to be like that. It just got sucked in with the clickbait horror games when siren head became popular. Awful game developers were just spamming siren head type monsters into the backrooms because kids eat that up.
@@ecciqabsolutely lmao, the fear of the backrooms is a careful and delicate balance of lack of information and lack of action. adding monsters removes both of these, information as it gives you something to fear rather than leaving the fear as ambiguous, and action, as it actually gives you a real, achievable objective rather than leaving you lost and alone. the fear of the backrooms comes from the rooms, not OMG SCARY DOG THAT CHASE YOU SKINWALKER SIRENHEAD AT 3AM????
There are very few good horror games that have a monster as the main focus now, they're all shitty games like survive the backrooms where you go floor to floor with monsters that earrape you and you have to just run away until you find a weapon. They are never good. Now some Roblox back rooms games have actually proven to be good. But they're also by veteran game creators and people with credit to their names. Most other games are just dogshit, and I'm sorry but siren head was such a stupid thing when it came out and the concept just pissed me off whenever I saw it. Give me something good not something internet famous
I can’t even explain the way my heart dropped at 1:14:10 when he saw the backrooms again. Like of course I knew he hadn’t left but it makes you realize how messed up it can make you. Once you think you’re finally home and seeing that familiar traumatizing setting once again. It’s messed up.
The movie you’re thinking about, Jack, is The Borederlands. It’s a found footage film about three dudes who explore a remote church in the English wilderness, and find out what dark secrets and history it’s hiding. It’s a semi Lovecraftian horror, and I highly recommend it.
Are you sure of the movie title? I've tried looking it up and found two different movies with similar names 2007 and 2024 plus a game series but none of them is related to the plot you or Seàn were describing 😕
The reason why the walls are yellow is (I'm pretty sure) that the colour is associated with madness and especially hysteria - there is a classic book about a woman thrown into a loft for hysteria by her husband, and the walls are yellow, and she starts to go mad and believe that there is something in the walls trying to get out
Yes the book is even called “The Yellow Wallpaper” i have it and it’s put away in a drawer because it’s so unsettling to me but i don’t want to throw it out.
"The Yellow Wallpaper," is an absolutely beautiful and intense short story. The very case of Charlotte Gilman writing it ended up changing the course of history forever, as it nearly immediately changed the social and medical fields perspective on women's autonomy and mental health. I don't think "hysteria," would have dwindled down when it did if not for her.
I don't think it would work though, the VHS effect only works when it feels like a camera. But if it's vr it needs to be hyper realistic you can't hide the unrealistic stuff behind the vhs effect.
@@Disanem You can add a VHS effect onto things in VR within reason and still have it work. It would feel like a camera, but it would be like you're the one holding the camera and filming it. It doesn't have to look like you're seeing it through your own eyes to still be realistic and creepy.
@@GrandHavenHorror I think if it was realistic it would be cool but having a VHS hand held camera would be cool so you can still see it through VHS filter Or something like that
1:13:25 Okay are we not gonna talk about how the projection became distorted because it was being filmed by a camera? That's such a small but sick detail!
I think the reason this horror works well is cause its stuff thats immediately familiar to your brain, but its always used in unfamiliar or 'wrong' ways
No the reason this "horror" works well today is because the chemicals in the food/water and over the counter Big Pharma pills have pussified entire generations of people through hormonal imbalance and estrogen overdose to the point they're afraid of empty fuckkng rooms.
For me, The Backrooms scares me in a way that’s like “I’m not supposed to be here… I want to go home. I can’t go home, but I really want to go home. I’m not supposed to be here.” No jump scares, no other horror devices then not letting you go back to a place where you feel safe and secure in an area where you’re familiar
It's like the feeling of being in someone else's house when you're not supposed to be there. You recognize this is a house, but you know it's not your house. So you can't feel safe. And imagine if you're trapped there. You can't go home. And you don't know if this house if empty, or worse , it's not. The backrooms is basically that but the house breaks all physical logic.
When he appeared again for the second time I paused the video and had to take a break, Ray Ray is the creatures name, and seeing it in general gives me anxiety so seeing it in this game made me have to take a break, my eyes were watering and I about had an anxiety attack
I feel like the backroom is such an effective setting because it seems to stir a nostalgia of half conscious infant memories people have. It's like snippets of deeply buried memories you formed when you didn't understand the world properly, so everything seems daunting and strange. It makes the Backrooms feel so familiar and yet so strange simultaneously, and I love it. I've noticed there's variation to accommodate as many people's pre-conscious memories as possible. Different lights, different wallpapers, different doors or windows, different carpets and floors, store shelves, the plastic chairs, variations of furniture, the pool room might spark nostalgia in some people, but not others, there's a variety so that whilst not everything will give people faint memories, at least something will. This also makes it so people will be more strongly unsettled by certain areas than other people depending on how much it strikes their half-memories with nostalgia
And alot of the settings in the backrooms makes me think of the 70s-90s, like a grandmother's house, a old VHS or department store, offices, hotels, and some of it even reminds me of a roller skating rink. Fuck, I bet if you could smell it it'd even smell the same 😂
I love horror games that just make you feel scared, but there isn't a "fail" element to it. Like this game having nothing just constantly attacking you makes it even more scary somehow, as if you are more scared by nothing being there then someone or something being there
And in the back of your mind you're constantly panicking because you don't know if there really isn't anything out there or behind you the whole time just hiding in plain sight or waiting for the perfect moment to kill you and scare the hell out of you
@@Naurdagnor that's why horror exists in the first place, some person thought of a concept that made them scared and they decided to capitalize on it, then more and more moments like this happened thus why we have the horror genre of entertainment
@@Bloldywakna4736 The idea of horror as a means of entertainment has been around longer than capital gain, but I get what you are trying to mean there. Originally it was used as a way to thrill and yet warn your immediate community through story telling, and has since evolved into what you described.
It's genius that the game goes for 45 minutes without anything scary happening, any sort of enemy, or any real kind of movement to make you think you're completely safe and then throws in a terrifying monster that suddenly seems to be an actual threat, only for it to then disappear, once again making you feel unsafe even though there's no threat
@@rileybifulk4243 It also makes sure that you don't realize that nothing can actually hurt you, which is smart. By that point in the game everyone will have realized that this is just a thing where you walk around and not much happens, so they change it up a bit so you don't get bored and start thinking there's a chance something will happen again
I feel like it was the character going crazy maybe like there isn't actually a threat but they've convinced themselves that there is? Like is so fun to guess what the story is
The backrooms style games really capture that fear we all once had as tiny children separated from our parent in a department store, and I admire that so much
Something about this triggers the panic I would feel when I was a kid and couldn’t find my parents somewhere. Like the illogical despair that I would be lost in the store forever and they would turn off all the lights and I would be stuck forever.
I know I'm late to the party, but my life is at its lowest point right now, and hearing you talk to the pillars about how big and strong they are going to grow up to be made me laugh for the first time in a while. What you do is important and it helps people.
The lighting and the actual lights are like a 100% real VHS tape. The movement is like a real person walking and filming. This is fuckin awesome! Best realistic graphics I've ever seen in a game. This game deserves an award
I love the idea of The Backrooms itself being the anomaly, like its an SCP instead of a place where a monster lives. Makes it feel a lot more ominous not knowing what it is and how it works
Well it could be SCP-101 or whatever number hasn't been used and the bacteria monster would be SCP-101 B. Or something like that. Sometimes anomalies have anomalies.
It won't work because what makes it looks realistic is the fact that we are seeing through the cammera that is attatched to the character's chest. The footage filter and the distortion around the field of view make it looks real as well.
@@Glacciusyou could make it work. Most of the what this looks is in lighting, filters, distortion and other tricks to add that found footage feeling. I’ve seen games with fairly low graphical quality turn out close to realistic graphics and environments with proper design, sound and lighting before so you could definitely turn out a convincing found footage aesthetic in VR with the right effort and skill. The chest camera is just a first person view camera in the development engine used here mounted to a chest level on a character model. You could use similar tricks to get a just as high quality true first person perspective that is attached to a flexible head representing a go pro like camera
The game VRChat actually has tons of Backroom/found footage worlds. In fact, a new one just got uploaded and it’s getting super popular. Some also look about as good as this one (but run poorly). Good graphics is as easy as setting the shader to calculate more and more reflections or shadows. Performance is the hard part.
It is theoretically possible to run into someone else who no-clipped into the backrooms. In the last game you come across someone's camp from where they were staying, and in other games you fine dead people. As the rift between the real world and the backrooms opens up wider, you'd be more and more likely to glitch in at the same time as someone else and find another person alive there.
i think an explanation they could use is that the time distortion that’s definitely caused by this version of the backrooms makes it so to someone who has entered the backrooms, anyone else there had already died long before they got there, sort of like time moving slower near gargantua in interstellar, the backrooms being millers planet.
@@msampson2286 actually ya that makes sense as well, and since it's straight up another dimension, the time dilation could be 100x bigger, so that split second difference on earth is still even a week in the backrooms. They'd easily be dead in a week
seeing the big doll-looking thing freaked me out way more than it should have, and I think it was because It wasn't a monster, it was just there. THEN It decided to follow him after a LONG time of it fooling me into thinking it was not a threat, GENIUS design, and I had to pause the video a few times to calm down.
The human fear of “no escape” is so well done here. And as a person who had claustrophobia, having no immediate exit is a large part of my fear so this game is portrayed so brilliantly! Back room games are always unnerving to me, but this was definitely the most unnerving purely because nothing happens until halfway through.
