Backseat

Introduction

Backseat, developed and published by HOGO Games, released on Steam on 9 September 2026 at NZ$12.60. It's a first-person psychological horror game built around a taxi-driving premise with real stakes: the player's wife has been kidnapped, and the only way to save her is to obey a mysterious organisation known as BK26, which requires picking up dangerous strangers at night, learning what they're hiding through careful questioning, and avoiding giving any of them a reason to turn violent. Between conversations, players use an in-car computer to hack into databases and dig for clues that might keep them alive, while a logbook helps profile each passenger's likely type based on their behaviour. The game builds toward BK26's missions and a trail that leads back toward the player's wife, with multiple distinct endings depending on choices made along the way. As a brand-new full-price release, it launched with a substantial and clearly positive review base: 60 total reviews at the time of writing, 46 of them favourable, landing the game at Mostly Positive on Steam's own scale.

What's working: genuine tension built on observation, not jump scares

What comes through most clearly across Backseat's review sample is how consistently reviewers credit its central mechanic, watching and questioning passengers, for delivering real psychological tension rather than relying on cheap scares. One reviewer sums up the appeal directly: "Backseat has a really interesting concept and does a good job of building tension without relying on constant jumpscares," adding that "watching the passengers, trying to figure out what's wrong with them, and making decisions while driving keeps you surprisingly focused." A separate reviewer describes the immersion in more visceral terms, writing "the game was so immersive that I literally had to check the back seat every few seconds," while specifically praising how meaningfully their choices appeared to shape different outcomes. A Turkish-language reviewer goes further still, describing feeling the tension "right down to my bones" and crediting the developers with obvious passion and effort throughout.

The game's multiple endings draw their own consistent, specific praise as a strong reason to return to a fairly short experience. One reviewer reports being "shocked when I see how many endings this game has" and says they'll "definitely try again later," while a separate reviewer independently confirms the replay value, writing that the choices and different outcomes "made it fun to replay" despite the game's short overall length. More than one reviewer frames the unpredictability of individual passengers as the game's core hook, with one writing plainly that they "can't believe that all these people got into the car of a true psychopath," while crediting the game with keeping them guessing throughout. A detailed Chinese-language reviewer reports a particularly concrete positive signal: after posting specific feedback about confusing passenger-behaviour cues, the developer responded directly and the reviewer says they raised their score as a result, specifically crediting the team's responsiveness.

The honest problems: repetition, driving bugs, and a story that runs long

Set against that praise, Backseat's review sample carries a large and specific volume of complaints, concentrated heavily around the game's pacing and technical execution. The single most repeated issue is that the core loop, drive, observe, question, deliver, wears thin well before the credits roll. A German-language reviewer states it bluntly: "ist sehr schnell sehr eintönig," or that it becomes very repetitive very quickly, specifically citing a small map, thin story, and endless driving as reasons against recommending it. A separate German reviewer who otherwise enjoyed the game agrees on the same point, warning "nach 2 Stunden oder 1/2 ist das Spiel eintönig," roughly that after about two hours the game becomes monotonous, while a Czech-language reviewer similarly reports counting down the minutes until the story wrapped up by the game's second half.

Technical complaints form the sample's second major cluster, and reviewers report concrete, specific bugs rather than vague dissatisfaction. One German-language reviewer reports the automatic-driving toggle simply "hat bei mir nicht geklappt," forcing manual driving for the entire session and eventually a refund, while a Brazilian reviewer separately reports the GPS route glitching mid-ride, requiring three full restarts and describing the Portuguese translation as "horrenda." A Russian- language reviewer sums up the technical state plainly, describing the project as looking "очень сыро и плохо оптимизированным," or very rough and poorly optimised, more like a budget mobile game than a finished product. Beyond bugs, multiple reviewers report the passenger-profiling system, the game's central mechanic, doesn't behave consistently: a detailed Chinese-language reviewer reports that correctly identifying a passenger's type didn't reliably calm them down in practice, while a separate reviewer flags several passenger behaviours as too ambiguous to categorise confidently. The game's own AI Generated Content Disclosure confirms that AI tools assisted with select visual and audio elements and translations, a detail at least one critical reviewer raises directly and unfavourably in an otherwise harsh review that also called the game's optimisation poor.

Verdict

Backseat backs up a mostly positive launch with a genuinely original hook: reviewers repeatedly credit its passenger-observation mechanic with building real tension without leaning on jump scares, and its multiple endings draw consistent praise as a strong reason to replay a short experience. But its honest problems are widespread and specific: a large share of reviewers across several languages report the core loop turning repetitive within the first couple of hours, concrete bugs including a broken auto-drive feature and a glitching GPS route, and a passenger- profiling system that doesn't always behave the way the game promises. None of that undoes what a mostly positive reception is clearly responding to in its central idea, but for a full-price release, the rough edges are real and worth going in aware of. This is a cautious recommendation for horror fans specifically drawn to its unusual premise.

Wanderer callout

A reviewer who posted specific, detailed gameplay feedback, then updated their own review upward after the developer responded and acted on it, is exactly the kind of concrete, traceable signal Wanderer treats as more meaningful than a first-day impression: it shows a studio actually listening, not just claiming to.