The Complex: Expedition
When an expedition with your team into the complex goes horribly wrong, you're left alone and lost, wandering the seemingly infinite maze of hallways, otherwise known as the Backrooms. Might there be something following you?
The Complex: Expedition is a horror, exploration and realistic game
developed and published by pgWave.
Released on July 17th 2023 is available in English only on Windows.
It has received 1,397 reviews of which 1,280 were positive and 117 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.7 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 9.75€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified The Complex: Expedition into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at The Complex: Expedition through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: WINDOWS® 10+(64-BIT Required)
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-4460, 2.70GHz or AMD FX™-6300 or better
- Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 760 or AMD Radeon™ R7 260x with 2GB Video RAM
- DirectX: Version 11
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
This game gets the backrooms right i.e. spooky liminal feeling which is not just about a bloody monster chasing you. It accomplishes what few games do, being scary without chasing the player. This is about the space and the feeling of being lost and alone. Unique horror experience.
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The Complex: Expedition is a wonderful subtly unnerving horror experience filled with a kind of contemplative dread that will strike a chord with patient, imaginative gamers. Playing out like a horror inflected walking simulator, the minute to minute gameplay may not be enough to hold the attention of an action hungry audience. There are no shocking jump scares here and no in your face gore, rather this is the kind of horror that slowly crawls under your skin and makes you run from your own imagined terrors. While the game takes many visual and narrative cues from the wonderfully produced "Backrooms" YouTube videos by Kane Pixels, this is not intended to be an extension of that particular canon. There already exists a dedicated community producing derivative works, and countless creepypasta fan fiction which explore the every minutiae of the original series, but the developers wisely choose to ignore that body of work. Here instead, they present their own version of events which should be viewed as a companion piece. The team understand that the most interesting element of the fiction is the mystery, and that by very definition a mystery becomes much less interesting the more it is explained. The story begins with a team of researchers crossing the threshold and entering The Complex. Our protagonist, Neuman J. Miller, is the cameraman for this particular expedition. As such, he is tasked with crawling through a low opening known as "the gap" and documenting what he sees beyond. Shortly after this point, he encounters some kind of fluctuation in his surroundings which causes him to be transported to unknown territory within The Complex. From this point onwards the player is charged with trying to escape from this labyrinthine nightmare and return Neuman to the safety of his own standard world. Thus a bare bones narrative structure exists. Nothing is implicit, but much can be inferred from careful observation and exhaustive exploration. While there are no NPCs beyond the opening sequence, the environments are very much a character in their own right, with the ability to guide, disorient and alarm the player. The enjoyment and impact will depend on the player's willingness to engage with exploration, but the quality of the presentation should hold the attention of most. The project absolutely nails the visual aesthetics of the original short films. The Expedition utilises the same conceit of viewing the surroundings through the lens of a period appropriate (late 80s / early 90s) video camera, and so everything is seen in a forced 4:3 aspect ratio complete with lens flare, screen artefacts and visual distortions due to the nature of the medium. Combine this with the realistic lighting, the accurate recreation of colouring and texturing on surfaces and objects, and it makes for a truly impressive spectacle. The mundanity of the environments make them appear hyper real, and for anyone familiar with the VHS format, their mind will frequently be tricked into accepting what they are seeing as real. This immersion is further assured with equally strong audio design. The very human sounds made by the player ring out in stark contrast to the overwhelming silence of the alien environments. The steady breathing of the protagonist is a constant reminder of his vulnerability and isolation. The whirrs and bleeps emanating from the video recorder punctuate the silent halls and are both reassuring and dreadful in equal measure. The soft muffled footfalls across the carpeted expanses become eardrum shattering crashes as the floor surfaces change, and the noise rings out into the endlessness of the void. The Complex itself is a mostly silent expanse, and so when sounds do occur, they carry an unknown significance. The faint and menacing low hum of some distant machine becomes a cacophonous roar, as if alerting the world to the player's incursion into this silent realm. On rare occasions the sound of music will carry across the dead air emerging from some uncertain origin. Often the source of much joy, in this forbidden place, music is used to goad and unnerve. Without any contextual clues, discordant jazz and melancholic classical pieces feel mocking and unkind. Jaunty tunes become haunting spectres as the equipment through which they are transmitted garbles the lyrics or distorts the harmony, and the wonderfully spatial quality of the audio makes the effect even more startling. When