The Rise And Fall Of The Backrooms

The concept of The Backrooms has been hugely popular since it was first posted a few years ago. Despite the idea seeming to stagnate, people are still creating mountains of Backrooms content to this day. Most of it is very, very bad. Let's take a look.
Chapters
00:00 Everything Backrooms
01:07 Origins Of The Backrooms
01:48 Liminal Spaces
02:21 The First Games
03:52 Steam Games
05:54 Itch Games
08:43 Takeaways
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[@GoodmansGhost]

"Lost in the bathrooms" and "Toiletrooms" is by the same guy. Toiletrooms being a short prototype and LitBR being the expanded, much bigger game.

[@EphiTV]

Ah, didn't know that. Well, more credit to him for sticking with the concept.

[@rowyerboat1]

Football manager 2022 is by far the best backrooms adaptation

[@zwipy123]

Scared the shit out of me.

[@turingsghost]

This sort of thing seems to occur to every horror concept made within the past decade. Ever since Slenderman, every bit of viral horror content just gets Lowest Common Denominator'd into the earth. I think it might stem from the way the internet likes to anonymize things; the person who "made" the concept tends to get reduced to a hazy, indeterminate thing, and with that, a lot of people see that as an opportunity to expand upon the original, since the concept has expanded beyond the creative control of its author. With that, everyone wants to make their take the best one, and in the process the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks into overtime, until it's been tryharded so much that it loses all value as horror and the children's KZbin channels detect it as Trending Topic Number 419458. It's especially viscous with 4chan stuff, where the creator is _already_ anonymous as default.

[@jashinsdisciple8512]

I also feel like it originating in 4chan is part of its downfall, since the term "4chan" is a trigger word that people immediately associate with "creepiness" for some reason

[@MisterBones2910]

@@jashinsdisciple8512 4chan has had all sorts of illegal, mysterious, and just plain weird shit posted on it since its creation 20 (yes, 20) years ago. The SCP wiki initially sprouted from posters on /x/, the "paranormal" board, along with countless other great super-simple premises (the original skip- 173- was just a creepy statue with a couple short paragraphs) that got their own much shorter-lived popularity. "Creepypasta" as a concept more or less comes from there and SomethingAwful, and even the anonymous nature of the boards and the sort of gestalt hivemind it had in previous years lends an air of subtle weirdness to it.

[@jashinsdisciple8512]

@@MisterBones2910 yea, but there are people who believe that quote on quote "all negative evil things come from 4chan and the deep web* yes there is weird and heinous shit on there, but you don't have to be a Hollywood hacker to get on there

[@DefineBeings]

People messed up the Backrooms by continuesly adding more lore, more levels, and SAFE entities wich don't harm you. The Backrooms are supposed to be mysterious. Because of the lack of horror, the Backrooms almost completely died, but then Kane Pixels revived it. My point is that I am extremely disappointed in the Backrooms. I remember those old days, when the Backrooms were actually scary in 2019. Good old days.

[@Periwinkleaccount]

I also really like the way Kane pixels made levels where instead of being some kind of thing you warp to, it’s just that it transitions into different types of architecture and general areas.

[@pythonprogrammer6773]

Everything needs to be "revived". Should have stayed as a 4chan post. Cool idea but years later... it's time to bury the rotting corpse

[@OnehandedGamer-gv3eu]

Don't forget the various communities just living there.

[@PenguinEconomics-st2ws]

I honestly blame kids who found it and didn't really understand the existential horror. Frankly I think the original 4chan post went too far and shouldn't have even hinted at another entity being there. Being trapped in a same-y looking place alone is terrifying and taps into a primal human fear, claustrophobia.

[@therealyojames]

You forgot about "The complex: found footage", its a great example of imo the right way to do a backrooms game

[@EphiTV]

Didn't check that one out. Visuals look nice. Most of the scenes look like recreations of popular liminal photos? There were just so many games it was tough to sift through and pick out a few worth showing.