Dude I've had so many nightmares of running through concrete spiral car parks and having no idea if I'm 100 levels in the sky or 100 levels below ground.
Well these days it isn't that challenging. With how easy to hse and accessible so many game engine programs and effects and rendering softwares are, it's not as impressive as it was 10 or 15 years ago.
@@vidmasterK1having the means makes it easier to be able to created but still need the imagination and skill to use it, the fact that this looks so much like kane videos shows the love it went through creating it.
The latter half of this game really reminds me of an abandoned place I explored a few years back. It was originally a children's psychiatric ward, then turned hotel, then Buddhist temple. The basement had so many empty rooms and there was spots the murals on the wall for children. I did briefly go into the temple part alone and there was 20 some Buddhist statues and there was apartments style rooms all around it. I have a video of it on my channel I really wish we would have done an uncut walk through with some history on it and what not but there are a few other videos like that of the building. Such a cool experience
Bro how tf somebody see a building and go "you know what let's change this children's ward into an apartment building but then AFTER a temple because why not? 😂
Oh my gosh, I know exactly what place you're talking about. That place is very eerie. Sadly, it has been looted and completely trashed after it got popular on the Urban Explorer side of UA-cam.
I haven't finished the video so im writing this like a few minutes in. The current lore that in which i understand for the backrooms is some company figured out how to open a gateway into another unknown dimension (backrooms) which had a side affect which was not known at the time. The gateway being open allowed other's to enter by "no clipping out of reality" which in short, is finding corrupted parts of our world which has no collision and falling through. Something caused the gateway to overload and shut down or maybe they pulled the plug forcefully. This ended up trapping the hazmat dudes inside the backrooms. The baackrooms lore takes place in the 70s or 80s which is why the hazmat suits are so bulky and it's using VHS tapes (other than the fact VHS is more reliable than digital in preventing corruption or data loss)
I think the phenomenon this game and concept exploits the hell out of is "uncanny valley" "Uncanny valley" is usually referenced when people talk about _entities_ that look "almost human but not quite," things like mannequins and dolls and animatronics and MoCap models. They _resemble_ humans, but they try so hard to be realistic that they just unsettle us. But this _entire environment_ is "almost human but not quite." It resembles a mall, a pool, a hotel _just enough_ that we recognize them immediately, but they're just... not quite right. The subway maps and the restaurant menu look _so_ authentic, but we know that the maps are not accurate. We know the "restaurant" has no food to sell. The lawn chairs are set up to seat an audience, but they are facing nothing. The "ghost ride" leads to more hallways. The signs are labeling nothing significant. The stores are empty. The pillars are useless. The stairs go nowhere. It's a manmade environment, but none of it was made by man.
I love that to this day I have absolutely no idea what the backrooms are and I'm just staring blankly at this playthrough like "lots of walking around"
@@Croncho-dj4ly I really recommend watching the movie, but if ya want spoilers who am I to deny? Warning, I'm gonna explain basics of movie and ending! You've been warned! There a three main people. I call them the Skeptic, the Tech guy, and the Priest. All three of them are looking into a church and stuff happening there, to see if it's all fake or a miracle or God. Odd things happen, like lights going out and children crying, the movie keeps you guessing for a long time wether the place is actually haunted or not. Eventually the three call in an expert and that expert dose a ritual, to get rid of whatever bad spirit it in this church. Skeptic and Tech Guy believe something supernatural is going on, but The Priest is not believing it, calling the churches/Vadacin's ways outdated. Lights go out, and when Skeptic and Tech guy can get some light in the room The Priest is out cold and the expert has disappeared. The two go inside a tunnel leading under the church they discovered earlier, and keep seeing The Priest who seems to be going deeper and deeper. The two find skeletons of babies, human sacrifices former priests of this church used to make to a pagan god. The Skeptic and Tech Guy keep following what they think is The Priest, until they end up in a very tight tunnel. It's very small, and after it's to small to keep going the two struggle to turn around and go back crawling on their stomachs. The walls start turning flesh like and an acid like substance starts raining on top of them. Turns out, the pagan god had been messing with their minds like it had every priest at this church before, leading them straight inside of itself. The two die a horrible, slow, and painful death as the acid slowly kills them. They are screaming for a while. There's a lot more info you can look up that goes into more detail, explains background information, ect. That's the basic plot though. There is one scene where some young people of the town play a prank on The Skeptic Tech Guy and Priest, buy setting a sheep on fire in the middle of the night to burn to death. That was freaky, NGL.
I think one of the most terrifying aspects of the backrooms is amount of corners that hide the next unknown; that the greater fear is not being alone, but wondering if you are.
I can’t lie whoever in the backrooms was in charge of mall music deserves a raise 1:03:00 The backrooms is supposed to be creepy and all that but this game’s environments are strangely beautiful
7 місяців тому+1
It’s called Eastside Story by Trevor Duncan. I’m curious if anyone noticed that this is the music from the episode where Spongebob “loses” his identity lol.
The monster is perfect for this game. No obvious chase or horrifying creature, just something that is so alien that you cannot understand it’s intentions towards you.
It was such a good scare and the fact that the thing doesn't constantly appear behind you makes it more scary. Just the idea that you know it is following you but you can't see it, so you never know if you truly lost it.
@@acapybara3032 Yeah the jumpscare at 43:30 scared the absolute hell outta me. I was like oh! the ball pit balls have physics?? Cool! And then my joy quickly disappeared-
The Backrooms messes with your mental so well that it doesn't need a threat. Your alone, lost, not even sure if there is an exit and that is enough to break someone mentally very well done game thank you for the experience.
I was getting major anxiety from the quietness in general and then we see Ray Ray, the thing from that deep web video, which seeing it in general gives me major anxiety but seeing it in the game made me sweat, and then seeing it following Sean around made my eyes water, I took like a twenty minute break from the video just to recoup, too fucking much 😂
The breathing was subtle enough to not be annoying, but pronounced enough to remain unsettling. Jaw dropping environments. I feel like Sean in my emotional support gamer for spooky season! Lol
This reminds me of the years spent cleaning office buildings in the dead of night. You quickly learn to put the thought that, "something" could be lurking, out of your mind. You'll go batty.
I used to shut all the computer labs down on my campus, and this is so true! If you get that feeling, you have to throw it away otherwise your job is going to suuuuck. After a while I really loved the routine I got down and it felt more comfortable.
oh brother I can't shake this feeling in my own home, like if I'm watching a horror playthrough where someone breaks into your home, I open my door so I have sightlines to the front entrance. thank goodness I don't have ground level windows
@@bladenot-runner1795 This!! I constantly had Rammstein or some kind of heavy metal in my ear so that when/if a ghost tried - they tried with the wrong MF'er because I had the power of metal on my side. >_>
I'm really glad you are still into the backrooms stuff. I always really enjoy it, though I also prefer the no monsters version, and when games aren't just a tour through the various silly levels people have added. I was impressed by "Dreamcore" as well since it seems to be a really deep exploration of the poolrooms concept, and it's gorgeous. Truly surreal architecture.
The no monsters version isn't canon. "...six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. *God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you* " The OG story says yes, there's something horrible there with you.
Honestly the only thing that bothers me in these games is that the signs are usually in English and it doesn't imply that things get in the backrooms from all over the world and it kinda seems like the backrooms only exist in the US (I understand its easier for the developers this way
I never thought of that, however I can forgive that fact since the game is in English and is targeted for English speakers. Quite possible they could translate everything but I feel like changing all of the signs to other languages is probably more of a hassle than anything.
@@ocifer I think it would be cool to not know what signs say. It would give a deeper sense of isolation. Like in Lost when you don't understand what the korean couple talks about because the creators wanted to give the same sense of isolation as the other english speaking characters had.
@@toxic_tomato_soup if you saw my last comment before I deleted it, ignore it. I posted on the wrong video lol, also I can agree with you there. AI especially does that well when generating images of “uncanny” or “liminal” pictures.
i’d like it better if it wasn’t an actual language and was just like ai generated babble, i feel like it would lend to the uncanny valley-ness of it all
that reveal that something is following you is so good you spend so long just creeped out by the environment and the second it starts to feel comfortable they take it away and make it so much more unnerving
I' am so glad this game shows the true origin of what the backrooms are meant to be, no big monsters chasing you, Just the terror of knowing you are alone in this undiscovered space
Exactly what i love about it. When awful game developers started putting siren head in the backrooms it just really ruined the whole point of it but thats what its known for now. (because poorly made horror games attract millions of children and the original creepiness to the backrooms would get boring after 5 mins to their little kid brains)
did you finish the video? the monster arrives at like 42 minutes. very unnerving but I think it still works with the 'alone for eternity' part cuz I think it only follows you once you find it. idk I paused the video to type this so I'll come back if I have anything else to say. Coming back: the silly monster came back and I didnt think it was that scary. I liked the first better. - Okay the ending was super cool. final thoughts, this games looks and probably feels cool, the monster was a little compromising in the end but it worked in the beginning, but the ending is something ive never seen before in a backrooms game.
@@ezra_kohl I still think it's effective, 1 entity that is most likely not well documented within the story is good that it could work as a jumpscare and unsettling feeling but not enough that it hits the point of being repetitive and therefore not scary anymore
@coltian1 yeah it's a really cool one, I much prefer the blank room soup man over the weird tripod Kane has (imo). I'm fascinated by its motives and how it just observes and follows. Also it would be incredibly difficult to create suspense or a compelling story without the suspense of threat. So ig I take back what I said in my original reply
1:06:55 Hey, pretty sure that's a Signalis reference! That plays a lot before the warnings in that game and also has a subway scene. Could just be a reused sound file though, actually that's probably what it is.
