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I wanted to take a while to really form a good response to this because it’s a great question! I struggled with the same thing when prototyping my game and wound up with a hybrid approach to try getting the best of both worlds.

The main issue with handmade is that, especially as a solo dev, it takes way too much time to build a whole game that way. The quality is great because it’s fully controlled, but it lengthens timelines too much for solo devs and small teams.

By contrast, purely procedural is infinitely extensible, but without a really complex algorithm to do it things get boring fast. A huge scale with that strategy is WAY more feasible than handmade, but the results just aren’t typically as fun.

The solution I took to that problem was to use a bit of both! I have handmade story areas that progress the narrative, and they’re all separated by randomly generated hallways and rooms that I designed to fit the theme of the narrative during each transitional stage in the plot. By doing that, I can make every playthrough feel unique while also delivering a higher quality narrative which I like a lot with this project.

For reference, I got a lot of these concepts from GDC talks as well as these two videos from Tim Cain: 

• https://youtu.be/jkXd503iCRI?si=po51BFdw_iXpRhrE
• https://youtu.be/ZpGbO9qk4qw?si=x2TIchoddBk3Huad

I do absolutely think a handmade, low-poly Backrooms game could work! The biggest thing is examining the options and seeing what type of balance plays best to your strengths and provides the most interesting variety possible.

Hopefully that helps! Sorry for the essay!