Escape The Backrooms: Complete Co-op Starter Guide

Escape The Backrooms turns a viral creepypasta legend into a cooperative nightmare from Fancy Games and Blackbird Interactive. Released in Early Access in August 2022, the game reached its 1.0 version on October 23, 2025, with more than thirty playable levels. The premise remains relentless: you and up to three friends have fallen out of the "white noise" of reality, trapped in an infinite maze of yellowed hallways, ghostly pools, and murderous party rooms. This starter guide gives you all the keys to survive your first hours and progress as a squad without losing your mind.

Setting up a coop session that holds together

Escape The Backrooms is played by one to four wanderers in online co-op. A level's exit only triggers if all members still alive reach the extraction zone: a player left behind dooms the team to start over. So plan on an external voice channel (Discord, TeamSpeak) to complement the built-in proximity chat, which is particularly useful but lets the entities hear your voices when they get close.

• Create a game: from the main menu, choose Host, set visibility to Friends Only or Public, then invite via Steam.
• Choose the difficulty: Casual to discover the game, Normal for the calibrated experience, Hard and Nightmare for true nightmare initiates.
• Never head out without a reconnection option: if the host drops, the game stops. Prefer the player with the best connection as host.
• Check your mic before starting: the game uses sound recognition and some teammates need to hear your cues.

Tip: right away, name a "lamp carrier," an "Almond Water carrier," and a "scout." Splitting roles this way avoids wasting consumables and smooths out escapes.

Controls, interface, and game pacing

Escape The Backrooms is played in first person, with keyboard-mouse or controller. The interface is deliberately minimalist, in keeping with the "found footage" spirit that defines the franchise. Remember these basics before joining your first game:

• WASD: movement. Shift: sprint (uses up breath). Ctrl: crouch, essential against the Wretch.
• E: interact (pick up an item, activate a lever, open a door).
• Right-click: turn the flashlight on/off. Scroll wheel: cycle through inventory.
• F: give an item to a targeted teammate, a core mechanic for sharing Almond Water and First Aid.
• V: push-to-talk proximity chat (depending on settings).

The interface is limited to a discreet stamina bar at the bottom center, a circular health gauge when injured, and an equipped items counter. No mini-map, no radar: your eyes and your memory are your only guides.

Sanity, oxygen, health: understanding the vital gauges

The real antagonist in Escape The Backrooms isn't always the entity chasing you: it's your own body giving out. Three silent gauges dictate your survival.

• Health: damage dealt by entities, falls, or certain environmental traps. A First Aid kit restores a significant portion.
• Sanity: rises with prolonged darkness, insane visions, and proximity to entities. Total insanity leads to hallucinations, visual distortions, and gradual death.
• Oxygen: key to submerged levels (Poolrooms, Level 7 Thalassophobia). Recharges at the surface, depletes while holding your breath.

Stamina is used for sprinting and regenerates while walking. It's not crucial on the early levels but becomes vital as soon as you flee a Bacteria or a Skin-Stealer.

The items you should never leave on the ground

Loot is scarce and inventory is limited. Always prioritize these consumables: they make the difference between a successful run and a collective game over.

Level 0 "The Lobby", the canonical starting point of the escape. Credit: Fancy Games

• Almond Water: the symbolic drink of the Backrooms. Restores sanity and a bit of health, absolutely essential from Level 6 (Lights Out) and Level Fun onward.
• First Aid Kit: heals a large portion of health. Save it for serious injuries or to revive a fallen ally.
• Flashlight: the torch. Consumes batteries, essential from Level 1 (Habitable Zone) onward. Without it, the Smilers will devour you.
• Face Mask: filters out the Bacteria's spores in Level 0.11 and contaminated zones. Without a mask, coughing gives you away and attracts entities.
• Bug Spray: an improvised weapon against swarms of Deathmoths in the caves and Terror Hotel.
• Firework: a projectile that eliminates a Party Host in Level Fun+.

Inventory tip: always keep at least one unopened Almond Water. Some levels chain sanity damage, and a single sip can save you from a deadly hallucination.

Overview of the levels: from Level 0 to Level 94

Version 1.0 features twenty-seven main levels and a handful of secret levels unlocked through alternate exits, for a total exceeding thirty. Here are the major stages your team will go through.

