On October 18th, 2022, a game developer named Blake (discord handle Tisbury) released Backrooms: Escape Together (BET) on Steam after having his Steam page live for only 2 weeks. During that 2 weeks he gathered only 500 wishlists. The game didn’t get into Popular Upcoming. or New & Trending. The streamer coverage at launch was fairly limited:

But, despite ignoring the Steam basic strategy, Backrooms: Escape Together (BET) went on to sell more than 100,000+ copies and the developer is now sitting on over 60,000 wishlists.

How and why did this game take off? In today’s blog I want to look at how some games have found success by following internet sub-communities and sub-genres that manifest themselves on Youtube.

What is a YouTube Cultural Trend?

If you spend enough time on the internet and dive deep enough you will uncover vibrant sub sub sub communities that have distinct lore, aesthetics, and histories. Usually these sub communities bubble up on Youtube because it is a visual and easy to consume platform. Also the view counts are public on Youtube so we can see the potency of these sub-fandoms. 

The Backrooms trend is one of these deep subcommunities. If you don’t know what “Backrooms” is you are probably older than 25 (or don’t know anyone born after the year 2000). In short, kids these days are scared of fluorescent lights, drop ceilings, and CRT TVs and Backrooms is the manifestation of these fears (and also loneliness, isolation, decay, mass production, open spaces).

Backrooms is a “creepy pasta” or fan fiction all centered around getting stuck in a liminal zone where everything is fluorescent lights, yellow carpet, long hallways, and patrolled by creepy creatures who make weird sounds. It was born from a 2019 4chan thread where someone challenged the community to “post disquieting images that just feel ‘off’.” 

Someone posted a yellow room much like this one, and the lore took off viraly. To read more of the lineage of who created them and which community polarized them, check this document.

Eventually, a community-built fan-fiction wiki emerged that built up the “cannon” around The Backrooms According to the fandom, each level of “The Backrooms” has a different liminal vibe. For example Level 0.7 is a “Dark Lobby” where there is limited lighting and walls that are much taller than Level 0’s walls (Backrooms fans are very specific). 

In January 2022 a YouTuber posted a “found footage” video he created based largely on the existing Backrooms lore and the trend reached new heights.

So where did Backrooms: Escape Together come from?

In the summer of 2021, Blake and a few friends were puttering around with a multiplayer game where if you died you would be sent to a Backrooms-esque holding area (Blake said his inspiration was the Gulag mode in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2).  ideas and decided to make a Backrooms themed game. Blake’s co-developer then suggested simplifying the multiplayer game and just make it an entirely Backrooms themed co-op experience. This change was largely inspired by the success of the 2022 release Inside the Backrooms..

In August 2022, Blake restarted development from scratch on a Co-op Backrooms-only horror game. He was actually afraid he had already missed the trend (just 7 months after the youtube blowup of it). Working quickly to make sure he got it out in time, he released the game just 2 months later in October. 

He didn’t miss anything the demand for Backrooms content was still white (with a slight yellow tone) hot.

Why this game?

There are LOTS of successful backrooms games on Steam:

There are also a lot of crappy Backrooms games on Steam. Just searching the word “Backrooms” on vginsights.com, you can see over 25 of them.

These are the factors that make this game stand out:

  • It uses Unreal Engine 5. The graphics are REALLY good. The lighting and characters look photo-realistic. 
  • The game is co-op. At the time of release there were very few co-op Backrooms games. 
  • The game is well made without the typical “jank” of most asset flips. The game is sitting at a “Mostly Positive” review score.
  • Blake really monitors reviews and feedback and updates the game to make sure it is hitting the mark. He even made the game slightly easier after he saw too many people were having trouble with Level 0. 
  • Blake respected the source material. The game doesn’t try in reinvent Backrooms. He uses the common imagery that fans are familiar with and want to interact with. 
  • The game is a straight up horror game. It isn’t trying to be over designed like “oh it is a Backrooms horror game SLASH Roguelike Deckbulider SLASH Dating sim SLASH Rhythm game. Hu hu hu.” NOPE It is just the Backrooms and The Bacteria chases you, the end. 
Screenshot of Backrooms: Escape Together – Look at that UE5 lighting

But how did Blake’s game succeed without any wishlists?

Over and over I write that you NEED to get your Steam page up ASAP to start collecting as many wishlists as you can before launch. Furthermore, Valve found that games perform better after at least 6-months of collecting wishlists. 

You need at least 7,000 wishlists. You need to get on Popular Upcoming.

So is my advice wrong? Is this rapid release the new strategy? 

Here is what happened:

First, the game never appeared in Popular Upcoming then New & Trending ladder which is usually a death sentence for most games. HOWEVER, every game gets some time in the “Discovery Queue.” If a game does well (basically lots of sales) after getting featured in the Discovery Queue, the Steam algorithm shows it more. And if Sales are still good, Valve shows it even more and more and more. 