[@therealyojames]

@@EphiTV the entire game focuses on basically in my opinion the most interesting part about the backrooms, the fear of your own mind. The game has no major "monsters" however throughout the game are subtle "shadows" peeking around corners at you and other similar things to kind of spook your mind into that state of "there is something that could be lurking around every corner" and that ends up in your mind starting to actually look for and invent things that arent there. Mark and Jack both played it so if you’re interested I would recommend checking out one of their playthroughs

[@therealyojames]

There is also a pretty good progression of the different types of backrooms so you never get bored of the same exact surroundings

[@cowboy-e-girl]

why did they call it "toiletrooms" when "bathrooms" is right fucking there

[@anotheryoutubeaccount5259]

Same dev

[@DoubleDeadSkull]

crazy that microsoft made the backrooms way before us jokes a side fantastic video, love your stuff

[@amythistfire5042]

0:27 Users can choose any tag to apply to any game. Publishers can ban tags that don't apply, but I bet it wasn't applied as a tag often enough to come to the attention of the publisher.

[@EphiTV]

Yeah I assume it's from user tags, but I don't think it'd show up in search with only a few random tags. Must be a decent amount. More of a question of why multiple people would do that.

[@eeeeeeeeeeeee1]

Football Manager 2022™ is my favourite Backrooms game

[@ZachariahJ]

The whole SCP/Liminal/Backrooms fad has gone a bit over the top, but that's what happens on the internet - perfectly normal phenomenon. But the dev who made 'Escape the backrooms' - Fancy - does the funniest dev blogs I've ever seen. They are genuinely hilarious KZbin content, and I'm happy to subscribe to his channel - - he has a great sense of humour.

[@GrandHighGamer]

This video is so scary, I'm glad offices aren't real.

[@Andriej69]

The answer to all ruined internet creations is always the same: Reddit

[@yanbi2345]

this is really good quality keep up the great work

[@bruh_mercs1836]

Your channel should be much larger for the effort of these videos 💪🏼

[@tnt-boom]

Roblox picked up the Backrooms, in Roblox studio looking up Backrooms pulls up thousands of results. And there are Thousands of Roblox games on them.

[@MahDryBread]

I haven't thought about that screensaver in so long

[@EphiTV]

I think I went with the multicolored pipes one back then. Maze always felt weird.

[@sleepylionking1103]

Literally my only issue is that too much shit was added and Backrooms started to make sense… and I don’t like they. I just want it to be mysterious bc it’s a goddamn other reality you cannot explain nor escape

[@kappafontaine4629]

In my opinion anything before pixel canes backroom series is somewhat salvageable because pixel was really the whole reason why the back rooms got blown up into the mainstream media I can deal with the idea of memory worms the Beast of level 5 hounds the facelings all of that I love that but anything aside from that just it just sucks now if these were from different versions of the back rooms or isolated instances that's fine but the fact that they're redoing the entire back rooms again I hate it Quick edit this is in no way s******* on Cain he's an amazing visual effects artist it's just when his back room series hit mainstream that's when a lot of the normies got into the back rooms too and started fucking with things

[@lioedevon4275]

Just discovered your channel and man your vids are a nice shot in the arm of inspiration!

[@EphiTV]

Much appreciated!

[@ai_art_director]

i really liked escape the backrooms game, i also played inside the backrooms with friends but it was pretty hard and after we died we moved to zomboid so idk if we play again it

[@NikoKuehne]

theres a reason levels 0-8 are the only canon levels. otherwise the backrooms would be a typical creepypasta if this was true

[@steveheist6426]

...if you wanted to just completely riff on the concept, Backrooms seems perfect for a first-person PacMan clone xD

[@SyPhase]

Try the Complexe Found Footage

[@hellocommaspacebitch]

Steam loves to recommend me football manager all the time too

[@ricks5756]

I think ToiletRooms was inspired by Level 189 in a way ^-^

[@samcresswell518]

The backrooms wiki is also terrible, the whole things just feels like a ripoff of the SCP wiki, except without the quality of writing or genuinely interesting ideas. The backrooms works better when its this infinite, unknowable space. It doesn't work when there's hundreds of extremely well described levels, all the monsters have a badly written description that kills any mystery and there's even supposed to be organisations and communities in it. Monsters should be few and far between. People lost in it should be even rarer, you could spend years wandering it and never find anyone else alive.

[@Baackus]

That resident evil soundtrack hit hard

[@memawscheesetiddies]

0:22 I had this video playing in the background while playing FM22 this felt like a glitch in the matrix

[@masterzoroark6664]

OK, the Backroom 1997 is actually a good game that understands the assignment. Yeah- sucks that the demo is named like shit, but this is the only interesting Backrooms game that isn't "The wiki pleaser". Long story short- it takes the idea and turns it more into a Silent Hill deal, personal hell where your guilt looks for you

[@Z_Z.t]

Im actually wondering, why there is no backrooms, that goes wild(like generates its assets, and changes layout) in procedural generation, and no backrooms that changes its layout, when player doesnt look at it (like that grass maze in Harry Potter). If you want make world feel hostile, let it change itself, so no maps may help you.