• Level 0 « The Lobby »: the iconic yellow hallway. An endless maze of damp carpet and buzzing neon. The Bacteria hunts by sound here.
• Level 1 « Habitable Zone »: a huge dark underground parking lot. First encounter with the Smilers and Skin-Stealers.
• Level 2 « Pipe Dream »: pipeline tunnels, suffocating heat. Objective: don't get lost in the branching paths.
• Level 3 « Electrical Station »: a labyrinthine power plant. The Hound appears here and hunts by sound.
• Level 4 « Abandoned Office »: empty offices and windows to absolutely avoid (the Windows kill anyone who looks at them).
• Level 5 « Terror Hotel »: a decrepit hotel, room by room. A mix of Skin-Stealers, Hounds and Deathmoths.
• Level 6 « Lights Out »: pitch-black corridors. The Wretch's domain, which scans you by sound.
• Level 7 « Thalassophobia »: a black ocean dotted with wooden houses. The Thing emerges from the fog.
• Level 37 « Poolrooms »: the famous maze of tiled pools, between serenity and dread.
• Level 52 and Level Fun =): the nightmarish birthday party. The Partygoers are the most cunning entities in the game.
• Level 94 « Motion Sickness »: a cel-shaded world with a cartoon aesthetic. Watch out for The Animated King.
• Level 188, Level 3999, Level 974, The End: the final and secret levels, reserved for seasoned teams.

Level 37 « Poolrooms », one of the game's most atmospheric must-see passages. Credit: Fancy Games

Bestiary: recognizing and surviving the entities

The developers have never translated the entity names: keep them in English, they're used as-is by the French-speaking community too. Here are the most frequent encounters and how to respond to them.

• The Bacteria (Howler): a skeletal wireframe silhouette. Hunts by sound in Level 0. Walk crouched and turn off your flashlight as soon as it screams.
• Smiler: white eyes and a wide smile in the dark. Stay in the light, they can't enter lit areas.
• Skin-Stealer: a bloodied humanoid that mimics voices. Trust behavior, never appearance. An ally repeating the same phrase on a loop? Run.
• Hound: a quadruped with long dark fur, hunts by sound. Walk, break line of sight, and stop its charges around a corner.
• Partygoer: a smiling yellow humanoid capable of setting traps. Never get stuck in a closed room, always keep two exits in sight.
• Deathmoth: swarms of carnivorous moths. Bug Spray or slow movement, without your flashlight pointed at them.
• Wretch: a blind entity with LiDAR detection. Crouched, it completely loses track of you.
• The Animated King (Level 94): a cel-shaded king who attacks the moment you look away. Stare at it and back away.
• Windows (Level 4 and 188): an entity that strikes anyone who looks at it through a window. Paint over or cover the windows, or look away.
• The Clump: an organic mass found in the Hotel Chase and the Dark Poolrooms. Dive underwater to lose it.

Golden rule: on almost every entity, panic kills faster than the creature itself. Cut the sprint, breathe, communicate in a low voice. A player who runs blindly always ends up dragging the team into the trap.

The deadliest traps to anticipate

Some levels concentrate particularly vicious mechanics. Prepare yourself mentally before entering them.

• Level Fun =): the Partygoers imitate the voices of missing players to lure you into the balloon rooms. Never respond to an unverified call.
• Level 94: losing sight of the king means instant death. Coordinate the watch in rotating pairs.
• Level 7: only leave the boat in the immediate vicinity of a building. The rising fog signals the arrival of The Thing.
• Level 6 Lights Out: the slightest light attracts the Smilers. Only use light when you need to read an inscription or open a mechanism.
• Level 188: Aranea Membri charges in a straight line; take refuge in a corner room rather than a long corridor.

Advanced tips for a team that survives

Beyond individual mechanics, collective survival relies on a few habits that French-speaking speedrunners repeat over and over on dedicated Discord servers.

• Always travel in at least pairs: a lone player doesn't survive against most entities.
• Mark exits already explored: memory fades fast, say "already done" out loud at every intersection.
• Spread the healing load: two First Aid items on a single player is a disaster if they go down first.
• Save the Almond Water for Level Fun: sanity drops there at a fearsome rate.
• Prepare a clear escape command ("Regroup, north door"): losing three seconds explaining is dying.

To go further

The French-speaking Escape The Backrooms community is particularly active: Steam guides published by speedrunners, fandom wikis, and Twitch playthroughs provide annotated maps for the trickiest levels. The official subreddit r/EscapeTheBackrooms centralizes Fancy Games' patch notes, while the developer's official channel was already teasing two new levels for the summer 2026 patch. Plan for thirty to forty hours to clear all the rooms in co-op, more if you're aiming for the secret endings and 100% achievements. Good luck falling, wanderer: the exit is never as close as you think.