Here are the “Visits” numbers for BET during its launch week. That big yellowish green line is the Discovery Queue traffic. 

Discovery Queue accounted for 46% of Backroom’s traffic. That is how this game sold so well.

The peak discovery queue traffic that first week was 25,000-ish visits. I have studied dozens of games that got DQ featuring and I only saw two other games beat this (37,904 and 61,761 peak visits). For more information on what it takes to get into the Discovery Queue works check out this blog post and this blog post explains how the Discovery Queue works.

Here is my guess as to why Backrooms: Escape Together did so well despite not following the basic strategy:

  1. At launch the game was a very cheap $3.99. 
  2. The game is well tagged with a variety of “Horror” tags so the Discovery Queue knew to show it to Horror fans. 
  3. Horror fans are voracious and will often try out any horror game.
  4. I don’t know what percentage of Horror fans know what “The Backrooms” is but I am sure it is a lot. In the very first screenshots BET shows off the necessary shibboleths to say “yes this is backrooms” (guys in hazmat suits, empty yellow rooms, The Bacteria, flooded tile rooms).
  5. The graphics are really good and people could see this isn’t some dumb asset flip cash in.
  6. The game supports coop and it is clearly stated. Horror fans LOVE coop because they can be with their friends. It’s like going to a scary movie with your best friends.
  7. The trailer shows gameplay, the theme, the setting, the enemy within 5 seconds. It is immediately clear what this game is from the trailer.

All of these factors combined to make this game a no-brainer impulse buy. Blake did a fantastic job messaging his game on his Steam page. If you take my class over at HowToMakeASteamPage.com my core message is that you need to tell people specifically what type of game you are making within seconds. It isn’t about being coy or dazzling them with how unique your game is. Instead, you need to anchor your game into what is already familiar to Steam shoppers so they can feel like they are in good hands and you will deliver them a quality experience. If your game is too confusing, too different, you are just going to alienate the Steam audience. 

Backrooms: Escape Together is a masterclass in making a good Steam page to tell people what type of game you have. 

But should you market your game for only 2-weeks?

No.

Even though BET (and fellow horror games Lunch Lady, and Don’t Scream) managed to pull this off, I think the sales could be even higher if they had at least done Steam Next Fest, gone through Popular Upcoming and New & Trending. 

Other Youtube cultural trends

A lot of the success of BET comes from the fact that Backrooms is a popular “IP” on Youtube. But horror games aren’t the only source of adaptations from Youtube content.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the success of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions: a time tracker / idle game that you play while working on something else. Spirit City is clearly built off the youtube trend of streamers like Lofi Girl (14 million subscribers) who create subtle electronic music that is perfect to play in the background while you work. 

Looking at screenshots of Spirit City, you can see it is clearly inspired by the cozy background drawings that are in the Lofi Girl videos. 

Art of Lofi Girl:

Art of Spirit City: Lofi Sessions

Then a couple weeks ago Chill Pulse launched with ~15,000 wishlists and earned 489 reviews in 10 days. It is also a vibes-based background idler using lofi beats, and artwork of people working in cozy environments with their fuzzy pets. Screenshot of  Chill Pulse:

Youtube is a special amplifier for internet sub-cultures. It combines the visual, audio, and narrative elements in a compact and easy to share form. That is why looking at what is trending on Youtube can be a big inspiration for a successful game.

My Advice

“I think Backrooms is a thing where a lot of people just have this hole to fill where they see this universe they really like and they want to explore more. It’s kind of up to the developers to fill that with games. It’s kind of like public IP (Intellectual Property) that you can adapt. It’s kind of like Star Wars but it’s not held by one company.” – Backrooms: Escape Together creator Blake 

This quote from Blake is what really clarified this trend for me. Youtube and the various fan communities generate this public Intellectual Property (IP) that is Open Source and Public Domain. The Wizard of Oz, and Steamboat Willie is public domain and you can make a game using those properties. But instead of being 95 years old, the Youtube content is HOT right now. You don’t have to wait, you can tap into the most popular IP and you don’t have to pay for the rights. 

It is kind of genius really.

If you are savvy enough, and you go looking in the right places, you could uncover some IP with a fan base that is just begging you to adapt it into a video game. These fans want to fully explore their favorite world and they need our help to realize that goal.

That said, I don’t think chasing youtube trends is a long term way to fund a studio. However, if you are in between projects, recently had a flop, trying to get something out quickly, or working on a first game just to learn how Steam works, trying to adapt a Youtube trend could be a great kickstart.