The beeping made me think how funny it'd be if the bosses put trackers in all the hazmat suits; if their employees got sucked into the backrooms, hey at least they can map things out by seeing where they travel.
43:39 this segment of the game genuinely scared me so bad. Had a sense of security the entire time up until that moment where i realized it was all false. That creepy entity showing up and stalking us out of nowhere added so much tension. Every time that thing showed up i got jumpscared
My theory for the end of this: I think this guy traveled decades into the furture the moment he first clipped through, and in that time the foundation itself fell victim to the shifting and eventually closed. That picture of their sign at the end was overgrown so that's what lead me to believe it shut down. I also think someone found the camera, and the title screen is that person reviewing the tape of what our protagonist recorded.
The movie Sean was trying to name was most likely "As Above, So Below", it's actually set in France but it is definitely a found footage with religious themes and catacomb/cavern spelunking scenes with a WTF ending. Decent horror movie
I believe the main theory is that a lot of stuff in the backrooms is stuff that fell through from the main world. It'd be funny if a whole ass store just went *poof* and ended up in the backrooms like in the game
That's the only lore I'd be willing to accept as 100% canon. Stuff you find just "glitched through reality" and into the backrooms. Might also be interesting to have a game where you do "find other people". But they're all skeletons or decomposing bodies, because they starved/dehydrated to death before they could find their way out. Not because some monster killed them.
As soon as I saw Ray Ray for the first time, I knew we'd see him again, and that started making my eyes watering, no horror games genuinely scare me to the point where I have to take a break from the video to recoup
39:45 its an old subway station aesthetic. From what i know about Dimensional bridging, the backrooms are actually a forth dimension shift of the reality, thats why a lot of it looks the same, because its corners and clips of Three dimensional architecture in the axis shift, and how three dimensional vision perceives it. So imagine you've shifted your personal phase of 3rd dimension a whole forth axis slide so you're no longer aligned with your regular view of reality. This causes lots of places of the same variety to cascade onto the same area.
I know these backrooms are 1000% fake, but for like 18-20 years I've had dreams of those giant pool style back rooms that people had made and I find it wild that they match so closely
Bro me too, I always had the fucking wierd like tunnels at the start and then I would crawl out and immediately drop into a pool, and then I would wander aimlessly through the pool section until i heard a noise behind me and then I would turn and wake up before i saw anything
thats the wild thing about the whole thing with the backrooms. they're 100% fake, but they are so closely linked to reality, but subconscious and remembered reality, that it just feels so much more real and alive than any other horror setting. im doing a psychology course at uni and i swear if i end up doing a degree, i may do it on liminality cus good fuckin GOD i wanna know why this resonates with people so incredibly strongly
It's creepy that we started getting a sense of normalcy in the empty rooms, we got so used to just empty, then they started adding furniture back in. Some of it even looks put away for later use.
50:25 I used to live in a hotel that felt just like this. It was built in the 1910s so it wasnt like a modern hotel. Each floor was a completely different theme. One had deep red capets, one was pine green carpets, even the light fixtures were different from floor to floor. The lobby stairs only went to floor 2, then to get to the stairwell that went to any other floor you had to go across this ballroom that was completely empty and had all the lights off when it wasnt being rented out. Then that stairwell had key card doors to get into it, so it felt completely seperate from the rest of the building. It was really grey and grungy, and always smelled like weed. Felt like walking through a back alley at night. Then to get ice, there was only one ice machine in the building and it was on the whole other end of the hotel from the stairs/elevators so any time you wanted ice you had to go to a completely different themed floor and walk all the way across the empty halls to the far end. And it wasnt in its own room like modern hotels with vending machines and such, it was just a random ice machine at the end of a random hallway.
The idea that the monster follows you as seen in the cut-scenes but is not harmful when you actively approach makes for perfect jumpscares, especially since you don't see the creature constantly and only at random moments
I'd love if they put outlines of people in the yellow wallpaper. Like actually see the lumps. Be a nice nod to the book The Yellow Wallpaper. Also would just be really creepy.
So many parts of the backrooms look like an amalgamation of every church with a youth pastor playing a guitar combined with a sterotypical granny's house. Also, I love the idea that the found footage format means that some guy is playing all this back and is watching you figuring out how to open a door
For those who are wondering, the tall guy is based on the guys from Blank Room Soup, a since-debunked dark web video that was said to be a man who was being forced to eat his wife in the form of a soup by costumed killers
the costumes were created by raymond persi who performed with these mascots he called 'rayray'. according to him, some of the rayray suits were stolen before a show and later he received an email from 'a fan' with the blank room soup video
i love the decision to have that be the threat in the game, something that everyone around that time had probably seen clips or images of but long enough ago to where it’s creepy but has that same almost nostalgic feeling that the rest of the game leans on
3:15 I'll bet that the voice acting sounds so good from the player character because they took a real VHS tape camcorder and had the voice actor speak into it at chest level. So you're getting what the voice would actually sound like from a camera. Practical voice effects are so great and fun to do!
This is one of the most realistc voice acting I have heard in a while the way they comunicate in the start is so natural big probs to the voice cast here.
There’s a bunch of different “canons” of the back rooms. Outside of Kane’s,The major ones are the wiki dot and the liminal archives. It’s sort of like Scp where anyone can submit stuff , but the liminal archives are more strict than the wiki dot. Though the wiki dot one has had some recent overhauls as well
The backrooms was a liminal space with an eerie feeling to it, then it got the whole story of falling into the backrooms and it was more being scared of the unknown in an endless familiar place, then when poorly made horror games got extremely popular with children bad game developers started spamming siren head into the backrooms, which then devolved into all these backrooms games filled with random monsters with bad ai "hunting" you.
Objectively all canons are bad except Kane’s. The wikidot completely throws away everything that made the backrooms scary and good in favor of making it a knockoff SCP. It’s so bad
I love backrooms horror, because you don’t need monsters or anything to make it creepy, there’s just something about the atmosphere and the being alone in these unsettlingly familiar places that makes you have this sense of uncertainty and anxiety
I think the backrooms is a mix of claustrophobia (fear of small and confined spaces) and kenophobia (fear of large empty spaces or voids) while you're trapped in hallways which are confined youre also traveling through a seamlessly endless space and sometimes its not even hallways. Wild
Don't get me wrong I love the whole like monsters in the backrooms thing but i prefered it when the purpose behind the backrooms was the fear of loneliness. To be completely alone with nowhere to go. You don't know where you are and there isn't a single person that can help you. Just you. I love the idea of that more. Also graphics killed it this game
Then you didn't read the actual creepypasta for the backrooms and are parroting all the other people who want to seem cool by saying 'I don't need no (man) monsters!' Its all about 600 million square miles of random spaces and something dangerous is in there with you.
Though the original did have a sense of loneliness, there was also a sense of dread and unknowing; in Kane Pixels' original video, he had an entity in there.
@@gmork1090 it was purely a personal preference. I am well aware of the original I just prefer the loneliness aspect of it. It's more raw to me. You don't see many games like that
@@gmork1090There’s nothing cool about just liking something different from the “original.” It’s all fiction, let people enjoy what they want. It’s ridiculous that people still criticize Kane’s version of the Backrooms just cause he didn’t follow someone else’s version.
I used to go blackberry picking every year when I was little. We had a house on a hill way out in the Irish countryside, a few neighbours, and miles and miles of fields with blackberries bursting from every hedge, if you knew where to look. Me and my sister used to compete, see who could fill their little Tupperware first. Those long, half-autumn evenings are some of my most treasured memories.
Just wanted to point out that the company Magwave in this appears to be way older by the end of the game. Something significant happened while you were in the backrooms. I think what happened is the two realities merged into one. Which is why the portal thingy was not active, which would explain our characters panic when he sees the backrooms have extended.. everywhere.
lol the fact that jack said in the beginning that this wasn't the type of game to have something jump at him and that he was safe. 43:39 made my heart jump out of my chest. gotta remember to expect the unexpected lol
1:05:20 For anyone curious what an abattoir is (i didn't know either I had to look it up), it's basically a slaughterhouse for butchering animals. Cool word. Who'd've thunk you'd learn some new vocab from watchin the backrooms, eh?
i also learnt that lacrimosa translates to weeping/tearful and is derived from Our Lady of Sorrows, another name for The Virgin Mary. Ah the things you learn in horror yt lol
You know Markaplier made a good point regarding this game. The improvement shows they can upgrade the system for more interactivity. More interaction like item collection or ways to interact more with the enviroment would be the natural next step with a game like the complex.
Realism is one hell of a horror device.
Honestly tho
if you don’t have to pay taxes here i feel like the back rooms might be the better option
If used well. I always found 8-bit or 16-bit horror games to be more scary, though. Clock Tower, Chzo Mythos(excluding Trilby's notes) Faith etc.
@@crimsonghoul8983 Tbh, you could make that argument about every horror device. Like how Faith is amazingly well done and terrifying, but the FNAF 8-Bit minigames aren't really that scary.
Darkness is the greatest device for horror. It's not the darkness itself that is terrifying, but the fact that it doesn't present you what may be lurking in the darkness to you, and your mind creates the horror within.
If I can afford a house in this then it is better than real life.
ITS ONE TOPIC
Hi ot :)
Lol one topic is subbed to jack, very cool!
Ik
*Gasp* a wild 'One Topic' has appeared!
The backrooms would be even scarier (to me) if it was a place where you don't feel hunger nor any other physiological need, not even sleep. A place where you can exist forever awake and spiral into madness.