the player stops to really listen, the content of the song feels deeply sinister and insidious. Then there are the sounds made by something else entirely; something rarely seen, something very curious, something that is following... The developers released a shorter free game called The Complex: Found Footage about a year before the release of Expedition. It is a pared back version of essentially the same game, and I can understand some reviewer's opinions where they suggest it is the better overall experience. The earlier free game literally covers much of the same ground as Expedition and the whole experience clocks in at under an hour. It could be viewed as a playable remix of the early Kane Pixels videos. Expedition on the other hand, takes about two hours to complete, and more if you are really investigating the world. As a much more fleshed out experience, it does often suffer from long monotonous stretches traversing reused environments and some rehashed gameplay elements. While the first game is certainly much more succinct, I would argue that the increase in fidelity here and the addition of more narrative elements makes the earlier work largely redundant. Having given it another playthrough, the difference in quality is really quite pronounced. If you have yet to try out the original free game, then absolutely play that before coming to a decision on this larger successor. For those who feel completely satisfied by that short experience, they would be best served by leaving off there. For those who feel some kind of deeper connection, some yearning to return to the equally comforting and disquieting hallways of The Complex, then definitely snap this up. You will enjoy getting literally and metaphorically lost within this well crafted world. The full 1.0 release is due July '24, and I have been reliably informed that it will be almost a new game at that stage. I do hope the tone doesn't shift too radically, but I certainly look forward to another expedition into the liminal world, whatever may be lying in wait for me there.
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I'm a huge fan of surrealism/ liminal/ liminal horror and I've played quite a lot of games from this genre (Anemoiapolis, Superliminal, Exit 8, Stanley Parable, Backrooms: Found Footage (same dev) / The Project / Lost Tape / Escape The Backrooms), and I have to say that this dev is probably the truest to the liminal experience of the Backrooms that I've seen. Keep in mind that Found Footage is a free game by pgWave published a year ago for free- go check it out! Graphics: Amazing. Feels realistic, the shading is great, true-to-life video camera fuzziness. You could probably fool people into thinking that screencaps from this game are photographs. I feel like Found Footage was an experiment to see how the dev could take the narrative and explore different levels of the backroom, and kudos to him for not recycling anything (save one, iirc- the ledge peering into the concrete expanse with giant signs and symmetrical, gaping rooms)- I believe he changed the rooms of that area to avoid self-plagiarism, but the OG one in Found Footage was better. It gave me chills when I saw it for the first time. Gameplay: For those people who are complaining that this is a walking simulator- this is true liminal horror. I feel like a lot of Backrooms games these days focus heavily on entities and play it off more as a slasher/ survival horror (Escape the Backrooms being the most popular one)- which is fine! It's fun, and I enjoyed those games- but this game is more about the eerie feeling about traversing an unknown, impossible area filled with manmade structures that are clearly made with no thought of man. Bathrooms without utilities, rooms without furniture, illogical structures... beautiful. Content: This is quite a lot of content. Unlike Escape the Backrooms, where you have to brute force your way through mazes because there is only ONE way through the level (remember the Boiler room?), there are multiple ways to get to the next level, and the game encourages you to either play again to traverse the other paths or to go back and check them out once you found the elevator. I really appreciate the map design in this way, great quality of life. I played for an hour and I felt like it was longer.
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The Complex: Expedition is the best rendition of Backrooms yet. It's the closest you'll get to a first person exploration of Kane Pixels Backrooms. Unlike other Backroom games, TCE focuses on exploration and atmosphere over monster jump scares. The creator establishes an eerie nightmarish aura over large maze-like levels. Most of the popular Backrooms levels are recreated in this game. However, there are a few noticeable shortcomings - the first is that the game is far too short. Casually walking, I was able to complete TCE in in a little over three hours on my first try. Another problem is that some content the creator presented in his previous demo "The Complex: Found Footage" is missing - specifically the Suburb levels and some other famous Backroom features (which is quite disappointing). However it should be noted, at this point in time, TCE is an early access game so hopefully all these deficiencies will be rectified at some point soon.
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The game is very atmospheric and cool. developers, I beg you very much, do not spoil your project with a trillion entities and the like. This doll fits perfectly into this game, I really hope that the game will remain as cool in the release.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 19 November 2024 11:08 |
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| SteamSpy data | 21 December 2024 06:57 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:33 |
| Steam reviews | 22 December 2024 07:48 |
