Backrooms Anomaly

Developer: Liminal Games

Publisher: Liminal Games

Platforms: PC (Steam)

Release Date: 24th July

Sometimes videogames aren’t original. That’s OK. There are seven basic plots, and all that, so not everything can be a completely fresh experience. Meanwhile, in the horror sphere, the anomaly-spotting genre continues to prove popular, as does the Backrooms phenomenon, thanks to the recent smash-hit movie.

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Hang on a minute lads, I’ve got a great idea.

As you’ve probably guessed from the title and screenshots, Backrooms Anomaly is The Exit 8 crossed with that initial, and most famous, sickly yellow-tinged level of Backrooms. You enter a bright corridor, a figure approaching from the far side, dressed in the familiar hazmat suit. Posters adorn the right wall; there’s a notice board and a water dispenser on the left, while two doors lead to smaller areas, utility and storage rooms. Exit the door at the end, and you either notch a point for a clear room or reset to zero for not spotting an anomaly, something slightly different from the norm.

Spot an anomaly, and, as usual, you must high-tail it back the way you came, a continuous loop until you reach the magical score of ten. Anomalies vary massively in subtlety. A monster in the utility room and blood on the figure’s boots are easy to spot; a paper cup next to the water dispenser and a missing picture frame, not quite so.

If Indie Horror Gamer awarded its scores based on originality, not much would get a high rating, and certainly not Backrooms Anomaly, given it manages to be ‘inspired’ by not one, but two successful games. But we don’t, and the anomaly genre is just about holding on, the gameplay loop engaging enough for us to have persisted here, discovering all 50 of its strange and oblique anomalies. The Backrooms theme adds a degree of oddness to proceedings, feeling like a natural extension of that world: a place to escape from, a place of dreary repetitiveness and mind-numbing humming, a place that leaves you questioning your sanity, and wondering if there really were two staplers on that shelf, after all.

Conclusion

If you’re not yet exhausted from the Backrooms craze and like a bit of anomaly-spotting, you’ll get plenty of value from Backrooms Anomaly, despite its brazen lack of originality.

Backrooms Anomaly is out on Steam on the 24th July. A review copy was provided to Indie Horror Gamer by Liminal Games.