No make it worse you feel hungry and thirsty but never die from it 😈
@@dreameraydenat least that would give you something to feel
@@dreameraydenyou could focus on that though. It’s be scarier and weird to not feel it
I think some interpretations do go that way!
That sounds like hell
I wonder if silence is uncomfortable for the same reason it signifies danger in nature. If all the birds and critters go quiet in the woods, it usually means some kind of predator is lurking. Maybe it's ingrained in our psyche to dislike pure silence, and furthermore to fear it, especially in isolation.
i think its unsettling because its just really uncommon, no matter where you are. rooms get quiet sometimes, but even when its quiet, theres always _some_ sort of noise. rustling paper, buzzing lights, the wind or rain outside, theres always background noise. and we get used to it, even if we arent paying attention to it. so when theres an absence of it, its immediately noticeable and unsettling, because we fear the unfamiliar. we know background noise is normal and safe because its constant, so when it isnt there, we figure something must be wrong.
Silence also makes EVERY sound seem much louder (your own footsteps, for example.) Since you are alone, have no map or navigation aid, and no means of defense, instinct tells you that making noise is to be avoided, because you don't know what is around the next corner, and they'll hear you before you hear THEM. You can literally scare YOURSELF.
@kimraudenbush247 Oh absolutely!! I've been in that position, albeit out of paranoia while alone, since it wasn't an unfamiliar environment but my own home while alone and not used to it. Instinct makes you hyper-aware of every little noise, especially your own, and it can get you feeling like a prey animal; small and vulnerable, like a mouse in an open field with nowhere to hide. And in nature, when it comes to being prey, you usually wont hear the predator coming, so your best bet is to keep yourself quiet, as you said! It's a terrifying sensation!
@@kimraudenbush427 the silence part and footsteps was very real for me when I worked at a hospital and had nightshifts. Patients were quiet at night so when I walked down the hallway all I heard is my breathing, rustling of my suit and my footsteps. Sometimes it was unsettling
@@cumcumcum148 i'm employed as an unarmed security officer. I've spent a number of holidays babysitting facilities. The two things at night that really screw with you?
1- Motion-activated lights in the warehouse, because you see a row of them light up on the camera feed but surrounding lights stay off, nobody's in the building but you, and when you go to investigate, it's completely silent. And it's not til halfway through your shift that you realize the overhead fans are causing air movement that is moving little scraps of paper around and THAT'S what's triggering the lights...
2- patrolling "The Yard", which is where 53' trailers are stored, loaded, and unloaded. A fence surrounds the property, the light posts illuminate YOU better than anything else, you can't really see what's outside the fenceline at night, it's often very foggy, and the wind blows across the holes in the safety bars at back of the trailers, causing an eerie whistling that can send chills down your spine... Not to mention deer and foxes also pass by outside the fence. Ever heard a fox's alarm bark? That'll scare the life outta you on a windy and foggy night...
Sean saying "we still haven't seen a swimming pool area" and then walking straight into a swimming pool area is the most Jacksepticeye thing ever
606 Likes but no reply's, that's insane, anybody have a timestamp where I can find this part in the video?
@@thefunnywatermelon2983I just happened to be scrolling through
52:09
Literally xD
That’s literally my favorite thing about watching Seán’s videos! If I had a dollar for every time he’s predicted something in a game mere moments before it happens, I’d never have to work another day in my life!
I was your 2.1k like, I feel special
Having a real estate agent accidentally lead a bunch of prospective homeowners into the backrooms seems like a cool horror movie premise.
Well good news, there is a movie like that, if only i remembered the name, cause it got pretty stupid by the end
I know of Vivarium, but that is much more supernatural. A few overlaps, but I feel there'd be more than enough to differentiate it from a backrooms vibe.
@@maxmachac9756 Is it the one where a couple gets trapped in a 'too perfect' suburban neighborhood that goes on infinitely and are given a child that grows super fast and fed food that slowly kills them with the ground being clay and there being no escape whatsoever? I just saw a 'how to survive' video on it and it freaked me the fuck out
And imagine if the shower snap in head and just try to keep telling about how nice would large sofa be here and maybe remove wall here while they all are in shock while lost.
@@itsturtlefacemydudes woah what's the name?
Someone needs to make a backrooms game where you can take the furniture you find and make a nice cozy room for yourself to chill in
Backrooms building simulator would be fun. Just wait till you find the IKEA jackpot!
Survival game where you can find tools to take apart the walls to build forts and stuff? Survive monsters?
@@wingsoficarus1139 oh man I hadn’t even thought about disassembling the walls, that’s a great idea, you could completely renovate your little home in the backrooms. I’ve been trying to write down all the ideas I’ve had for this incase I ever try to make this game myself. That’s a good one, also defending from monsters would probably be a lot better of an objective than just making a room for no reason. Both great ideas
Oh like Roblox 3008 but instead of the infinite Ikea it's the backrooms
@@chadman2724 I haven’t played roblox for at least 6 or 7 years so I don’t know what that game is
For anyone interested. Lacrimosa was composed by Mozart. It explores themes of death, not knowing what happens after we die/grief, etc. What’s more, he died before he finished the work. A very smart choice by the game’s developers to put in here. Although I haven’t seen the ending of the video just yet, but one can assume..
That actually plays into my theory that the backrooms is a kind of purgatory for places and things rather than for people
The text is a section of the requiem mass called the sequence, which precedes the gospel reading. Mozarts setting of the whole thing is really beautiful
I like the idea that since there are things in the Backrooms (sofas, fridges, washing machines), it means there are people out there whose sofas, fridges and washing machines have no clipped through the ground and suddenly the phenomena of disappearing appliances is now a relatable thing.
So that’s where my nerf dart went!
I bet there's just a room full of socks
Thats where my tenis ball went
Oh so that's where my brain went!
Or it could be that the backrooms created it themselves
Honestly, with how ai generated art looks today, I feel like the backrooms kinda resemble an ai trying to build a human world. Some things are familiar, but it just has that sense of unnease to it.
Hey you ain’t wrong
Exactly, that’s what I was thinking. Like something that isn’t human is trying to mimic what the human world looks like. Which is why they don’t know where normal objects would usually go
You're actually uncomfortably correct...
Yea it dips just into the uncanny valley. So close to familiar get so far
I was just thinking that! all of the stuff looks like ai trying to rebuild a world but is mixing inside with outside stuff, like the plastic lawn chairs inside. also the China Express inside a supermarket, both food related but not quite right. like ai doesn't understand what should be where so it's like mashing stuff together to see what works. I also like the idea that it's kind of like Coraline where it's the "other world" and the entity is making something to feel like a home but it's not quite right. it's like how the world is so huge but most of it is outside, it's like the entity tried to replicate the vastness of the earth, but make it strictly inside/confined to keep him trapped (I haven't finished the video yet)
I got to the carousel part where there's a fake sky and omg based off my theory it's like it's trying to replicate night sky (and in the swimming pool area there was like a hole in the ceiling for light to come in but it probably wasn't sunlight) omg so cool
45:49 i think a really big thing that happens in a lot of these kinda backrooms game is that you first start with anxiety cuz you don’t know if there’s any monsters yet or not but as you go along you don’t find any clues that point to monsters so you let your guard down until the game pulls something like this and it freaks you out cuz you don’t know how long the monster has been following you and watching you without you knowing
The backrooms is like uncanny valley for objects and buildings instead of people. It borders on familiarity but there's something just barely off and that's what makes it unsettling
liminal spaces! thats the term for exactly what you're describing! thats why airports and gas stations and laundromats at night are so unsettling
@@buffy9486 I know exactly what you mean because I actually work at an Airport and when I go to the Basement at Night it feels reeeeeally freaky! I got used to it but sometimes it just has this very weird feeling that I cannot describe!
Sky is blue
I love the idea of the backrooms having creatures in it *in theory.* Like, not knowing for sure if you're alone or not. Hearing noises, seeing things move out of the corner of your eye, stuff like that. Not a huge fan of full on monster chases and stuff; I don't want to see the creature, I just want to have the suspicion that someone or something *might* be there. I feel like the endlessness of the backrooms, and the unease of not knowing if you're actually alone or not, is so cool.
Yeah the best mixture is crippling loneliness while also hoping to god it stays that way because of what finding something else might mean.
There is a chance that the creature in this one is just in the character's head cuz he's going insane, because it doesn't really interact with it throughout the game, just appears and spooks him
This works well for short games but the larger survival type games in this IP have to eventually have a release to that buildup. Or what a couple backrooms games I’ve seen have done is just make it where your never quite sure what is behind any given corner.
You know there is danger, you just have no idea where or what it is.
@@themotions5967 yeah I agree. I think that in the case of having that climax happen, I prefer it done like it was in this game though. It was a creature that wasn't outright malevolent and you still don't really know what it is or what's its motives are. Still a lot of mystery in it, and it plays off that fear of the unknown. Its also a common rule in horror movies and games that you want to avoid directly revealing the monster since viewers/players can tend to get desensitized to the scarryness of it quickly.
that's what the backrooms were originally supposed to be, the endless rooms you travel through that instead of a physical monster killing you, it's your own mind and sanity eating you alive, more games should explore this type of horror content, I feel like it's way scarier than having a physical monster try to kill you
I think the scariest thing about this game is just everything feels wrong, like instead of a hunting ground like the other Backrooms games, it's more of endless wandering
With added tall uncanny creepy thing that follows you! =D
@@table2.0yeah that unexpected thing freaked me out
The backrooms was always supposed to be like that. It just got sucked in with the clickbait horror games when siren head became popular. Awful game developers were just spamming siren head type monsters into the backrooms because kids eat that up.
