Backroom : First Signal

Co-op horror on PC

Backroom : First Signal is a first-person co-op horror game for two to six players, with solo play also available. You search the Backrooms, a maze of damp carpet, stained yellow wallpaper and buzzing fluorescent lights, looking for a way out. Proximity voice chat carries voices through the halls, echoes in large rooms and muffles them behind hazmat masks.

Each run rebuilds part of the maze, including its rooms, supplies and what waits inside. You mark walls with strips of tape, check camera feeds on CRT screens and scavenge for items. The cameras don’t show everything. At the maze’s end, a door has a card reader, but only one of the shuffled keycards opens it, and it looks like the expired ones.