[@EphiTV]

I think there are some that use procedural generation but it doesn't amount to much when every room looks almost the same.

[@Z_Z.t]

@@EphiTV I think immersive survival parkour would be cool, you taking some risk in order to investigate new places just to survive (and find someone?). Like a prison without walls (Ah yes, Matrix reference). I think most (but not all) people lost their heads, after they saw cool atmospheric place, they tried to create games without much tought about how they gonna use it in the 1st place.

[@EphiTV]

Infra is sort of similar. Not horror, but it has those urbex themes.

[@neku_senpaii]

whats the music you used in the "takeaways" part of your video?

[@EphiTV]

That's the save room music from Resident Evil 1.

[@neku_senpaii]

@@EphiTV thank you!

[@dar4061]

God I'm old now.. When people start talking about things that just happened like 3 years ago as the "good aul days" things are far too accelerated these days, the back rooms have barely existed can we wait until it has its life before we start reminiscing about 3 years ago.

[@ryuku2]

Second video in a row, comment for interaction Gonna like

[@DogsaladSalad]

what's the music at the end?

[@EphiTV]

"Safe Haven" from Resident Evil 1

[@Grandmaster-Kush]

For me only enter the backrooms is a somewhat decent game

[@Hurricanelive]

This is what the backrooms is... just endless maze of terrible yellow wallpaper covered walls, the buzz of terrible basement fluorescent lighting, and the squish squish of damp terrible shag carpet and the slow slow descent into insanity. IMO it's much more like the shining if the shining didn't sort of outright shout this is all supernatural and more... it's just in your head and everyone remembers it slightly differently.

[@SuperPerry1000]

TBH the Backrooms fell to the same problems as the SCP stuff did. When it's open season, Sturgeon's Law applies immediately. And all that existential horror is replaced by a bunch of teenagers who only know horror from Paranormal Activity and Slenderman trying to one-up each other in terms of "eldritch beings" that scream at you and make you suffer FOREVUR. The More Jumpscares, The Better, right?! It's sad 'cause the Backrooms does actually have some interesting lore behind it, from what I've combed from the wiki. You have some really interesting ideas beyond the first five levels all these games feature, like one that's essentially a giant, infinite kids play area with a food court somewhere inside. Giant forests, a space station, the void between levels, endless oceans. There's even Levels that are 100% habitable and monster -free, and conversely levels that do not exist in the terms of mortal perception. A AAA-tier, high-budget horror game with as many of those more interesting levels as possible, would be a fantastic time in terms of aesthetic alone. But no. We'll just trudge through the same goddamn yellow rooms, again. Someone bring me some Almond Water.

[@anpan7880]

I like your videos

[@TheGrinningViking]

I'm a miserable bastard who hates the world - anyways, with that context in place, good video man. Keep it up. I don't say that often 👍🏼

[@perhapsjames_]

r/okbuddychicanery moment

[@EphiTV]

I've actually only seen a bit of Breaking Bad but I do enjoy how pervasive the memes have become.

[@mn3studios931]

Kane pixels backrooms on top

[@Luggee.]

hamburger

[@jamawama297]

Gate keeping is a good thing

[@flarfo348]

not really, the real issue is low quality things being promoted (like by the algorithm)

[@GoodmansGhost]

@@flarfo348 Promotion happens by itself when using popular subjects. Which is exactly why there are so many backrooms games. And the same reason why there were so many Slenderman games and for a short while a ton of Sirenhead games.

[@pandapruitt2542]

Kind of feels like you purposefully skipped the few actual good backrooms games :/

[@EphiTV]

I've played so many bad ones I don't even know which ones are good. Some of the "good" ones I've had recommended ended up being the same anyways. That said I've never played the few co-op ones out there.

[@pandapruitt2542]

@@EphiTV I get that I guess. I definitely feel the same way when it comes to new anime haha so I can't blame you

[@LONE_WOLF515]

🥱

[@I_V_X]

Why do you wiggle around when speaking?

[@lordbarron3352]

I'm loving your smug aura. Smirkmaxxing, totally smugpilled.

[@EphiTV]

lol