@@ecciqabsolutely lmao, the fear of the backrooms is a careful and delicate balance of lack of information and lack of action. adding monsters removes both of these, information as it gives you something to fear rather than leaving the fear as ambiguous, and action, as it actually gives you a real, achievable objective rather than leaving you lost and alone. the fear of the backrooms comes from the rooms, not OMG SCARY DOG THAT CHASE YOU SKINWALKER SIRENHEAD AT 3AM????
There are very few good horror games that have a monster as the main focus now, they're all shitty games like survive the backrooms where you go floor to floor with monsters that earrape you and you have to just run away until you find a weapon. They are never good. Now some Roblox back rooms games have actually proven to be good. But they're also by veteran game creators and people with credit to their names. Most other games are just dogshit, and I'm sorry but siren head was such a stupid thing when it came out and the concept just pissed me off whenever I saw it. Give me something good not something internet famous
I can’t even explain the way my heart dropped at 1:14:10 when he saw the backrooms again. Like of course I knew he hadn’t left but it makes you realize how messed up it can make you. Once you think you’re finally home and seeing that familiar traumatizing setting once again. It’s messed up.
The movie you’re thinking about, Jack, is The Borederlands. It’s a found footage film about three dudes who explore a remote church in the English wilderness, and find out what dark secrets and history it’s hiding. It’s a semi Lovecraftian horror, and I highly recommend it.
Are you sure of the movie title? I've tried looking it up and found two different movies with similar names 2007 and 2024 plus a game series but none of them is related to the plot you or Seàn were describing 😕
@@hudaalnounou1126 It’s called The Borderlands in its native UK and other countries, but it’s called Final Prayer in the US if that helps.
@@kmjl93that’s kinda goody that they give movies different names. I’m excited to watch it though thanks for the help :)
Thank you so much!
I was looking for this, thank God someone knew what it was
The reason why the walls are yellow is (I'm pretty sure) that the colour is associated with madness and especially hysteria - there is a classic book about a woman thrown into a loft for hysteria by her husband, and the walls are yellow, and she starts to go mad and believe that there is something in the walls trying to get out
yellow also plays strongly in Netflix's DARK. (I was thinking the pink "hotel" could be baker-miller)
Yes the book is even called “The Yellow Wallpaper” i have it and it’s put away in a drawer because it’s so unsettling to me but i don’t want to throw it out.
@@EizaPizza I suppose you could scare some people by forcing them to read it
"The Yellow Wallpaper," is an absolutely beautiful and intense short story. The very case of Charlotte Gilman writing it ended up changing the course of history forever, as it nearly immediately changed the social and medical fields perspective on women's autonomy and mental health. I don't think "hysteria," would have dwindled down when it did if not for her.
Yellow is also the colour that Ellen is afraid of in Harlan Ellisons (game/book) I have no Mouth and I must scream.
This shit would be nerve wracking af in vr
I don't think it would work though, the VHS effect only works when it feels like a camera. But if it's vr it needs to be hyper realistic you can't hide the unrealistic stuff behind the vhs effect.
@@Disanem I agree. It would have to be done well, not like those shitty back rooms vr chat games with goofy ass monsters and shit
@@Disanem You can add a VHS effect onto things in VR within reason and still have it work. It would feel like a camera, but it would be like you're the one holding the camera and filming it. It doesn't have to look like you're seeing it through your own eyes to still be realistic and creepy.
@@GrandHavenHorror
I think if it was realistic it would be cool but having a VHS hand held camera would be cool so you can still see it through VHS filter
Or something like that
Bro everyone knows everyone say in vhs effects before the 21st century
1:13:25 Okay are we not gonna talk about how the projection became distorted because it was being filmed by a camera? That's such a small but sick detail!
If it wSnt supposed to then
We are creTing a backroom inside backroom AI Worl
Even when there's nothing bad happening, the sprinting in this game makes me anxious lol
I think the reason this horror works well is cause its stuff thats immediately familiar to your brain, but its always used in unfamiliar or 'wrong' ways
But not absurd enough to be funny, just enough to be off putting
No the reason this "horror" works well today is because the chemicals in the food/water and over the counter Big Pharma pills have pussified entire generations of people through hormonal imbalance and estrogen overdose to the point they're afraid of empty fuckkng rooms.
It's having a lawn chair in the middle of a room with no windows that is just uncanny.
Uncanny Valley.
For me, The Backrooms scares me in a way that’s like “I’m not supposed to be here… I want to go home. I can’t go home, but I really want to go home. I’m not supposed to be here.” No jump scares, no other horror devices then not letting you go back to a place where you feel safe and secure in an area where you’re familiar
It's like the feeling of being in someone else's house when you're not supposed to be there. You recognize this is a house, but you know it's not your house. So you can't feel safe. And imagine if you're trapped there. You can't go home. And you don't know if this house if empty, or worse , it's not. The backrooms is basically that but the house breaks all physical logic.
21:40 I cannot describe the sensation of pure fear that pulsed through my body when that thing came on screen.
it scared me sm I'm so glad someone else thought so too
I was just getting comfortable too, just cozy gamer time.
When he appeared again for the second time I paused the video and had to take a break, Ray Ray is the creatures name, and seeing it in general gives me anxiety so seeing it in this game made me have to take a break, my eyes were watering and I about had an anxiety attack
@@SmokeyMarshmallowswhere the hell is he from??
@@SmokeyMarshmallowsRay Ray? Y'know where he from? Like another game or Fandom? Or is he just a figure someone can use in a game for free?..
I feel like the backroom is such an effective setting because it seems to stir a nostalgia of half conscious infant memories people have. It's like snippets of deeply buried memories you formed when you didn't understand the world properly, so everything seems daunting and strange. It makes the Backrooms feel so familiar and yet so strange simultaneously, and I love it.
I've noticed there's variation to accommodate as many people's pre-conscious memories as possible. Different lights, different wallpapers, different doors or windows, different carpets and floors, store shelves, the plastic chairs, variations of furniture, the pool room might spark nostalgia in some people, but not others, there's a variety so that whilst not everything will give people faint memories, at least something will. This also makes it so people will be more strongly unsettled by certain areas than other people depending on how much it strikes their half-memories with nostalgia
I agree completely, I think that's what it's all about and it's done extremely well in this game.
And alot of the settings in the backrooms makes me think of the 70s-90s, like a grandmother's house, a old VHS or department store, offices, hotels, and some of it even reminds me of a roller skating rink. Fuck, I bet if you could smell it it'd even smell the same 😂
I love horror games that just make you feel scared, but there isn't a "fail" element to it. Like this game having nothing just constantly attacking you makes it even more scary somehow, as if you are more scared by nothing being there then someone or something being there
And in the back of your mind you're constantly panicking because you don't know if there really isn't anything out there or behind you the whole time just hiding in plain sight or waiting for the perfect moment to kill you and scare the hell out of you
The imagination is capable of greater terrors than reality could ever offer.
@@Naurdagnor that's why horror exists in the first place, some person thought of a concept that made them scared and they decided to capitalize on it, then more and more moments like this happened thus why we have the horror genre of entertainment
@@Bloldywakna4736
The idea of horror as a means of entertainment has been around longer than capital gain, but I get what you are trying to mean there.
Originally it was used as a way to thrill and yet warn your immediate community through story telling, and has since evolved into what you described.
an pretty sure that's called psychological horror where nothing happens but your always scared
It's genius that the game goes for 45 minutes without anything scary happening, any sort of enemy, or any real kind of movement to make you think you're completely safe and then throws in a terrifying monster that suddenly seems to be an actual threat, only for it to then disappear, once again making you feel unsafe even though there's no threat
It’s so smart to build tension
@@rileybifulk4243 It also makes sure that you don't realize that nothing can actually hurt you, which is smart. By that point in the game everyone will have realized that this is just a thing where you walk around and not much happens, so they change it up a bit so you don't get bored and start thinking there's a chance something will happen again
I feel like it was the character going crazy maybe like there isn't actually a threat but they've convinced themselves that there is? Like is so fun to guess what the story is
@@user-tr1yp5tx8kthats what the human mind does, it gets bored and makes terrifying scenarios that i doesn't tell you that it made
The backrooms style games really capture that fear we all once had as tiny children separated from our parent in a department store, and I admire that so much
wow, you really just captured exactly what it is
I really love the first twenty or so minutes where every time we come faced with a door, we just hear frantic clicking lmao
i feel like sean and mark’s playthroughs definitely taught kane to put a big old “E IS FOR OPENING DOORS” at the beginning of the next game😭
Honestly the slightly monotonous voice acting makes it super realistic, I really like it. It goes without saying that it looks fantastic too.
572 likes and no comments? I don’t care.
Something about this triggers the panic I would feel when I was a kid and couldn’t find my parents somewhere. Like the illogical despair that I would be lost in the store forever and they would turn off all the lights and I would be stuck forever.
i feel like i had dreams exactly like this as a kid
I know I'm late to the party, but my life is at its lowest point right now, and hearing you talk to the pillars about how big and strong they are going to grow up to be made me laugh for the first time in a while. What you do is important and it helps people.
The lighting and the actual lights are like a 100% real VHS tape.
The movement is like a real person walking and filming.
This is fuckin awesome!
Best realistic graphics I've ever seen in a game.
This game deserves an award
I think Its the unreal engine
I love the idea of The Backrooms itself being the anomaly, like its an SCP instead of a place where a monster lives. Makes it feel a lot more ominous not knowing what it is and how it works
Well it could be SCP-101 or whatever number hasn't been used and the bacteria monster would be SCP-101 B. Or something like that. Sometimes anomalies have anomalies.
