is this game better than escape the backroom ?

[Freddy Death]

im actually playing escape the backroom and its horrible, i find the game boring, ugly, not really scary and unclear. this game seem wayyy better but i want to know the review od people ?

[Yaos]

It's shorter (for now), about 150 minutes. It's way better in the visual department, mostly.
Gameplay wise, it's very similar, weirdly so. It's also a little simpler and clearer.
Right now I'd say it's really incoherent in quality, going from high quality sound and visuals to average to low quality in some levels.
I hope it gets better, and also detach itself from escape the backroom. It does not need to be that similar, even copying the worst aspects of it.

[Hund]

Content wise it is shorter, but i felt that the quality of the levels was a touch above the rest.

You get about 3+- hours out of it at the moment depending on how fast you are at figuring stuff out.

We really enjoyed it and are hoping for more levels to come.

[Punani]

I would say it is very similar to Escape the Backrooms, but the graphics are much much better. Sadly enough, there is way less content for now.

You could easily play a few levels and stay within the two hours and just refund it if you do not like it.

[Balloonicron]

Originally posted by Freddy Death:

im actually playing escape the backroom and its horrible, i find the game boring, ugly, not really scary and unclear. this game seem wayyy better but i want to know the review od people ?

It's literally just someone making a duplicate so they can also make money off a hot ticket.

[Tisbury]

Originally posted by Yaos:

It's shorter (for now), about 150 minutes. It's way better in the visual department, mostly.
Gameplay wise, it's very similar, weirdly so. It's also a little simpler and clearer.
Right now I'd say it's really incoherent in quality, going from high quality sound and visuals to average to low quality in some levels.
I hope it gets better, and also detach itself from escape the backroom. It does not need to be that similar, even copying the worst aspects of it.

Thanks for the feedback! You mentioned that sound an visuals are inconsistent, do you have specific examples so we can improve? What levels are good in your eyes and which ones are bad? (Quality wise)

As for the gameplay being similar, I will admit it is. Both games are based on the backrooms, we read the same wiki's and thus most of the levels will be very similar. We try to add a unique spin of our own gameplay and I think both games stand out. BET's development started before Escape the Backrooms even came out. A lot of the inspiration came from a Roblox backrooms game actually.

I've definitely seen a lot of mechanics from BET be implemented into Escape the Backrooms' new updates but I highly doubt its intentional. We both are making a survival horror based on the backrooms so there will be lots of overlap.

[Yaos]

Originally posted by Tisbury:

Originally posted by Yaos:

It's shorter (for now), about 150 minutes. It's way better in the visual department, mostly.
Gameplay wise, it's very similar, weirdly so. It's also a little simpler and clearer.
Right now I'd say it's really incoherent in quality, going from high quality sound and visuals to average to low quality in some levels.
I hope it gets better, and also detach itself from escape the backroom. It does not need to be that similar, even copying the worst aspects of it.

Thanks for the feedback! You mentioned that sound an visuals are inconsistent, do you have specific examples so we can improve? What levels are good in your eyes and which ones are bad? (Quality wise)

As for the gameplay being similar, I will admit it is. Both games are based on the backrooms, we read the same wiki's and thus most of the levels will be very similar. We try to add a unique spin of our own gameplay and I think both games stand out. BET's development started before Escape the Backrooms even came out. A lot of the inspiration came from a Roblox backrooms game actually.

I've definitely seen a lot of mechanics from BET be implemented into Escape the Backrooms' new updates but I highly doubt its intentional. We both are making a survival horror based on the backrooms so there will be lots of overlap.

Hey, so I can develop a little more if you want.

Firstly I didn't know your started development before escape the backroom came out. However I assume they must have started developement even before you. But that's not important at all - I'm sure you have a lots of comment about how the game are similar and I'm not holding it too much against you, of course they will look similar because both are respecting the same lore. So that's not a main problem for me.

I think the main strength of your game is the ambient, visual and sound design. As a game dev myself I know how hard it is to achieve that level of fine-tuning : it takes time, a lot of time, even with the simplest concepts. So congrats.
My favorite levels were the famous yellow office, the parking level and the open space with the rainy outside.

They were pretty simple but chill. The pools come to mind too, but the game design was pretty disappointing I must say. It lacked variety and landmarks, and the ending puzzle seems out of a kid's magazine. Puzzles should make sense with the settings as to not break immersion. The puzzle in the pools could have easily been as some kind of colored tiles you have to count instead of paint decals - or use mosaic or something. Right now I felt like like the level was just a bunch of pool liminal space we already seen + a random color kid puzzle.

