Romance the Backrooms

(I haven't given this a star rating since since currently only the demo is available)

There are a lot of ways the contemporary video game scene is different from what it was when I was growing up, many of which are good and many of which are bad, since the transition from playground-for-insular-but-sincere-weirdos to gigabuck-suffused-juggernaut-targeting-every-imaginable-demographic doesn’t lend itself to a simple good vs. evil dichotomy (though I will note in passing that the clear balance point of awesome between these questionable extremes was 1998, a year that was clearly Peak Videogames; yes, I was 17 that year but leave that aside, I am 100% right). Despite the profound ambivalence I typically feel when comparing then with now, though, one thing that still evokes uncomplicated nostalgia for me is the demo. Demos were the 1990s version of Early Access – developers trying to build buzz for their games by releasing a limited slice ahead of the full release – except you didn’t need to pay for the privilege and the games would eventually come out. Some were good, and admittedly some were quite bad – a particularly dire Hellboy demo that involved spinning around endlessly in a deep-brown graveyard looking for a way out was a lowlight – but regardless playing a demo was an exercise in abiding in hope: this was just a little bit of game, it’s still being worked on, and besides, it’s free, how great is that?

There are a lot of reasons the demo has gone by the wayside in the larger video game culture, and understandably they’ve never been big in IF, province of short, free games that typically don’t use teasers to sell themselves. Romance the Backroom isn’t a typical piece of IF, though – though using Twine, it’s styled as a visual novel, with copious character and background art, music, and (eventually – it’s not in this release) voice acting. It’s also got a long playtime, judging from the fact that the piece that’s currently available is billed as only the first act. So a demo to give players a low-commitment way of trying things out actually makes sense.

The balancing act a demo must undertake is to provide a satisfying, self-contained experience that lets the player experience what’s good about a game, while making clear that there’s a lot more to come in the full game. On this front I think the present demo is a success. The setup here is that the main character, Carla, falls through the cracks in the world into the “backrooms” that undergird the multiverse, literally tripping on her way out of the day-care where she works and finding herself far from home. It’s an abrupt, unexplained shift, but the details ground it:

"…instead of my hands hitting the cold hard gravel of the parking lot, they hit a wet, carpeted surface, splashing on top of it with a loud smoosh."

That is just viscerally unpleasant! The backrooms themselves are an interestingly empty setting; at first they’re just a maze of yellow-wallpapered hallways (the protagonist made a Charlotte Perkins Gilman reference just after I did), but you soon run across a bizarre fellow named Kilcal – he’s got a clock for an eye and is clear that he’s not a human – and his compadres, four other warm-hearted grotesques (my favorite is a guy with eyeballs in his hair named Glarence, I mean come on) who promise to keep an eye on you and help you get home. But it doesn’t take long for you to be separated from them and kidnapped by a creepy group of “mimics”, who take you back to their king, who menaces you for a bit before Kilcal and company show up to rescue you, starting your world-hopping adventure in earnest just in time for the “coming soon…” banner to pop up.

It’s a lot of backstory, worldbuilding, and characters to establish, but the game lays out its premise effectively; there isn’t enough time to feel like I really got a handle on the main supporting cast, who I assume will carry the “romance” part of the title (this part of the gameplay isn’t really evident yet in the demo), and Carla is a bit of a generic protagonist, but things are archetypal enough that I never felt overwhelmed, and the writing is specific enough that I never felt like I was just experiencing a naked trope-fest; this is especially the case with the villains, who are legit creepy. The prose is straightforward, but each of the characters does have an individual voice, which is no mean feat. And the setup seems sturdy enough that I can imagine a lot of adventures, and interpersonal drama, to come.