Same here! Id like to connect it to a world where we understand anomalies to this extent
SCP-184 creates endless rooms when its inside of somthing, look it up theres a cool story about exploration
@@HeidiCharlesLeonTo be fair, SCP's are anything anomalous, so technically the backrooms are an SCP
Fun fact people have kinda started to connect the SCP Foundation and the back rooms recently it’s really really cool ngl
Imagine a game like this in VR, looking as realistic as it does.
It won't work because what makes it looks realistic is the fact that we are seeing through the cammera that is attatched to the character's chest. The footage filter and the distortion around the field of view make it looks real as well.
you could probably make it work but I get where you're coming from,@@Glaccius
@@Glacciusyou could make it work. Most of the what this looks is in lighting, filters, distortion and other tricks to add that found footage feeling.
I’ve seen games with fairly low graphical quality turn out close to realistic graphics and environments with proper design, sound and lighting before so you could definitely turn out a convincing found footage aesthetic in VR with the right effort and skill.
The chest camera is just a first person view camera in the development engine used here mounted to a chest level on a character model. You could use similar tricks to get a just as high quality true first person perspective that is attached to a flexible head representing a go pro like camera
The game VRChat actually has tons of Backroom/found footage worlds. In fact, a new one just got uploaded and it’s getting super popular.
Some also look about as good as this one (but run poorly). Good graphics is as easy as setting the shader to calculate more and more reflections or shadows. Performance is the hard part.
I don't want to imagine that, thanks.
It is theoretically possible to run into someone else who no-clipped into the backrooms. In the last game you come across someone's camp from where they were staying, and in other games you fine dead people. As the rift between the real world and the backrooms opens up wider, you'd be more and more likely to glitch in at the same time as someone else and find another person alive there.
i think an explanation they could use is that the time distortion that’s definitely caused by this version of the backrooms makes it so to someone who has entered the backrooms, anyone else there had already died long before they got there, sort of like time moving slower near gargantua in interstellar, the backrooms being millers planet.
@@msampson2286 actually ya that makes sense as well, and since it's straight up another dimension, the time dilation could be 100x bigger, so that split second difference on earth is still even a week in the backrooms. They'd easily be dead in a week
seeing the big doll-looking thing freaked me out way more than it should have, and I think it was because It wasn't a monster, it was just there. THEN It decided to follow him after a LONG time of it fooling me into thinking it was not a threat, GENIUS design, and I had to pause the video a few times to calm down.
The human fear of “no escape” is so well done here. And as a person who had claustrophobia, having no immediate exit is a large part of my fear so this game is portrayed so brilliantly! Back room games are always unnerving to me, but this was definitely the most unnerving purely because nothing happens until halfway through.
I think people with kenophobia (fear of wide open empty spaces) might also be able to relate.
Dude I've had so many nightmares of running through concrete spiral car parks and having no idea if I'm 100 levels in the sky or 100 levels below ground.
Honestly, this game is the one that best replicates Kane Parson's animation style. It's ridiculous how stunning this looks for an indie game
Well these days it isn't that challenging. With how easy to hse and accessible so many game engine programs and effects and rendering softwares are, it's not as impressive as it was 10 or 15 years ago.
@@vidmasterK1having the means makes it easier to be able to created but still need the imagination and skill to use it, the fact that this looks so much like kane videos shows the love it went through creating it.
@@Rprot_travelerKane Pixels interpretation sucks tho and is far from the original concept.
The graphics however are good.. so I agree with that.
Really shows you how far they've come lol
@@justaemptymallsubjective
The latter half of this game really reminds me of an abandoned place I explored a few years back. It was originally a children's psychiatric ward, then turned hotel, then Buddhist temple. The basement had so many empty rooms and there was spots the murals on the wall for children. I did briefly go into the temple part alone and there was 20 some Buddhist statues and there was apartments style rooms all around it. I have a video of it on my channel I really wish we would have done an uncut walk through with some history on it and what not but there are a few other videos like that of the building. Such a cool experience
Bro how tf somebody see a building and go "you know what let's change this children's ward into an apartment building but then AFTER a temple because why not? 😂
@@RadioMan2023 it seriously is such a bizarre place with alot of interesting history. It's being turned into an old folks "sanctuary" right now.
I subscribed to your channel so I can watch some of your vids later, love exploration vids
@@SmokeyMarshmallows thanks lol! they're definitely not typically exploration videos but I hope you enjoy regardless
Oh my gosh, I know exactly what place you're talking about. That place is very eerie. Sadly, it has been looted and completely trashed after it got popular on the Urban Explorer side of UA-cam.
I haven't finished the video so im writing this like a few minutes in. The current lore that in which i understand for the backrooms is some company figured out how to open a gateway into another unknown dimension (backrooms) which had a side affect which was not known at the time. The gateway being open allowed other's to enter by "no clipping out of reality" which in short, is finding corrupted parts of our world which has no collision and falling through. Something caused the gateway to overload and shut down or maybe they pulled the plug forcefully. This ended up trapping the hazmat dudes inside the backrooms. The baackrooms lore takes place in the 70s or 80s which is why the hazmat suits are so bulky and it's using VHS tapes (other than the fact VHS is more reliable than digital in preventing corruption or data loss)
Hey jack, just wanted let you know that this game isnt finished yet and is in early access. I hope you play this again when its major update comes🙏
He better see this
Whats the name of this specific game?
@@cutienana92the complex: expedition on steam
@@cutienana92 The Complex: Expedition
The slow build to the first real scare of the big boi moving is HIGHLY effective. Had me going “nope nope nope”
it actually made me jump
I haven't gotten to that part yet... 💀 pray for me
@@andym2318 👀👀👀 did u see it yet, it legitimately freaked me out
@@andym2318same💀
Just got there... Jesus.
I think the phenomenon this game and concept exploits the hell out of is "uncanny valley"
"Uncanny valley" is usually referenced when people talk about _entities_ that look "almost human but not quite," things like mannequins and dolls and animatronics and MoCap models. They _resemble_ humans, but they try so hard to be realistic that they just unsettle us.
But this _entire environment_ is "almost human but not quite." It resembles a mall, a pool, a hotel _just enough_ that we recognize them immediately, but they're just... not quite right. The subway maps and the restaurant menu look _so_ authentic, but we know that the maps are not accurate. We know the "restaurant" has no food to sell. The lawn chairs are set up to seat an audience, but they are facing nothing. The "ghost ride" leads to more hallways. The signs are labeling nothing significant. The stores are empty. The pillars are useless. The stairs go nowhere. It's a manmade environment, but none of it was made by man.
I love that to this day I have absolutely no idea what the backrooms are and I'm just staring blankly at this playthrough like "lots of walking around"
For anyone wondering, the found footage movie he is referring to is called The Borderlands, and the ending is terrifying
I just saw that like a week ago. Really terrifying ending. Had me guessing whether the place was really haunted or not until the very end.
Thank you,i was about to search up "the horror movie with religious stuff which has a twisted ending and also claustrophobic"
thank you for this, i checked the comments just to see if someone knew it
@@cassiewonder3945what happen in the ending? Begging for spoilers pls
@@Croncho-dj4ly
I really recommend watching the movie, but if ya want spoilers who am I to deny? Warning, I'm gonna explain basics of movie and ending! You've been warned!
There a three main people. I call them the Skeptic, the Tech guy, and the Priest. All three of them are looking into a church and stuff happening there, to see if it's all fake or a miracle or God. Odd things happen, like lights going out and children crying, the movie keeps you guessing for a long time wether the place is actually haunted or not. Eventually the three call in an expert and that expert dose a ritual, to get rid of whatever bad spirit it in this church. Skeptic and Tech Guy believe something supernatural is going on, but The Priest is not believing it, calling the churches/Vadacin's ways outdated.
Lights go out, and when Skeptic and Tech guy can get some light in the room The Priest is out cold and the expert has disappeared. The two go inside a tunnel leading under the church they discovered earlier, and keep seeing The Priest who seems to be going deeper and deeper.
The two find skeletons of babies, human sacrifices former priests of this church used to make to a pagan god. The Skeptic and Tech Guy keep following what they think is The Priest, until they end up in a very tight tunnel. It's very small, and after it's to small to keep going the two struggle to turn around and go back crawling on their stomachs. The walls start turning flesh like and an acid like substance starts raining on top of them. Turns out, the pagan god had been messing with their minds like it had every priest at this church before, leading them straight inside of itself. The two die a horrible, slow, and painful death as the acid slowly kills them. They are screaming for a while.
There's a lot more info you can look up that goes into more detail, explains background information, ect. That's the basic plot though.
There is one scene where some young people of the town play a prank on The Skeptic Tech Guy and Priest, buy setting a sheep on fire in the middle of the night to burn to death. That was freaky, NGL.
I think one of the most terrifying aspects of the backrooms is amount of corners that hide the next unknown; that the greater fear is not being alone, but wondering if you are.
I can’t lie whoever in the backrooms was in charge of mall music deserves a raise 1:03:00
The backrooms is supposed to be creepy and all that but this game’s environments are strangely beautiful
It’s called Eastside Story by Trevor Duncan. I’m curious if anyone noticed that this is the music from the episode where Spongebob “loses” his identity lol.
The monster is perfect for this game. No obvious chase or horrifying creature, just something that is so alien that you cannot understand it’s intentions towards you.