Any time I write about a popular genre on Steam, the first question I get is “well how long will this last?” I actually think genres are slower to change than people think. Today’s top genres on Steam are city builders, strategy games, and sims. Well those genres were also the most popular ones on PC back in the 90s. PC Game genres don’t change as fast as everyone assumes.

But horror games, and cute cozy people listening to slow electronic music is a setting not a genre. Therefore I do think specific Youtube trends have a much shorter shelf-life. It is like fashion. I am confident that T-shirts are going to be popular for the next 50 years, but the colors and designs on them are going to change year to year. I am confident Idle games and Horror games will be popular for at least another decade, but the themes of those games will change. These Internet trends are the equivalent of the design on the front of a T-shirt. 

When you try to adapt a Youtube trend, you truly are trying to catch a viral phenomenon. Horror games are in a unique position to capture these trends because demands from fans are so great that they are ok  with the type of game that designers can make with shorter development times, less complex game mechanics, and can get away with less content. 

Bonus marketing lessons from Backrooms: Escape Together

Blake is very methodical and has a natural marketing brain and is full of great tips that you can use. I didn’t know where to put these tips so I just adding this addendum

  • The original price was $4.99 but Blake increased it to $6.99 6 months later. Then raised it again to $8.99 6 months after that but then realized that was too high (more on that in next bullet) and dropped it back down to $7.99.
  • Increasing the price to $8.99 brought in a bunch of negative reviews (more on that in next bullet). “I have a lot more work to do before I can earn the $8.99 price. That seems to be the limit for my title. I can kind of raise the price and I’ll get more units sold as long as I raise the price to below $8.99.”
  • The $8.99 price point brought in enough negative reviews that it dropped the game’s rating from Very Positive to Mostly Positive. Blake looked at the ratio of visits to wishlist adds and found that wishlist adds were 20% higher when his reviews were “Very Positive” vs “Mostly Positive.” (NOTE: This is just one game in one period of time. Do not over interpret this data. But it does seem to have an effect on potential buyers).
  • The BET trailer is perfect and should be the template for your Horror game. It is also the same template as Choo-Choo Charles and Lunch Lady. The formula is fade in on a first person view in-engine of the player running from something, then they look over their shoulder and see the monster of the game chasing them. THAT’S IT! Sounds simple but so few games pull it off. Then you intermix a bunch of details of the game listed out and demonstrated “Co-op,” “find X”, “AI” “Procedural Gen” and pictures of the map. 
  •  Lunch Lady is another successful horror game (not associated with Backrooms lore) and had a very similar launch tactic. 2 Weeks Steam page live (the minimum Valve allows) and launching with minimal wishlists then letting the algorithm sweep you away. CZ NOTE: Don’t try this at home kids unless you are making a horror game and you are sure it will go viral. This is a very risky technique and I don’t recommend it. But it has worked for the horror game Don’t Scream.
  • If you feel you missed the Backrooms trend, look up SCP. There are hundreds of sub stories there and I am surprised many of these have not been adapted into a game. For a quick summary of what SCP is, check out this explainer video.
  • Horror games are HOT. Fans can’t get enough of them. Seriously, if you are thinking of giving up on indie game development after a few releases with weaker sales, take a couple of months and make a horror game. Read my post on why every indie should make a horror game at least once.
  • Blake doesn’t have hard data but suspects that Backrooms fans are under 25 and mostly are in the middle school to high school age range. 
  • BECAUSE of that age range he said he had to make his game slightly easier. His theory is that middle school gamers aren’t as experienced and bounce off harder games. He said he made some of the puzzles less complex and the audience has responded positively. 
  • Despite the younger audience, Backrooms content does better on Youtube than TikTok. “Backrooms focuses so much on suspense, slow build ups, exploration and eerie desolation. You can’t really make an engaging 10 second TikTok video that jams this all in without completely losing the vibe of the backrooms.” – Blake 
  • Backroom fans are omnivorous. Blake told me fans come onto his discord saying “I’ve played them all. I played every single backrooms game or something like that on Steam.” Fans don’t say “OH ANOTHER BACKROOMS YUCK.” They love them.
  • One downside of Unreal 5 is that it requires a beefier machine to run the game and that deters a big portion of the audience.
  • BET’s refund rate is a fairly high at 16.1% and it was even higher 25.4% during the original release window. My theory is that it is the Unreal Engine 5 hardware demands, cheap price, the fact that it is co-op (people taking a sample to see if they should introduce the game to their friend group), Blake admits that the first level is too hard (29% don’t finish it), and the Backrooms fans giving it a shot to see if the game delivers on what they want out of a Backrooms game. I don’t think this is a bad thing in this case. But it might be worth trying a demo to see if that could change things. 
  • Blake attributes a lot of the game’s success to the early adoption of Unreal Engine 5. The visuals really popped just in screenshots.