There are few things worse than losing your dog, unless it involves searching for the little blighter inside an endless public toilet occupied by a murderous jester. The Bathrooms sends you into this damp nightmare to rescue your Shiba Inu, collect keys and investigate some peculiar machinery. It sounds promising, but after a few hours of wandering through identical lavatories, I was ready to leave the dog with the clown and go home.
Gaming Heaven
Credit where it’s due: the atmosphere is genuinely creepy. Flickering lights, rising water and distant screams create moments of proper tension, particularly when The Custodian decides you’ve spent long enough admiring the porcelain. The endless bathroom setting is suitably surreal, and the threat of being hunted occasionally gets the heart going.
There’s also a reasonable selection of activities. You can gamble for cash, search barrels, collect orbs, upgrade your equipment and pursue different endings. The freedom to experiment might appeal to players who enjoy discovering systems for themselves. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between experimentation and being abandoned in a toilet with absolutely no idea what you’re doing.
Gaming Hell
The objectives are a muddle. You can reach the credits without understanding how you won, which is an impressive achievement for all the wrong reasons. Progress involves repetitive scavenging, backtracking and interacting with machinery while hoping something meaningful happens.
The Custodian initially provides some decent scares, but once you learn his routines, he becomes less terrifying nuisance and more irritating bloke who won’t stop following you round B&Q. The supposed comedy rarely raises a smile, either. If this is satire of liminal horror games, the joke appears to have been flushed before anyone explained it.
Eventually, the endless corridors and repetitive rooms become tedious rather than unsettling. There’s atmosphere here, certainly, but precious little substance beneath the damp tiles.
Final Judgement
The Bathrooms has a decent horror concept buried beneath confusing objectives, repetitive exploration and an uncertain identity. It occasionally frightens, but mostly frustrates. Unless you’ve always fancied paying money to get lost in a supernatural public convenience, give this one a miss.