Why is no one talking about how scary the first real scare is. The build-up of "nothings gonna happen" and "im safe" then boom is scary as hell.
do u have a timestamp i wanna watch this video so well but i am deathly afraid of jumpscares with really good scary buildup
@@ilikemario6965 59:51 is the main jumpscare imo. 43:40 and the minutes following is a little spooky.
edit: at 1:10:20 the big boy returns
@@acapybara3032 thank u omgg ur a lifesaver
It was such a good scare and the fact that the thing doesn't constantly appear behind you makes it more scary. Just the idea that you know it is following you but you can't see it, so you never know if you truly lost it.
@@acapybara3032 Yeah the jumpscare at 43:30 scared the absolute hell outta me. I was like oh! the ball pit balls have physics?? Cool! And then my joy quickly disappeared-
Damn, these transitions between the cutscenes and the game are some of the best I’ve ever seen! This is SICK!
bro fr! it’s insane
Other game devs should take note fr fr
Dose anyone know the name of the horror movie Jack was talking about ?
@@Zer-wu3gh skinamarink
Yeah I love these kind of transitions, God of War also does this very well with their one camera thing
The Backrooms messes with your mental so well that it doesn't need a threat. Your alone, lost, not even sure if there is an exit and that is enough to break someone mentally very well done game thank you for the experience.
I was getting major anxiety from the quietness in general and then we see Ray Ray, the thing from that deep web video, which seeing it in general gives me major anxiety but seeing it in the game made me sweat, and then seeing it following Sean around made my eyes water, I took like a twenty minute break from the video just to recoup, too fucking much 😂
So, how long until Sean learns he actually can open doors?
Answer: 23:26. Congrats, Sean.
15 minutes in and scrolling through comments seeing if it was mentioned. Thanks for that! (I know, I'm a late viewer. Big deal. Lol)
The breathing was subtle enough to not be annoying, but pronounced enough to remain unsettling. Jaw dropping environments.
I feel like Sean in my emotional support gamer for spooky season! Lol
This reminds me of the years spent cleaning office buildings in the dead of night. You quickly learn to put the thought that, "something" could be lurking, out of your mind. You'll go batty.
I used to shut all the computer labs down on my campus, and this is so true! If you get that feeling, you have to throw it away otherwise your job is going to suuuuck.
After a while I really loved the routine I got down and it felt more comfortable.
I did similar and it was HAUNTING. There's a reason I set the alarms and listened to podcasts to drown out the quiet.
oh brother I can't shake this feeling in my own home, like if I'm watching a horror playthrough where someone breaks into your home, I open my door so I have sightlines to the front entrance. thank goodness I don't have ground level windows
@@bladenot-runner1795 This!! I constantly had Rammstein or some kind of heavy metal in my ear so that when/if a ghost tried - they tried with the wrong MF'er because I had the power of metal on my side. >_>
I'm really glad you are still into the backrooms stuff. I always really enjoy it, though I also prefer the no monsters version, and when games aren't just a tour through the various silly levels people have added. I was impressed by "Dreamcore" as well since it seems to be a really deep exploration of the poolrooms concept, and it's gorgeous. Truly surreal architecture.
The no monsters version isn't canon. "...six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. *God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you* " The OG story says yes, there's something horrible there with you.
Honestly the only thing that bothers me in these games is that the signs are usually in English and it doesn't imply that things get in the backrooms from all over the world and it kinda seems like the backrooms only exist in the US (I understand its easier for the developers this way
I never thought of that, however I can forgive that fact since the game is in English and is targeted for English speakers. Quite possible they could translate everything but I feel like changing all of the signs to other languages is probably more of a hassle than anything.
@@ocifer I think it would be cool to not know what signs say. It would give a deeper sense of isolation. Like in Lost when you don't understand what the korean couple talks about because the creators wanted to give the same sense of isolation as the other english speaking characters had.
@@toxic_tomato_soup if you saw my last comment before I deleted it, ignore it. I posted on the wrong video lol, also I can agree with you there. AI especially does that well when generating images of “uncanny” or “liminal” pictures.
ooh wouldnt it be cool if the signs were different for everyone and they were in whatever your native language is
i’d like it better if it wasn’t an actual language and was just like ai generated babble, i feel like it would lend to the uncanny valley-ness of it all
that reveal that something is following you is so good you spend so long just creeped out by the environment and the second it starts to feel comfortable they take it away and make it so much more unnerving
I' am so glad this game shows the true origin of what the backrooms are meant to be,
no big monsters chasing you, Just the terror of knowing you are alone in this undiscovered space
Exactly what i love about it. When awful game developers started putting siren head in the backrooms it just really ruined the whole point of it but thats what its known for now. (because poorly made horror games attract millions of children and the original creepiness to the backrooms would get boring after 5 mins to their little kid brains)
did you finish the video? the monster arrives at like 42 minutes. very unnerving but I think it still works with the 'alone for eternity' part cuz I think it only follows you once you find it. idk I paused the video to type this so I'll come back if I have anything else to say. Coming back: the silly monster came back and I didnt think it was that scary. I liked the first better. - Okay the ending was super cool. final thoughts, this games looks and probably feels cool, the monster was a little compromising in the end but it worked in the beginning, but the ending is something ive never seen before in a backrooms game.
@@ezra_kohl I still think it's effective, 1 entity that is most likely not well documented within the story is good that it could work as a jumpscare and unsettling feeling but not enough that it hits the point of being repetitive and therefore not scary anymore
@coltian1 yeah it's a really cool one, I much prefer the blank room soup man over the weird tripod Kane has (imo). I'm fascinated by its motives and how it just observes and follows. Also it would be incredibly difficult to create suspense or a compelling story without the suspense of threat. So ig I take back what I said in my original reply
im confused but there was a monster lurking.
1:06:55 Hey, pretty sure that's a Signalis reference! That plays a lot before the warnings in that game and also has a subway scene. Could just be a reused sound file though, actually that's probably what it is.
Yes! I’m glad someone else caught that. I think it’s probably a tribute to Signalis as another great psychological horror game.
The beeping made me think how funny it'd be if the bosses put trackers in all the hazmat suits; if their employees got sucked into the backrooms, hey at least they can map things out by seeing where they travel.
43:39 this segment of the game genuinely scared me so bad. Had a sense of security the entire time up until that moment where i realized it was all false. That creepy entity showing up and stalking us out of nowhere added so much tension. Every time that thing showed up i got jumpscared
isnt it the soup guy from the video that blew up in 2018?? /gen
They look similar but no
@@amanitaaldainelooks more like baymax
yes it is! I think jack pointed that out too xD least I hope so @@amanitaaldaine
It was so scary because you don't expect to actually get to see the entity when you peek around the corner it came from.
My theory for the end of this: I think this guy traveled decades into the furture the moment he first clipped through, and in that time the foundation itself fell victim to the shifting and eventually closed. That picture of their sign at the end was overgrown so that's what lead me to believe it shut down. I also think someone found the camera, and the title screen is that person reviewing the tape of what our protagonist recorded.
I was thinking at first they would have closed down after losing someone unexplainably but that sounds like such a better theory omg 😭 so cool
@@mashed.233 I have my moments 🤓
The movie Sean was trying to name was most likely "As Above, So Below", it's actually set in France but it is definitely a found footage with religious themes and catacomb/cavern spelunking scenes with a WTF ending. Decent horror movie
It was borderlands :) as he said it was in england not france
43:50 why is jack asking “ was that you” in a tone that they are friends is so funny to me😭
No game can ever be as creepy as someone saying "Daddy is dirty and needs a sponge bath".
im sorry
, what-
I read this the same time as sean said it
I believe the main theory is that a lot of stuff in the backrooms is stuff that fell through from the main world. It'd be funny if a whole ass store just went *poof* and ended up in the backrooms like in the game
That's the only lore I'd be willing to accept as 100% canon. Stuff you find just "glitched through reality" and into the backrooms.
Might also be interesting to have a game where you do "find other people". But they're all skeletons or decomposing bodies, because they starved/dehydrated to death before they could find their way out. Not because some monster killed them.
@@Sanquinityto build off of that, what about all those missing people mysteries like Amelia Earhart ended up in the back rooms somehow?
Considering how distorted some of the stuff is, I don't think that theory is completely right
An "ass store" sounds disgusting. I wouldn't even want to find a partial one, let alone a whole one! 😲
Like Kane pixels car car video
As soon as I saw Ray Ray for the first time, I knew we'd see him again, and that started making my eyes watering, no horror games genuinely scare me to the point where I have to take a break from the video to recoup
Glad im not the only one who has physical reactions to spooks like that!
39:45 its an old subway station aesthetic. From what i know about Dimensional bridging, the backrooms are actually a forth dimension shift of the reality, thats why a lot of it looks the same, because its corners and clips of Three dimensional architecture in the axis shift, and how three dimensional vision perceives it. So imagine you've shifted your personal phase of 3rd dimension a whole forth axis slide so you're no longer aligned with your regular view of reality. This causes lots of places of the same variety to cascade onto the same area.
You know its a good game when you think you’re still in a cutscene.
I think there's fake screen-burn too
I know these backrooms are 1000% fake, but for like 18-20 years I've had dreams of those giant pool style back rooms that people had made and I find it wild that they match so closely
Bro me too, I always had the fucking wierd like tunnels at the start and then I would crawl out and immediately drop into a pool, and then I would wander aimlessly through the pool section until i heard a noise behind me and then I would turn and wake up before i saw anything
Same and that's why the pool 'level' is the most terrifying to me
Dude literally me. It makes me so scared to actually so my dreams in a game
thats the wild thing about the whole thing with the backrooms. they're 100% fake, but they are so closely linked to reality, but subconscious and remembered reality, that it just feels so much more real and alive than any other horror setting. im doing a psychology course at uni and i swear if i end up doing a degree, i may do it on liminality cus good fuckin GOD i wanna know why this resonates with people so incredibly strongly
same i have vivid memories of dreams of being stuck in a “backrooms”-style mcdonald’s playhouse/building??
