Inside the Backrooms is a terrifying horror inspired by the viral sensation that is the backrooms. This game will have you evading entities, solving puzzles, and hiding and running and screaming. The game is surprisingly complex, with fantastic puzzles and genuinely horrific monsters. Here is how to escape the backrooms in Inside the Backrooms. There is no saving once you’re in until you hit the second half of the game, so it’s best to leave at least an hour to get there.
How to Beat the Backrooms in Inside the Backrooms
Once you wake in the backrooms, you’ll enter the lobby. This is a safe space where the objective is to find a wall with a ladder leading up to a hole. Just follow the arrows to get there. Once you crawl through, you’ll pop out the other end, where there will be almond water, anxiety pills, and a radio. Take as much as you can. Also open the drawers to get familiarized with two of the entities that you will be meeting going forward.
Go through the only door in the room.
You will now be amidst the first puzzle – the elevator puzzle. The four columns on the right will be labelled 1 – 4, to symbolize what order to press the numbers opposite them. The columns of the left will be the numbers you insert into the elevator panel. Find the order of the numbers and punch them in that order into the elevator panel. The doors will close if you have entered the correct sequence.
The doors will open and you will find yourself into the proper backrooms. From here on, there will be entities.
This game randomizes some drops and puzzle pieces, so all this guide can do is tell you how to solve each puzzle, not where to find each piece. All codes and combinations are also randomized.
Firstly, you are going to want to travel through the middle passageway of the three potential passageways and keep walking through to an alcove where flashlights can be located. These are significant, so find them first. In the top of that drawer will be the file on the third entity for this section.
The next puzzles are scattered throughout the backrooms, all needing to be complete. Here is an index of all puzzles with solutions in the order you should complete them.
All puzzles in the backrooms
Bear in mind some items vital to solving puzzles may be the reward for completing other puzzles, or may simply be dotted around the backrooms.
The TV
You will come across a TV atop a drawer in a secluded room. This TV allows you to play a VHS tape. You can find the VHS tape in a drawer or in a locker – so look around for it. You must press ‘E’ to interact with the VHS player atop the TV and slide the VHS from your inventory into the player. Then the video will start. This is vital to complete the 9 dead bodies puzzle, so take a picture of each of the three patients and what is missing from them, so you don’t have to play the message again.
The 9 dead bodies
You will come across a display of 9 dead bodies, as featured on the VHS tape. Before starting this puzzle, you need all three missing body parts from the patients displayed on the VHS tape. You can find the body parts scattered around the backrooms, in drawers, lockers, or on the floor. You may also find extra body parts. You can ignore them.
You must place the body parts with the corresponding patients. Interact with the tins above the bodies to find out who the patients are, and drag their body part from your inventory to drop it into the tin. Do this for all three patients, and a ‘mirror will break’. This relates to the strange wall next to the TV room, the wall that looks as though a giant, low-render backrooms is beyond it. The wall is now gone and reveals a new passage, which contains the switches puzzle.
In that room also is a locked locker. The code requires you to press the correct combination on the pad of nine buttons. The blood on the corpses spell out which buttons to press on the pad. The locker hides a vital item for your run.
The light projector and silhouette
You will come across a projector that shines light onto a floating metal object. Interact with the object to be able to move it. Your aim is to rotate the object until the shadow on the wall resembles a horse. Once that happens, a door will morph into existence. You can walk through it into the clock puzzle.
The clock
The clock requires you to have the clock arms, which can be found in a drawer or in a locker in the backrooms. Once you have it, you can interact with the clock and slide the clock arms from your inventory to the clock. Rotate your view to see behind the clock, where there will be two keys. You can turn them to turn the arms.
To solve the puzzle, you must find a note with the time you need the clock to tell. This note can be found on the drawer opposite the Red Door. Find the time and then make the clock show that time. This will open up a compartment behind the clock with the code to the number-lock safe.
The number-lock safe
The number-lock safe requires the code behind the clock. Once unlocked, it will contain an item vital for your run.
The vases
You may come across a room full of vases. The hammer is needed for this puzzle. You must interact with each vase and slide the hammer from your inventory over the vase to smash it. The vase’s broken parts will despawn momentarily. One of the vases will contain the Red Key, which is needed to unlock the Red Door.
The Red Door and the paintings
Once you have the red key, you can open the Red Door. This will lead to a room full of paintings. These paintings will have a letter hidden on each of them. Using the reflection of the lights, you can unveil each one.
With all five letters, you can unlock the letter-lock safe at the end of that room. This will contain four fuses and moth jelly. The fuses are vital for much later in the run, but it is better to find them now so you don’t have to go all the way back.
The switches
Going through the formerly-blocked passage room will reveal a dark room with a number of switches on them. You must flick the correct switches to unlock the door at the end of the room. Three locks are connected to three switches. Flick each switch up one at a time and run to see whether a green light has been activated. Once all lights are green, the door will be unlocked. Only three switches can be flicked on, so if you flicked an incorrect switch, flick it back off.
This will unlock the door to a room with hazmat suits, geiger counters, and extinguishers. These are all needed for the radioactive room.
The radioactive room
Find the room with a slaughtered hazmat-wearing person outside of screen flaps. This next puzzle requires you to be wearing the hazmat suit, not just have it in your inventory.
There is a locked door at the end of the rooms that can only be unlocked if the radiation level is low enough. You much use the geiger counter to see which objects strewn around the rooms are radioactive, and then smother them generously with the extinguisher. This will lower their radioactiveness for three minutes. You may find it easier to just smother everything for at least five seconds to be on the safe side.
The door will unlock when it is clear enough. Walk through the door.
At the end of the corridor you will find a drawer with items and file for another entity you are about to come across.
There will be a door that requires the bolt cutters to break the lock. Head down the stairs. There will be a button that you need to stand on for the shutter door to go up. Once it is all the way up, you must run through and drop through the hole into the final parking level of the backrooms
The parking room
This is a short puzzle that is the final stage before the office rooms, the second stage of the game.
You must find all the valve handles scattered across the level. There are burst pipes that you need to interact with and slide the valve handles from your inventory to attach them. Then you can use your mouse to tighten the handles by turning them clockwise. Turn it enough to stop the leak.
Once this has been done for all the leaking pipes, the door at the end of the room will stop leaking gasses. To go through the door, you’re going to need the access card by the dead man at the other end of the parking lot.
once through the door, the creature will start running from wherever it is to chase you down. You can walk the first part and then sprint the rest of the way down the hall until you enter the wide room. There will be two red buttons. One in the hallway, and one next to the entrance when you enter the room. These buttons cut off the hallway from the next room, keeping the creature at bay. Do not press the red button in the hallway, or you will trap yourself into the hallway with the creature.
Related: How to Escape the Lobby in Escape the Backrooms
Escaping the backrooms into the office rooms
Go up the stairs and down the hall until you hit the elevator. The code for the elevator is on a note attached to the elevator. Put in the code. You will arrive in the office rooms. It is now safe to leave if you need.
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