When I say the quality is inconsistant, I mean that you have a parking level that is really well done with an interesting yet simple progression through the level, and afterward we got the tunnel level that seems out of another game. The lighting is blown out (the light seems to be not coming out of the lamps that produce it), the corridors are almost empty of any props or anything interesting. The design is weird. The monster is blind, why would we need closets to hide in? Shouldn't we duck and wait ? The concept translated to a level should be pretty straightforward, but it made us scratch our heads on several occasions.
The LIDAR level was by far the worst. It was egregious, and I'm not writing that just to be mean, it was my experience.

I mean that kind of gimmick is cool I guess, but first I don't really get how it makes sense from the story perspective. But that's a detail : it was terrible to navigate through. I spent I think 40% of my time playing this level, and at some point my allies were dead and I was just lost, wandering through the level completely lost. I will detail every step of my lidar level experience :
- That kind of level should only last 5 minutes in my opinion.
- The entity is cool, but after more than 60 times the same unavoidable jumpscare, I got a little bit angry I got to admit.
- The second part of the level, with the big structures, is gigantic and I didn't notice immediatly the blue lines. The first part of me being lost was me wandering in there for what felt like 20 minutes. It's a long time.
- When I found my way back through the level and noticed the blue lines, I finally understood what the puzzle was. It took me a long time for some reason, I backtracked a lots of time trying to push a button I already pushed.
- When I came back to the "museum" bit, hearing the monsters, I tried to hide. I thought the monsters were out and just ran through the opened door that was green.
- I was hesitant to jump in the hole. But 3 things made me jump through this part
1. That was the green door, while the other two were red and orange.
2. The hole didn't have a red outline, so I felt it was inviting me.
3. I thought the only monster I didn't hear was the one depicted on top of my door.
4. This part somehow made me think of the hidden warp zones in mario. Like a way to go back to certains levels or something.
- I died and started the level again with my friend.
- After doing everything again, my friend died. I tried another solution for the puzzle and died again.
- Doing it a third time, I looked it up and was just shocked that it was just a color puzzle. I think it's a very weak puzzle that doesn't correspond to anything.

When I say the game should detach itself from Escape the Backroom, I say this partly because of the lidar level, I found it really weird that both of you devs uses a level so specific like this when the lore iirc doesn't have anything like it.
I'm also saying (very subjectively) that I don't really care about the "official" backrooms lore (that I don't really like) and would love backrooms to be whatever people wants it to be and build upon it, ala Kayne Pixels. In other words, I'd love something new and interesting, not the same things that have been done over and over. That's just me though.

I used to not understand the success of the "Pools" game, but having played it I think I understand that it really comes down to the moody ambient the game has - and in that sense, it respects the liminal space spirit. That must be why my favorite level was the rainy office, I just found it soothing. Even if the puzzle wasn't the greatest, it made somewhat sense in the setting, and the sound of rain outside really was what needed at that moment in the game.

I hope I wasn't too harsh and I wish you fellow devs the best and would love to talk some other times if you want more details! Happy dev.

[Psykokow]

To add a counter to that dislike of the LIDAR, I genuinely found it interesting following the colours and then i got lost trying to figure out the final part... but it was quite unique. I enjoyed it a lot. It could be more complex but I suspect it would lead to a much longer suffering.

So far it has been really enjoyable the game, so well done and I look forward to your new additions.

It was a good couple of hours fun.

[Freddy Death]

Originally posted by Psykokow:

To add a counter to that dislike of the LIDAR, I genuinely found it interesting following the colours and then i got lost trying to figure out the final part... but it was quite unique. I enjoyed it a lot. It could be more complex but I suspect it would lead to a much longer suffering.

So far it has been really enjoyable the game, so well done and I look forward to your new additions.

It was a good couple of hours fun.

Of what I saw of the lidar gameplay, it seem better and closest to other lidar game. Where escape the backroom really did a horrible job for lidar

[Hund]

Originally posted by Freddy Death:

Originally posted by Psykokow:

To add a counter to that dislike of the LIDAR, I genuinely found it interesting following the colours and then i got lost trying to figure out the final part... but it was quite unique. I enjoyed it a lot. It could be more complex but I suspect it would lead to a much longer suffering.

So far it has been really enjoyable the game, so well done and I look forward to your new additions.

It was a good couple of hours fun.

Of what I saw of the lidar gameplay, it seem better and closest to other lidar game. Where escape the backroom really did a horrible job for lidar

I must say i liked it in both games, different approach but i did enjoy both versions of Lidar.

[[They/Them] ChesseTheWasp]

Escape the backrooms is one of the best backrooms games on steam, the rest (including this one) are usually much worse

[Freddy Death]

Originally posted by They/Them ChesseTheWasp:

Escape the backrooms is one of the best backrooms games on steam, the rest (including this one) are usually much worse

with the experience with escape the backroom that i have, the bar must be pretty low o say its the best one. i admit that there is a ♥♥♥♥ ton of level but thats one of the only good part