Escape the Backrooms quietly added to Xbox Game Pass

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Published Jun 1, 2026, 3:57 PM EDT

Before friendslop, there was Escape the Backrooms

An Escape the Backrooms player escaping a monster

Escape the Backrooms quietly landed on Xbox Game Pass this weekend, coinciding with developer Fancy Games finally launching the hit horror game on console — and with the release of A24's buzzy new film. The launch comes roughly four years after Escape the Backrooms entered early access on Steam and almost immediately garnered a devoted audience. And for good reason.

It was friendslop before the internet coined the word, a bit like Phasmophobia in spirit, but less passive and with more jumpscares. The idea is this: You and your friends need to, well, escape the back rooms before the creatures, called "entities," that live there kill you. There's a bunch of stuff to find as you make your way through the rooms' various levels, and you'll need to manage your sanity and other vitals while avoiding the entities. It's billed as a multiplayer co-op game (and it's quite fun as one), though you can play the whole thing solo, too.

What even is the Backrooms anyway?

Inside the internet’s strangest horror ecosystem

"Back room" sounds pretty tame, but you're not shuffling around in some dusty filing room. The back rooms of Backrooms are weird, mazelike spaces — a mix of office cubicles, daycare cafeterias, sewers, ritzy hotel lounges, underground rooms stuffed with fuse boxes, and a range of other bizarre, unrelated locations. You can write a lot of games that launched in the wake of Phasmophobia off as streamer bait (games designed to provoke dramatic reactions for a streamer's audience), but Escape the Backrooms had rather a lot more substance than its peers, even if it did grow repetitive over time.

Escape the Backrooms was in early access for a little more than three years before launching in its 1.0 state in October 2025. Fancy Games celebrated the milestone with a major update with new endings and entities, addressing some of the more pervasive critiques about how same-y the game gets over time. The game's console launch marks the last major milestone Fancy Games planned, though you can still expect smaller updates and fixes over time.

Four questions, one right answer.

Movie still

Which movie is this?

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