While some genres of entertainment have made themselves known through major publishers and AAA studios, with some indie spirit mixed in, over the last few decades, it has been community projects such as SCP Foundation and The Backrooms that have helped define what the horror genre is all about – serving as inspiration and even foundations for both the independent scene and some major works such as Remedy’s Control (in the case of SCP). The latter is what we are talking about today, with The Backrooms’ design ethos, particularly, serving as inspiration for the recently released episodic psychological horror Subliminal from Accidental Studios, which is now available to purchase on PC. But does it rise to the level of its inspiration? Read on to find out!
Subliminal hands you the role of Caleb, a man picking his way through the wreckage of his own memories, and the whole ordeal is dressed up as routine “maintenance” of a mind that has very obviously stopped running smoothly. Joined by your narrator, who talks you through his escape, the game’s pull comes from slowly working out whether that voice actually deserves your trust. What makes the writing land is its refusal to explain itself. Subliminal trusts you to read meaning into its rooms rather than spelling everything out, and the upshot is a story told as much through wallpaper, signage and the bits and pieces left lying around as through anything the narrator says. It is quite satisfying overall, if not a bit weak and non-conclusionary, though this may be due to it being the first part or episode of a wider planned work, something that could be made a little clearer.
Wearing its inspiration on its sleeves and doing it quite a bit of justice, Subliminal stands out in its corner of the genre. Accidental Studios has leaned hard on modern lighting, detailed, reactive surfaces, and the sense of forboding and eeriness its spaces offer. Rather than another procession of beige offices, the game drags you through a childhood basement crammed with period-accurate toys, a sprawling indoor water park, and a fast-food play centre, then quietly poisons each one until the familiar curdles into something deeply wrong. Stalking those spaces is Smile, a corrupted mascot lifted straight from the play centre’s branding (arguably inspired by Poppy’s Playtime). It is not flawless under the bonnet. The game is demanding on hardware, and does have the occasional instance of roughness, but these are minor qualms for a genre where the concept of design is just as, if not more, important than the actual execution.
Subliminal understands that dread thrives not just in what you see, but in what you hear. The sound design is solid, and it is coupled with a narrator whose calm, faintly detached delivery threads a vein of dark humour and warped nostalgia throughout the descent. It is a small slice of the overall package, but it is handled with a confidence that the rest of the game would do well to match more consistently.
At its heart, Subliminal keeps things pretty simple. You wander into an area, work out a puzzle, and that opens the door to the next slice of Caleb’s past. The puzzles are, for the most part, approachable and involve the manipulation of light sources, with you ultimately siphoning illumination from one source and feeding it into another, powering switches and mechanisms as you go, and the idea is framed neatly as coaxing life back into the parts of Caleb’s mind that have gone dark. Occasionally, there are limiters on the puzzles, such as timed sequences that yank you out of the slow, contemplative pacing and force you to keep moving. When the loop clicks, it is genuinely satisfying, swapping careful thought for sudden urgency so that you never quite get comfortable. There are occasions where you can trap yourself, but ultimately, there is always a solution that will come to you sooner rather than later.
If anything is going to test your patience, it is the chase sequences. These bits drag on for ages, the checkpoints are few and far between, and the movement turns clunky right when you need it to feel snappy, all while the game still expects you to dodge obstacles and crack little puzzles at a flat-out sprint. It is that balance that developers of horror games often straddle: make things too challenging, and you risk the atmosphere fading away through frustration; make things too easy, and you risk the player not feeling the intensity of the rush. Unfortunately, I think the developers are still finding that line, and hopefully the second episode applies their learnings. However, the foundations they have are solid, even if not groundbreaking, and it is clear there is more to build from this starting point.
So, does Subliminal rise to the level of the community-born phenomena that inspired it? I wouldn’t say it does just yet. In its best moments – whether the harrowing, almost childish, whimsical locales, its sound design and narrative it captures some of that spirit of The Backrooms while also setting a path towards its own direction. However, the clunky chase sequences and unfinished narrative suggest there is still work to be done. Accidental Studios has laid solid foundations rather than groundbreaking ones, but they are foundations on which a sequel could build to create something genuinely special. For now, this is a flawed but promising first step into Caleb’s mind, and one well worth taking if you know to expect a beginning rather than an ending.
Final Score for Subliminal
Developed by Accidental Studios and published by Infini Fun and Gone Shootin’, Subliminal is now available to purchase on PC. A Steam review code was provided to facilitate this review.