Anyone else notice the movement towards the end of the hall when jack turns around at 1:05:00? That genuinely spooked me.
Looked like light turned off
Most likely the game unrendering spots he left behind and it just looks like the lights go off
Yeah went to the comments to figure out if anyone else saw it too. 😮
jumpscares/scary moments
21:40 - very minor
43:38 - creature
44:14 - small noise
59:55 - creature
Thank you, now I can hide in the comment section at the right times!
@@Rosalia.Mine. 🫡
It's creepy that we started getting a sense of normalcy in the empty rooms, we got so used to just empty, then they started adding furniture back in. Some of it even looks put away for later use.
32:27 Sean asking about what the real estate is like and then immediately walking into a home - like room is hilarious to me
The backrooms make me think of places that an AI would design
Ohhh that’s scary cuz that might happen
50:25 I used to live in a hotel that felt just like this. It was built in the 1910s so it wasnt like a modern hotel. Each floor was a completely different theme. One had deep red capets, one was pine green carpets, even the light fixtures were different from floor to floor.
The lobby stairs only went to floor 2, then to get to the stairwell that went to any other floor you had to go across this ballroom that was completely empty and had all the lights off when it wasnt being rented out.
Then that stairwell had key card doors to get into it, so it felt completely seperate from the rest of the building. It was really grey and grungy, and always smelled like weed. Felt like walking through a back alley at night.
Then to get ice, there was only one ice machine in the building and it was on the whole other end of the hotel from the stairs/elevators so any time you wanted ice you had to go to a completely different themed floor and walk all the way across the empty halls to the far end. And it wasnt in its own room like modern hotels with vending machines and such, it was just a random ice machine at the end of a random hallway.
The idea that the monster follows you as seen in the cut-scenes but is not harmful when you actively approach makes for perfect jumpscares, especially since you don't see the creature constantly and only at random moments
Now I want MatPat to do a theory on how many Roombas it would take to map out the backrooms 🤣
It would take an infinite amount due to the fact that the back rooms are infinitely expanding
Idea: we tape a knife to a Roomba and release it into the Backrooms.
@@morganqorishchi8181 YASSS ARMY OF KNIFE-WIELDING ROOMBAS!!!
That has me thinking tho… in these back rooms vids and stuff why do they send ppl instead of like rovers ????
@@loafyu5405 because we don’t get as emotionally invested with “emotionless machines”. We could theoretically see ourselves as one of those humans.
I'd love if they put outlines of people in the yellow wallpaper. Like actually see the lumps. Be a nice nod to the book The Yellow Wallpaper. Also would just be really creepy.
So many parts of the backrooms look like an amalgamation of every church with a youth pastor playing a guitar combined with a sterotypical granny's house.
Also, I love the idea that the found footage format means that some guy is playing all this back and is watching you figuring out how to open a door
It does feel like a church hallway!
Imagine how much scarier this would be with little nightmare's horrifically disfigured and warped furniture
YESSS
For those who are wondering, the tall guy is based on the guys from Blank Room Soup, a since-debunked dark web video that was said to be a man who was being forced to eat his wife in the form of a soup by costumed killers
Thanks I knew it seemed familiar. I know it was debunked but it still freaks me out to this day
Yeah, I remember watching SomeOrdonaryGamers deep Web video on it. Very interesting to see it pop up here.
the costumes were created by raymond persi who performed with these mascots he called 'rayray'. according to him, some of the rayray suits were stolen before a show and later he received an email from 'a fan' with the blank room soup video
i love the decision to have that be the threat in the game, something that everyone around that time had probably seen clips or images of but long enough ago to where it’s creepy but has that same almost nostalgic feeling that the rest of the game leans on
i would love a chill backrooms game like vrchat where you can just hop on and talk to random ass people in there
3:15 I'll bet that the voice acting sounds so good from the player character because they took a real VHS tape camcorder and had the voice actor speak into it at chest level. So you're getting what the voice would actually sound like from a camera. Practical voice effects are so great and fun to do!
This is one of the most realistc voice acting I have heard in a while the way they comunicate in the start is so natural big probs to the voice cast here.
There’s a bunch of different “canons” of the back rooms. Outside of Kane’s,The major ones are the wiki dot and the liminal archives. It’s sort of like Scp where anyone can submit stuff , but the liminal archives are more strict than the wiki dot. Though the wiki dot one has had some recent overhauls as well
Guessing Kane's is what most games are based off of? Or are they like a mix between the liminal archives and wikidot as well as Kane's version?
@@MudZeePlayGamer they're probably more based on throwing random shit from the backrooms at you
@@MudZeePlayGamerThis one is definitely based on Kane's series, but a lot of other games are based on the wiki.
The backrooms was a liminal space with an eerie feeling to it, then it got the whole story of falling into the backrooms and it was more being scared of the unknown in an endless familiar place, then when poorly made horror games got extremely popular with children bad game developers started spamming siren head into the backrooms, which then devolved into all these backrooms games filled with random monsters with bad ai "hunting" you.
Objectively all canons are bad except Kane’s. The wikidot completely throws away everything that made the backrooms scary and good in favor of making it a knockoff SCP. It’s so bad
I love backrooms horror, because you don’t need monsters or anything to make it creepy, there’s just something about the atmosphere and the being alone in these unsettlingly familiar places that makes you have this sense of uncertainty and anxiety
5:07 "You think I'm gonna die here, but actually if I just scooch a little bit forward, I'M A LUNATIC"
Yeah, pretty much
I think the backrooms is a mix of claustrophobia (fear of small and confined spaces) and kenophobia (fear of large empty spaces or voids) while you're trapped in hallways which are confined youre also traveling through a seamlessly endless space and sometimes its not even hallways. Wild
I have both of those phobias
@@PistachioMaann yes same! That's why I thought of it 😂
@@hanhantheman5457 😂
Don’t forget a fear of being watched all the time, and followed. At least that’s what im always getting from these
An infinite confined space.
Don't get me wrong I love the whole like monsters in the backrooms thing but i prefered it when the purpose behind the backrooms was the fear of loneliness. To be completely alone with nowhere to go. You don't know where you are and there isn't a single person that can help you. Just you. I love the idea of that more. Also graphics killed it this game
Then you didn't read the actual creepypasta for the backrooms and are parroting all the other people who want to seem cool by saying 'I don't need no (man) monsters!' Its all about 600 million square miles of random spaces and something dangerous is in there with you.
Though the original did have a sense of loneliness, there was also a sense of dread and unknowing; in Kane Pixels' original video, he had an entity in there.
@@gmork1090 it was purely a personal preference. I am well aware of the original I just prefer the loneliness aspect of it. It's more raw to me. You don't see many games like that
@@gmork1090There’s nothing cool about just liking something different from the “original.” It’s all fiction, let people enjoy what they want. It’s ridiculous that people still criticize Kane’s version of the Backrooms just cause he didn’t follow someone else’s version.
Your own sanity being the number 1 antagonist in the backrooms is way better than occasional spooky monsters imo
I used to go blackberry picking every year when I was little. We had a house on a hill way out in the Irish countryside, a few neighbours, and miles and miles of fields with blackberries bursting from every hedge, if you knew where to look. Me and my sister used to compete, see who could fill their little Tupperware first. Those long, half-autumn evenings are some of my most treasured memories.
thats beautiful
Ive been waiting for you to play this one - not an action/story game but i really like these simple exploration games
Just wanted to point out that the company Magwave in this appears to be way older by the end of the game. Something significant happened while you were in the backrooms. I think what happened is the two realities merged into one. Which is why the portal thingy was not active, which would explain our characters panic when he sees the backrooms have extended.. everywhere.
The complex took over the institution, so it cloned it for the end of the game
lol the fact that jack said in the beginning that this wasn't the type of game to have something jump at him and that he was safe. 43:39 made my heart jump out of my chest. gotta remember to expect the unexpected lol
Same lol, I think my soul left my body for a second.
Hearing Mozart's Lacrimosa in a video game is one of the most satisfying things I've witnessed in quite a while.
After listening to the magnus archives the backrooms just feel like the Distortion to me, which honestly just adds to the creepiness vibes.
1:05:20 For anyone curious what an abattoir is (i didn't know either I had to look it up), it's basically a slaughterhouse for butchering animals. Cool word. Who'd've thunk you'd learn some new vocab from watchin the backrooms, eh?
Thx for the explanation ❤
i also learnt that lacrimosa translates to weeping/tearful and is derived from Our Lady of Sorrows, another name for The Virgin Mary. Ah the things you learn in horror yt lol
These graphics genuinely had me in awe. Amazing to see how far computer imagery has come
Imagine the specs needed for this on high graphics though
@@MudZeePlayGamerhonestly probably nothing crazy. Engines like UE are really well optimized these days
@@MudZeePlayGamerit isn’t crazy, it’s just a filter slapped over unreal engine. Shouldn’t require much to run
@@TS-uu4hp You’re forgetting the “over unreal” part of that. This game takes a fair bit to run
@@lololghi7909 that's fair
You know Markaplier made a good point regarding this game. The improvement shows they can upgrade the system for more interactivity. More interaction like item collection or ways to interact more with the enviroment would be the natural next step with a game like the complex.
1:06:50 Three note oddity while on a train. Is this a Signalis reference or something?
Pretty sure it is. The subway car looks exactly like the one in the Signalis cutscene