On the more questionable side, the visuals lean a little far to the grotesque for my taste, and I ran into an odd bug where the top 20% of the images started getting cut off after a bit. But I tend to find it pretty easy to ignore pictures in my IF. Similarly, the frequency and impact of choices seems relatively light so far, with the few on offer primarily giving you the opportunity to resist or give in to the obviously-bad king’s blandishments. But I was certainly feeling engaged regardless, and I assume that as the game progresses, the gameplay will open up a bit too. For that matter, future development might shift the art style into something I enjoy more – again, that’s the beauty of the magical thinking prompted by a demo! But in this case I feel confident expecting that the solid parts of what I’ve played so far would translate over into the full game, and even if the weaker pieces remain as they are, they’re still not sufficient to drag down what’s shaping up to be the weirdest Saturday morning cartoon that never was.

Played: 7/24/24
Playtime: 30min

This is an opening chapter demo of a more ambitious project that includes music, voice, graphics and gameplay. Its title/logo was the first clue that I HAD to play it. The logo is insanely well conceived and executed, and an immediate draw to the work. The graphics in the game itself, on the other hand, take some adjustment. They are noticeably cruder than the game’s logo. They are rendered in primitive powerpoint style, with lots of overt geometric shapes, bright, limited palette colors and almost crude artistic short hands. The opening scene, in a ‘real world’ day care center was a bit jarring and off-putting. By the time we transition to the strange ‘Backrooms’ though, I found the art to be an increasingly mood-setting asset. I attribute this to NPC character design. While arguably as crudely rendered, NPC images rely on more fluid, freehandy shapes. They are also wildly imaginative, making for some evocative illustrations that hit far above their tooling limitations. The protagonist too is chockablock with low-res details (like the duck pattern on her jacket!) that combine to multiply- rather than sum-of-their-parts.

It helps a lot that the Backrooms are intended to be offputting and weird. My first impulse was ‘I’m in the Black Lodge!’ (from Twin Peaks), which, if there is a quicker way to get me on a game’s side I’m hard pressed to identify it. That knee-jerk is not totally without merit, as the titular ‘Backrooms’ are explicitly sourced from a memetic construct around weird liminal spaces featured in fan chats and copypasta. This take on the meme was engaging. Physics and logic are second thoughts that may or may not apply, moment by moment. I was as much put in the mind of Wizard of Oz as Twin Peaks in the unnaturally comfortable introduction and engagement of the deeply weird. You are introduced to a coterie of allies, then set about trying to return to earth. Complications (and villains) ensue.

Gameplay is pretty limited. There are a few moments of choice, but it is unclear how much this impacts the broad strokes of the story. Mostly you are clicking links that turn ‘pages’ (or advance powerpoint slides?). The focus of this demo chapter is orienting the player on the strange world they will be exploring. Or more like DISorienting, amirite? Thankfully, the narrative is propulsive and off-kilter enough that it speeds forward past some limited (so far) NPC characterizations and occasionally unconvincing dialogue. In particular, the protagonist adjusts to her new situation questionably fast, though frankly this choice helps the story’s mood and forward momentum more than it hurts. I found it to be an engaging read of constant surprise whose shortcomings are blink-and-you-miss-them. (And may be mitigated in a longer narrative anyway.)

All that said, there is one aspect that felt neglected. The game describes itself as an otome, which the internet dutifully informed me is a female-centric romance game, often characterized by choice-based romantic/emotional gameplay. The fact that I needed this explained might make me not the best critic here. Notwithstanding my genre ignorance, the romance aspect of the game was completely missing in this opening chapter. Now, given the plot events careening through this demo devoted to establishing the weird, weird setting, I agree there wasn’t really time for that. It ALSO means though that the demo doesn’t really give a taste of gameplay presumed to follow. Is this going to discourage fans of otome? Dunno, can’t speak to that, but feels like a missed opportunity in a demo.

All in all, the graphical and setting charms of this work far exceed any other quibbles. Apparently, there is voice acting and of course subsequent chapters to follow. Unindoctrinated to the draw of otome as I am, cannot say for sure that it will ultimately be for me or not, but ‘Find Love in the Black Lodge’ is a sly way to get me to try!