Game EXP: The Backrooms Game FREE Edition (VSD)

The Backrooms Game FREE Edition
Systems: Windows, SteamOS, Linux
Release Date: July 25, 2019
Publisher: Pie On A Plate Productions
Developer: Pie On A Plate Productions
Time Spent: 76 Minutes
Playlist on YouTube

There are a lot of backroom games.  Like, a lot a lot. So we're not going to compare how The Backrooms Game FREE Edition compares, stacks up, copies, or innovates the genre of liminal space walking simulators and instead focus on my inability to follow and/or remember instructions and how stress can distort perception (albeit without any actual scientific evidence, but actually!).

When I first started The Backrooms Game FREE Edition, I figured I was getting into something similar to POOLS or Dreamcore, where the emphasis was on nearly endless exploration.  What TBGFE really is is more akin to an old-fashioned arcade game where you try to get the highest score possible, or in this case, travel the furthest distance.  To progress further in this game, there are actions you have to perform to keep the world from breaking you and essentially dying, or no-clipping out of the backrooms.  

First, there's the mechanic the game tells you about as you start, to check your watch every 30 seconds.  But when you check your watch, you're also supposed to "Press E" to maintain your connection to reality.  My first couple of times playing, I didn't register this bit at the bottom.  Even on my first playthrough, I didn't check my watch for the first 150 seconds (2 minutes 30 seconds).  And then there are the rules that the game doesn't tell you until after you've failed and you've no-clipped.  Like it can be counterproductive and detrimental to your health/sanity/play time if you check your watch more frequently than every 30 seconds.

And this is where that handy and moderately complicated study from the National Institute of Health comes into play; although I haven't read it in its entirety because I only just found it while writing this article.  My hypothesis was that playing a stressful game, or at the very least being in a stressful situation, can distort your perception of time.  Someone might be pretty good at determining how long 30 seconds lasts if they're just sitting at a desk.  But put them into a stressful situation, and that could distort their perception regarding the flow of time.  What feels like 30 seconds could only turn out to be 20 or maybe 10 seconds.  I had thought about playing with a stopwatch set on my phone next to me, but that felt like cheating in a way I woudln't've felt too good about.

The other mechanics that the game throws out at the player are to "not look at it" whatever it is supposed to be; I'm not sure.  Unless part of it was whatever looked like it was dripping out of the ceiling, and I just walked right up to it.  Also, you're not supposed to look at or focus on the lights.  I only found this out on my third or fourth attempt as I thought that maybe looking at the lights instead of the shifting walls and moving floors would play merry hob with your sanity.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are several hidden mechanics that the game doesn't initially let you know about.  Like maybe you're not supposed to pass through doorways, or be sure to follow paths where you see a power outlet.  Maybe running for more than 3 seconds decreases your sanity?  Maybe running at all is a bad thing.

I really appreciate that in this FREE Edition of a game, there isn't an actual end, I think, and that it's focused on seeing how far you can get before you stop/die/no-clip/etc.  I do wonder how sensitive the rules are as you play.  For instance, is your sanity dinged less at the beginning if you check your watch every 20 seconds compared to if you've been playing for 5+ minutes?  If you check your watch at 28 seconds and the "Press E" prompt hasn't come back yet (presumably it reappears every 30 seconds), is it more beneficial to quickly check your watch again to press E, or should you wait another 30 seconds before checking your watch again?  On one hand, it would be interesting to watch someone who is fluent in this iteration's mechanics to see how far they get, but at the same time, it would be very boring because then nothing much would be happening.

As far as free games go, The Backrooms Game FREE Edition could've been a lot worse by not doing a lot, but the backrooms and liminal spaces as a concept are supposed to be sparse.  Maybe one day I'll fork over some real-world money and find out if there's more to this genre than endless halls, all the while staying true in concept and/or tone without turning it into something that is decidedly not the emptiness of the backrooms.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Your Ominous Presence So Profound